Michael Millar

On this morning’s Today Programme Alistair Darling came as close as I reckon he’ll ever come to setting out his stance on guaranteeing bank deposits. He said: “What we do in relation to that will differ from institution to institution…what I will do is in every single case and every single instance…I have been very clear I have never ruled anything out.” So finally an answer of sorts, and that answer is the Chancellor will play each ball as it lies. Basically this means our savings are safe but it’s just a question of who ends up being the guardian – be it a Spanish bank or the government itself. Quite why it took this long to say "we’ll do our best to avoid guarantees but if it has to come to that so be it", is beyond me.

This is the best financial advice I've heard all week: If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it  would now be worth £4.95.  With HBOS, earlier this week your £1000  would have been worth £16.50, £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now  be worth less than £5, but if you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager  one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium  re-cycling plant, you would get £214. So based on the above statistics  the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. For more from Michael Millar, head over to Trading Floor.

I just got some stats about how many homes bought in the last year would have been covered by the stamp duty suspension were it to have come in 12 months ago. I'm surprised by the number frankly - no doubt I've spent too much time in London where a place for £175,000 is something of a pipedream. Sales last year that would have been caught were as follows: - Between Jan and Dec 2007 - 320,129 sales - Between May 2007 and Apr 2008 - 294,846 sales There was a total of 998,000 sales in 2007, so the £175,000 threshold would have covered about one in three purchases. I'm still waiting to hear how the banks will respond to this.

Alistair Darling’s stubborn refusal to accept the economic statistics in front of him is getting a bit silly. Now anyone can prove something with stats - two out of three people know that - but Mr Darling’s insistence that the UK economy will grow by up to 2.25% in 2008 in the face of what everyone else is saying is not bolstering the government, just undermining its credibility. The IMF says the economy can hope to grow by 1.6% this year (revised down from 2.3% in October so watch out for further revisions) and 1.6% in 2009. The Chancellor still thinks we could get up to 2.75% next year. The CBI has lowered its expectations several times in the last few months and is now at 1.8% this year, and 1.7% for 2009.