The Libor Inquiry and Ageing

It would be interesting to know why Andrea Leadsom has not been chosen to sit on the Parliamentary Inquiry panel into the Libor scandal and banking standards. It seems a pity to have excluded her after the successful way she questioned Bob Diamond at his appearance before the Treasury Select Committee the other day. It is obvious why John Mann, another Treasury Select Committee member, has not been chosen. His questioning of Diamond was both boorish and publicity seeking and thus his style is most unlikely to elicit any worthwhile answer of the big beasts who will be asked to appear before the Inquiry panel. It is good though that like inquiries carried out by US Congress committees the Tyrie led Inquiry is to be able to appoint Counsel to interrogate the witnesses under oath. Some of the evidence should be illuminating and I wonder what the Governor of the Bank of England will have to say now that it seems he was made aware of the Libor scandal in 2008 but did nothing about it. If true did he do this off his own bat or were Brown and/or Balls involved in the decision? Turning to another issue or rather to another semi independent government body, the Office for Budget Responsibility has reported that because of our ageing population current policies will result in non interest public spending increase by something like 15% by 2061. As such an increase is unsustainable it is clear that our present spending policies will have to change dramatically. Allister Heath has a good article about this in City AM today which you can read here. You would have thought that with this kind of tsunami coming at us that the Government would be looking seriously at further significant cuts in spending as well as at ways to increase growth. That is why it is so crazy for the Government on the basis of uncertain and largely debunked science to embark upon a costly green policy and why it is negligent in not pushing the private sector to exploit shale gas.