Last week saw President Obama’s boldest move yet as he attempts to steer the US out of the storm. His $trillion pledge has a substantial sum allocated to buy up legacy assets or in other words the loans that are considered toxic. Once the banks off-load these assets they will be a lot more ...

Whilst I won’t claim to have watched the full 3 hours and 15 minutes of the Kangaroo Court, sorry I mean the Treasury Select Committee’s grilling of the naughty bankers from HBoS and RBS I watched enough to get annoyed. We all know that a few bankers have made ridiculous amounts of money by ...

As a stated in this column last week I am sceptical about how much of the taxpayer’s money is going to find its way to homeowners, despite the fact that literally a £trillion has been thrown at the problem. The latest attempt by the government to buy back bonds ...

In its latest white paper, Exact has said the government should reinstate local authority mortgage lending to fill the public lending shortfall. The paper argues that currently the government is relying on a few high street banks to supply the UK mortgage market, but they have failed to use all ...

Mortgage Strategy: Alan Cleary’s column. ast Monday’s news that net lending from the mutual sector was in negative territory should be of little surprise. Most industry predictions for 2009 is that net lending will be negative to the tune of about £25bn as people delay getting on the ...

At last some joined up thinking from the government with an announcement last week that Northern Rock would start lending again rather than winding down its mortgage book. This is a significant statement of intent which clearly says that the government is prepared to ...

Mortgage Strategy: Alan Cleary’s column. Good news is hard to come by at the moment but there is positive signs coming from the prime minister. The banks that we collectively own or part own as tax payers are now being ‘encouraged’ to lend more money to take up some of the slack. ...

Exact’s in-house research team considers local authority lending as the best method for central government to direct and target funds to those who have been excluded from the current market. ...