CITY AND SUBURBAN
Tell the creep in the back office to get off the cheques
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Looking wretchedly conscious of their position, the chairmen of some of our largest companies emerged from 11 Down- ing Street after a tongue-lashing from the Chancellor. He had told them (or so I dreamed) to pay their bills. Good people and businesses were dropping like flies, he said, suppliers and creditors faced ruin, and all because some creep in the back office was sitting on the cheques. Evasion, obstruction, delay and deceit were all being practised by supposedly respectable companies in the names of cash manage- ment. The normal flows of cash through the economy had dried up, and we saw all around the casualties of drought. The other day (so the Chancellor told his unwilling guests) the chairmen of the High Street banks were sitting where you are. I am now ashamed to have wasted these busy men's time in pursuit of a cheap political stunt. It was silly to suggest that they were operating a cartel, even if they had the wits to do so. When I charged them with profiteering, they said they were not very good at that, either — as we shall see this month from their ghastly results. As for the idea that they were driving businesses to the wall by not lending to them, it confuses the remedy with the disease. Businesses are dying of debt, they have too much of it, they cannot cope with it, the last thing they need is more of it. That is why the end of the recession will bring a new crop of failures, as businesses try to trade their way back to prosperity only to find that they are, fatally, over trading. They need to get their borrowings down. They need capital, and we must think again about how they are to get it. What they need first, though, is to have their bills paid. Get on with it, gentlemen. If you can't give them cash, at least give them bills of exchange, which they can sell for cash. Do you think it is a coincidence that all these cameras are outside, and reporters who know what your salaries are, and how much they have gone up? Out you go, now, and do as I tell you. I might even arrange for central and local government — notoriously slow payers both — to settle some bills of their own.
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