Fraser you should consider interviewing Christopher Woods the analyst from CLSA, his weekly report Greed & fear is essential reading around the trading desks, hedge funds & professional investors of the world. He is a free market absolutist who called the market meltdown and has been trenchant in his views of the mistakes made by politicians, regulators & central bankers and has called out Brown, Paulson, King , Greenspan & Bernanke for particular criticism. He is also very clear on what needs to be done to fix the problems in the banking sector, many of which are fairly extreme, controversial and at odds with mainstream Government thinking on both sides of the Atlantic. Being an avid reader of Greed & fear and having read some of his previous interviews on-line & knowing people who have heard him speak in public I believe he would make for a great interview. He based in the CLSA Head Office in Hong Kong but travels to London on a regular basis. If Greed & fear is anything to go by you won't be disappointed.

I don't know where to put this, and as a typical blogger more adept at writing than reading, I don't know if this has been asked:

'No more boom and bust' - OK we can see the bust, but where exactly was the boom?? Was Brown half right (shudder)?

We have had a massive asset price boom in property, but the economy as a whole has not boomed at all. GDP growth has been pretty unimpressive. The question is this: why did the massive surge in money supply, Government borrowing/spending, personal borrowing, equity release, and immigration, not result in hyperbolic GDP growth?? Did we export our growth to China? Has it been absorbed by net falling productivity due to a bloating public sector? Was it pumping up our houses, and is now hissing out? If all this liquidity failed to produce any GDP increase above long term trend, can we expect the current attempted massive liquidity splurge to work??

I demand my boom

Hugs and kisses, Rosa

Substantial sums were lost when the dot.com bubble burst, which in turn led Alan Greenspan to lower interest rates as a way of getting consumers to lift the economy out of recession. Low interest rates in the USA pushed worldwide interest rates down, that in turn fuelled an asset price bubble. Having avoided the pain that should have followed the dot.com bust, we are now facing a 'double whammy' - two recession rolled into one.

Unfortunately governments on both sides of the Atlantic have adopted the same approach again - this time by reducing interest rates to near zero - but now both business and consumers have lost confidence that will not easily be reversed. In stark terms, the actions of central bankers was their response to democracy - a desire to enhance the 'good feel factor' of the majority that blinded them to the creation of the world's biggest bubble ever, and from which now there is no possibility of escape. All of us, no matter who we are, must bear our part of the inevitable financial and social pain that will define the next decade.

I have only once seen this explanation of the US housing boom:- that Bill Clinton as President passed a law enabling him to oblige banks and Freddie and Fanny to lend to iffy mortgagees. Does Fraser agree that this is what happened? if so, it would have been enough to blow up the unsustainable bubble all on its own, wouldn't it?

Regarding a solution, raise interest rates so that banks will earn some money is a bit more logical than giving the stuff away for zero return.

Blaming the housing boom on Clinton is such a red herring, you might as well blame Mrs T for creating a boom in the UK by selling off Council Houses on the cheap, providing multiple MIRAS tax relief and banks supporting the policy with 100% mortgages to people like me who couldn't really afford them . All of these factors started the first property boom bust cycle I remember which came to an ignaminious when interest rates doubled and we we're forced out of the ERM on Black Wednesday.