""The important thing is to get the banks now lending to businesses and to families," he said."

Where have we heard this before? From the FT:

"Alistair Darling, the chancellor, will today unveil details of the arm's-length agency that will manage the £37bn in stakes the government agreed with banks to help them in the credit crisis.

The Treasury said the agency's staff would be tasked with monitoring the lending activities of the banks to ensure that they fulfil the pledge to ensure funding of small businesses and that mortgage borrowers get a fair deal without the banks ramping profit margins at their expense.

As reported in the Financial Times last week, ministers have been in talks with high-street lenders to rewrite their voluntary code on lending to small businesses to ensure that customers are given reasonable notice before loans and overdrafts are axed or made more expensive.

Attempts by the Treasury to strengthen the code, as it has done for mortgage lending, comes amid increasing political concern that the £400bn state bail-out of the sector is not reaping the promised benefits for small companies. Gordon Brown has insisted repeatedly that support for such companies is a condition of the £37bn taxpayer-funded recapitalisation of Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS and Lloyds TSB.

Yesterday in an interview for the BBC Mr Brown reiterated that his first priority was to get the economy moving. "The important thing is to get the banks now lending to businesses and to families," he said"

Let's see, not lending, keeping money, sounds like TARP. Notice that the British are creating an agency to monitor the lending practices of the banks that received government money. I guess that you can't trust banks anywhere.

Actually, it doesn't sound like the Brits got the banks on paper either. Is insisting like jawboning?