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Russia proposed to China that the two nations should sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 to force the US government to bail out the giant mortgage-finance companies, former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson has claimed. The allegation is in his memoir On the Brink in which he also suggests that Alistair Darling, the UK chancellor, blocked a rescue takeover of Lehman Brothers by Barclays Bank when he refused to support special treatment by UK regulators. “Russian officials had made a top-level approach to the Chinese, suggesting that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings...

A new 50 per cent top rate of income tax has been announced in the Budget by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor. Personal allowances will also be fully withdrawn for those with incomes over £100,000 from next April. Outlining the scale of the problem, Mr Darling announced that he expects that the economy will contract by about 1.6 per cent during the first quarter of this year, and that GDP growth will be about -3.5 per cent for the year. The recession has forced the Chancellor to rip up his economic forecasts made in the Pre-Budget Report in November, in which...