Britain ruled by banks? (Discuss)

Oh, Hamm, I despair - did you actually go to school? What the fuck are you on about? Do you READ at all? There are thousands of people coming into the UK with NO INTENTION OF WORKING - that is nothing to do with the Benefits scrounging which goes on among our indigenous people. There are TENS OF THOUSANDS of people who enter the UK every year - usually now around 250,00-ish legally, but with the Borders Agency hardly on red alert, I think we can guess that there are plenty of illegals still getting in, not that I'm the slightest bit interested in that stat, as it doesn't exist officially.

Do get a grip. READ WHAT PEOPLE WRITE. IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT, QUESTION IT BEFORE YOU MAKE ANOTHER WILDLY JUDGMENTAL AND INACCURATE STATEMENT. You're really now at such a low, I'm refusing to engage with you further.

Grassy - terrible, terrible!! Off with his head!
 
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krizon said:
Gareth: don't be a lazy sod! The sources are pretty much any broadsheet printed in the last couple of months, or government statistics from you.gov, but mine are from The Week, published - believe it or not - weekly, a digest of the most topical of news subjects.
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Why can't you back this up, or is this more of you tying yourself in a knot? I read what you wrote but you haven't. Again, you have come across as bigoted and said you can prove it, so please do so.

No-one put these words in your mouth, so either prove it, or retract your digs and your language.
 
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Oddly enough krizon, meetings and established clients this week have and will include some russians who have set up a high end kitchen business and a pre revolution iranian who is based in Mayfair and has in fact kicked off a decent trade finance company (so does work)

Also a Belgian/isreali who is represnting and managing a french owned top end wine importers and an aussie who has an established handyman team

I know full well that they love london (despite us forcing our culture on them )
 
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If we accept the premis that sub-prime is ultimately the root (if not the only) cause of this unprecedented financial crisis, then it's a case of banks-as-pimps and public-as-whores, in my view.

Is one more to blame than the other?
 
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Its about the future (which the article fails to acknowledge in any way) and not the past. Whatever the wrongs or rights of what has gone before, the city must stay competitive on a world basis and regulations and taxes cutting into that have to be fought. The sector is way too vital to the UK to see it any other way

How far the proposals are likely to do so, no one here knows (and the writer certainly doesnt illuminate) without the detail to hand and maybe the hand has been overplayed but then again..maybe not
 
For anyone interested, or pretending to be interested, go to http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk and then search for Immigration Statistics. You'll need to separately search for Asylum Seekers, et cetera, but you can go knock yourselves out with detailed searching for as long as you want.
 
He seems to be clear-sighted about the issue, Clivex, although, bear with an old woman here - is he saying that Cameron would like Club Euro to revert to trading partner status, like ye olde Common Market, and nothing more? No Eurocracy from Brussells, which would overwhelm the newer or more laissez-faire members mentioned in his article, or, more likely, just be ignored?
 
This is an alliance that cannot even handle a Greek default.
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No. He ends up by saying this.

Thats not "bluster" its a hard fact.

the point about the french farmers opt out and the cameron wish is a good one too

Krizon...that is more or less what he says but i did read hurriedly. The euro has failed of course and whos to say that it wont again?
 
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Cameron was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. If he hadn't vetoed then Milliband would have criticised him for conceding. As for making alliances no other country would support us. I wonder what Milliband would have done? With 100% hindsight I would have tried a different approach. Very difficult!

I am thoroughly pissed off with some of the anti -Europe Tories with their yah-boo sucks reaction and equally with the opposition and Clegg playing silly games. What was needed was a message from the parliament that that we were all firm in our resolve but willing to work with the 17 to fashion a proper solution.
 
Gareth.
If we accept the premis that sub-prime is ultimately the root (if not the only) cause of this unprecedented financial crisis, then it's a case of banks-as-pimps and public-as-whores, in my view
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Given some of the comments on here I thought long and hard about what follows as I am a commtted anti-racist but the irony got the better of me.

The banks, the rating agencies, regulators and governments all must take some responsibility for the sub-prime debacle probably in that order but how many people are aware of what created the opportunity for scam merchants to inflate such a bubble. It doesn't take much lending skill to want to steer away from that type of lending in its raw form. It grew markedly harder over time due to the rating agencies applying higher ratings than they ought to have and the likes of AIG insuring a percentage of risk.
The genisis began over 10 years ago. My employer, one of the world's largest banks, had a substantial business in the US largely lending very large loans to major corporates and institutions. The bank was taken to court several times in various us juridictions largely on the premise that it was discriminating against the poor and particularly the poor Afro-american and hispanic communities. By and large the bank did not lend to individuals or for mortgages. It was easily demonstrated that the bank's loan portfolio was almost entirely loans to companies controlled by wealthy caucasian and or asian individuals. It was therefore reasoned that by not lending proportionately to the poor and to the ethnic communities the bank was unfairly discriminating. On one visit to the US I had to wait for a very senior banker to return from court.

Given the nature of the bank's activities the claims did not really stand up but most of the other banks including mortgage providers were subject to the same charges.
I do not as a rule follow the progress of legislation in the States so I cannot give chapter and verse, though there was an excellent article on this in one of the broadsheets. The result of this is that many banks were compelled, by pressure and/or legislation to significantly increase their exposure to the poorer and ethnic communities. The unscrupulous soon cottoned on that the banks could not apply the normal credit rules to such loans but had to have a given percentage without charging interest to reflect the risk. Moreover if they sold the loans they would have to write more to maintain exposure. The rating agencies imo also failed in that they were loath to give crap ratings, possibly for the same reason. Diced and sliced with various layers of insurance, guarantees, etc,etc,10% covered here, 5% covered there, these loans were the Emperor's new clothes but it was hard to get an opportunty to check them out. In reality they were unsurprisingly shite loans. Thus was the birth of sub prime.

A great example of social enginering driven by well intentioned actions severely hurt not only those it was meant to assist but the whole shebang.
 
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the point about the french farmers opt out and the cameron wish is a good one too
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It's actually one of the worst sentences in the article, pure prejudice. French farmers are not treated differently to others.
 
Grasshopper said:
If we accept the premis that sub-prime is ultimately the root (if not the only) cause of this unprecedented financial crisis, then it's a case of banks-as-pimps and public-as-whores, in my view.

Is one more to blame than the other?
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I don't think the analogy holds - if the banks are pimps, then the public are the clients and the whores are the mortgages which bring about nice houses. Of course, pimps provide no real value to the market and are generally abusive and predatory, so... oh, I see!

Seriously, though, each individual loanee can only be expected to take responsibility for their own loans. The banks have to take responsibility for all of them. Can any single member of the public (property speculators excepted) really have been expected to second-guess what they were being told by their banks? I'm sure some did and ended up dodging a bullet, but I think most people would have approached a lender under the presumption that the bank knows what they're doing and is not going to unduly expose themselves.

And that's without getting into what was going on behind the scenes, with how the subprime packages were being fraudulently sold to investors, with collusion from the credit agencies etc.

Edit: also, how many of those mortgages went through brokers? Are those individuals to be blamed for following the advice of the "experts" they employed to find them the best deal?
 
Grey said:
It's actually one of the worst sentences in the article, pure prejudice. French farmers are not treated differently to others.
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I think this is a really interesting and well argued thread. Tout Seul's input is fascinating and I find clivex and krizon pretty near the mark in term of the 'English' view, whilst Hamm and Grey, who seem to be looking at the picture from a Brussels/ Dublin, and, dare I say, an almost anti English perspective, are pretty close to van Rompuy and Barroso in their reading of events.

I reckon that Cameron is inclined to play fair if only the others, e.g. Sarkozy, would. The response from Labour has been truly abysmal - opportunistic and lacking in any intellectual credibility

Going into the EU as late as we did has left us with 30 years + of trying to keep things reasonably fair, against the machinations of the French/ German axis.
 
Hopefully no offence to either of you.

Some useful stuff by Sullivan. I knew what role Fannie and Freddie performed and the benefit of 'conformed' loans'. I didn't follow the yank markets after I left the bank in 2002. But I remember the court cases.

The first villains were the real estate brokers. Note Never let the Estate agent arrange your mortgage
 
Grey said:
It's actually one of the worst sentences in the article, pure prejudice. French farmers are not treated differently to others.
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Oh, yes they were!
If they hadn't been, the EU would have been killed off by CdeG ... history but veritude lies there.
 
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Interesing stuff, Tout. I'd never considered that sub-prime might actually have been borne out of some form of financial affirmative action.

Gareth, I acknowledge that there are many different contributing factors that have coalesced to make this crisis unique, and did nod towards this in my post. The point I was trying to make was that greed (for want of a better word) is part of the human condition, and that goes for consumers as well as bankers. It's a gross simplification, of course, but there isn't the time - and I don't really have the inclination, to get into an in-depth, blow-by-blow account of the timeline of what went wrong where - it's largely in the public domain anyway.

There always has to be a scapegoat. The Banks are certainly not blameless - far from it - but they are being targeted because it is expedient to do so. It avoids anyone asking too many searching questions of Government about the regulatory environments that facilitated this in the first place (Tout's post giving us another subtly-different insight on this, imo).

Whether it's sub-prime or sovereign debt, it's all about 'people' spending money they haven't got. Again, I think this is part of the human condition, and we blame bankers for the current crisis because it means we can avoid looking closer to home for the ultimate source of the problem.

Looking into my crystal ball, I fully expext the UK to be blamed when one of the Euro economies does eventually go tits-up and a country defaults. Fingers will be pointed and blame will be heaped upon the UK for refusing to enter into the current arrangement, regardless of the fact that the real problem was profligacy of whichever state defaults. It's just the way of the world, isn't it?
 
Very Very Ordinary said:
I find clivex and krizon pretty near the mark in term of the 'English' view, whilst Hamm and Grey, who seem to be looking at the picture from a Brussels/ Dublin, and, dare I say, an almost anti English perspective,
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That is unfair and untrue on the two chaps. Also, Brussels and Dublin cannot be construed as having the same outlook. At this stage Dublin is just playing the game in the hope of seeing an opportunity of getting out of this monumental mess.
 
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