Has Gordon Brown saved the day?

Gordon Brown is glowing with pride at seemingly having saved the world's banking system. Unfortunately, his pride may be short-lived. A nasty recession is about to hit us.

"We've had some success in getting the price of oil down," said Gordon Brown earlier this week. It's an oddly economically illiterate comment coming from a man currently being hailed as the saviour of the global financial system, isn't it?

Because, of course, Brown hasn't brought the price of oil down at all. Indeed, whatever he might like to think, he has no more control over what the global market fancies paying for a barrel of crude than he does over what cash-rich property vultures are prepared to pay for the Notting Hill houses of unemployed bankers. No, what has actually brought the oil price down is recession in America and the threat of recession everywhere else. Gordon Brown can claim credit for the UK's recession if he likes (that would seem to make sense it is largely his fault), but I'm not sure he can also put his hand up to Iceland's, Spain's or America's.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.