Another day, another desperate throw of the dice (7)

Continuing my occasional series, The Badger has noticed that trying to force commercial banks to increase mortgage lending to their crazy 2007 levels in the face of plummeting house prices is trickier than he expected.

Not a problem! The gummint is now going to completely reverse its eminently sensible policy of running down Northern Rock's mortgage book as fast as possible (by simply making sure that NR's mortgage deals were the least attractive on the market). The new plan is to give NR long term taxpayer funded loans and guarantees in order to try and reflate the housing bubble.

H/t Stillthinking at HPC, who adds "... this must count as an extension of government borrowing and so push the pound down further, and ... push up real long-term interest rates."