King downbeat on 'new SLS'
The replacement for the Special Liquidity Scheme (SLS) will not solve the current problems afflicting the UK mortgage market, the governor of the Bank of England has said.Speaking to the Treasury Select Committee yesterday, Mervyn King added that mortgage firms would continue to face credit crunch-induced revenue concerns.SLS was introduced by the Bank and the government earlier this year, and allows lenders to swap some of their hard-to-value assets for government bonds.These can then be traded elsewhere, boosting revenue.However, Mr King suggested that the financial problems remain intractable and that the replacement scheme can only go so far in alleviating them."I hope everyone will understand that the proposals to be published next week, important though they are, will not and cannot solve the shortage of funding to finance bank lending, including mortgage lending," he said.According to Nationwide, house prices in the UK have declined by 10.5 per cent in the past year.
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