"Osborne unveils £140bn scheme to kick-start bank bonus season"

From The Telegraph:

George Osborne unveiled a £140 billion emergency scheme to try to avoid a second year of low bonuses in the City of London.

The Bank of England is to offer money to high-street banks to also try and prop up houses prices. Loans are currently being rationed for many families as the bankers have either lost all the money or just taken it all, the Chancellor announced. It comes after sharp rises in the costs of mortgages and other loans in recent months as banks struggle to raise money now that nobody trusts them any more.

Sir Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor, said that the “corrupt governments in the industrialised world have thrown everything bar the kitchen sink” at the global meltdown in financial services sector salaries but that even “bolder action” was now required.

In the annual Mansion House speech in the City, the Chancellor said he was no longer prepared to “stand on the sidelines” and that the radical new “bank bonus funding scheme” will be launched within weeks.

"We are not powerless in the face of the euro-zone debt storm which they caused," Mr Osborne said. "We can deploy new firepower to defend the most important parts of our economy - banking and house prices - from the crisis on their doorstep. Funding for lending to the banker's family aspiring to own an even larger mansion and the business that wants to expand its directors' pension scheme The Government - with the help of the Bank of England – will not stand on the sidelines and do nothing as the storm gathers."