Howard Davies: The MT diary
Debating the crisis; shooting up Amazon; London vs Geneva; the lessons of Bruges.
Mervyn King likes to begin his speeches with a question about numbers. He did so at the Mansion House this year. So let me follow his example. Who can turn 25,000 into 420, with a touch on his keyboard? With Mervyn King you have to concentrate through to the end of the speech before you get the answer. Mine will come sooner.
When he sat as a member of Her Majesty's Brown government, Lord Myners was something of a thorn in the side of the bankers. In the War of Fred Goodwin's Pension, an epic struggle, he was on the side of the angels. But, now that St Vincent de Cable has inveighed against gamblers and spivs, Paul Myners seems the voice of sweet reason by comparison.
He chaired a debate between me and Lord Peston of Today (and all other BBC programmes) at the LSE recently on the causes of the crisis. The shameless aim was to sell copies of a book I have just published called The Financial Crisis: Who's to blame?.
