Penny Sleuth’s Tom Bulford says Britain’s politicians and banking bosses are desperately trying to blame this financial crisis on external factors. Nobody is willing to accept responsibility for the reckless business practices of the past decade. This spells more bad news for UK stocks and the British pound…

Not being a Guardian reader, I missed the now famous interview in which Alastair Darling described the economic outlook as the worst for sixty years. But since it caused such a furore and has pulled the rug out from underneath Sterling, I thought that I should look it up and see what he actually said.

Had Darling been taking a keen interest in economics before he became Chancellor he would not now come out with comments such as this: ‘We knew that the economy was going to slow down…but we had no inkling that a financial crisis was about to unfold. No-one did. No one had any idea.’ I beg to differ. Many people for many months had been warning of reckless lending practices, overvalued properties and a dangerous credit binge. If anybody should have been hearing these minority views and taking them seriously then it should have been Alastair Darling and, of course, his predecessor Gordon Brown.

But the fiction that today’s economic problems somehow came out of the blue is being spun furiously. There is some truth in the assertion this country has no control over the price of oil and other commodities, but we certainly do have control over domestic lending. Labour politicians are now desperately trying to bundle these two quite distinct matters into one big economic tsunami that rolled upon our helpless and indefensible shores.

They are not alone. The other day I heard a director of one of our leading building societies assert that the only thing holding back the housing market is the collapse of the supply of wholesale funding – the result, he was quick to add, ‘of the global credit crunch that began in the USA’. Such an explanation conveniently absolves building society bosses from having approved risky business models and sitting back as they indulged in foolish lending. And it also dodges the issue of which came first – the decision of wholesale funders to withdraw lines of credit or the realization that UK house prices were far too high and set for a fall.

Shameless historical revisionism to pass the buck

So we are now into a period of shameless historical revisionism, the main purpose of which is to blame our economic problems on others, especially if they are foreigners, and on forces beyond this country’s control. The Government wants to portray itself as the crew of a ship in rough waters, selflessly trying to give what help it can to sick passengers. Bankers are talking about ‘learning the lessons’ of the crisis, rather than considering whether the loss of billions of pounds of shareholders cash is a matter for resignation. Indeed only this weekend I heard one from HBOS saying that ‘taking responsibility and resigning are two different things – and we have taken responsibility.’ So that’s OK, then!

Gordon Brown is desperately trying to steer a course between saying that the crisis is out of his hands and beyond his control, while also giving the impression that he can do something about it. And we have a Chancellor who explains the fundamentals of the job in words that one might use to a child of five. ‘Becoming chancellor is completely different from any other appointment. Even when times are easy, it’s important, because you’re dealing with money and money affects how everything works. When times are far from easy, it’s even more difficult.’

The whole spectacle does not really inspire confidence, does it? No wonder Sterling has been on the slide. Are you ready for this? Take a look at this brand new report from my colleague, Ben Traynor, for one smart way you can protect yourself before it’s too late.

Source: It’s Not My Fault, Guv…