But the Treasury retreat on hypothecation has been quietly under way for a while.
The extension of hypothecation to road pricing is thus being described as part of a seamless process.
Andrew Dilnot of the Institute for Fiscal Studies says hypothecation is just another way to raise taxes.
Re-hypothecation transactions are off-balance sheet and are therefore unrestricted by balance sheet controls.
What this creates is chains of counterparty risk, where multiple re-hypothecation borrowers use the same collateral over and over again.
Hostility to such hypothecation remains an article of faith in the Treasury, despite recent breaches such as the landfill tax.
As mentioned above, the chain of re-hypothecation is widespread, with major financial institutions across the globe all counterparties to one another.
And things like hypothecation and so on must wait, do you think?
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Which is why tax hypothecation is simply a bad, even silly, idea.
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This churning of collateral means that re-hypothecation transactions have been creating enormous amounts of liquidity, much of which has no real asset backing.
With collateral being re-hypothecated to a factor of four (according to IMF estimates), the actual capital backing re-hypothecation transactions may be as little as 25%.
You did touch upon their use of customer funds for their own operations, a process known as hypothecation, and this is at the heart of the problem.
But now that the principle of hypothecation has been accepted, it may be difficult for it to resist further encroachments into its control of the public finances.
As a sop to the party faithful, it included clauses allowing oil drilling in previously protected areas and ending the hypothecation of any petrol-tax revenue for public transport.
Andrew Dilnot, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, acknowledges that hypothecation may be a way of raising more revenue, but sees it largely as a confidence trick.
Despite the Treasury's long record of being opposed to hypothecation, ministers may come to regard this as the best course if the current debate over transport taxation continues at a high pitch.
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