You won’t often see us talking up Robert Peston but he makes some very good observations in his recent blog on why Quantitative Easing is not leading to more bank lending.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/08/what_rbss_results_say_about_qe.html

There is a strong correlation between the strength of bank balance sheets and the volume of capital available for commercial real estate? Banks have to shrink their loan books and the toxic world of property is a great place to start.

To support Peston’s theory here is one little anecdote. The best performing loan originator at one major bank group is currently deemed a start performer having only written two loans in 2009. The reason being that he has won a load of new deposits, from cash rich property investors. He has lent about £100m and collected £500m of deposits. His perfect customer has lots of cash and no need for troublesome new loans.

As my grandfather used to say, “that’s the problem with banks, they only want to lend money to people who don’t need it!”

As regular readers (both of you) will have picked up, I am no great fan of Robert Peston and it would appear that I am in good company.

My previous criticisms were more to do with style than substance and, for example, I understand that David Cameron does a mean Pesto.  This hardly requires the mimicry skills of Rory Bremner, all you have to do is adopt a condescending sneer, a whiny voice and then randomly over emphasise seemingly unconnected words.

But Dapper Dave’s dislike also may stem from Robert’s role as the unofficial press secretary to HM Treasury.

Indeed such is the regularity of his BBC scoops, direct from the Chancellors desk (it would allegedly seem), that FT Alphaville have taken to refering to his Blog as alternative newswire: Pestowire.

As they put it (with a large dollop of irony):

 ”Pestowire: Top News from Top Sources. The BBC’s Business Editor, Robert Peston, has played in important role keeping the British public fully informed during these difficult times.”

There is no doubt that he is well briefed, so when he says that Banks ask chancellor for capital, HBoS shares fall by 41.5% and RBS by 39.5%.  No amount of denial by a knight of the realm such as Fred Goodwin can counter the accepted gospel of Saint Robert, patron saint of truth and light in these dark times.

Not even hedge funds caused that sort of damage.

For what it’s worth he is probably telling it as it is, but is it really in the public’s interest to spook the markets further, just so he and the Beeb can have another scoop? 

The government for their part, in a admirable effort to cut costs, might have outsourced the role of the Chancellor’s Press Secretary, but are now in danger of creating a story bigger than the news itself.

Bring back Alistair Campbell all is forgiven.