Picking winners - guaranteeing one loser , the honest tax payer

So now we have the Coalition government channelling Gordon Brown ( and more worryingly more Bill Clinton - of which more further down ).

On Newsnight last night I saw a normally sane Grant Shapps talking about the need, on Newsnight no less, to "do something"^tm Gordon Brown.

The "Lib Dem lead" Coalition ( as I'm toying with now calling it ) wants tax payers who have paid their debts or who at least repay them to underwrite those who don't. This they call stimulating growth - I call it theft.

What's the plan ? To guarantee 10% of the mortgage of first time buyers, buying new ( in UK terms this means very expensive and likely to crumble egg boxes )homes.

Also in a 180 degr reversal of the common sense on deposits that had been building up they will do so on much lower deposits.

This means they will almost all fall into negative equity almost straight away !

The problem is high house prices - the cause is the insane availability of credit for these assets and this is exactly the wrong sort of thing to do.

Its also very close to the thing that light the touch paper on the current financial crisis, when Bill Clinton insisted that a proportion of mortgages were provided to those who couldn't afford them - setting up the whole basis for the sub prime thing. ( If you get your news from the BBC / Guardian then of course you'll never have heard of this ).

Its desperate and insane.

PS Hat tip to Allister Heath
last night who did at least make a stand for sanity against the "aggregate demand" fruitcakeness of Labour's Katty Usher and some mindless CBI bloke on News night ( and less we should forget the new )Newsnigh.

See also: Allister Heath "Brownonomics makes a shock return"