Pre-Budget Report

I said—ironically, of course—that I was most impressed by these qualified commentators, and, as usual, I was not exaggerating. Citibank, which provides one of the highly qualified commentators quoted by the hon. Gentleman, lost £60 billion, and it bought up Merrill Lynch, which had lost £52 billion, so this brilliant person is working for an organisation that lost £110 billion. The hon. Gentleman quoted Morgan Stanley, which lost almost £16 billion. Barclays losses were, admittedly, a mere bagatelle in comparison; it lost only £7.9 billion. We are expected to give credence to the prognostications of these idiots, however, including Moody's, which had given triple A ratings to all the lunatic procedures those organisations were following.