the end is a bit nigher

Obviously not, although you now have near 30k posts! I vaguely remember Blue breaking 11k. You lot have been busy.

Oh yes. Feel free to pop in for a cuppa.

Given their policy on making work pay does anyone really think the Tories would allow a massive handout to what would in the majority be Labour voters? Middle class person A struggles to make ends meet and pay the mortgage. Chav B defaults and the government allows him a free pass out while leaving A to struggle. Can't see it myself.

I saved it specially! I'm not a gold troll btw, although one of the reasons I stopped using the site was that at the time there was more about gold than houses. I have traded gold up and down in the past so no problem with discussing it, but back then (when I were lad) the discussion was more along the lines of buy gold because the world was about to end. Anyway, good to see Errol still here. Time to have a nose and see who else is left.

Well, I return after a few years and people are still banging on about gold. If you had bought at peak in 1980 then in real terms you would only be down 20%!

And hopefully the Government will follow the Irish lead and start withdrawing the taxbreak of offsetting income against interest payments for non-company BTLers.

I sincerely hope so. There is more than one union out there that needs utterly destroying, starting with Unite. The sooner the 70s rejects are consigned to the bin, the better. Totally agree. Put time and effort into earning a decent amount of cash. Live within your means. Get shafted by the Libs. The Libs also have that clown Cable. Identifies the problem correctly and decides the solution is to get the banks lending again. Muppet. The bank of England is independent, except at times to suit Bruin, such as when he announced with pride that several central banks had cut interest rates together. Albeit completely independently.

What else did anyone expect under the tax leech that is the Labour Government? Start high, slowly bring the level down until everyone is screwed. Then overspend against the new income and do the same again. Scum.

I looked for the 'Public Sector Workers' option but couldn't see it. Could it be added please? With a few exceptions, and including their pensions, they have to be the most over-valued blood-suckers of the lot.

It came from the money markets and savers but was lost against over-inflated property. The usual portrayal is off investment bankers dealing in derivaties, but the reality is quite different. Of course that doesn't suit the politics of some of the posters on here, which is why I rarely bother these days.

Well, i'm still not sure the Great British public have got it yet, but anyone listening to the BBC commentary this morning should have got a hint. Losses were due to right-offs on commercial property and over-generous lending against residential property during the boom. Virtually nothing to do with investment banking.

3.5% it is Interest rates won't rise. They will hide behind the "it will come down later in the year" mantra. Stealth inflation. Do nothing when the rate is too high, but everything if it starts to fall.

Errrrr, no. The shareholders of quite a few UK banks learned that if they leant money to people who couldn't pay it back then they lost most, if not all of their shareholding value, so I struggle to see how the real owners of these banks have benefitted. And you seem to have missed the cause of the reckless lending i.e. the Government dropping IRs specifically to increase borrowing to boost asset prices (Eddie George, 2003). That's what got us into this mess in the first place. You also seem to have missed the Government failing to stop the reckless lending despite being warned times of how unsustainable it was. The lending targets are purely an attempt to get asset prices back up to where they were at the peak. If the Government wanted to stop bonus payouts then it easily could at the nationalised banks. And if the bankers were to blame then why have the nationalised banks continues the same business model. The economy is back to where it would have been if we hadn't had the credit boom. Brown and his fellow bunch of tax abusers did nothing clever. There was no real growth. Most of the businesses that have gone under would have been unviable without the boom anyway. And most of those jobs lost equally so. There never was a miracle economy. Get over it. Part of the problem is population growth. If there are 10 people in the UK and £1,000 in circulation, then each can have £100. If someone new is born or arrives then there is only enough for £91 each 9roughly). Issue another £100 and everyone is happy again. Issue £111 then everyone has £101 and everyone is richer than before. Cut the population and everyone is richer still.

I think you'll find you are wrong. I accept that certain Governments following Keynsian economics of borrow to spend are a threat to the stability of our societies. Don't forget, the nationalised banks have LENDING TARGETS they have to hit or be fined heavily. Those LENDING TARGETS are set by the Government, primarily to support Government policy. e.g. a key policy is for a larger private rental society created by people or organisations borrowing money to buy property. Where is the majority of this money to come from? The banks of course. I think the banks have learned a harsh lesson. I think certain Governments haven't.

Yes, try and work out what really caused the problem. Lose your obsession with bankers and focus on the governments whose policies the banks are playing out. They are the real issue.