Hsbc

[jonpo]

"Consume more house"? I`ll have two please, with cheese It was a Ponzi man, it is blowing up from the inside, embrace it. Run towards the light!

By the way, there will be a lot more "going under the bus"before this mess is sorted, London I.O brigade will be next IMO.

Yes consume more house.... you will notice if you look at rightmove that not all of the houses are priced exactly the same and so anyone in the market for housing has a choice between consuming say a bedsit in peckham for instance or a mansion in belgravia.

[jonpo]

Personally I think the 'right thing' would have been ...

There is no past and no future only now. Its like golf... you play the ball where it lands. you cant replay the golf shot that Alistair Darling took in 2008. you can only play your ball where is is now.

[okaycuckoo]

There is no past and no future only now. Its like golf... you play the ball where it lands. you cant replay the golf shot that Alistair Darling took in 2008. you can only play your ball where is is now.

To get where you're going, sir, you don't want to be starting from here.

I'd like to read a bit more about your resistance to the injustice - just offer a hint, and I'm sure I could draw the picture.

As it stands you've purchased on credit the ideas of this daft bint with her sophisticated "finger explanations":

[Neverwhere]

There is no past and no future only now.

Stop analysing the past and making predictions about the future then.

[Liquid Goldfish]

There is no past and no future only now. Its like golf... you play the ball where it lands. you cant replay the golf shot that Alistair Darling took in 2008. you can only play your ball where is is now.

That attitude is fine when you have the luxury of going crying to mummy next time you balls things up.

[jonpo]

It is exactly this sort of clever dick attitude that will be bankers' undoing. There is a significant number people wishing dire retribution on you and your profession including asset stripping and being thrown in the clink. I would suggest you show some humility and gratitude in your dealings with people because you are treading on egg shells when you proclaim your own brilliance instead. I would also suggest you don't mention what you do if you go to parties frequented by others apart from bankers, assuming any invites are still forthcoming.

Fine, but for the hundreth time im not a banker. never have been never will be. I'm friends with some people who work for banks.. however none of them are bankers (ok well actually one of them is probably a "banker" but i knew him years before he stepped foot in a bank). I once did some work for a bank. but no longer. I'm just an average guy from a very average state school who did very average, academically. and I'm just trying to figure out the world and how it works. In London pretty much any party you go to will have someone who has something to do with financial services. So I try to avoid prejudging people based on their profession or employer.

I'm just trying to say.. let it go.. there are bad people in the world who may have done bad things... sooner or later those bad things will probably catch up to them.

[Bloo Loo]

Fine, but for the hundreth time im not a banker. never have been never will be. I'm friends with some people who work for banks.. however none of them are bankers (ok well actually one of them is probably a "banker" but i knew him years before he stepped foot in a bank). I once did some work for a bank. but no longer. I'm just an average guy from a very average state school who did very average, academically. and I'm just trying to figure out the world and how it works. In London pretty much any party you go to will have someone who has something to do with financial services. So I try to avoid prejudging people based on their profession or employer.

I'm just trying to say.. let it go.. there are bad people in the world who may have done bad things... sooner or later those bad things will probably catch up to them.

Im saying...Hang 'em high...They have destroyed countless lives...like all war criminals, they should hang..

[Ah-so]

Not just deposits, their liabilities include massive derivatives exposure (trillions) along with both quality and toxic mortgage, business, personal loans, as for thier liquidity buffer, it was reported recently that they are 70 billion short of capital.

1) derivatives liabilities are valued in billions - the trillions are notional amounts and fairly meaningless. By and large the values are balanced - there will be offsetting trades on the asset side of the balance sheet. Most of the trades will be collateralised.

2) mortgages are assets, not liabilities, whether they are quality or toxic. As are business and personal loans.

3) The article was about HSBC's capital, not liquidity. They are different things. Liquidity is derived from deposits that have not been lent out or otherwise utilised.

[Ah-so]

Personally I think the 'right thing' would have been to have gone into administration overnight and opened the doors in the morning recapitalised. Bail ins for bondholders, equity wiped out completely, debtors and,if need be, a saver one-off haircut. (after alll - that is what they've come back to once more after the Great Theft!)

As part of that package it would have annulled the staff's employment contracts - I would have given them the opportunity to reapply for their jobs at significantly lower salaries and pensions with all existing bonus commitments and pension obligations wiped out.

We would have been through this thing a whole lot quicker. Savers are getting their ar*ses handed to them on a plate anyway. The only people carrying on as before are the staffers who by all accounts have been asset stripping other businesses to fill their black holes and bonus pools.

EDIT: But this is still consistent in me not blaming you - you are merely doing what your instincts tell you. Our approach must be to stop your instincts but recognising they exist...but without blame. Merely that the rules of the game allow you and therefore the rules are wrong. You have the wrong incentives.

What you suggest is pretty good, but the legal framework was not there in 2008 - there could have been no bail-in of bondholders. There was a very limited set of options available to the government and bail-out was the least painful, in the absence of a "white knight". The annulment of employment contracts would not have worked either - if they have been dismissed there would have been no one around to fill the cashpoints etc.

The bail-in law is going parliament as we speak, and that is on top of other legislation, such as the Banking Act 2009, which introduced a resolution regime for bank insolvencies (there had not been one previously).

[The Knimbies who say No]

What you suggest is pretty good, but the legal framework was not there in 2008 - there could have been no bail-in of bondholders. There was a very limited set of options available to the government and bail-out was the least painful, in the absence of a "white knight". The annulment of employment contracts would not have worked either - if they have been dismissed there would have been no one around to fill the cashpoints etc.

The bail-in law is going parliament as we speak, and that is on top of other legislation, such as the Banking Act 2009, which introduced a resolution regime for bank insolvencies (there had not been one previously).

Interesting, all sorts of companies went to the wall prior to 2008 without the taxpayer taking the hit.

The highlighted bit- the 'pain' associated with taxpayer baleouts is by no means fully quantified yet, and won't be for quite some time. To suggest that the situation has been resolved with the minimum hardship to all concerned is a bit premature imo. Half a decade later and there is no end in sight.

[Venger]

Im not sure I understand you when you say "so many threw us under the bus to save jonpo types". we are just now emerging from one of the deepest recessions and slowest recoveries on record. the number of people working in financial services fell by ~100,000. RBS alone employs 140,000 and LLoyds employs 120,000 people. So do you think they should all just have been thrown under a bus? over and above the 100,000 that are presumably now more productively employed elsewhere? so that you can in your own self-interest buy the large detached house you think you deserve at a knock down price ? Every cycle has its malinvestors, and in every cycle the truth washes away the hope they once had. If you feel like you have been thrown under a bus in the last recession by the very actions which were taken to avoid a lot more people going under the bus then I pity you. A part of me kind of wishes you got what you wanted.. all those people going under the bus... the streets full of for sale signs but no credit and no buyers to be found. deflation, unemployment that would make spain seem like a street party. perhaps a good bit of rioting. did you really want to be out of work for a couple of years while we worked through that depression ? do you think that would be good for society ? would that have been justice for those hundreds of thousands of people who have so wronged you ? and where do you draw the line? how complicit was the shoe shine man in your "being thrown under a bus" ? what about the cooks in the restaurants of the banks ? the cleaners of the toilets ? the receptionists ? the people who refill the coffee and vending machines ? the people that move computers and telephones ? the HR department ? after all they are the ones that hire and pay these dastardly bankers... what about the PA's.. what about the girls hired just to look pretty ? what about the fresh interns ? the accountants the auditors the middle and back offices the myriad of IT departments.. are they all really complicit ? and thats before we get anywhere near people who actually do things in a bank which contrary to HPC myth is mostly not about screwing people over. its actually mostly about the provision of fairly mundane services for clients of the banks.

my point is this 100,000 people in financial services actually went under the bus last time but I don't cry for them because they were playing the game, the system decided they were surplus to requirements and threw them under a bus. If you too lost your job in the last recession then im sorry its probably the systems way of telling you to do something more productive with your time. even for the people who managed to stay employed 'more for less' was always expected.

They were complicit due to being wrong, if they'd taken on too much mortgage debt. And many own outright or are equity rich. Renters would have been ok, getting another job if they lost their own, as rental market adjusted to what is the new affordability for rents vs income. Equally jobs would still be around but at lower rates, or back after depths of slump hit and new market entrants take over the businesses, which is fine for people who haven't taken on big debt burdens convinced in forever HPI. Who also have some savings or ingenuity to ride out the tougher times for a while.

Many without debt have been wronged, such as interns, lower-end employees, cooks, cleaners/by saving the system. Faced with massive high house prices, many unlikely to own. Their landlords protected, and home-owner values protected and massively reflated and rising again.

Equity rich and over-indebted mortgage holders saved by policy measures. And rather them throw under the bus, than me still priced out, enduring more ridiculous HPI reflation on back of 0.5% and QE anti-saver measures, and hearing them/VI/journos all still lusting after even more HPI for another 5 years, as it has been. Too many of them in control of over-valued assets, and been given forgiveness for their own debt, with non-owning savers taking the brunt of it 3 times.

The main thing being not just for me, but to put rebalance in the system. Crashes/recessions/depressions break up over-stretched companies who tried to acquire everything in the boom, and put the assets back to market at lower prices for many more participants to get a share of. Instead of one guy/one company creaming it all off, and top end bankers still able to command stupid salaries and bonuses, because crash avoided. Giving renters option to buy at lower house prices, and a lot of positives. Instead of all your victim VI status for forever HPI believers. And to save your victims we're still hit with massively high house prices. Thankfully deleveraging is still happening.

1. HPI mad decade. 2. Reflation. 3. Everyone lusting after HPI, and HTB2 schemes. You rode it during the dip, bail-out stage, rates dropped, pre-reflation and into QE with your conversion of apartments into a house.

[jonpo]

1391206341[/url]' post='1102459162']

The main thing being not just for me, but to put rebalance in the system. Crashes/recessions/depressions break up over-stretched companies who tried to acquire everything in the boom, and put the assets back to market at lower prices for many more participants to get a share of.

Yes I totally agree ...recessions are healthy... They help reallocate resources to more productive use... Creative destruction..

But I also believe you can go too far if your not too careful if you know what I mean.

[Neverwhere]

It was. But bond holders (I believe) had equal claims to savers at that time. That is what they couldn't stomach - giving a hit to savers. To save the savers they had to save bondholders...and everyone else, like the staff.

As I said, of course, now, when away from the fear of the unknown moment (I'm looking at you here Gordon Brown), it seems perfectly possible to give savers a haircut.

If the political will was there I'm sure they could have retrospectively compensated the savers anyway, would have been much cheaper all round.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

What you suggest is pretty good, but the legal framework was not there in 2008 - there could have been no bail-in of bondholders. There was a very limited set of options available to the government and bail-out was the least painful, in the absence of a "white knight". The annulment of employment contracts would not have worked either - if they have been dismissed there would have been no one around to fill the cashpoints etc.

The bail-in law is going parliament as we speak, and that is on top of other legislation, such as the Banking Act 2009, which introduced a resolution regime for bank insolvencies (there had not been one previously).

Like it was the cashpoint fillers who caused the problems or have the contracts that needed changing.

Nice framing.

[Venger]

Yes I totally agree ...recessions are healthy... They help reallocate resources to more productive use... Creative destruction..

But I also believe you can go too far if your not too careful if you know what I mean.

Well we hardly had any creative destruction, so if not taking it too far equals QE/0.5% rates and reflated house prices, then it doesn't help many people waiting for opportunity/value. The job losses in the financial sector are still playing through, for correction ahead.

It was. But bond holders (I believe) had equal claims to savers at that time. That is what they couldn't stomach - giving a hit to savers. To save the savers they had to save bondholders...and everyone else, like the staff.

As I said, of course, now, when away from the fear of the unknown moment (I'm looking at you here Gordon Brown), it seems perfectly possible to give savers a haircut.

Savers not invested in over-valued assets took only sensible course open to them. Savings wealth is an antidote to depression, not the cause. How about HPC on those hyperinflated asset prices, protecting what savers have already paid tax on and struggled to put away against ever rocketing house prics, and fresh lending at volume to younger professionals post-crash.

[Ah-so]

It was. But bond holders (I believe) had equal claims to savers at that time. That is what they couldn't stomach - giving a hit to savers. To save the savers they had to save bondholders...and everyone else, like the staff.

As I said, of course, now, when away from the fear of the unknown moment (I'm looking at you here Gordon Brown), it seems perfectly possible to give savers a haircut.

You are right. Bond holders ranked equally as senior debtors with all depositors. And that was not a bail-in regime but an insolvency regime and would not have preserved the utility functions of the bank.