Word: northerners
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Amid the chaos and confusion that has accompanied the credit crisis at British bank Northern Rock, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has remained tight-lipped. There was barely a word from him when the Bank, as Britain's lender of last resort, made emergency cash available to Northern Rock last week. When that triggered a run on the High Street lender, with customers lining up for days to take back their savings, King still failed to utter a word. And when the government finally stepped in Monday to offer a gilt-edge guarantee for spooked depositors in the form...
...Thursday to explain the Bank's handling of the crisis - the first run on a U.K. lender in living memory - King finally opened up. The Governor, the bank's former chief economist and an academic who's taught at Cambridge, Harvard and MIT, first got wind of problems at Northern Rock on Aug. 14. The Newcastle-based bank - Britain's fifth-largest mortgage provider - leaned heavily on wholesale money markets to fund its own mortgage loans. When those inter-bank markets started to freeze up in recent weeks amid a global credit squeeze triggered by the subprime mortgage crunch...
...Fast-forward a month, however, and things looked grim. Still short of credit in those tight money markets, Northern Rock had little choice but to approach the Bank of England for cash. And that - the emergency credit that King duly put up - was supposed to be that. It wasn't. Far from reassuring savers, the central bank's efforts amounted to "the equivalent of screaming fire in a crowded cinema," offered John McFall, chairman of the Treasury select committee. King could hardly quibble with that, but coming to his own defense, the Governor made clear it hadn't been...
...unclear where that balance of toughness and perspective originates. Hermann hints that it comes from a childhood spent watching her parents, both doctors, deal with the carnage of emergency rooms. Hermann grew up in Concarneau, a fishing port in northern Brittany where car crashes were routine on the rough coastal roads and regularly disrupted the family's evenings. "I was often in the corridors of hospitals for emergencies, and it's funny, but I got used to that sort of activity," she recalls. "Maybe it's why I am so comfortable in fashion, which is so quick and aggressive...
...flee their homes in at least 20 countries. Since June, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya have had hundreds of thousands of people uprooted from their homes. Scores have died since. West Africa has seen its worst floods in years, with 300,000 fleeing the earth-colored waters of northern Ghana. Meanwhile, forecasts by African meteorologists say the rains have yet to peak. October may be the worst month to come in this very wet year...