Christine Lagarde

[otters]

Today the IMF is warning of a pensions time bomb, caused by an ageing population.

Well what the hell do they expect when they raid their retirement funds, and give it to the feckless.This outfit is not fit for purpose.

[Nationalist]

That's "Professor" Robert Winston who, despite supposedly being a man of science, believes that a beardy man in the sky made the Universe in 7 days. The bloke's a grade A dickhead and it surprises me not one jot to see him aligning himself with the feckless idiots who presided over the financial collapse of our country.

Actually, he's an atheist but "socially" Jewish.

[PopGun]

That could lead to the rich taking up arms to rob the poor.

Dream on.

[PopGun]

I've noticed no one has bothered to point the finger at the cretins that compromised the debt markets and mixed the sub prime and prime derivatives together causing the credit crunch in the first place?!?

But as usual, the HPC brigade blames the pigs, not the nutters putting the lipstick on them.

[Bruce Banner]

I've noticed no one has bothered to point the finger at the cretins that compromised the debt markets and mixed the sub prime and prime derivatives together causing the credit crunch in the first place?!?

But as usual, the HPC brigade blames the pigs, not the nutters putting the lipstick on them.

If I paid you £10K to put your head in a gas oven.......?

[PopGun]

People like left wing politicians and the crony capitalist bankers who designed the morally hazardous regulations? I think this whole response is to them.

Really? That's not how I read them, if so I wouldn't have bothered posting.

Yeah it really pi$$es me off watching stupid reckless people (who on the face of it) are getting off scott free, whilst only being a 1% base rate rise away from oblivion. However I refuse to lose sight of the people who created this dystopia in the first place.

[scrappycocco]

this frightens the life out of me, i haven't even got a mortgage yet and they have friggin thoughts of letting people off theirs......

[Olebrum]

this frightens the life out of me, i haven't even got a mortgage yet and they have friggin thoughts of letting people off theirs......

Writing off the trillions and trillions of dodgy derivatives created by the banks which are responsible for the crisis was ok, so why not this?

At least this way the taxpayer will get a break, instead of the bill.

[Reck B]

If bankers and politicians were jailed and I could buy a proper sized detached house with 2 x my own income, I personally wouldn't give a toss if people were let off their debts.

[Quicken]

I think I would be OK with mortgage debt forgiveness, provided it were necessarily accompanied by bankruptcy and loss of all assets. Allowing the feckless to go back to square one should also allow house prices to correct rather rapidly.

Q

[winkie]

"Load up, load up, load up..." with debt, it seems, is the latest (same) message from our wise overlords.

(Personally, I'll stay out of the debt party crap shoot. Thanks, but no thanks. )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH7PoBy6Vsw

[PopGun]

Writing off the trillions and trillions of dodgy derivatives created by the banks which are responsible for the crisis was ok, so why not this?

At least this way the taxpayer will get a break, instead of the bill.

Which is why it won't happen.

[PopGun]

If I paid you £10K to put your head in a gas oven.......?

Yeah, that's comparable. Thanks for yet another intelligent response.

[Game_Over]

If you have an economy where people engaged in wealth producing activity are taxed to the hilt in order to pay millions of other people to sit around doing f*ck all

Then the only way to fund such a system is by huge amounts or government and personal debt.

Politicians could have prevented these credit bubbles from forming but that would have meant crashing the system 10-20 years ago.

Blaming people for borrowing and bankers for lending is bizarre.

[Bruce Banner]

Yeah, that's comparable. Thanks for yet another intelligent response.

Glad you liked it.

[KingBingo]

I've noticed no one has bothered to point the finger at the cretins that compromised the debt markets and mixed the sub prime and prime derivatives together causing the credit crunch in the first place?!?

But as usual, the HPC brigade blames the pigs, not the nutters putting the lipstick on them.

Because if politicians and central planners had not fecked with the money in the first place the smart guys on Wall Street and others would not have had the opportunity to do what they did.

You have been on this board long enough to learn enough about economics to know that the state is the source of these problems. You just have a visceral dislike of financiers who took advantage of the broken system.

[Armitage Shanks]

Actually, he's an atheist but "socially" Jewish.

He most certainly is not an atheist but is a practising Jew - a simple Google search will reveal as much. His ability to apply his undoubted talent for logic and reason sadly extends neither to his 'beliefs' of the origins of the universe or to his politics.

[PopGun]

Because if politicians and central planners had not fecked with the money in the first place the smart guys on Wall Street and others would not have had the opportunity to do what they did.

You have been on this board long enough to learn enough about economics to know that the state is the source of these problems. You just have a visceral dislike of financiers who took advantage of the broken system.

I'll reverse that inside out and throw it back at you.

I think you'll find it's the other way round. It's the state that has to react, it's just successive governments have a tendancy to make the situations worse. Another viewpoint of course is that they're all in bed together.

Yes, feckless Sarah and Steve have brought down the entire western economy with their 125% 6x salary mortgages and maxing out their Debenhams cards.

Meanwhile bankers are only guilty of ‘exploiting a broken system’?!

Righto

I know you keep banging your anti-corportist drum on this forum, but the only person you're kidding is yourself.

Edited April 13, 2012 by PopGun

[Venger]

Yes, feckless Sarah and Steve have brought down the entire western economy with their 125% 6x salary mortgages and maxing out their Debenhams cards.

Meanwhile bankers are only guilty of 'exploiting a broken system'?!

Righto

I know you keep banging your anti-corportist drum on this forum, but the only person you're kidding is yourself.

All of the house price inflation boom welcomed and cheered on by the majority of home owners, with very few objections from existing owners as price rose and rose from 2000 onwards. Very few concerns amongst owners who loved their homes sometimes going up in value by more than they earnt per year; year after year.

Sarah and Steve stuck two fingers up at stupid renters in their rush to buy or upsize. "House prices only go up". Their parents were proud, "Sarah and Steve are doing well. They've just got a £300,000 mortgage to upsize to our area."

Those with logic who knew it such price rises were unsustainable and leading to a crash have been the ones punished, with so much thrown to support house prices.

I'll blame bankers only after home owners have been forced to give back a lot of the £2 trillion of ponzi-created value in their properties, including from all the Sarahs and Steves. It's the home owners who've made out, far more than the bankers.

Edited April 14, 2012 by Venger

[Bland Unsight]

I'll blame bankers only after home owners have been forced to give back a lot of the £2 trillion of ponzi-created value in their properties, including from all the Sarahs and Steves. It's the home owners who've made out, far more than the bankers.

Of course, the banker really did extract alot of money in the process - in After the great complacence, (2011), Engelen et al. calculate that the cumulative employee receipts from 2001-2009 of the five major UK banks was £245,507 million - i.e.£245bn, (page 31).

So right now, Venger is right. People refusing to sell below today's prices are holding the housing stock to ransom defending their £2,000bn paper gain.

However, the bankers got paid in money. Their take is real. Sarah and Steve's take will duly vanish.

Also there aren't really that aren't that many people in the whole finance sector - Engelen reckons 1,000,000 directly and another 500,000 in "para-finance", and it was constant throughout the boom (page 151).

Last time I looked the CML were saying that about 50% of the housing stock is mortgaged, so mortgage holders gains (at the moment) are only £1,000bn

There are quite a few mortgage holders, about 10 million is the usual CML figure, so assuming that the joint mortgages will be partly cancelled out by all the accidental landlords and BTL, we by a very rough and ready measure a £1,000bn/10,000,000 = £100,000 each.

If we assume that the top 5 banks have ALL the finance sector employees, (which means we are definitely going to underestimate the gain per employee), their take is still £250bn/1,000,000 = £250,000 - and remember, that's money not delusion.

It was good for the bank employees

The bank employees were also responsible for publishing accounts that bid their share price up to stellar levels and then gave shareholders an almost 100% loss if they held all the way to the bottom.

There is nothing wrong with a plc in principle but there is something very, very wrong with the way we allowed our banks to work - and that needs fixing, unless it was just good old fashion fraud, in which case we need convictions.

[KingBingo]

I'll reverse that inside out and throw it back at you.

I think you'll find it's the other way round. It's the state that has to react, it's just successive governments have a tendancy to make the situations worse. Another viewpoint of course is that they're all in bed together.

Yes, feckless Sarah and Steve have brought down the entire western economy with their 125% 6x salary mortgages and maxing out their Debenhams cards.

Meanwhile bankers are only guilty of ‘exploiting a broken system’?!

Righto

I know you keep banging your anti-corportist drum on this forum, but the only person you're kidding is yourself.

What you continually gloss over because it does not suit your politics is that we would not have the global financial system we have today if politicians had not tried to bribe people for power with funny money.

If we had sound money, our best and brightest would all be getting jobs in Engineering, Farming and Software&Technology. We would have this simply because there would be no leverage to be had in playing with money and shifting it around.

Instead we have our best and brightest going into financial engineering, trading and financial IT contracting.

It was a series of political decisions taken by 'statesmen' that created this situation, who took us away from honest money. Not the financiers who evolved shortly after to take advantage of it.

[Venger]

Of course, the banker really did extract alot of money in the process - in After the great complacence, (2011), Engelen et al. calculate that the cumulative employee receipts from 2001-2009 of the five major UK banks was £245,507 million - i.e.£245bn, (page 31).

So right now, Venger is right. People refusing to sell below today's prices are holding the housing stock to ransom defending their £2,000bn paper gain.

However, the bankers got paid in money. Their take is real. Sarah and Steve's take will duly vanish.

Sarah and Steve deserve all they get. It's just annoying it consequences haven't come quicker for many later reckless borrowers, helped with low interest rates and QE, mortgage rescue schemes and making it difficult for banks to repo.

The home owners' take isn't just measured in pure money. Value isn't money but still important to those holding a position. It's real to be able to bask and brag how great your investment has been. How proud you are your house has gone up so much in value. Have every reason to claim renting was dead money, because easy lending to new borrowers eager for the debt has pushed up prices up so high, year after year. Being able to idiotically announce house prices double every few years and have the majority agree.

It was real for Labour to spend the best part of 10 years (I enjoy your posts but have no understanding why you door-stepped for Labour in the last election?) taking credit for the miracle economy powered by ever more dangerous levels of debt. Real for the voters who also kept voting them back in, including from those who gained from the other side of the Labour damaging equation in distributing benefits so lavishly. It was real for many shareholders in banks who had seen massive gains in shareholder value, on the back of reckless lending, who could have critically assessed the banks lending positions as dangerous.

It's been real to have the option to 'release equity' from their homes to spend, and in many instances to buy second homes and BTLs at higher prices. Or to 'help' their children on to the 'ladder' allowing them to pay even higher prices, with then both the extender and taker more prone to greater loss if housing falls in value.

And the opportunity still readily exists for many owners, both who outright or with mortgages, to extract their real share of the ponzi gains, via STR and downsizing.

You show how the banks have profited, and I agree, but it was with the blessing of many who saw dangerous levels of debt being extended as a good thing. It all took place with many active shareholders in banks exposing themselves to the risk, passively happy with the way things were going with excess debt.

Bankers are taking a lot of the blame, because they got paid well in money, and in a few instances are still being paid well. Whereas so many others who saw the boom as a good thing, are exposed to value change and other consequences like job losses. Yet house prices have remained inflated, the consequential gains in value not yet 'vanished', so many owners should shut up with the blaming, and begin taking some loss in value. The guilt is widely attributable.

[Bland Unsight]

Value isn't money but still important to those holding a position.

You're right about this, and on reflection I think that my post, focussing on money, misses an important part of the story.

(I enjoy your posts but have no understanding why you door-stepped for Labour in the last election?)

Pure unadulterated ignorance, but you've got to own your mistakes. I was one of the political sheeple at that point. This sheep has now stalked away from the herd in disgust. Brown thought he could keep markets like a tame pet. He was really just creating endless opportunities for more sophisticated economic actors to gouge his idiot Treasury for the sucker it was. I'm embarrassed, but the truth will set you free!

I used to see HPI as a joke - my mathematical background is pretty solid so I knew a priori that the "growth" was BS, but as a happy renter with no plans that would involve home ownership, really it just didn't interest me. I thought rents were steep but if the rest of the nation wanted to price themselves out of their houses with stupid borrowing, I'd just write it off as bad luck for me and rent somewhere a little less plush, (i.e. no central heating).

When in 2008 AIG and the US investments banks found a way to put the UK economy in a coma, I started to read. With the UK market falling I thought, "OK, so that happened." When UK HPI returned I felt that I need to work out what the f*** was going on, on the pretext that whatever it was, it wasn't good.

Mostly, I blame New Labour. I cannot envisage how they could not easily foreseen the inevitable consequences of their choice to "let them eat credit". As the sign on Harry Truman's desk said, the truth about political power is that "the buck stops here."

Bankers are taking a lot of the blame, because they got paid well in money, and in a few instances are still being paid well. Whereas so many others who saw the boom as a good thing, are exposed to value change and other consequences like job losses. Yet house prices have remained inflated, the consequential gains in value not yet 'vanished', so many owners should shut up with the blaming, and begin taking some loss in value. The guilt is widely attributable.

People should not be able to get mortgages as if they were picking out a suit. Without structural reform of UK mortgage lending of a kind that would have been simply unimaginable before 2007, this will happen again and again. We don't let unqualified half-wits run the National Grid, the idea that some specialist lenders and mortgage brokers should be allowed to toss around high-LTV interest only BTL mortgages like they were handing out sweets is an idea that should have had its day. We shall see.

Thanks for your post.

[South Lorne]

That could lead to the rich taking up arms to rob the poor.

..the debt ridden poor will become the rich....

[PopGun]

It was a series of political decisions taken by 'statesmen' that created this situation, who took us away from honest money. Not the financiers who evolved shortly after to take advantage of it.

Agreed, but who oiled these political decisions? Not those who went on to take advantage of them by any chance?!??

Red Tories/Blue Labour wouldn't be able to engineer anything, without people lubricating them into power in the first place.