Meltdown facts

Published on 05/07/2012 00:00

There has been much correspondence regarding former Chancellor Alistair Darling and the global financial meltdown.

Mr Darling was undoubtedly in control of the UK’s finances at the time of the worldwide banking collapse, a fact that Prime Minister David Cameron will never allow us to forget, but there is a great difference between being there at the time and being responsible.

The disaster, as most will know, was primarily due to the greed of financial institutions in the United States deciding to gamble in the “sub-prime” lending market, which involved lending money to people who obviously could not pay it back, but then selling on the debt at a profit before the borrower defaulted.

When the bubble burst, this, in what now is a global economy, affected the whole world, and, if anything, Mr Darling emerges with credit from this period, as he was the one to show leadership in realising that we had no option but to bail out the banks, a policy which was then followed by the rest of the G8 nations.

If any individual government is, by negligence, to blame for the world’s present financial woes it is US President Barack Obama’s administration.

In daily debate in the Commons, Messrs Cameron and Osborne continually remind us of the financially chaotic situation they inherited from Labour, but leave the implication of responsibility hanging in the air, for to go further would be untruthful.

If Mr Cameron could truthfully accuse Messrs Brown and Darling of being directly responsible for the world’s present financial plight do you not think that they would take every opportunity to remind us?

Walter J Allan

Colinton Mains Drive

Edinburgh