There must be a ****ing tipping point where we’re officially allowed form mobs in the streets with burning torches and pointy things FFS?!!!

To storm the gates of Canary Wharf, haul the fat arrogant greedy bastards out of their ****ing ivory towers and drag them through the ****ing streets for public amusement and ridicule, to be kicked and spat at by anyone who fancies it

Before being led up to the scaffold where a handily loccated noose waits for each and every one of the ****s!!!!

After reading this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/20/public-debt-gordon-brown

You’d be hard pushed not to be baying for blood. Britains national debt has now tripled. Is that to build hospitals or schools. No. Its to hand over great big wodges of mullah to people who live in enormous houses and drive ****ing Bentley’s

it’s not real money… not when you get to that many noughts.. b*strds.

How many people on here have loans, other than for your house?

We are all guilty im afraid, some more than other of course!

touching.

🙂

Start of with the people who have accumulated bad debt or have borrowed irresponsibly. This is called toxic debt. Alot of banks are having to deal with very high levels of toxic debt. This is a sad byproduct of ‘buy now pay later’.
Why do you think Mini sales are dropping so fast? People bought them on PCP deals.
Bankers have a role but to be honest, the recession isnt the bankers fault.
Start with the irresponsible idiots living beyond their means, those who borrowed 5/6times their salary (irresponsible borrowing NOT lending- do people need their arse wiping for them as well?). Credit was readily available but sadly people thought everyone else was doing it, its socially acceptable so why not?

Very very sad.

How about starting with the people that wilfully borrowed way outside their means, then went bankrupt knowing that it would be written off?

Then you can have the bankers that made all the mistakes, but you have to leave the normal bank staff out of it.

But… You can mob Howard from the Halifax straight away. Those adverts have signed his warrent.

Another good one binners (although you will have to do well to reach the heady heights of your double posted school run rant from the old forum).

I do like how, it being the Guardian, there’s no rabidity or “string ’em up” polemic that we might see in some of the more right wing papers.

There are a reasonable number of people – and they’re not just bankers (I’m thinking hedge fund managers and venture capitalists in particular) who also should be getting a kicking for this. But they’re all risher that Croesus, so they’re untouchable.

What we need is a f***ing revolution. But we’re all too busy watching Holby City on plasma TVs to think too much about actually doing something….

oh right, you all shun the blame culture, till it all goes wrong.

bloody typical.

Bankers have a role but to be honest, the recession isnt the bankers fault.

Disagree. The banks claim the problems are caused by the collapse of wholesale markets. What they mean is, the value of assets has diminished. I may have been able to borrow from a bank based on the value of my assets, but I was not responsible for that value – the risk profile attaching to those assets was determined by financial institutions, and those institutions got it horribly wrong: they assumed that asset and comodity values would continue rising.

Back to the sandpit with you.

OMUN, wrong, the recession was well overdue, the Government should have MTFU and corrected the market(s) back in the early 00’s. What happened was an economy based on paper profit and consumer borrowing. The banks serviced and inpart grew fat on this.

ourmaninthenorth is right
if some guy on benefits came up to you in the street and said can i borrow a hundred quid i can pay you back honest guvnor
you would say no **** off

now if your a banker and someone on 20k a year comes up to you and says can i pay you back honest what do you say?

irresponsible borrowing NOT lending

It was irresponsible borrowing from the perspective of people individually getting into trouble – they can’t blame the banks for their predicament. However on an overall perspective it was irresponsible lending – in a similar way the banks can’t blame the people borrowing for the fact they got it so horribly wrong and got into trouble.

(much as I’d love to blame the borrowers, it REALLY was the lenders fault).

What happened was an economy based on paper profit and consumer borrowing. The banks serviced and inpart grew fat on this.

Correct in the first sentence – that’s exactly what I was saying: asste values grew, and lending was based on that. Money expanded. Now money is contracting.

the UK is in *such* a mess because our economy has been allowed to become so dominated by financial services. As we are post industrial the only thing we could make is money out of each other. Which, as you point out, has a distinct air of inevitability about it. The result it, we reaping what has been sown since the final death throes of our manufacturing based economy in the 1970s.

If you have a look at Japan – they are back in the sh*t having not long moved out of it. They abandoned heavy industry in favour of technology in the 1960s, and had an economy that grew until a banking crises put it into stangation for years. They’ve had some growth in the last decade, but are now in real trouble – current figures suggest that the Japanese economy is “offically” in depression (greater than 12% shrinkage on an annualised basis).

We’re looking like we’re going the same way as Japan. The economy is shriking rapidly. While the governent tries a new version of the Keynsian “spend your way out” solution, it is also having to prop up the basis of the economy (banks have the money, people need the money) by buying up failed financial institutions. These institutions have failed, not because of the general populace, but because of the core decisions taken by those banks – they have epitomised greed and avarice, and now we’re paying the price.

Anyway, our next stop is probably deflation , which should totally f*** us over: no-one will spend, and the economy will, at best, grind to a halt.

he Government should have MTFU and corrected the market(s) back in the early 00’s.

If you explain what you mean by this, right now, in a way that means that Stoner doesn’t laugh at you, I promise I will always take your opinions seriously henceforward. 🙂

Aren’t you suppose to wait for them to microwave baby or kitten first?

ourmaninthenorth is right

These are words I like.

I’m still up for a revolution. Mind you, look what it did to the economy of Russia. And its ex-state owned industries are a siginificant part of the mess we’re in – have you seen the state of these companies? The oligarchs are being dug out of the sh*t left right and centre.

It is a f***ing mess. But it is also exceedingly disingenuous of Gordo and co to suggest that we’re in the middle of a “global conomic hurricane” – man has yet to learn to to effectively control the weather, but he does have control over something as man made as a national economy. Gordo and Ali are wrong to claim they are clean of any complicity in this – they allowed the banks, hedge funds and VC houses to operate in such aderegulated and lax manner. They share in the blame.

But Tory Dave’s got no answer for this either – he ought to deliberatley lose the next general election unless he wants the blame for this mess as well.

he Government should have MTFU and corrected the market(s) back in the early 00’s.

If you explain what you mean by this, right now, in a way that means that Stoner doesn’t laugh at you, I promise I will always take your opinions seriously henceforward

Sorry, Jon, my own rantings smothered this somewhat.

Hora?

(much as I’d love to blame the borrowers, it REALLY was the lenders fault)

Hmmm Disagree. For future lending you would have to request the borrower fill out an extensive psychometric profile. Dont forget the current forms ask peoples outgoings and what other loans they currently have. How honest are people when they fill these out? Alot of people borrowed against the perceived value of their house. They borrowed against a debt they owed on something that they dont even own. How far should a bank (business whose business it is to make a profit) delve into a potential borrowers life to ensure that they are not idiots?
Lets not forget banks cant discern how close someone is to losing their job when they ask for a loan. The form merely says ‘how many years in current job’ when really it should say:
1. ‘how good are you at your job’?
2. ‘Are you a serial sicknote’?
and..
Theres only so much information that you can glean from potential borrowers. Lets get this straight, Im not defending bankers, Im looking for perspective.
Borrowers who are even now are being encouraged by the Government to spend and not save/learn prudence to claw our way (the right way) out of a recession.
All those who borrow on credit cards/loans/run up overdrafts then roll over on the debt should be ashamed. They should learn to budget and control their spending/drinking rather than blame it on a banker.

The Government should have MTFU and corrected the market(s) back in the early 00’s.
The house market bubble was expected to burst alot sooner, the housing market bubble was seen to be artificially inflating the economy. The Bank of England wanted rate rises to control this but Labour backed away from action.

Start of with the people who have accumulated bad debt or have borrowed irresponsibly. This is called toxic debt. Alot of banks are having to deal with very high levels of toxic debt. This is a sad byproduct of ‘buy now pay later’.

Complete tosh.

Banks have always had bad debts. The problem has been with ‘securitisation’ when dodgy debts have been repackaged to supposedly make them less risky – only now no one understands exactly what level of risk they represent.

You lot voted in the people that deregulated the markets. That’s democracy for you.

Oh wait, what’s that you say? People had no idea that voting for Thatcherism meant this kind of risk? Well I don’t believe that. The public are always soundly well informed and always make carefully considered decisions based on policies and manifestos that will be good for the country in the long term!

Higher interest rates and greater supply of affordable housing (including looking after the thousands of empty houses ‘we’ let fall into disrepair due to estates nobody ‘decent’ wanted to live on). Reckon that would have curtailed our average debt. Add in some control on the banks playing swappsy with debt packages they didn’t understand or know the contents of purely to fuel a balance sheet based notional profit and I reckon we’d have been way better off. Hindsights great but seriously, which sensible person wasn’t aghast at the housing price boom and wondering when/where it would all end? I’ve lost count of the number of times from 2000 onwards I expressed contentment at the prospect of prices faling back to where they were and the possibility my kids would be able to buy a house without earning £50k in their first job!

Count me in for a bit of banker kicking. In fact, it could be classed as a sport, the equivalent of fox hunting say.

So its all the banks fault. The whole recession was created by the banks. Nothing to do with weak government, piss-poor FSA and a culture of borrowing.

Amazing, I can see another recession in 10yrs time when the same lessons havent been learnt…and who says recessions are cyclic?

The Bank of England wanted rate rises to control this but Labour backed away from action.

Who sets interest rates again?

TJ/GG rule invoked. End of thread.

A question:

A lot here seem to think that lending ebgins and ends at the personal level (mortgages, car loans, credit cards). I don’t know the answer, but what proportion of lending by banks (all banks, not just retail banks) doesa this represent?

I’m not trolling – I just want to understand whether simply b*ll*cking on about personal debt isn’t diverting attention from the wider effect of borrowing by all sectors of the economy has had on our current situation.

Forget the bankers, they’re not the ones to blame for a total collapse of the system. If you gave a room full of children matches to play with someone would get burnt. Bankers are there to make money and it’s up to the Goverment and the FSA to regulate those banks and protect consumers and the economy alike.

Wake up and smell the coffee, it’s the Government stupid!

sofatester – Member

How many people on here have loans, other than for your house?

We are all guilty im afraid, some more than other of course!

None at all. We only spend what we can afford, and have saved for.

BD beat me to it.

Mark, since 97 the BoE have been set interest rates. Their only mandate was to manage inflation to a goverment target using the only tool they were given, interest rates.

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/graphs-average-house-price.php

early 2000s was not a time that a house price bubble had formed.

Their only mandate was to manage inflation to a goverment target using the only tool they were given, interest rates.

Though there is a point to be made that they weren’t therefore allowed to use rates to control something else they saw as a danger to the economy (and use a different measure to control inflation). How true it is that they wanted to do that I don’t know.

What scares me is this government. I do get the impression they react and plan by numbers. Before the ‘bonuses’ hit the headlines the government were on the ropes reeling from the critism and their handling now the bonuses are plastered allover the headlines the heat is off. Theres a new one-dimensional scapegoat.

Anyway its Friday. I blame those Bastids at the Northern Crock! 😕 😆 8)

Some people have been predicting this thing for years. Ie: Will Hutton.

He saw a lot wrong in the culture within the investment banks

I remember reading an article, before any of this broke, saying how he challenged a banker about his behavior. The guy had just bought a company on behalf of the bank. He said to him: “You must be aware that that company is massively overvalued”

The reply he received was “I don’t give a ****, I’ve made my bonus!”

That why we need heads on spikes

good idea binners. Damn an entire industry on a single quote in a book you once read.

Surely if a system is set up to encourage employees to lend people money without any regard for how they are going to pay it back, thats irresponsible lending.

If the same institutions financial plans are based around increasing their lending by however many percent each year and selling off the revenue from the repayments of those debts in ‘safe’ financial instuments thats negligent lending.

Taken together that comes fairly close to criminal lending particularly when the house price bubble couldn’t have happened without the ready availability of money to people who at best would have difficulty in paying it back.

criminal lending

no such thing (in this context)

If the lending market is sufficiently deregulated then lenders will lend as they wish. Banks dont work to some ethereal moral code to which they all subscribe. They will work within the laws and regulations laid down. If society doesnt want banks to lend so much, society needs to write the codes to restrict the practices. If it doesnt, it is every bit as much to blame for the consequences.

Why did Woolworths go bust?
Why did MFI go bust?

I blame Hora.

Binners, did the tight git buy you a pint on yer birthday, or what?

Woolworths went bust because they were sh!t.

Ditto MFI.