I've come to the conclusion that if you have money, you're screwed. All the measures I've seen to tackle this will help those in debt, but at the expense of devaluing savings, investments, pensions, etc.
I saw my income drop 70% last year when RBS cancelled my main clients overdraft at the beginning of last year.
The firm struggled on until June when it closed it's doors making 50 staff redundant.
The owners managed to sell parts of the business which just covered the staff redundancies. (Some of the staff were talking of suing the owners for unfair dismissal until *someone* pointed out where all the company liquidity had gone - ungrateful bastards.)
The owners are left with a ?650,000 mortgage on a building they can't use. This ties in quite nicely with the ex-chairman's annual pension (at 50 years old.)
F***ing incompetant bastard or greedy scheming shit?
Rant rant rant f***ing RBS.
Well, I may be living below the poverty line now, my remaining and new customers take about 60 days to pay, new customers are becoming harder to find because the banks are butting them all out of business, but at least I don't claim to be a financial expert like a bank and I don't rack up ?24Bn in debt like a bank.
The Chairman should be in jail, never mind being asked to give up some of his frikking pension.
Rant rant rant f***ing RBS.
Sorry, I feel better now.
Anybody able to lend me a fiver? Unsecured I'm afraid.
One of the few things I like about the USA is the way that when some city crook gets found out they are put on trial quickly (months rather than years) and if convicted, which they normally are, get sentences of many years and not a slap on the wrist and there club membership withdrawn.
The FSA in this country is a joke, taking many years to get to the prosecution stage and then losing cases on technicalities so fatcats who have ripped plebs like us for millions walk free almost every time.
Its about time we had a system that allows for the quick and simple prosecution of city crooks and sentencing reflected the size of the crime.
We seem to have a massive culture problem in the UK of "not my fault".
Same should apply to corporate manslaughter due to inept or incompetent management.
There used to be rules in place to stop high street banks gambling themselves out of existence by playing high finance games, but they all got swept away in the vain hope that deregulation would make them more efficient. Of course this was all a load of bollocks, but it does mean that the likes of Fred "the Shred" Goodwin can walk away from the disaster he made of RBS and keep his fat pension with impunity; he didn't break any laws, because there weren't any. What we need is consumer banks that just deal in basic savings and loans and investment banks which do all the risky stuff, with a firm separation between the two.
Pensions are screwed up because they've been trying to close an ever widening gap between the contributions going in and what's coming out as people live longer lives in retirement. If they'd just done this by asking for greater contributions we'd probably have moaned a bit, but eventually adjusted, but instead they resorted to high finance and, after the current crisis, will be so far behind that they'll probably all need nationalizing. As such we'll probably find ourselves doubly clobbered with having to put more in for our own pensions and also to pay for the shortfall in those already retired.
One of the few things I like about the USA is the way that when some city crook gets found out they are put on trial quickly (months rather than years) and if convicted, which they normally are, get sentences of many years and not a slap on the wrist and there club membership withdrawn.
The FSA in this country is a joke, taking many years to get to the prosecution stage and then losing cases on technicalities so fatcats who have ripped plebs like us for millions walk free almost every time.
Its about time we had a system that allows for the quick and simple prosecution of city crooks and sentencing reflected the size of the crime.
The problem with this is that these people weren't crooks, or at least not in the way the law would understand it. Nick Leeson was a crook, these bankers were just following pretty standard procedure for banks in the deregulated finance-happy naughties. We've had 25 years of economic ideologues telling us that the system was perfect because the self-interest of the market inherently fixes any problems. The last couple of years have revealed that to be a sham but it took the last couple of years to do that. In 1998 or thereabouts I doubt many people really considered whether further financial dergulation might lead to poor people being encouraged to take-out loans creating short-term profits and bad-debt which would be "passed around" the financial system at profit until the massive financial hole came home to roost leading to a banking collapse on a massive scale. It wasn't something anyone really considered.
Of course now we can all see that this was a ridiculous tower of babel but back then Western governments were actively encouraging it, these weren't people who knew they were doing the wrong thing until it was all too late. It's the system that was rotten rather than the people working in it.
And, whilst I agree that government bailing-out failed businesses with billions of public money is sickening it's basically essential. We need the banks and we can't allow them to collapse because the fallout would be so bad (heck, the fallout from the trouble they're having even with government help is pretty enormous).
We seem to have a massive culture problem in the UK of "not my fault".
Same should apply to corporate manslaughter due to inept or incompetent management.
From now on, yes we should. But I fear in another fifty years when all this has been forgotten someone new will dig out the Austrian school and Friedman and the ball will start rolling once again...
From now on, yes we should. But I fear in another fifty years when all this has been forgotten someone new will dig out the Austrian school and Friedman and the ball will start rolling once again...
Of course. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Consider this - what started the Great Depression? A massive unsustainable credit fuelled asset boom.
And what started this mess? I think I hardly need to say "A massive unsustainable credit fuelled asset boom".
The Chairman should be in jail, never mind being asked to give up some of his frikking pension.
I'd imagine 90% of the population would agree with you there. Unfortunately, Britain is not a democracy, despite the laughable claims to the contrary, so the public's will has little effect on the running of our country.
We seem to have a massive culture problem in the UK of "not my fault".
We have a culture of the old boy network, jobs for the boys (who went to the same expensive, public school as us), and as long as you're rich, you won't go to prison.
If you earn ?5 per hour, then you have to pay your own bills, your own transport costs, etc, and if you screw up your job you get sacked, and if you acted illegally, then you might well get prosecuted.
If you earn twenty times that amount (?100 per hour, ?200,000 per year), you get expenses paid for on top of your wages, and if you screw up you often you'll get away with nothing said, or just a minor criticism, and if you commit an illegal act then they try to keep it quiet, if for no other reason than to save the company embarrassment.
And if you earn ?400,000 per year, or ?600,000 etc, then you sit back, wait for your peerage, knighthood, etc, and relax safe in the knowledge that there's more chance of Stevie Wonder seeing Dawn's sunlight than there is of you seeing the inside of a prison cell.
Another example of the equality we enjoy in this country.
I'd imagine 90% of the population would agree with you there. Unfortunately, Britain is not a democracy, despite the laughable claims to the contrary, so the public's will has little effect on the running of our country.
Find a country that is!
"Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" have soooo many clips that are apropos. Here's just one:
One of the few things I like about the USA is the way that when some city crook gets found out they are put on trial quickly
But incompetence is generally not illegal, neither here nor in the United States. Nor is negligence if it doesn't directly physically injure anyone. Actually, in the United States, most of the corporate crooks get away with it too - they have to be egregiously crooked (on the scale of Enron) to get taken to court. Normally the crooks get a nice golden parachute there, too.
From what I've read in the Times, it seems like the Treasury is to blame for this scandal with the pension - they agreed and signed the legally binding contract, and now they are trying to backpedal like mad now the public have found out about it by making a lot of noise to try to shine the spotlight on the former chairman of RBS and obscure their own breathtaking incompetence. Perhaps some ministerial heads ought to roll.
I've come to the conclusion that if you have money, you're screwed. All the measures I've seen to tackle this will help those in debt, but at the expense of devaluing savings, investments, pensions, etc.
Buy gold from a trader on the internet, and pay him to stick it in a vault in Switzerland.
At least that way, it's only probable that he'll take the money and scarper.
I've just get a letter 'off of' the Halifax saying I've got ?9.94 in my account. Last I had dealings with 'them' they were the 'Leeds' Building Society. I'm going to take it out and get pissed! Cheaply!
I've come to the conclusion that if you have money, you're screwed. All the measures I've seen to tackle this will help those in debt, but at the expense of devaluing savings, investments, pensions, etc.
just buy lots of stuff before they lose all your savings
once you have lots of stuff in your house the bankers can't lose it :) (if you bought a stupid mortgage and now don't have a house to keep it in... well then that was a bit silly wasn't it*)
*if you bought a sensible mortgage from a company that sold stupid mortgages to other people and then went up the spout then that's not your fault, put the pitchfork down
I'd imagine 90% of the population would agree with you there. Unfortunately, Britain is not a democracy, despite the laughable claims to the contrary, so the public's will has little effect on the running of our country.
I don't think any country claims to be what you are probably using the word democracy to mean there.
Democracy in the simplest primary school explanation doesn't exist because it's impossible.
frankly one of reasons that the country is in a mess currently is because the elected officials are putting their collective spoke in and interfering with the running of the country :p
At least in yes minister Jim always discovers that his new scheme that is outside of his personal expertise and not properly thought up is a bad idea before it takes hold and the country goes down the tubes...
I've just get a letter 'off of' the Halifax saying I've got ?9.94 in my account. Last I had dealings with 'them' they were the 'Leeds' Building Society. I'm going to take it out and get pissed! Cheaply!
Of course now we can all see that this was a ridiculous tower of babel but back then Western governments were actively encouraging it, these weren't people who knew they were doing the wrong thing until it was all too late.
This is wrong -- this potential problem was known and discussed prior to the current situation. I remember reading about it and thinking 'hmm' and then ignored it like everyone else. For people whose responsibility it was to guard the country's fiscal well-being, I'm sure they knew the risks too. As always greed and short-term gain trumped over long-term health. This kind of behaviour is evident in most human activities, be it personal health, environmental pollution or financial stability. We invent excuses not to act and create false information to justify actions so that we have five years of pleasure, not really caring what happens 10, 20, 50 years down the road.
Frobush means where beer is cheap, NOT where the locals can't take their alcohol.
You know up North, it's that bit of England where all the good football teams come from, and where everyone speaks properly. Well, apart from Newcastle/Sunderland way, but that's DM terrority, so you'd expect nothing else :p
This is wrong -- this potential problem was known and discussed prior to the current situation. I remember reading about it and thinking 'hmm' and then ignored it like everyone else. For people whose responsibility it was to guard the country's fiscal well-being, I'm sure they knew the risks too. As always greed and short-term gain trumped over long-term health. This kind of behaviour is evident in most human activities, be it personal health, environmental pollution or financial stability. We invent excuses not to act and create false information to justify actions so that we have five years of pleasure, not really caring what happens 10, 20, 50 years down the road.
Unfortunately it only takes mistakes in one very large economy to drag the rest of the world down.
You have a point, but I think the problem was the "invisible hand" theory underpinning market economics and deregulation that stated that even if the market did create a problem on this scale it would manage to fix it through self-regulation borne out of self-interest (because it wasn't in the bankers interests for the financial sector to fail). Because of this, although bankers knew that the toxic debt being passed-around was creating a potential problem, the dominant economic ideology was based around the notion that the marketplace would "somehow" fix it eventually. It didn't and the banking sector collapsed and threatens to pull-down the rest of the economy with it.
Comments
The firm struggled on until June when it closed it's doors making 50 staff redundant.
The owners managed to sell parts of the business which just covered the staff redundancies. (Some of the staff were talking of suing the owners for unfair dismissal until *someone* pointed out where all the company liquidity had gone - ungrateful bastards.)
The owners are left with a ?650,000 mortgage on a building they can't use. This ties in quite nicely with the ex-chairman's annual pension (at 50 years old.)
F***ing incompetant bastard or greedy scheming shit?
Rant rant rant f***ing RBS.
Well, I may be living below the poverty line now, my remaining and new customers take about 60 days to pay, new customers are becoming harder to find because the banks are butting them all out of business, but at least I don't claim to be a financial expert like a bank and I don't rack up ?24Bn in debt like a bank.
The Chairman should be in jail, never mind being asked to give up some of his frikking pension.
Rant rant rant f***ing RBS.
Sorry, I feel better now.
Anybody able to lend me a fiver? Unsecured I'm afraid.
The FSA in this country is a joke, taking many years to get to the prosecution stage and then losing cases on technicalities so fatcats who have ripped plebs like us for millions walk free almost every time.
Its about time we had a system that allows for the quick and simple prosecution of city crooks and sentencing reflected the size of the crime.
We seem to have a massive culture problem in the UK of "not my fault".
Same should apply to corporate manslaughter due to inept or incompetent management.
Pensions are screwed up because they've been trying to close an ever widening gap between the contributions going in and what's coming out as people live longer lives in retirement. If they'd just done this by asking for greater contributions we'd probably have moaned a bit, but eventually adjusted, but instead they resorted to high finance and, after the current crisis, will be so far behind that they'll probably all need nationalizing. As such we'll probably find ourselves doubly clobbered with having to put more in for our own pensions and also to pay for the shortfall in those already retired.
The problem with this is that these people weren't crooks, or at least not in the way the law would understand it. Nick Leeson was a crook, these bankers were just following pretty standard procedure for banks in the deregulated finance-happy naughties. We've had 25 years of economic ideologues telling us that the system was perfect because the self-interest of the market inherently fixes any problems. The last couple of years have revealed that to be a sham but it took the last couple of years to do that. In 1998 or thereabouts I doubt many people really considered whether further financial dergulation might lead to poor people being encouraged to take-out loans creating short-term profits and bad-debt which would be "passed around" the financial system at profit until the massive financial hole came home to roost leading to a banking collapse on a massive scale. It wasn't something anyone really considered.
Of course now we can all see that this was a ridiculous tower of babel but back then Western governments were actively encouraging it, these weren't people who knew they were doing the wrong thing until it was all too late. It's the system that was rotten rather than the people working in it.
And, whilst I agree that government bailing-out failed businesses with billions of public money is sickening it's basically essential. We need the banks and we can't allow them to collapse because the fallout would be so bad (heck, the fallout from the trouble they're having even with government help is pretty enormous).
From now on, yes we should. But I fear in another fifty years when all this has been forgotten someone new will dig out the Austrian school and Friedman and the ball will start rolling once again...
Of course. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Consider this - what started the Great Depression? A massive unsustainable credit fuelled asset boom.
And what started this mess? I think I hardly need to say "A massive unsustainable credit fuelled asset boom".
I'd imagine 90% of the population would agree with you there. Unfortunately, Britain is not a democracy, despite the laughable claims to the contrary, so the public's will has little effect on the running of our country.
We have a culture of the old boy network, jobs for the boys (who went to the same expensive, public school as us), and as long as you're rich, you won't go to prison.
If you earn ?5 per hour, then you have to pay your own bills, your own transport costs, etc, and if you screw up your job you get sacked, and if you acted illegally, then you might well get prosecuted.
If you earn twenty times that amount (?100 per hour, ?200,000 per year), you get expenses paid for on top of your wages, and if you screw up you often you'll get away with nothing said, or just a minor criticism, and if you commit an illegal act then they try to keep it quiet, if for no other reason than to save the company embarrassment.
And if you earn ?400,000 per year, or ?600,000 etc, then you sit back, wait for your peerage, knighthood, etc, and relax safe in the knowledge that there's more chance of Stevie Wonder seeing Dawn's sunlight than there is of you seeing the inside of a prison cell.
Another example of the equality we enjoy in this country.
Find a country that is!
"Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" have soooo many clips that are apropos. Here's just one:
But incompetence is generally not illegal, neither here nor in the United States. Nor is negligence if it doesn't directly physically injure anyone. Actually, in the United States, most of the corporate crooks get away with it too - they have to be egregiously crooked (on the scale of Enron) to get taken to court. Normally the crooks get a nice golden parachute there, too.
From what I've read in the Times, it seems like the Treasury is to blame for this scandal with the pension - they agreed and signed the legally binding contract, and now they are trying to backpedal like mad now the public have found out about it by making a lot of noise to try to shine the spotlight on the former chairman of RBS and obscure their own breathtaking incompetence. Perhaps some ministerial heads ought to roll.
Like that's going to happen.
Remember our glorious leader is the saviour of the world and nothing at all is anything to do with him when it goes wrong.
At least that way, it's only probable that he'll take the money and scarper.
Jonathan Lynn. "Mayday". Read - NOW!
just buy lots of stuff before they lose all your savings
once you have lots of stuff in your house the bankers can't lose it :) (if you bought a stupid mortgage and now don't have a house to keep it in... well then that was a bit silly wasn't it*)
*if you bought a sensible mortgage from a company that sold stupid mortgages to other people and then went up the spout then that's not your fault, put the pitchfork down
I don't think any country claims to be what you are probably using the word democracy to mean there.
Democracy in the simplest primary school explanation doesn't exist because it's impossible.
frankly one of reasons that the country is in a mess currently is because the elected officials are putting their collective spoke in and interfering with the running of the country :p
At least in yes minister Jim always discovers that his new scheme that is outside of his personal expertise and not properly thought up is a bad idea before it takes hold and the country goes down the tubes...
You can get pissed on ?9.94? How? :confused:
Netto. Starberg larger. 4% or is it 4.5%? 18 stubbies for ?5.50 (approx 9 pints)
Funnily enough it tastes exactly the same as Sainsburys "Biere D'Alsace", but that costs ?8.99 for 18 bottles.
Tastes as good as Stella.
Much nicer than Bud.
So long as you like lager that is.
This is wrong -- this potential problem was known and discussed prior to the current situation. I remember reading about it and thinking 'hmm' and then ignored it like everyone else. For people whose responsibility it was to guard the country's fiscal well-being, I'm sure they knew the risks too. As always greed and short-term gain trumped over long-term health. This kind of behaviour is evident in most human activities, be it personal health, environmental pollution or financial stability. We invent excuses not to act and create false information to justify actions so that we have five years of pleasure, not really caring what happens 10, 20, 50 years down the road.
Some countries' banks turned profits in the most recent quarter. All the Canadian banks turned profits, eg, in the hundreds of millions http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/International-Business/Big-profits-by-Canadian-banks-despite-meltdown/articleshow/4198924.cms and I'd be surprised if that was an isolated case. The article doesn't mention profits at three of the four largest banks, a couple of whom are yet to report but the others are in the hundreds of millions.
Unfortunately it only takes mistakes in one very large economy to drag the rest of the world down.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
I'm from up north.
Frobush means where beer is cheap, NOT where the locals can't take their alcohol.
You know up North, it's that bit of England where all the good football teams come from, and where everyone speaks properly. Well, apart from Newcastle/Sunderland way, but that's DM terrority, so you'd expect nothing else :p
You have a point, but I think the problem was the "invisible hand" theory underpinning market economics and deregulation that stated that even if the market did create a problem on this scale it would manage to fix it through self-regulation borne out of self-interest (because it wasn't in the bankers interests for the financial sector to fail). Because of this, although bankers knew that the toxic debt being passed-around was creating a potential problem, the dominant economic ideology was based around the notion that the marketplace would "somehow" fix it eventually. It didn't and the banking sector collapsed and threatens to pull-down the rest of the economy with it.
I can take the local's alcohol, and often do!
You're my wife now!