Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling signalled yesterday that
billions more taxpayers' pounds may be spent on easing the
credit squeeze.
It is the latest indication that the Government's £37billion
bail-out has failed to kickstart lending.
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor both said that another
direct cash injection was not their first option, but they
did not rule one out.
Instead they are thought to be figuring out a multi-billion
insurance scheme in which the Treasury would take on some
of the risk of debts.
Banks would pay a fee to reduce the potential losses they
would face on lending to companies and also possibly to households.
The Prime Minister insisted yesterday that banks should be
lending even more than they did in Labour's boom years. He
said he was 'urgently' talking to the banks about how to get
them to start lending again.
Opposition MPs are sure to seize on further schemes that
use public money as evidence that the bail-out has been an
enormously expensive failure.
