Business Secretary Vince Cable has announced from the LibDem party conference in Brighton plans for the creation of a Business Bank run by the State.
Sky News announced that the project, which is to come into effect in about 12 to 18 months time, will see £1 billion of tax-payers money go on to the bank's balance sheet, but which the Treasury will not reclaim.
This sum is expected to be matched or exceeded by private money.
The aim is for the bank to boost lending to small and medium sized firms, and the move has been welcomed by the British Chamber for Commerce, whose Director General, John Longworth, stated that "six in 10 firms say they would feel more confident if the UK had a state-backed business bank".
Vince Cable declared: "for too long the mirage of growth based on property speculation and financial gambling has hidden the harder virtues of making things productively".
Hopefully we will be seeing an end to the Blairism style of banking, currently backed by the Tories, where the banking sector, rather than being there to boost private enterprise through responsible lending, indulged in mass-profiteering, strangling the economy and gobbling up masses of money in bonuses.
We may also assume that this State-owned bank will not indulge in toxic debt style investments, in bogus paper values and hokus pokus stuff, all that gobbledegook stuff which no normal person can fathom and that sent the banks into bankruptcy in 2008.
In other words, a business bank that's there for the real economy, for honst businesses in an honest economy! Let's hope so for now!
