Nationwide defies Alistair Darling on mortgage interest rate cuts

[AtW]

the government are currently moaning that the populist mortgage rate cuts that they envisaged are not happening.

Yes they are moaning thus doing their job politically, but economically they are allowing banks to charge high rates to rebuild their balance sheets - if banks can't do that then taxpayer money will be lost for a long time. In essence taxpayers are financing it via bank rates rather than straight taxes, so Govt gets away with yet another stealth tax.

HTH