“The request is simple, please include... supply chain finance” Bank of England release FOI correspondence with former PM Cameron, lobbying for inclusion of supply chain finance, offered by Greensill Capital, within post COVID support scheme to buy forms of commercial debt:
Greensill contacted Bank/HMT on ‘a number of occasions’.
Cameron contacted Bank on 5th and 7th March 2020.
DC/ Greensill/ Bank call on 17 March.
On 18 March Bank announced CCFF scheme, excluding supply chain finance.
This is a rather interesting sentence from Cameron to then Governor Carney’s private secretary introducing Greensill...
“GC is now the world’s largest provider of Supply Chain Finance and has the mandate for the UK government”.. which is a reference to...
... the point elaborated on in Greensill’s specific proposal to Deputy Gov Cunliffe for why the Bank’s emergency debt purchases should (as in 2010) include supply chain finance...
“We are the sole provider of HMGs supply chain finance programmes across all areas...”
DC’s email pleads with Deputy Governor over objections relating to Greensills use of foreign currency, support for foreign supply chains, and in particular that this corporate facility was not for a financial institution...
Greensill caught between that and not being a bank...
New set of emails to the Treasury released...
Of note: an amount of between £4-10bn mentioned for the refused application for the Commercial Paper facility.
Treasury seem pretty sceptical at this point, and Cameron and Greensill basically argue its to help NHS/ pharmacies...
... so what changed by June? At that point Greensill is entrusted with actually itself handing out taxpayer backed COVID support loans under separate CLBILs scheme, after having badgered Treasury over its support for NHS and pharmacies, and lends money to Gupta’s steel companies.
Again back in March - pretty sceptical note - Treasury Perm Sec reports “incoming from my old boss” - Cameron.... and “well done for holding off ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️”...
And then the mention of the former Cabinet Secretary Sedwill is new - he introduces Greensill to second perm sec of Treasury - which rather suggests there were more emails/texts/ lobbying elsewhere (ie other than HMT & Bank of England that we have seen)...
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Treasury effectively confirms debt rule loosening, by announcing its new “guardrails” to channel capital spending goes to a 10 year pipeline of major projects that generate economic returns that will help “depoliticise infrastructure”
Their view is independent accountable bodies, either new or given new powers will set & implement a 10 year infrastructure strategy integrated with 2 year spending reviews, and audit this, and assess value for money ensuring capital investment generates clear long term returns…
Ministers now openly call the impact of the Sunak debt rule “a mistake”, that it constrained some much needed public infrastructure investment, while not stopping bad investment in failing projects… capital needs to be properly quality controlled not arbitrarily constrained
“One monopolist serves as a gatekeeper for the delivery of nearly all live music in America today”
- US Govt’s attempt to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster announced in May in a court filing is quite a document… “platinum” pricing is mentioned 5 times … #Ticketonomics
Live Nation itself said this year that platinum pricing was in its 5th innings in the US but “in its first” in Europe and their intention to apply it “all along the way” until the concert “gates open up” is a “multi year opportunity to grow our top line/ bottom line”…
CEO Michael Rapino said earlier this year ”it’s just pricing smarter” & “it’s a skill” where LN/ Ticketmasters in-house team “works with artists, agents, managers” to “price the fronts better so the back sells out”… “rolling this around world” is “the great growth opportunity”
NAO confirms that HS2 without phase 2 will result in trains with less space between Manchester and Birmingham than current west Coast services, and might require demand management to dissuade passengers… bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
Non-consensus view, but having sunk the costs of phase 1, and then committed to the hybrid bill for HS2 north… the cost benefit ratio of completing the bit between Manchester airport and Birmingham will be very high… would require political consensus to be re-established though
Who can forget the Perm Sec’s amazing document from last year.. the strategic case on rebalancing Britain “no longer applies”
Shadow Chancellor Jeremy Hunt acknowledges to @bbclaurak when asked if Conservatives had won whether there would have been tax cuts in Autumn that “we wouldn’t have been able to do it immediately, no”
…
most notable thing re: Chancellor interview with Laura is this unusual Treasury analysis due in next fortnight which will “look at the state of the public services, the state of the public finances…public spending pressures we are under”
Q: why isnt the OBR doing this?
While fiscally eventful, it is not going to be a “fiscal event”… when first announced by Chancellor on her first Monday in office it sounded more like an audit of stalled spending and impact on public services, than an audit of the public finances…
Reassuringly, @demishassabis tells Blair at the @InstituteGC conference that Artificial Intelligence is only at the IQ level of a cat right now.. [although that is changing rapidly - surely will exceed humans in many tasks in this Parliament] 🐈⬛
Interesting to think Blair as PM famously never used his computer, or rarely did so…
Also has the scars, as it were, from that failed NHS IT contract… if only that had succeeded…
Interesting to know if this Govt is conscious of the ghosts of that and of botched PFI deals.
Chancellor’s Mais lecture did have sense of learning from some setbacks during the Blair era … havent seen a good analysis tho of where eg record on PFI and the NHS IT contract [perhaps Horizon too] forms part of this govt’s memory.
Coutinho co-opting the Treasury Permanent Secretary into backing idea that Labour will raise taxes by thousands…
All this arises because the OBR (unlike its equivalent in Ireland, Australia the US, the CBO) is prevented from doing comparable truly independent costings…
This whole “debate” is, for now, rather absurd, as next week we will get the actual policies in manifestos, the parties’ own assumptions and separate truly independent numbers on the implications for tax, spend & borrowing from the likes of the IFS & Niesr.
The Treasury Permanent Secretary who Coutinho deployed this morning to defend the £38bn/ £2k claim wrote to the Opposition to say it “should not be presented as having been produced by civil service”… this could be problematic…