Between a rock and a hard place.

The nationals this morning have launched into Alstait Darling's handling of the Nothern Rock crisis.

The Mail,Telegraph and Times telling us how the bank is frittering away tax payers money

The Sun's leader talks of the

fiasco is fast becoming Labour’s “Black Wednesday.”
The difference is that the 1992 devaluation crisis freed Britain from the euro and paved the way for a record 15 years of growth.
The £3.3bn price tag then was peanuts compared with the tens of billions taxpayers stand to lose today — with nothing in return.
So far it’s £24bn — £900 for every single taxpayer.

Darling caught between a rock and a hard place says the Telegraph

There was a welcome, if rare, sighting of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Dispatch Box yesterday. His near-invisibility in recent weeks is a little puzzling, given that he is presiding over the gravest financial crisis since our ejection from the exchange rate mechanism on Black Wednesday, 15 years ago.

Vince Cable who is fast gaining a reputation over the crisis writes in the Guardian that

The reputation for economic competence was hard won. It is now being lost, very fast. The immediate cause is Northern Rock. I will not rehearse again the arguments about who said and did what to whom and who was to blame for the original crisis. But in extending a loan to the mortgage bank, currently £24bn in addition to the less controversial £18bn deposit guarantees, a series of disastrous errors have been made.

Let the City solve its own problems says the Mail leader reminding us that

When times are good, a major British bank can make profits of over £1million per hour, all year round. It's not unusual for employees to pick up Christmas bonuses worth 50 or even 100 times the average worker's total annual earnings

.

So it continues

Why, though, should taxpayers be expected to shield hugely profitable banks when times are uncertain in the City?

Avoid this meltdown says the Mirror

The health of the British economy is tied up with the future of Northern Rock.

Chancellor Alistair Darling holds in his hands our jobs and incomes - plus the mortgages of millions of people.
It's easy for Tory shadow George Osborne to shout from the sidelines but he's failed to come up with a solution.
What we need are cool decisions to avoid an economic meltdown

FT gagged over Northern Rock

The question of what is in the public interest raised its head last night as the FT bya high court injunction as it sought to publish the memorandum of sale for Northern rock

This from the FT's blog

We are currently covered by a partial, temporary injunction covering the contents of a sale memorandum sent out to about 50 potential acquirers of Northern Rock. It runs until next Tuesday, where upon full evidence in the case will be heard.
In publishing information from the sale memorandum, we took the view here at FT Alphaville that the shareholders of Northern Rock and the market generally were entitled to know the assessment of the financial position of the bank - an institution that has had to borrow something north of £20bn from the Bank of England.
In response, Northern Rock sought an injunction which would prevent the whole of the media from reporting anything about the sale memorandum.
The FT’s crack legal squad vigorously resisted this and, as a result, the scope of the injunction sought was considerably narrowed. For example, Northern Rock wanted the injunction to prevent publication of the names of those who had been provided with the sale memorandum, notwithstanding the fact that names of potential bidders have already been widely published.
Northern Rock also sought an order that would have prevented disclosure of the fact that it had obtained an injunction. The FT resisted this and the order was refused.
Northern Rock intended that an injunction should be obtained anonymously, but this was also unsuccessful.

I presume that the high court has taken the same positioin that Gordon Brown did at PM's questions when he decided that the interest of the UK taxpayers who have lent the bank £24m is outweighed by the shareholders and bidders of the Company