There were one or two petted lips around Westminster yesterday in response to governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King’s call for Britain’s biggest banks to be split up to prevent the possibility of a financial crisis of similar proportions to the one that the UK is going through, in the future. Particularly peeved were Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling who even went as far as rebuking. Mr. King for his comments. King was seemingly unfazed at their comments.

According to Terry Duddy, chief executive of Home Retail Group, owners of the Argos and Homebase chains, the rise in VAT due on January 1 could act as a major for sales of large value items in the weeks leading up to the increase. Whilst announcing that the company had returned to profit in the six months to August 29, , Duddy said went on to announce a rise in consumer confidence and that his company was more optimistic about the outlook for the fourth quarter.

Chocolate kings, Cadbury have subtly increased the pressure on Kraft to raise its proposed £10 billion ($16.6billion) takeover offer. They did so through reporting unexpectedly strong third-quarter trading figures, surpassing even the toughest analysts’ expectations, The Company have succeeded in raising its full-year revenue targets to the “middle” of its 4-6 per cent goal range. Cadbury announced quarterly revenue growth of 7 per cent, which they claimed had been achieved by increasing prices and profit margins, despite a fall in turnover for the period of percent. Correspondingly, Cadbury had made considerable efforts to cut costs and reduce market spending. Since Kraft announced its offer proposal in early September, indications are that investors expect the US food group to pay at least 800 pence per share, while the current cash and shares proposal values Cadbury’s equity at 731pence a share. In the light of the recent results, some investment banks have revalued the target price on Cadbury to 900 pence, however a Kraft offer at this level is considered unlikely, unless counter-bidders suddenly emerge. The consensus is that Kraft will succeed with their offer, if it comes back with a 50-50 split of cash and stock bid of around 825 pence per Cadbury share. Kraft are understood to be considering returning with a formal offer but may wait until after its third-quarter results on November 3, while the UK Takeover Panel has set Kraft a final deadline of November 9 to make a formal offer.

Sterling continued its steady rise against the ever weakening dollar, recovering against the Swiss Franc. whilst faltering against the Euro.

• Pound/US dollar 1.6606
• Pound/Euro 1.1093
• Pound/Japanese Yen 151.6918
• Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6587

The FTSE 100 lost out on some of yesterday’s gains, down 33.79 points to close on 5257.85 The FTSE 250 25 shed all of the previous days gains. Down 143.60 points to close on.9421,04

Morgan Stanley has returned to profit after three quarterly losses in a row, after reporting a net income of £457m in the third quarter of 2008. The bank’s investment banking division fared particularly well with underwriting revenues up 74% from 2008 levels. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo, the country’s fourth-largest bank, reported record $3.2bn profits for the quarter, reporting that revenues from mortgages and consumer credit had surged.

Despite that positive news, the Dow Jones was down for the second consecutive day, yesterday by 92.12 points to crash below the ten thousand points on 9949.36. The NASDAQ Composite index also continued to fall, this time by 12.74 points to close on 2,150.73.

Recent reports continue to speculate that US companies who received billions of dollars of government aid in the financial crisis are to be forced to cut any excessive salary packages awarded to their leading executives. Of the seven companies that received the highest aid from the US Treasury will be obliged to reduce the basic salaries of their 25 best-paid employees, by up to nine tenths of the salary packages, while each firm’s 125 top earners would be see their pay slip cut in half, under the US government plan. There has been widespread outrage in the US over the high level of bonuses paid by firms that not so long ago were forced top go to the government cap in hand and ask for government help to stave of bankruptcy .

Figures just published confirm that China has exceeded its target for economic growth in the third quarter, for the first time this year. Chinese government figures show year on year GDP growth was up 8.9% from 7.9% in the previous quarter. Chinese officials have also said they are sure they will reach their full year target of 8% for economic growth, with the economy grewing by 7.7% in the nine months to September.

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Tags: Alastair Darling, Argos, Bank of England, Banking, British Economy, British Pound, Brown, Cadbury, Currency, Darling, Dow Jones, Economics, Economy, Employment, Financial News, FTSE, Global Credit Crisis, Gordon Brown, Home Retail Group, Homebase, Kraft, Mervyn King, Money, Money Management, Money Markets, Morgan Stanley, NASDAQ, Recession, Terry Duddy, UK Banks, UK Economy, UK government, UK Recession, US Treasury, Wells Fargo

Anyone, whoever took the time to study modern history, will have heard the story of how the American “fathers” managed to purchase the island of Manhattan for two bottles of whisky and a few brightly coloured beads from the Red Indians. The fact that the island went on to become one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the World must make that particular piece of business one of the greatest “snow jobs” in history. Yet it is possible to say that what Messrs. Brown, Blair and Bush did to the UK public over the last ten years or so doesn’t fade much by comparison.

Bush and Blair thankfully have been banished to the annals of history, but Brown seems to be hanging on for ever, or at least till the next elections.

And hanging on is the word, and a surprising side of Brown’s nature that we have never seen before is that, nothing seems to embarrass him. The recent round of political scandals, which at least for Brown’s sake, showed that politicians from both of the major UK political parties do have something very similar in common. They have absolutely no compunction in putting their hand in the government cash register to make sure that they are not deprived of even the most obscure form of home comfort, as long as it is at the expense of the British public.

Once the callous thinking behind this fact has been established and verified by the press then anything else seems possible. Were the UK public forced to accept expensive in terms of human lives and money on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which might have been justified as short term military campaigns but certainly have gone on too long and have basically achieved very little. Why did the UK government sit back and do nothing when crude oil prices shot through the roof, Did Bush and his cronies persuade them to sit on their hands and everything would be ok, while the government coffers emptied to pay the oil rich nations their ransom money? And who is to say how much that nasty side of corporate America, who backed George Bush into becoming probably the worst President in American political history made out of that deal.

And when the global financial crisis hit, Blair had already had the foresight to make himself scarce and Bush followed not too long after, as his second term of office slithered to a welcome halt. There is a new broom in the White House and he is sweeping clean. The recovery that is taking place there seems to be genuine, yet one wonders if it can really take such little time.

In the UK, financial recovery seems to be happening too but at a much slower and more cautious pace. If there is a recovery it is certainly not being felt by the majority of the public, who are struggling to survive. Their economic future looks grim for the next twenty years or so, but as is our nature, we seem not to complain about it too much. Instead the focus of attention is why Susan Boyle ( who does look a little like Gordon Brown in drag) didn’t win some pointless talent competition or will a newer, stronger version of Swine Flu come back and kill of half of the global population anyway. So why worry!

In other words, as Brown, Blair and Bush and their political predecessors long since discovered, the public will mostly always believe and accept just about anything you tell them. After all what do Red Indians know about property development?

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Tags: Blair, Brown, Bush, Economy, George Bush, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair