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Freefall


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HOLA441

Banker topping himself - hogwash. The ones I know are mainly still in work, but doing sensible hours, taking their holidays like normal people once again, seeing their kids more than once a year etc. I do know one who last week took signing off bonus/redundancy for such a huge sum he need never work again at 40.......................so he told me anyway........

Oh ho ho re the ending of the programme - solar panel salesman!!!!!!

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Funny that - as I was watching the family leave the house - that was exactly what I saw - in the 1980s - except they didn't do what was common then, families just walked out (not understanding the need for communication and not having CAB or Shelter or other resources to talk to) - and posted the keys back in the letter box.

And as someone else suggested - the did need to be a postscript - Security Guard went back to social housing with a debt of £50k - which is exactly what happened in the 80s.

It is odd how it mirrors that time - and it wasn't until the accountants and solicitors started losing their jobs - that everyone else realised there was a real economic downturn.

Strikes started a long-time after property issues highlighted in this programme - and we are about to see the Post Office strike on Friday ...

Wonder what will happen when it's announced that all government salaries are to be frozen.

Strikes will abound then as they did in the 70s and to some extent, the 80s.

History repeating itself?

I'm just staggered I'm so old that I'm still here to see it at the beginning but with Swine flu - am expecting I'll die September - so won't see the up-turn, if there is one - but would like to .. so that I can post in my 80s that I'm still working and stacking shelves at Tescos to pay for my Alzeheimers care - oh, sorry, my govt insurance for my Alzeheimers care.

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Being a programme aired by the impartial BBC, I'm shocked that no mention was made of the government's role in this fiasco.

IMHO, the governments tole was perfectly portrayed.

they did absolutely nothing to stop it.

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Being a programme aired by the impartial BBC, I'm shocked that no mention was made of the government's role in this fiasco.

Yep. I guess Gordon Brown chucking himself off a bridge would be too much to ask for. Let's blame it all on the banksters instead.

Subliminal BBC brainwashing.

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IMHO, the governments tole was perfectly portrayed.

they did absolutely nothing to stop it.

Those BBC executives have really earned their salaries this year deflecting blame from Labour. They deserve an increase - inflation busting license fee well earned next year.

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Bloody fantastic programme - got to the core of the financial heart attack and suffused it with the social play on aspirations and motivations - the trickling, roll-over greed that has been discussed so deftly by the likes of Juvenal and others. Then the guilt that seeps from it, suppressed by tapping the veins and shooting up. Quick. Consume something before you have to stop and think about what you've done. There. No - not quite better? Oh that's ok, buy something for someone else. That's 'selflessness' isn't it? Oh good, guilt appeased. Double points. Now for the next one. I hope guilt isn't cumulative - is it? Oh well, better not to think about it. Think of the car, the house, the watch and move on. I've come so far...I did it all myself, never relied on anyone. I deserve it.

~~~~

I've not seen the working life of the 'City' quite so well characterised. I say 'characterised' - but I spat my biriyani out when an old colleague popped up in the show as an extra on the trading floor. I should mention I've worked in CDOs for almost 5 years now, 3 of those years with him. I guess I should have taken the radiotimes review more seriously when they said they'd mixed in real live locations and improvised around them. The exquisite irony is that that 'extra,' [no I won't name him], was responsible for not hedging our own warehouse risk at the time, and ended up costing me my job as a knock on effect. I'm not bitter. P.S warehousing is where the bigger banks buy up the mortgages, hold them for a short while then mix them with other mortgages and sausage-like constituents and wait to line up investors. Of course, you should hedge the bonds while you're 'warehousing' them, but hey... that costs money and mortgage products have been robust over the last few years because they're collaterlised on homes, and they only ever go up. Stick some sub prime in there...ooh and student loans, and car loans, and squeeze in some Californian state debt and let's sell it to that pension fund down the road. If we don't know what underlies the moving parts, how on earth will they - let alone be able to judge it as value for money or not. I know they're smart, but there's no way of them knowing. If it yields 8% and the rating agencies rate it AAA, well then it can't go bust and it's all groovy. Buy it. The pension fund valuation will go up, we can secure raises, bonuses and acclaim. We can have threesomes. Alchemy at its best.

Isn't this a bit two-faced of me? Maybe. I was homeless 2 years before I joined that world - maybe it helped, maybe I knew that an asset which tripled in 6 years was due for a colossal fall. Maybe everything around me shouted toward the incredulous - the world I'd so wanted to be part of - so conceited, false and empty. So I figured I'd just save - participate but not participate. And wait. It's been a long time. Discovering this place helped.

And so the world swung round in March 07, just as on Freefall. Everything jammed up. All the deals we had hot off the press - no one wanted. The helicopter rides over Monaco for some industry luncheon - quashed. The round of Christmas bashes with 5 course meals and Charleston dances and fake paparazzi to make you feel 'special,' to be replaced by rumours, and movements, and departures and then the call of HR.

Funny thing is the clean prescience of the last 5 mins of the programme - they move on. They get paid off enough to live out the rest of their lives. But they can't. They snake on, because they don't know anything else - to the next fashion, the next opening - heck as my old coleague appears to have done.

I don't begrudge them. The economy, society, they're just human constructs - made of deficiencies and foibles and hopes that enmesh with others' - augmenting them. Over time, one part learns to ripple, and it spreads out to everyone else. Those very foibles and hopes register the change. A Mexican wave. A trend, a tipping point. Got to be part of it... it's fun.

Everyone had a choice. Everyone has a choice. I reckon this programme was the validation for the hard years of wait - the feeling that it was never quite right. A succinct window on early 21st century life.

P.P.S Thankyou to all of you who helped me through, without never knowing about it.

Edited by Kingmaker
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Yep. I guess Gordon Brown chucking himself off a bridge would be too much to ask for. Let's blame it all on the banksters instead.

Subliminal BBC brainwashing.

two seconds of "no more boom and bust" from gordon on a tv in the background would have done the job

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Wow! I slag off the BBC as much as anyone. That was excellent. Powerful stuff.

The problem is I think only HPCers would have been watching it, the people who would have needed to see it will still ahve their heads in the sand.

Great touch at the end the slippery salesman getting into green products. That is exactly what the next bubble is going to be - if we let it happen.

bit like the double glazing bubble, and the cavity wall insulation bubbles, I see what you mean.

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I honestly think that the last scene where the security guard confronts the spiv who sold him the mortgage was the most powerful and heartwrenching thing I've seen on TV for years.

It'll be the defining moment of television in the 2000's after this horrible decade draws to a close.

Good riddence 2000 to 2009.

Edited by Khayl
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I honestly think that the last scene where the security guard confronts the spiv who sold him the mortgage was the most powerful and heartwrenching thing I've seen on TV for years.

It'll be the defining moment of television after this horrible decade draws to a close.

Good riddence 2000 to 2009.

I agree, it was quite poignant.

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I honestly think that the last scene where the security guard confronts the spiv who sold him the mortgage was the most powerful and heartwrenching thing I've seen on TV for years.

It'll be the defining moment of television after this horrible decade draws to a close.

Good riddence 2000 to 2009.

That's the trouble with the working classes - all theirs thoughts are emotional.

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