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As the first slurred booms of Auld Lang Syne begin tonight, the Bank of England will transfer £42million to the US Federal Reserve.

Although this probably won’t be too widely reported, it will mark the last chapter in the story of Britain’s alliance with America in the Second World War. The transfer of funds represents the last repayment against a loan taken out in 1946.

For most of the Second World War the US supported Britain through a Lend Lease programme. This delivered millions of dollars of military equipment, general goods and food in return for leases on British military bases around the world. Without it Britain’s war effort would almost certainly have been doomed to failure.

Shortly after VJ-Day in August 1945 the Americans suddenly and unexpectedly announced the end of the Lend-Lease system leaving Britain, who had spent 10 of the last 30 years engaged in war, in a very desperate financial situation.

Attlee’s new Labour government had won an election by promoting ambitious plans of creating a welfare state, giving free healthcare and nationalising Britain’s main industries. In September 1945 the cabinet instructed John Maynard Keynes, the economist and negotiator, to go to Washington to negotiate a $5billion ‘moral obligation’ grant, but all he returned with was a $3.75 billion loan fixed at 2% over 50 years.

The entire affair strained the relationship between Britain and the US, even more so when the Americans used the loan as a vehicle to force Attlee to make pound sterling freely convertible by 1947.

In a world crippled by war, most countries duly converted their sterling to the mighty dollar and this contributed to more years of hardship and rationing for ‘victorious’ Britain.

But thanks Uncle Sam and, on behalf of fellow Brits, we’re sorry we failed to stick to the 50-year loan term.

One recent story I find quite interesting is the problems the Financial Inclusion Taskforce is having trying to encourage mainstream lenders to offer low value loans.

The government launched an initiative in late 2004 to try and develop methods whereby the financially excluded (people on low incomes in deprived areas) could get affordable credit. At the time it pointed out that a lack of low cost and low value loans meant that the financially excluded often turned to high cost doorstep lenders and even illegal loan sharks which ultimately made their debt problems worse.

A Social Fund exists whereby the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) can give out crisis and budgeting loans and as part of the Financial Inclusion initiative the Treasury extended this by getting the DWP to administer a growth fund.

During this year the DWP began to work with the third sector (in essence non profit making credit unions) to administer the Growth Fund in deprived areas.

In December the Financial Inclusion Task Force gave an update on its work with the Growth Fund and said it was working well, but that the number of loans the fund had given out had been below its expectations.

The Task Force also said it had been exploring the extent to which mainstream lenders (such as banks and credit card providers) might move into the market for low value loans (£300-£600). It said, the response had been fairly negative, with all of the lenders approached saying that the reputation risk associated with charging a cost-reflective interest rate to the affordable credit sector is too significant (given the projected returns) for major banks to be prepared to get involved in the market, even through sub-branded subsidiaries.

To me, as the Task Force also acknowledges, it looks as though the only viable solution is to extend the number and coverage of the third sector and there will never be a mainstream solution.

A story I find quite interesting today is one that the Daily Mail owned website thisismoney has signed a deal with paaleads to sell its leads.

Paaleads is owned by moneysupermarket and is basically an Ebay style system where people in the financial world can bid for leads generated by other sites.

So in this case, people go onto the thisismoney website and log their interest, in say a mortgage, the lead is then passed to the paaleads site where it is put up for auction and the highest bidder gets the lead.

This sort of system is not unique and there are several other buying and selling networks for affiliates, but perhaps paaleads will become the largest one. The site also has a similar deal with its parent company Moneysupermarket as well as Moneyweb, Yourmortgage and Mymortgagekey.

Paaleads separates out the leads into things like Mortgage, Remortgage, Adverse and Pensions advice and also lets people just bid on leads within a particular geographic region. It also has a facility where a monthly budget of lead spend can be set up.

All very interesting, but I wonder if the users of these so-called comparison sites really know what goes on behind the scenes.