Cheney's banker attacks his policies

The investment manager who looks after an estimated $5m (£2.5m) of Vice-President Dick Cheney's money has criticised America's energy policy.

In an email to clients - presumably Mr Cheney among them - Jeremy Grantham rails against the country's refusal to confront climate change.

"The US is the only country in which environmental data is steadily attacked in a well-funded campaign of disinformation," writes Mr Grantham, whose comments were revealed by the website thestreet.com.

Of George Bush's call to replace 20 per cent of petrol with ethanol, Mr Grantham says: "US corn-based ethanol, as opposed to efficient, Brazilian sugar-based ethanol, is merely another US farmer-protection programme, made very expensive both directly and indirectly by inflating real agricultural prices."