The banks

[Gio]

Nice to see the PM is spouting the usual shit he comes out with.

Banks should not be rescued with tax payers money, ever.

They've made the balls up so they should be allowed to go to the wall.

I'd encourage anyone who pays tax to withhold it on the grounds that if you're going to help banks and their toxic debts, then you have to help all businesses and especially small ones, as they produce so much of the countries wealth yet get the least help of all when we have a recession.

[D-Rider]

Banks should not be rescued with tax payers money, ever.

They've made the balls up so they should be allowed to go to the wall.

I have a lot of sympathy with that view - the people that have acted recklessly and incompetently are those that have made huge sums over the past years. Unfortunately, although a few may loose their income for a while, they are not really the ones to suffer.Those that suffer are the ordinary man and woman and business.

And that's where the argument falls down - the banks go to the wall and it's the ordinary people that get hit hardest.

Look what happened yesterday. As we all know, much of the current crisis stems from the USA. Yesterday their government shirked their responsibility to the rest of the world by not stabilising things - sending the finance system into a right old spin. Seems to me they were focussed on the small picture of avoiding unpopularity with their taxpayers rather than facing up to their responsibility to the world economy.

However galling it may be to bail out those that have acted recklessly and made a pile from doing so, the only responsible thing to do is to stabilise the system and put in place effective regulation to stop the situations that have occurred.

Just my 2p-worth (which is now worth less than it was a week ago)

[mangocrazy]

Yes. Bankers = power without accountability, it seems.

[ligloo]

when's the dollar going to crash?

I'm off for a shopping trip to New York next month

[D-Rider]

I'm off for a shopping trip to New York next month

LOL - I don't go 'till November (though not a shopping trip - thank God)

[HowardQ]

All the bent Bwankers should be lined up down Threadneedle Street and shot. It would then be a good idea then to re-introduce the old method of hanging, dragging through the streets and quartering. Might then discourage a few more of the bent bastards to stop spreadbetting, short selling and generally playing stupid games with our money.
Just need to try and avoid too much collateral damage to peoples savings and mortgages.
Then perhaps we could go back to the really stupid idea of banks encouraging people to save with them and then lending out the money they actually had for mortgages etc..
OK not an easy idea I know, but once a few have been dragged through the streets, it could start to catch on.
When I got my first mortgage you had to have a savings account with the Society for a minimum of 6 months or so if you hoped to get approval for a mortgage, good way of saving for deposit, then you could borrow around twice or maybe 2.5 times the main earners salary fon the mortgage!
Well you may get a 90% mortgage if you were lucky!
Yeh I know, it was a helluva long time ago!

[D-Rider]

Confession time - when I left school I spent 5 years in banking. Eventually worked out how to escape from it and do something more useful and far more interesting.
This was back in the days before the financial system became such a casino.
I did get part-qualified and learned enough to know that the banking system and the economy is dependent on the creation of credit which is achieved through the banks lending out more money than they actually have.
The thing is, it needs to be done carefully, at a safe ratio and in such a way that they minimise the risk of bad debt by not lending to those who will struggle to pay it back.

Then perhaps we could go back to the really stupid idea of banks encouraging people to save with them and then lending out the money they actually had for mortgages etc..

If the banks were only to lend what they have on deposit, then there would not be the funds available to adequately lend to business/ industry (and anyone else like home-buyers) - and what there was would probably cost a fortune to borrow.
Now maybe we'd have preferred that but to suggest that having created a world economy that runs on those lines that we pull most of the money out of the economy (and I do mean most) by having the banks lend only what they have on deposit is really quite unrealistic.

[Falcopops]

The thing is, it needs to be done carefully, at a safe ratio and in such a way that they minimise the risk of bad debt by not lending to those who will struggle to pay it back.

And thereby hangs the whole problem.

Thanks to the septics sub-prime problem, bad debt got rolled up into very risky packages that were gleefully gobbled up across the globe without so much as a check.

And the banks are constantly handing out warnings to us mere mortals about protecting our security. Bankers indeed. I do hope not too many of them top themselves.

[D-Rider]

Yep - spot on Dale

[Samray]

They're greedy fekkers, still looking for their pound of flesh or bricks and mortar.

There is finally talk of austerity and belt-tightening, ... decades too late.
Most people seem to have already sold their souls to the banks.

[joecrx]

i was always told borrow £1000 its your problen borrow a £1,000000 its the banks problem not now it isint

[HowardQ]

Sorry Andy but there are so many bad things going on in the world of finance and banking.
Like the long established issue of getting people to change their credit cards or mortgage for some silly rate for 6 or 12 months or whatever, whilst the people who stay with them are treated like shit. This makes the banks or whaatever look good for getting the new business even though in reality they are loosing money on the deals and loosing their own customers to other banks offering similar deals. Anybody with half a brain knows this makes no financial sense.
Same with car insurance, they give you a brilliant deal to get you in then in my case with the RAC, over the next 4 years quote you a renewal of between about 80% to 260% more for the same car. I got wise to this and always go back to the same company as new business every time, doesn't do their finances any good, but they can brag about all the news business they are bringing in, me I just love getting really cheap insurance. Also get one years free RAC cover every year as new business.
This has been going on with loans, mortgages, credit cards, insurance etc. for years, now the bwankers have suddenly found out the hard way that they've seriously fucked up. How sad.
P.S. I've also had my last two car loans from Northern Rock as the were the cheapest around, was fine by me, but they might be thinking rather differently now!

[mangocrazy]

I hope you've all moved your savings out of these overseas accounts as the credit crunch has reached Japan...

In the last 7 days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches.

Yesterday, it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song while today shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived.

While Samurai Bank are soldiering on following sharp cutbacks, Ninja Bank are reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black.

Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.

[D-Rider]

Sorry Andy but there are so many bad things going on in the world of finance and banking.

You don't need to apologise to me Howard - I couldn't agree more.
I'm certainly not sticking up for banking and bankers - I have little sympathy for the world of finance in general.
Things have changed a lot (for the worse) since I worked in that sector - after a year of it I knew it was an unsatisfying job and wanted to move on .... just took 4 more years to work out what and how.

However, I do know that you can't just unpick the financial world in an instant and that much of the principles do serve us well as long as people don't start pushing the risk (which, of course, they have done).

Then making things worse is the "have now pay later" culture that a large part of the population has rushed into headlong - emphasised by the credit card debt that so many have. Yes, the banks shouldn't make that so easy but then, people need to take a bit of responsibility too.

IMHO

[HowardQ]

Sorry Andy but there are so many bad things going on in the world of finance and banking.

You don't need to apologise to me Howard - I couldn't agree more.
I'm certainly not sticking up for banking and bankers - I have little sympathy for the world of finance in general.
Things have changed a lot (for the worse) since I worked in that sector - after a year of it I knew it was an unsatisfying job and wanted to move on .... just took 4 more years to work out what and how..........................
Then making things worse is the "have now pay later" culture that a large part of the population has rushed into headlong - emphasised by the credit card debt that so many have. Yes, the banks shouldn't make that so easy but then, people need to take a bit of responsibility too.
IMHO

The whole system is wrong, it pushes people into situations of using credit, so they don't pay cash. You get the pay by credit card then swap the balance to a new card interest free scenario and all the others.
You also usually get a discount for buying by finance and don't get one by paying cash, I am old enough tp remember it being the other way around.
Have you ever tried to pay for anything expensive by cash?
My daughter sold her Astra GSI Turbo on Friday, (she really needed something cheaper to run and insure), and the bloke paid in cash, He was a friend of a good friend who works on the oil rigs.
By Saturday I had found her an excellent old type 2004 Civic 3 door, with alloys, A/C and lots of other toys with just 18k on clock and full Honda SH.
Absolutely unmarked and lower price than anyting I'd seen on A/Trader.
It was at our local Car Supermarket, so we thought let's go and buy it cash, as she had not had chance to bank it.
Salesman says I will need a £500 deposit, we say fine, have it here in cash! Sort of funny look from salesman.
How will you pay the balance, got it here you can have the whole lot now in cash (£5K plus).
Salesman by now is in a serious state of such, "can't do that sir, it's against company policy and also illegal, because the goverment want to stop money laundering.
By now we are shocked, will take a while to get it to the bank and cleared, so will delay picking up the car, are you sure we can't pay cash.
Haven't you got a Credit card, you could pay by that and then pay it off.
Er no we don't want to do that.
The nearest bank branch to where my daughter works in Sheffield City Centre doesn't have a cash counter any more, so you can't pay it in discreetly, had to feed 6K into the bloody machine. (Probably cos nobody uses cash any more).
Only good point was it cleared quickly so did not have to wait too long.
Then came the next fun bit, Jo needed to contact the insurance and wait for the new certificate to come through, which could take a week so she could sort out the new certificate needed to get the car taxed.
No problem says the salesman, phone this 0800 number and you get free insurance for a week so we can tax your car and let you drive it away, all big dealers do this now.
So paid for the car a couple of days later by switch and off we went.
The special Insurance was via Norwich Union. (They always did things a bit funny in Norwich).

With all the uninsured drivers on the road, should it be this easy to get a car taxed for a year without having any insurance of your own?

Also if I had a few millions of drug money to launder, would I choose to do this by buying a few thousand 4 yr old Honda Civics and then sell them on again. Nice little car but I don't think so, the government just want the ability to track every transaction we all make whenever they might need to.
This whole (financial) world's gone mad.