It's Don't make Your Mind Up Time

Well, there are times that I'm glad that I am not seriously in the markets. If anyone took anything at face value the things that the BoE or the Fed said last week, then they would have done their pieces. I was going to say that we weren't quite at the stage of "I'll never believe anything you say again", but we aren't far away from it.

Rumour has it that King might throw in the towel before the end of the week, following its announcement yesterday that it would pump three-month liquidity into the money markets (a very different animal from overnight liquidity). Whatever happened to King's condemnation of this last week on the grounds that it would encourage risky behaviour?

I was annoyed because I got out of sterling ahead of the Fed's anouncement on Tuesday, but luckily I didn't panic and then go back in after that one wrong-footed me. Otherwise I would have been caught out by two flip-flops within a week.

It's not much better in the US, where Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, quasi-independent financial institutions created in a bygone age, have been allowed to buy $20bn in subprime loans - a bail-out of the mortgage lenders in all but name. Clearly, nothing can be allowed to fail any more if it might costs votes. The democratisation of the financial system has a big downside. Farepak was allowed to fail because (a) it didn't make bad television and (b) the people affected didn't really matter. Mortgage lenders in trouble and failing banks were not such a concern when 90% of the population rented and only 20% had bank accounts. But now we live in a complex, devt-related, financial society. We are all geared mini plcs now. And we all have votes.

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It only took the Treasury two days to get out a statement "clarifying" the Chancellor's Tuesday statement: Here it is:

GUARANTEE OF EXISTING NORTHERN ROCK PLC DEPOSITS

The Treasury today confirmed that the guarantee arrangements for existing deposits in Northern Rock PLC would cover all accounts existing at midnight on Wednesday 19 September. This guarantee covers future interest payments, movements of funds between existing accounts, and new deposits into existing accounts. The guarantee will also cover accounts re-opened in the future by those who closed them between Thursday 13 September and Wednesday 19 September, inclusive.

Since it would otherwise be unfair to other banks and building societies, the arrangements would not cover any new accounts set up after 19 September, other than re-opened accounts as set out above.

In the case of wholesale market funding for Northern Rock PLC, the Treasury confirmed that the arrangements would cover:

• existing and renewed wholesale deposits;
• existing and renewed wholesale borrowing which is not collateralised.

The arrangements would not cover other debt instruments including:

• covered bonds;
• securities issued under the 'Granite' securitisation programme;
• subordinated and other hybrid capital instruments.

The guarantee in relation to Northern Rock PLC will remain in place during the current instability in the financial markets.

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So, Mourinho has gone. And it's all Madeleine McCann's fault. My guess is that John Terry was reading The Sun and made some comment about the quality of the Portuguese police investigation. Mourinho's nationalistic pride reared its ugly head, and he started defending the invetigation, probably adding something like "no smoke without fire". Terry lost his rag. Mourinho lost his, stormed off, and then texted the entire team to say that he was quitting.

Well, it makes as much sense as anything else.