Financial Stability Report 1 Dec

[Guest_northshore_*]

To live without realistic hope is to live without hope. Bad plan.

Extending expectations for today's financial stability report to life philosophy might be a tad melodramatic.

Edit: By the way you should watch the HoL Housing Committee meeting today, I think you'd 'enjoy' it:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/a2ece60a-e20e-4718-84f1-30a9ff6541bd

Edited December 1, 2015 by northshore

[shindigger]

Christmas Tales.

[Bland Unsight]

Extending expectations for today's financial stability report to life philosophy might be a tad melodramatic.

Hope is the big one. Words matter.

[Guest_northshore_*]

Hope is the big one. Words matter.

Words form stories and lies as well as truths. I'm all for hope but without commensurate housing action and effect it can be a dangerous thing.

[Bland Unsight]

Words form stories and lies as well as truths. I'm all for hope but without commensurate housing action and effect it can be a dangerous thing.

You're quite wrong.

Words communicate stories.

Lies are lies, truths are truths.

Hope is never dangerous. To live guided by expectations informed by what you want to be true, blind to the facts on the ground, is to be a stupid fool. Being a stupid fool is dangerous.

Go back to 2007 and find me hundreds of words on buy-to-let from a Bank of England committee with a mandate to deploy macro-prudential tools to mitigate financial stability risks. (Good luck, BTW.)

You want me to worry about the danger of hoping that things have changed. Things have changed.

Go back to 2014 and find me some evidence that Osborne would light a fire under the BTL sector with a radical transformation of the accounting treatment of mortgage interest for the purposes of charging income tax.

Changes to Section 21. Changes to SDLT on second properties. Changes to timings of CGT payments. GAAR. Changes to SDLT for properties held by companies and trusts. HMRC gathering returns from letting agents enabling them to catch BTLers not declaring income. BTL lenders restricting lending totals to individuals, reducing max LTVs, requiring BTL borrowers to have income aside from the rent. Brown's removal of indexation allowance in 2008. The largest BTL bankruptcy and they don't sell the loans on - they put it into run-off. Mortgages taken out of the new lending reckoning for FLS. MMR. The first BCBS consultation with BTL risk weights at 100% to 110%.

There comes a point where your wishes for fantasy overnight transformations of institutions that have grown up over hundreds of years and a relentless cynicism about incremental change, coupled with gathering about yourself the garb of the voice of reason, begs a simple question - are you Jeremy Corbyn? If you are, where do I claim my £5.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Bland Unsight

[Bland Unsight]

Another perspective. All this bleating about the Bank of England being the cause of all our woes.

Remember the Osborne line about not electing Labour in 2010 because it was giving the keys back to the people who crashed the car. The problem with that line of analysis is that is was a year too late.

We didn't nationalise the banks. We set up UKFI and managed them at arms length, and guess what - they did exactly what they did from 1997-2008. They found the most innumerate mugs and lent them billions to buy shit houses and then they used the equity created to lend them more so they could buy more houses. It was the same people doing the same thing. It was Busta and BM Solutions, again.

It has taken seven years for the political context to shift. Nothing has changed (yet) and everything has changed (already).

[Venger]

Basically, the Bank of England think it is still an honourable old Boys' Club where the raising of an eyebrow and a quiet word in one's ear would be enough to save the world.

Words form stories and lies as well as truths. I'm all for hope but without commensurate housing action and effect it can be a dangerous thing.

A lot has changed sigh. Market participants now carrying the main risks, not core financial institutions.

They've fallen for it, taken the bait, entered the run and followed it to be torn apart near the high stand, storms of splinters before the fire.

There's some denial out there - sometimes that occurs against some pretty overwhelming evidence. Lot of older homeowners with no mortgages keep claiming no effect from some quite astonishing political changes. Seems to keep coming back to 'they won't let it happen' (house prices to fall back).

Inspiral Carpets - ♫ Dragging Me Down ♬

Crashed the car? They were doing donut-handbrake moves, bald tyres, blind drunk, high speed, wrong way playing chicken and causing younger people to recoil from ever rising y-o-y hyper-HPI; party timing it.

The Bustas may have gone hard back in to property to add more and more, but so have many who already owned their homes outright (worth fortunes). There is dumb and there is also greed.

Few days after July Budget (Money Radio show): And I've lived in his area for 25/26 years. When I bought my flat it was £107,000. It went down to £82,000 and the mortgage rate went from 7% to 15%. Now my flat is worth about £650,000 and I feel reasonably confident (the 1 bed flat just bought for £490,000) is a good investment.

My family were not born to protect these positions and actions of other market participants. It's anti-universal-balance to suggest massively out-priced renter-savers, owe such market participants anything. Selling should be a selfish decision (at super high prices), but some have greedily doubled down into it, in a house-price and supply crisis.

[Venger]

[...]FLS is a means of recapitalising the banks so they are in some kind of shape to take the unavoidable correction of house prices (and other asset prices against which credit has been extended) which is the result of an ungodly and unresolved credit bubble. Hence FLS stays till they are so chock full of capital that one feels like the Dalai Lama on mogadon whenever one even imagines owning their shares.

I know that it's pretty rough on savers who supposed they'd be able to rely on interest from savings but it was a massive credit bubble. The money isn't real and the idea that the economy could, in perpetuity, pay 5% interest on it (without 5% inflation to gradually render the real value of the principal worthless) was a f**king fantasy. It was all an illusion. It is all an illusion. We're fighting over the scraps. You can't run a country by going on about it, but it doesn't stop it being true.

Yes and yes; hehe.

Gubbermint isn't just all about appeasing HPI smug/chasing owners and property-investors for their core-votes of HPI galoreness.

Rough, but values are set at the margin. It may drag out, but it could also see a 'Poof! And it's gone' - cascade of equity losses in wider owner market. If things can be so extreme, difference between older/greedy HPI/BTL on one side, and priced out renter-saver-workers on other, it can change hard. Or at least some selective opportunities to buy at lower prices. Eg BTLs at auction.

[Guest_northshore_*]

You're quite wrong.

Words communicate stories.

Lies are lies, truths are truths.

Hope is never dangerous. To live guided by expectations informed by what you want to be true, blind to the facts on the ground, is to be a stupid fool. Being a stupid fool is dangerous.

Go back to 2007 and find me hundreds of words on buy-to-let from a Bank of England committee with a mandate to deploy macro-prudential tools to mitigate financial stability risks. (Good luck, BTW.)

You want me to worry about the danger of hoping that things have changed. Things have changed

...There comes a point where your wishes for fantasy overnight transformations of institutions that have grown up over hundreds of years and a relentless cynicism about incremental change, coupled with gathering about yourself the garb of the voice of reason, begs a simple question - are you Jeremy Corbyn? If you are, where do I claim my £5.

I don't want you to do anything. The only thing I'd like, but don't expect, you and others to do is stop forming make-believe narratives of other people's opinions to justify your own and make yourself feel better on a forum.

Whatever my wishes are I don't do that because it's petty and unjustifiably hubristic.

[Democorruptcy]

Did you pile into BTL as FLS crushed savings rates?

Free markets. Democracy. Choices.

It's not the Bank of England's job to stop fools being fools. Brown kept BTL out of the Mortgage Market Review. The Bank answers to its political masters.

Us.

No, I don't own any property.

Free markets, now you really must be joking! That's the one thing we don't have any more.

What is a regulator's job then? Doesn't financial stability depend on stopping fools being fools? Why not have 150% mortgages, interest only, liar loans, etc. if everything is just down to personal choice?

So now anything the BoE does can be blamed on politicians. You've positioned yourself ready to move from praise to it's not their fault? Thinking of that... can you go answer my BoE related question in the stampede thread?

[Democorruptcy]

Another perspective. All this bleating about the Bank of England being the cause of all our woes.

Remember the Osborne line about not electing Labour in 2010 because it was giving the keys back to the people who crashed the car. The problem with that line of analysis is that is was a year too late.

We didn't nationalise the banks. We set up UKFI and managed them at arms length, and guess what - they did exactly what they did from 1997-2008. They found the most innumerate mugs and lent them billions to buy shit houses and then they used the equity created to lend them more so they could buy more houses. It was the same people doing the same thing. It was Busta and BM Solutions, again.

It has taken seven years for the political context to shift. Nothing has changed (yet) and everything has changed (already).

I assume the bleating is directed at me, so I'll answer that with this one about our beloved BoE.

Feb 2003

The Bank of England has surprised City analysts by cutting interest rates by one quarter of a percentage point.

After 14 months on hold, rates have been cut to 3.75%, taking borrowing costs to their lowest level since 1955.

The move surprised City analysts, who had thought that the Bank would maintain rates at 4% to keep a lid on the housing market and general inflation.

House prices last month were 24.9% higher than in January 2002, Halifax, the UK's biggest mortgage lender, said on Wednesday.

While inflation was, at 2.7%, a "little above target", the Bank attributed the rise to temporary factors.

The cut would help keep inflation "on track", Thursday's statement added.

"This is one of the biggest gambles any central banks has done - cutting rates when house price inflation is close to 30% and inflation is already above target," said John Butler, UK economist at HSBC.

"It is true to say [the Bank is] playing with fire."

Ross Walker, UK economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, said: "I can see nothing in the data that suggests the UK consumer needs further interest rate easing."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2732645.stm

Yes, by doing that I am putting some blame on them for the 2007 debacle, though they only comment about how well they think they have handled it since!

Edited December 2, 2015 by Democorruptcy

[Venger]

I assume the bleating is directed at me, so I'll answer that with this one about our beloved BoE.

Yes, by doing that I am putting some blame on them for the 2007 debacle, though they only comment about how well they think they have handled it since!

A lot of us suffered from that move and the greed that followed, especially from many BTLers. The cultural change too. Forever HPI/BTL smuggers.

I am not ready to let it just go either. Only read one former senior BoE official partly admit to getting it wrong (2000s HPI). That person was not Merv.

Sunday 25 March 2007

House prices: Steady Eddie owns up

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/exgovernor-george-says-bank-deliberately-fuelled-consumer-boom-28524833.html

scroll down http://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/mar/25/politics.economicpolicy

.. no stomach for a light recession; and certainly some politicians thought it recessions thing of the past, only boom forever gloryness, embraced by so many property heads.

Then we had some BoE officials who had different coping/explanation methods in the fall out. Merv below. It's something I've noticed a lot, and can be slightly guilty of it myself occasionally (on a much much lower level - nothing that impinges on peoples lives/housing/incomes or gets me bailed out) - people finding it easy to cast blame without accepting responsibility on one brilliant oneself. Serpico and his mansion and new bentleys and private plane, racehorses and so on... top of the world... carrying hard debt which came back to find him, casting himself as the innocent businessman and nasty Thatcher to blame in early 1990s recession when the banks called in debts after he couldn't pay what he owed.

Yet I do have to have the hope and belief that things can changes for the better*, and BoE in recent years has allowed greedy people to take more of the risks away from core financial institutions. Not going to continually cast all blame on younger people taking over the system today, or coming through. Or Carney. Younger people taking position in key areas; like in Treasury - the late 20s accountant guy who took the heat from BTLers after Budget.

The text.

THE TODAY LECTURE 2012

Fifty years of rising living standards came to an end with the financial crisis. As a nation, we are now significantly worse off than we were four years ago. The crisis has cast a long shadow. Of course, the immediate challenge is to get our economy growing again. But fifty years from now will our grandchildren ask why we lacked the courage to put in place reforms to stop a crisis happening again? I hope not - and that's why I want to speak to you tonight about the changes we need to make.

..It was something for which Eddie and I had worked for five years since Britain's departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. Now we had a chance to show what an independent central bank could do. Although far from clear at the time, the later decision to remove from the Bank of England the power to regulate banks would return to haunt us.

..Over the next decade, the new Monetary Policy Committee established a track record of low and remarkably stable inflation. In my first speech as Governor in 2003, I warned that this stability was unlikely to continue. And it didn't. And it didn't. Within a few years, and despite low inflation, the advanced economies of the world were plunged into a financial crisis which led to the sharpest decline in world trade since the 1930s, recessions across the world, rising unemployment and the near collapse of our banking system.

..

So what was the problem? In a nutshell, our banking and financial system overextended itself. That left it fragile and vulnerable to a sudden loss of confidence.

The most obvious symptom was that banks were lending too much. Strikingly, most of that increase in lending wasn't to families or businesses, but to other parts of the financial system. To finance this, banks were borrowing large amounts themselves. And this was their Achilles' heel. By the end of 2006, some banks had borrowed as much as £50 for every pound provided by their own shareholders. So even a small piece of bad news about the value of its assets would wipe out much of a bank's capital, and leave depositors scurrying for the door. What made the situation worse was that the fortunes of banks had become closely tied together through transactions in complex and obscure financial instruments. So it was difficult to know which banks were safe and which weren't. The result was an increasingly fragile banking system.

.. That bold action in October 2008 could have happened sooner. But the most important thing is that it was done. And the policy of recapitalising the banks was soon copied by other countries.

..We too have had a "bad banking situation". Roosevelt showed bold and decisive political leadership in explaining to his listeners the reasons why they should not fear banks but trust their Government to ensure that the economy could be saved from the bank failures that had led to the Great Depression. For the sake of future generations, we too must be bold and decisive and, while the memory is fresh, learn the lessons from this crisis. Reform is essential.

We don't build nuclear power stations in densely populated areas; nor should we allow essential banking services and risky investment banking activities to be carried out in the same "too important to fail" bank. Last autumn, the Independent Commission on Banking, chaired by Sir John Vickers and comprising some of our most brilliant bankers and economists, published recommendations on how to do this. It's vital that Parliament legislates to enact these proposals sooner rather than later.

Now we had a chance to show what an independent central bank could do.

And the rest is history.

Fifty years of rising living standards came to an end with the financial crisis. As a nation, we are now significantly worse off than we were four years ago

Some might even say that as a nation the UK is now significantly worse off than it was in 1997 when the BoE first took over the job

In my first speech as Governor in 2003, I warned that this stability was unlikely to continue. And it didn't.

Then he goes on to say there wasn't a boom and everything was unexpected.

To finance this, banks were borrowing large amounts themselves.

So the banks were the debt victims in all that stuff - lol -

It's difficult to count the number of contradictions and holes in the speech and the amount of self congratulation seems well over egged.

Mervyn King's view that there was no boom (really?) takes a bit of a caning here.

The Pre Credit Crunch Era

If we look back to the middle of the last decade we can see that there were warning signs that were flashing amber. Let me give you two main ones. UK house prices ( and of course ones in Ireland, Spain the US and Australia) were in the middle of an extraordinary rise or boom. Also the size of UK bank balance sheets was undertaking an extraordinary surge from being roughly the size of the UK economy to a new animal many times larger than it. What could possibly go wrong?

And yet in a rather desperate attempt at misrepresentation Mervyn King tells us this.

Whether in this country, the United States or Europe, there was no unsustainable boom like that seen in the 1980s; this was a bust without a boom.

Really? Odd then that he talks of something several times that looks rather like a boom to me.

The most obvious symptom was that banks were lending too much

By the end of 2006, some banks had borrowed as much as £50 for every pound provided by their own shareholders

This cheap funding fuelled lending. Banks got bigger.

Can anybody see signs of a boom there? And in a rather inconvenient truth if there was no boom the increase in bank lending looks even more dangerous and should have been responded to by the relevant central bank. At this point may guilty roads are pointing not at Rome but at Mervyn King.

http://www.mindfulmoney.co.uk/wp/shaun-richards/mervyn-king-has-failed-and-as-he-will-not-be-sacked-it-is-time-for-some-democracy-at-the-bank-of-england/

--

*

'Okay, so it's a balance. All societies are like that; the damping hand of the

old and the firebrand youth together. It works out through generations, or

through the set-up of your institutions, and their change and even

replacement; but Governance, the Humanists, combine the worst of both

approaches. Ancient, vicious, discredited ideas backed with adolescent warmania.

It's a crock of shit, Tsoldrin, and you know it. You've earned the

right to some leisure; nobody's arguing. But that won't stop you feeling

guilty when - not if - the bad stuff comes.

- Use of Weapons.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Venger

[Venger]

Then we had some BoE officials who had different coping/explanation methods in the fall out. Merv below. It's something I've noticed a lot, and can be slightly guilty of it myself occasionally - people finding it easy to cast blame without accepting responsibility on one brilliant oneself. Serpico and his mansion and new bentleys and private plane, racehorses and so on... top of the world... carrying hard debt which came back to find him, casting himself as the innocent businessman and nasty Thatcher to blame in early 1990s recession when the banks called in debts after he couldn't pay what he owed.

On a much much lower level (silly family arguments) - not overseeing a system of years raging HPI, or being a market participant in that buying up loads of BTLs then casting myself the victim in a market change, and 'still brilliant'.

[Neverwhere]

I don't want you to do anything. The only thing I'd like, but don't expect, you and others to do is stop forming make-believe narratives of other people's opinions to justify your own and make yourself feel better on a forum.

Whatever my wishes are I don't do that because it's petty and unjustifiably hubristic.

You've just assigned a make-believe narrative to Bland's underlying motivations.

[Guest_northshore_*]

You've just assigned a make-believe narrative to Bland's underlying motivations.

I haven't, this was a thread about opinions on the financial stability report: "...You want me to worry about the danger of hoping that things have changed. Things have changed. Go back to 2014 and find me some evidence...There comes a point where your wishes for fantasy overnight transformations of institutions that have grown up over hundreds of years and a relentless cynicism about incremental change, coupled with gathering about yourself the garb of the voice of reason, begs a simple question - are you Jeremy Corbyn? If you are, where do I claim my £5."

I share your view on almost everything land and money related Neverwhere, but we've been down this road before and I don't wish to do it again.

[Neverwhere]

I haven't, this was a thread about opinions on the financial stability report: "...You want me to worry about the danger of hoping that things have changed. Things have changed. Go back to 2014 and find me some evidence...There comes a point where your wishes for fantasy overnight transformations of institutions that have grown up over hundreds of years and a relentless cynicism about incremental change, coupled with gathering about yourself the garb of the voice of reason, begs a simple question - are you Jeremy Corbyn? If you are, where do I claim my £5."

I share your view on almost everything land and money related Neverwhere, but we've been down this road before and I don't wish to do it again.

I don't want you to do anything. The only thing I'd like, but don't expect, you and others to do is stop forming make-believe narratives of other people's opinions to justify your own and make yourself feel better on a forum.

Whatever my wishes are I don't do that because it's petty and unjustifiably hubristic.

At no point does Bland say that he is justifying his own opinions and trying to make himself feel better. You have made this up all by yourself. It is a make-believe narrative that you have assigned to Bland. That makes the statement that follows untrue:

I don't want you to do anything. The only thing I'd like, but don't expect, you and others to do is stop forming make-believe narratives of other people's opinions to justify your own and make yourself feel better on a forum.

Whatever my wishes are I don't do that because it's petty and unjustifiably hubristic.

Is it somehow okay for you to infer motivation and underlying meaning from the text but totally unacceptable for others to do so?

Or is it perhaps possible that the written word is not a perfect medium of communication and some meaning must be inferred and corrected through discussion?

If you keep on driving down a road in which you call people up on their posting behaviour you are inevitably going to attract some analysis of your own.

[Bland Unsight]

I assume the bleating is directed at me

It wasn't.

[Guest_northshore_*]

At no point does Bland say that he is justifying his own opinions and trying to make himself feel better. You have made this up all by yourself. It is a make-believe narrative that you have assigned to Bland. That makes the statement that follows untrue:

Is it somehow okay for you to infer motivation and underlying meaning from the text but totally unacceptable for others to do so?

Or is it perhaps possible that the written word is not a perfect medium of communication and some meaning must be inferred and corrected through discussion?

If you keep on driving down a road in which you call people up on their posting behaviour you are inevitably going to attract some analysis of your own.

I'm not sure why exchanges on specifics with BU lead to this familar response on stretched generalities from the BU + Neverwhere and Venger HPC police, but I'm tired of it and have nothing to add.

[Bland Unsight]

I don't want you to do anything. The only thing I'd like, but don't expect, you and others to do is stop forming make-believe narratives of other people's opinions to justify your own and make yourself feel better on a forum.

Whatever my wishes are I don't do that because it's petty and unjustifiably hubristic.

So you are saying that there's a significant and important distinction to be made between what you would like and what you want? Are you sure the rest of us are as excited about that distinction as you are?

Back in the real world it is fun to speculate. You appear to take me considerably more seriously than I take myself. Why do you even care? Just put me on your ignore list. No hard feelings.

[billybong]

Now we had a chance to show what an independent central bank could do

The innocent bystanders turned into financial masterminds

(that seems to be the maximum number of emoticons allowed)

Edited December 2, 2015 by billybong

[Assume The Opposite]

I wasn't realistically hoping for anything. But otherwise I hope for a citizen's income, zero income tax, lvt, monetary reform, equality of opportunity and someone to nuke the rentier establishment from orbit, just to be sure.

If only the last part would happen.

[Venger]

I'm not sure why exchanges on specifics with BU lead to this familar response on stretched generalities from the BU + Neverwhere and Venger HPC police, but I'm tired of it and have nothing to add.

Hmm; I attempt to challenge positions. Stretched generalities (from me, perhaps on occasion) - but not with any mind to police. Are you projecting? That 'tired of it'.. noticed it before on forums. Almost a call to close other posters down, seems to me.

Respect the real cops/mods though.

The innocent bystanders turned into financial masterminds

(that seems to be the maximum number of emoticons allowed)

It was your post, billybong, from 2012 I bumped up, as you will remember. That BoE speech still really gets to me.

[billybong]

Hmm; I attempt to challenge positions. Stretched generalities (from me, perhaps on occasion) - but not with any mind to police. Are you projecting? That 'tired of it'.. noticed it before on forums. Almost a call to close other posters down, seems to me.

Respect the real cops/mods though.

It was your post, billybong, from 2012 I bumped up, as you will remember. That BoE speech still really gets to me.

Thank you for giving it a bump Venger.

Seeing the speech again the absurdity of the BoE's claims got to me again as well especially the bit I quoted, but it's full of twisting statements and logical tomfoolery. Has the BoE really improved since - I think not. It's still amazing that they get away with what they do - effectively unquestioned.

Edited December 2, 2015 by billybong

[Bland Unsight]

No, I don't own any property.

It was a rhetorical question. I didn't expect you to answer it. I was making the point that people didn't have to get into BTL just because FLS crushed savings rates.

Free markets, now you really must be joking! That's the one thing we don't have any more.

That's exaggeration. We have massive intervention relative to how things have been and where they might be, but people have freedom to leave money in cash, buy shares, buy bonds, buy annuities, buy property with leverage, buy gold. We do not have a command economy. We have free markets.

So now anything the BoE does can be blamed on politicians.

I didn't blame politicians. I blamed the people who elected them and the people who borrowed all the money. Us.

You've positioned yourself ready to move from praise to it's not their fault?

That kind of analysis is too simplistic. It's not either/or - it's not in fact for me even either.

You can lay some blame at the feet of the MPC if you want, but they can (and did) pass it off to their political masters who gave them an inflation target which excluded HPI and only one tool to chase it with - interest rates. You can blame the people on the MPC - perhaps they should have resigned on principle? I'm interested in the structures. I'm interested in what happened. I'm not really that interested in arguing about who should get the blame.

Likewise, I'm not praising them. You're projecting that. I think that we are better served by the Bank than median income households in the US are served by the Fed, but that is to damn the Bank with faint praise.

I am interested in what they say they are trying to do and I am interested in what they do or don't do. I welcome the amount of interest that the FPC is showing in BTL and specifically in BTL as a problem. There have been times since 2011 when I have felt that it is only on hpc that a sustained criticism of BTL could be found. If the BoE want to join in with the anti-BTL vibe I welcome it.

Thinking of that... can you go answer my BoE related question in the stampede thread?

Well, seeing as you ask so nicely.

You posed a question about a table I posted from a BoE publication, with a link to the source. If you had a question that you wanted answered, why exactly am I obligated to do your bidding? I didn't know the answer and at that specific moment I didn't want to scratch around for the answer. I assumed that if you were genuinely curious, you'd get the answer and post it and if it clashed with my surmise, I'd have learned something and I'd welcome it. I am very cool with being wrong.

As I recall, we were arguing the toss over what was and wasn't, in your estimation, a line in the sand. It appeared that our thinking on this matter was different. I still don't think that there's much there, except perhaps a forecast of more borrowing at high-LTIs which are less than 4.5x.

If you have the curiosity to get a good answer to your question, I look forward to reading it.

I can now see that this odd post, quoted in its entirety below, was perhaps aimed at me, at the time I didn't know whether it was or wasn't, so I ignored it.

I cannot seem to get that question answered.

Source

A final thing. For me posting on the forum is something I do for fun. I am interested in all this stuff, I think it matters. Negotiating little scuffles with other posters is part of the process. You are, in my estimation, far more cynical than me, hence we frequently disagree. You possibly find my optimism naive and irritating, (this is pure speculation on my part, just in case northshore or any other officer of the speculation police are reading). Likewise, regardless of how you see yourself, I read a lot of your posting as unnecessarily defeatist and I respond to it motivated to some extent by frustration at what I construe as defeatism. That all seems healthy and good. I'm not going to get into a song and dance about it. What I have invested here is a commitment to playing my part in sustaining a thoughtful and raucous conversation. Now can you go and put the YO in DYOR.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Bland Unsight

[Neverwhere]

I'm not sure why exchanges on specifics with BU lead to this familar response on stretched generalities from the BU + Neverwhere and Venger HPC police, but I'm tired of it and have nothing to add.

I was neither being familar nor discussing stretched generalities. I was simply pointing out that the specifics of your earlier post were inconsistent:

I don't want you to do anything. The only thing I'd like, but don't expect, you and others to do is stop forming make-believe narratives of other people's opinions to justify your own and make yourself feel better on a forum.

Whatever my wishes are I don't do that because it's petty and unjustifiably hubristic.

At no point does Bland say that he is justifying his own opinions and trying to make himself feel better. You have made this up all by yourself. It is a make-believe narrative that you have assigned to Bland. That makes the statement that follows untrue:

Is it somehow okay for you to infer motivation and underlying meaning from the text but totally unacceptable for others to do so?

Or is it perhaps possible that the written word is not a perfect medium of communication and some meaning must be inferred and corrected through discussion?

If you keep on driving down a road in which you call people up on their posting behaviour you are inevitably going to attract some analysis of your own.

Falling back on more make-believe narratives about other people's motivations is, by your own standards, a rather poor response.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Neverwhere