If nothing else, he's persistent that Gordon Brown. Lots of people would have given up on the banks and their unwillingness to lend by now, business secretary Peter Mandelson is already raging at them for not doing what he wants, but Gordon Brown has decided to carpet bomb them with yet more of our money. Royal Bank of Scotland is finalising the shunting of £200bn of duff assets into a government guarantee scheme, effectively a 'bad bank' and Lloyds Banking Group and even Barclays are likely to do the same. The Bank of England is going to start 'quantitative easing', buying up bonds and securities that no-one else wants, to pump money into the system and Northern Rock is to be given £14bn to start lending again. But will it work? Well the Northern Rock move is sensible as it will introduce some much-needed competition into the mortgage market and, surprise, surprise, it's going to be allowed to lend up to 90 per cent of the mortgage. But will it be killed in the rush? The BBC sage Robert Peston was musing this morning that maybe people don't want to borrow at the moment, being keener to reduce their debts, so the lack of lending may not be all the banks' fault. Maybe there'll be some real bargains out there soon.