The Independent - Andreas Whittam Smith RSS Feed

Andreas Whittam Smith: Putin's energy threat should be risible

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

When I read what Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, had to say a few days ago about the pipeline that would transport gas from Russia to western Europe via the Baltic Sea, I thought here we go again, more bullying.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Lloyds and HBOS – a merger that should not go through

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Ever since the Government decided to supply new capital to any British bank that required propping up, I have thought the proposed rescue of HBOS by Lloyds TSB was a nonsense. The merger is against the public interest, for it will substantially reduce competition in the provision of home loans.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Are the rednecks losing their power?

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Just 10 days before America goes to the polls to elect a new President, I have at last begun to understand why the white working class generally votes against its own interests by backing the Republican candidate. This is the constituency which adores Sarah Palin. My enlightenment comes from a strangely-titled book, Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant, first published in the United States a year ago. The second deck of its title reveals a bit more: "Guns, votes, debt and delusion in redneck America".

Andreas Whittam Smith: We could be on the brink of a Great Depression

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

As we return to work this Monday morning, let the words of the director general of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, ring in our ears. Mr Strauss-Kahn, having spent all Saturday with finance ministers in Washington, warned that the global financial system has been pushed "to the brink of a systemic meltdown". And he added that the measures taken thus far to deal with the financial crisis "have not yet achieved the goal of stabilising markets and bolstering confidence".

Andreas Whittam Smith: Time to put some bankers in the dock

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

The key political fact about the present credit crunch is that the government didn't start this one. This is very different from what has repeatedly happened since 1945. The pattern had come to seem immutable. First inflation would become a problem. Then wages settlements would begin to increase. In turn the rise in prices would accelerate. Finally, to halt the spiral, the government of the day would sharply raise interest rates.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Building societies should never have gone public

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

All the building societies that transformed themselves into banks quoted on the stock exchange between 1989, starting with the old Abbey National, and 2000, when Bradford & Bingley took the plunge, have either failed or had to be rescued. Following Bradford & Bingley's demise, there is not one left.

Andreas Whittam Smith: A crash that has changed the world? Far from it

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

The new conventional thinking conjured up straight after the Wall Street crash last week is that life will never be the same again. But hang on. There would have been no opportunity for a vast financial bubble to develop and then burst had there not been enormous volumes of foreign-owned funds parked in the United States and Britain. This will not change.

Andreas Whittam Smith: The banks must clean up the mess they've created

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

For financial markets, it has again been an extraordinary weekend, one of a series since the vicious credit squeeze began just over a year ago. For when a firm is on the verge of collapse, and this time it is one of the giants of Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, the heavy work of trying to devise a rescue scheme is often compressed into the 48 hours that elapse from a Friday evening until a Sunday night. The absolute deadline of having to make an announcement by start of business on Monday produces the necessary pressure.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Now the banks must clean up the mess they've created

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Andreas Whittam Smith: The flaw at the top that's causing businesses to fail

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Whom should we have blamed for the collapse of Northern Rock? Or whom should we criticise for the near collapse of Bradford & Bingley the other day, leaving it to be rescued by its largest shareholders? Fingers are pointed at the regulators, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Bank of England. And this is fair enough so far as it goes. The FSA had ample warnings that Northern Rock's way of doing business, for instance, was coming apart at the seams.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Buy when stocks are down? Let's explode that myth

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Even British newspapers carried pictures on Friday of two Wall Street bankers being marched into court by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This American custom of publicly parading white-collar defendants is known as the "perp walk" after the police slang for perpetrator.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Irish voters have stated the truth for all of us

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Ireland is in danger of being bullied. The big boys planning the assault are France and Germany. That is the plain meaning of the statement they issued on Friday in response to the news that Irish voters had rejected the Lisbon Treaty designed to streamline the European Union.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Life in the long shadow of the First World War

Sun, 11 May 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Last week Doris Lessing said that winning the Nobel Prize for Literature had been a "bloody disaster". So much attention, so many interviews to do, no time to write. Yet she has just published Alfred & Emily, one of the most remarkable books she has ever written. For the 88-year-old author finally pays her dues to her parents, or so it seems to me, particularly to her mother of whom she said: "I always in flight from her, she always in pursuit."

Andreas Whittam Smith: This Austrian shame is compounded by history

Sun, 04 May 2008 23:00:01 GMT

How the Austrians come to terms with Josef Fritzl's terrible crimes will be conditioned by their history as much as by the facts of the case. What is striking about the Austrians is that they have the weakest sense of their own identity of any people in Europe. Whenever they decide who they are, something comes along to show them that it was an illusion.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Thriftiness just adds to recessionary forces

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:00:01 GMT

There are two methods of establishing whether the country is in a recession or not. Either look at the figures for economic activity or observe what consumers are actually doing.

Andreas Whittam Smith: When modesty masks a sense of failure

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:00:01 GMT

It has been an unusual experience reading the recently published biography of Bill Deedes, whom I knew well for a period. While he was editor of The Daily Telegraph in the 1970s and 1980s, I was for eight years his city editor. I had never before met anybody like him. Stephen Robinson's excellent book, The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, explains much that had puzzled me.

Andreas Whittam Smith: These verdicts underline the dishonesty of politics

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:00:01 GMT

As I counted the calamities that had been heaped on to the Government by the courts during the past few days, the title of the first satirical television programme I ever saw came to mind: That Was The Week That Was. The humiliations started last Tuesday when a High Court judge ruled that retrospective changes to immigration rules for skilled workers were unlawful and "an abuse of power". Then next day, Wednesday, the Government's policy of deporting terror suspects to countries that sign "no torture, no ill treatment deals" was shredded by the Court of Appeal.

Andreas Whittam Smith: The credit crunch will be with us for years to come

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:00:01 GMT

To understand big events such as the current credit crisis, you need both horizontal and vertical knowledge. By horizontal knowledge, I mean taking into account a wide range of factors that might bear on the situation.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Yet another reason to condemn Blair over Iraq

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:00:01 GMT

You need a big dose of cynicism to understand politics. Yet even though I regularly take my medicine, I was still deeply shocked by my colleague Steve Richards's recent account of the factors that propelled Mr Blair into the Iraq war. His article was published on these pages last Thursday. The decision was, Mr Richards wrote, "part of a New Labour approach to politics".

Andreas Whittam Smith; It's not only the public who don't respect a uniform

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:00:01 GMT

The Royal Air Force has had a base at Wittering, near Peterborough, for more than 90 years. You would think that by now it would have become an accepted part of the local scene. Yet the station commander, Group Captain Rowena Atherton, recently gave the order that RAF personnel should not wear their uniforms in the city because of the verbal abuse they might receive.

Andreas Whittam Smith: The financial crisis is moving into its final phase

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:01 GMT

The financial crisis, which has been running since last summer, and whose most notable incident thus far has been the failure of Northern Rock, is entering its most dangerous phase. On Thursday, there collapsed a £5bn hedge fund, Peloton, based in London.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Media studies is no preparation for journalism

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Is it just prejudice that media studies at school and university are widely regarded as a soft option - or as a "one-way ticket to the dole queue", as a former chief inspector of schools put it?

Andreas Whittam Smith: Media studies is no preparation for journalism

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Is it just prejudice that media studies at school and university are widely regarded as a soft option - or as a "one-way ticket to the dole queue", as a former chief inspector of schools put it?

Andreas Whittam Smith: Beethoven, Barenboim, and a moment of magic

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Among the countless thrilling experiences that classical music provides, there are two sets of performances that are always special. You may wait for years for either of them to come round. Very fortunately, however, London has provided both in the past six months.

Andreas Whittam Smith: If the Afghans don't want us, why should we stay?

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:01 GMT

The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, doesn't think we are doing a good job in his country. In the dangerous area where our troops are deployed we have, apparently, brought only more insecurity. Our decision to remove a brutal and corrupt governor of Helmand province was also a British error. "I made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the Taliban came," remarked Mr Karzai.