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listen to you two!
But if only you would 😕
[b][i]" As much as Gordon would have you believe it's a 'global' problem that came from America, America did not force Northern Rock to offer 125% mortgages and self cert liar loans for every man and his dog."[/i][/b]
Right Biscuit.......having read that I have come to the conclusion that one of us must be an idiot.
And from where I'm standing right now, I'm sorry to say ......it's not looking good for you mate 😐
America might well not have forced Northern Rock to offer 125% mortgages and self cert liar loans to every man and his dog. But, I feel fairly confident that Gordon Brown didn't either.
Northern Rock was not a government owned company. It did whatever it damn well wanted to do. And it was perfectly free to offer 125% mortgages and self cert liar loans to every man and his dog, if it so wished. Without any risk at all of government interference - something which you purport to oppose.
Now many people, including me, feel that it is both fair and right, to criticise Gordon Brown for his blind faith in the deregulated free-market. But you are hardly in that position yourself, since you also share in this absurd blind faith in the deregulated free-market.
Yes, Gordon Brown lost his bottle and when the shit hit the fan and decided that government intervention was the only acceptable solution. And yes, I can well understand how someone like you might strongly disprove of that. But you are hardly in a position to criticise him for the way the market behaved [u]before[/u] he decided to intervene.
Of course it's very easy for you to criticise Gordon Brown for losing his bottle and intervening. And you can make all sorts of wild and ludicrous claims that the market would simply have "corrected" itself, and everything would have ended up smelling of roses. But you weren't Prime Minister at the time.........talking is so cheap - isn't it ?
I have already pointed out that [u]even[/u] the rabid free-marketeers of the Bush administration, instantly dismissed the "doing nothing" option.
[b][i]"As much as Gordon would have you believe it's a 'global' problem......."[/i][/b]
You might well wrap up [i]global[/i] in apostrophes to suggest that the global aspect of the crises is a myth, a lie, ...... whatever. But facts are facts, however inconvenient they might be to your personal prejudices. The financial crisis which hit the world in 2007 [i]was[/i] a global one.
And it's worth remembering that countries such as Iceland and Greece which today find themselves up shit creek without a paddle, had conservative governments at the time .........conservative governments which were utterly committed to free-market, neo-liberal, laissez-faire economics.