Back from the Brink.

The Alistair Darling book Back from the Brink,has anyone read it and if so is it a decent read ? A few years back he gave a candid interview in which he clearly stated the the UK banks were within hours of closing doors and cashpoints because what cash they had was not underwritten true or false ?

Few give him credit, he steered the ship away from the icebergs. Was on holiday in Spain at the time and completely unaware

I was meant to have read it for my dissertation (opps) but I'm lost by the underwriting, didn't think banks underwrote physical cash, only assets. However I assumed it was to prevent bank runs as we saw with Northern Rock, as physical cash is something like only 5% of the money supply. There would not have been enough cash to give to depositors.

Could be wrong, but that's from my basic understanding that it was more to do with money supply than underwriting.

nicko31 said:

Few give him credit, he steered the ship away from the icebergs. Was on holiday in Spain at the time and completely unaware

Click to expand...

Absolutely, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annual if you click on the 10Y chart, you could see a very sharp increase in GDP, to then stagnation. Austerity, eh? Awful idea.