Nick Clegg has spoken this week of the need to extend the Funding for Lending scheme and "put it on steroids". George Osborne, Vince Cable and the Bank of England are also desperate to get the scheme working for small businesses.

Last month, George Osborne launched a new scheme to revive the SME economy, called Funding for Lending. He needs it to deliver an economic miracle to turn around the Tories' poll ratings. Sadly for the economy, but happily for the Labour Party, it's unlikely to succeed.

After the report of UK GDP in the second quarter of 2012 of -0.7% and the revision by the Bank of England of its GDP forecasts in its quarterly inflation report today to around 0% for the full year 2012, compared to 0.8% estimated by the Bank in May 2012), the Bank of England and the government are still looking for the causes of the continuing lack of growth and improvement in the UK economy, and unfortunately seeing it mainly in developments in the eurozone, citing demand for UK exports is down and that investment demand is down as well.

An £80 billion initiative to kick-start bank lending was fired into action today in the latest attempt to boost the struggling economy. The Bank o...

The Bank of England and HM Treasury officially launched the "Funding for Lending Scheme" (FLS) on Friday 13 July (read the announcement and details here), yet another covert operation to shore up the banks under the disguise of helping small businesses and households to access cheaper credit and thus stimulate the economy.