(7 November 2007 – UK) An article in UK newspaper, The Guardian, points out that in a previous life the former chairman of Northern Rock, Matt Ridley, was a columnist for the London Telegraph newspaper.Ridley, a Zoology PhD, wrote a regular column during the 1990s in which he espoused his non-interventionist, laissez faire, law of the jungle view of how an economy should work.
According to the Guardian: He [Ridley] railed against all government intervention and mocked less enlightened beings for their failure to understand economics and finance.
The article said that before he resigned as chairman of Northern Rock in October this year in the wake of the UK bank’s exposure to the US sub-prime mortgage market, Ridley went to the British government cap in hand and borrowed US$33 billion to keep it afloat.
The Guardian article noted the view of The Economist, which said that Northern Rock pushed an aggressive business model to the limit, crossing its fingers and hoping that liquidity would always be there.