UK entrepreneur blasts Republicans over failed bailout

by Catherine Woods - Tuesday, 30th September 2008 -

The US Congress’s failure to pass the $700bn financial rescue package has been labelled a “disaster” by Caxton FX chief executive Rupert Lee-Browne, who says the UK is going to be the hardest hit because of it.

A renegade group of 133 Republicans teamed up with 95 Democrats to defeat the bill 228 to 205 in the House. It’s thought they voted in reaction to concerns from taxpayers that their money would be used to prop up the ailing financial services sector.

Lee-Browne, who founded his foreign exchange firm in 2001, says it is a “disaster that the Republicans failed to push this through”.

He says: “It is the most stupid thing they could have done. All of this is about confidence, nothing more. If the US government is saying that they’re not confident enough to put this money up, what can you expect the market to do?

"This was the perfect opportunity for a firebreak, to knock down a whole row of houses so that the fire can’t spread. I think that, sadly, what Congress did was to listen to their constituents.”

In Asia, markets closed down on the news while in London, the FTSE rallied amid hopes a new deal will be pushed through.

Lee-Browne says that because the UK has been the financial centre for Europe, if not the world, for the past ten years, “this is where the banks are and this is where all the trouble will be”.

He notes: “The Americans don’t care about what happens outside the US.”

Picture source

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