Thirty years ago, it was “Anarchy in the U.K.” as Britain tried to get away from its role as the sick man of Europe. That meant civil unrest, high inflation and a weak economy. Margaret Thatcher was seen by many as the solution. Today, the British economy is sick again and there is anotherready solution to hand: quantitative easing a.k.a printing money:

Graham Secker, a well-known equity analyst at Morgan Stanley who covers U.K. equities has warned that profits for U.K companies could drop by 60%, peak to trough. This would put make this downturn even worse than the 1930s.

Since Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September, the capital markets have been all but shut to large banks globally. Investors were spooked by the evisceration at Lehman, Washington Mutual and Wachovia to name but a few cases of near total losses. As a result, many banks have been forced to go cap in hand to [...]

Royal Bank of Scotland just reported a record loss for a Britsh company of £24.1 billion pounds. That’s about £400 for every living soul in the country:

The Nationwide has released its latest house price survey, showing a very large 1.8% fall in British house prices between January and February 2009. This brings the yearly decline to a record 17.6%.

Yet, incongruously, the Nationwide revealed this information on its website under the heading “improving affordability helps new and existing buyers.” If this does not smack of cheerleading, I don’t know what does.

I watched the proceedings of the UK Treasury Committee with HBOS and RBS this morning on Bloomberg UK TV and it was a dismal sight. It had the feel of the Nuremburg trials, honestly. The clip below doesn’t do justice to how tense the atmosphere was.

I will say this: these men from HBOS and RBS ran very aggressive organizations, piling in to all manner of risk at the top of the market. While they dissemble and prevaricate, it is plainly obvious that they did not see the risks in their actions, nor did they want to.

Last week, Willem Buiter sized up the U.S. and the U.K. and found their desire to enact deficit-financed fiscal stimulus not credible. The attached video does a better job of summing up the mood Buiter invokes and the need for prophylactic protection from so much stimulus.

Everyone should be concerned about the increasing tone of trade friction in the global economy. While Chinese Premier Wen and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown are setting a positive tone in London today regarding bilateral trade agreements, the U.S. is doing its best to put off trading partners. In fact, in Canada, there seems to be a lot of rancor regarding the ‘Buy America’ provision now being attached to the U.S. stimulus package.

The monthly Nationwide Building Society survey is out for house prices in the U.K. The data show an annual fall that is the steepest on record at 16.6%. This means that house prices are now falling more rapidly than ever in the U.K. and that spells bad news as its economy has just entered recession.

As the financial industry further unraveled yesterday, Mathieu Robbins of the Irish Indendent asked a worthwhile question: Was RBS the idiot company of all-time in buying ABN Amro at the top of the market? Robbins says no and offers up nine other equally monstrous deals that all went seriously pear-shaped to prove it.