£128k unpaid rent - can't get the tenant out.

[Si1]

Just now, Locke said:

You used the word "all"

That includes assault, murder, theft & rape.

So it''s funny fro you to complain about nonsense extremes when you were the one who went there yourself.

Yeah I know, I was remiss with my terminology I apologise. Yeah it was silly of me.

 

[Locke]

4 minutes ago, Si1 said:

Yeah I know, I was remiss with my terminology I apologise. Yeah it was silly of me.

 

Well it's interesting right? Why can't Socialism fall into the category of "nonsense extremes"?

"All rape is evil" is an extreme, but is it nonsense? Most people would be forced to concede that it's not and therefore whether something is extreme is not related to whether it is nonsense.

Anyway, the real problem of Socialism is not that "sooner or later you run out of other people's money", but that it is enforced and run by governments, which means it is predicated upon theft and violence, which means it is evil and unsustainable.

If you lived in a stateless community, most people would be more than happy to share with the neighbours, what you would call "socialism". They would be ostracised if they did not, but that is completely different than being forced at gunpoint to pay for a welfare state.

[Si1]

2 hours ago, Pop321 said:

Don’t be daft.... that sounds far too balanced.

Many on here hate socialism or even having to pay more tax for lazy social scrounges.

They keep voting for the same privately educated boys club.... then banging on about how corrupt things are.

I happily advocate a fairer society, vote for one and then take as much from this beautiful rigged system as ‘the public’ clearly want me to.... used to upset and annoy me, now it just fascinates me.🤷🏻‍♂️

Well the Tories have two sub parties don't they, the establishment, who aren't really conservative in a political sense, just in a dog in the manger sense. And the ideological social conservatives and free market pushers. I believe the former bunch, the establishment, gained a lot of soft power, or political  currency, from kicking Gordon Brown out. That's Cameron and Osborne. And that's now waning. Finally. Maybe.

Edited April 28, 2021 by Si1

[Staffsknot]

18 minutes ago, Locke said:

Well it's interesting right? Why can't Socialism fall into the category of "nonsense extremes"?

"All rape is evil" is an extreme, but is it nonsense? Most people would be forced to concede that it's not and therefore whether something is extreme is not related to whether it is nonsense.

Anyway, the real problem of Socialism is not that "sooner or later you run out of other people's money", but that it is enforced and run by governments, which means it is predicated upon theft and violence, which means it is evil and unsustainable.

If you lived in a stateless community, most people would be more than happy to share with the neighbours, what you would call "socialism". They would be ostracised if they did not, but that is completely different than being forced at gunpoint to pay for a welfare state.

You seem to have this crazy notion everyone will work for the common good if there is no state or organised hierarchy. Having been to several places where these structures have disintegrated I can safely say you are talking theoretical academic rubbish.

In Iraq without functioning government the neighbours formed into militias to defend and take resources. Some neighbours were fond of taking power tools to their other neighbours for whatever divisions used to exist, often religious but sometimes just I want x and you have it.

History is full of collectives for protection and mutual benefit and the conflicts between such groups. Your philosophy is implicitly full of harm and violence just not by state actors by individuals themselves.

Primates form collectives for mutual benefit, they also head out and beat seven bells out of their neighbours to ensure access to resources they want. So has it always been for humans.

I suggest less Star Trek utopia thinking and more real world practical experience. 

Real people - commune land tended by two families. One has 3 kids and another has 1. Bad harvest how do you divide the food? Equal by family as both worked as hard to tend it? Or by need so all mouths an equal share?

What happens when family A or B begins to get hungry and sees B as the cause as either way one family is seen as causing the others suffering. Then one takes everything because nobody sits back watching their kids starve to death. Now magnify that to society level. What about the family with the disabled kid who can never contribute - I've been to those places where there's no state support and its not a great outcome.

Yes early homonids with disability or injury have been found to have been cared for, but they were also probably part of that family group. Also that family group probably killed off any outsiders threatening to take use resources.

Same as early settlers in US banded together on the frontiers beyond US gov hired sheriffs and formed militias as settlers & ranch owners as well as outlaws used to kill and take what they wanted.

 

[zugzwang]

45 minutes ago, Si1 said:

Well the Tories have two sub parties don't they, the establishment, who aren't really conservative in a political sense, just in a dog in the manger sense. And the ideological social conservatives and free market pushers. I believe the former bunch, the establishment, gained a lot of soft power, or political  currency, from kicking Gordon Brown out. That's Cameron and Osborne. And that's now waning. Finally. Maybe.

 

Gordon Brown was a free market pusher!

 

https://www.ianfraser.org/goldman-sachs-stance-marks-gordon-out-as-truly-the-man-with-no-shame/

It was Brown as chancellor who created near-regulatory vacuum in the UK financial sector when he removed supervision from the Bank of England in 1997.

He then ignored most of the recommendations of the 2000 Cruickshank report into the state of British banking, loosening rather than tightening regulatory standards, and appointed HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby to the board of the FSA. This extraordinary, cronyist appointment fatally compromised the regulator’s ability to regulate the UK’s most reckless bank.

Brown and Blair became patsies to the bankers largely because they developed a fondness for the tax revenues, the well-paid jobs and the glamour of having the world’s leading financial centre on their doorstep. These were Brown’s “winnings”. They also wrongly believed that London’s best chance of remaining one of the world’s leading financial centres was to allow the financial sector to write its own rules.

In this deregulated jungle, paper tigers like Sir Fred Goodwin were briefly able to roam abroad and deceptive accounting practices were tolerated or ignored. In a speech to the CBI conference in November 2005, Brown said that he did not just want “light touch” regulation. He wanted “limited touch” regulation.

Chancellor Brown, the Treasury and the FSA ignored a string of red flags –- including one raised by the legendary hedge fund investor Jim Chanos at the G7 summit in Washington DC in April 2007. Chanos and another hedge fund manger told the G7 finance ministers that the world’s banking system was already in such parlous state that a systemic collapse was inevitable. But Brown’s ears were stuffed with City cash.

Brown and the FSA were also repeatedly told that something was not quite right at HBOS -– particularly the way in which the bank was pricing its loans, the way it was securitizing and collateralizing its corporate loan book and the way in which it was abusing off-balance-sheet vehicles to massage down its bad debt position. Repeated warnings about this catastrophic behaviour bounced off the FSA. It just didn’t want to know and the chancellor remained entranced.

He persisted with his “light touch, limited touch” approach until it was too late. By the summer of 2008 RBS, HBOS and a few smaller banks had done what any hubristic and overly aggressive bank will do when it is inadequately supervised –- drive themselves to the brink of collapse.

This was the time to learn some lessons from the fiasco, right?

Er no. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and chancellor Alistair Darling instead ploughed in some £1.3 trillion of UK taxpayers’ money into the busted banks but with very few conditions attached. Vague requirements to lend a certain amount to UK SMEs have been ignored with impunity.

Brown didn’t seem to have any interest in restructuring or imposing behavioural change on the failed banks. All he wants to do is to ensure they can rebuild their balance sheets and return to the private sector as quickly as possible. And the only way that can be achieved is if they behave in ways that are antipathetic to economic recovery. Nor has Brown promoted any justice for the customers who were defrauded or who had their assets expropriated by out-of-control banks such as HBOS during the boom.

[Si1]

1 minute ago, zugzwang said:

 

Gordon Brown was a free market pusher!

 

https://www.ianfraser.org/goldman-sachs-stance-marks-gordon-out-as-truly-the-man-with-no-shame/

It was Brown as chancellor who created near-regulatory vacuum in the UK financial sector when he removed supervision from the Bank of England in 1997.

He then ignored most of the recommendations of the 2000 Cruickshank report into the state of British banking, loosening rather than tightening regulatory standards, and appointed HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby to the board of the FSA. This extraordinary, cronyist appointment fatally compromised the regulator’s ability to regulate the UK’s most reckless bank.

Brown and Blair became patsies to the bankers largely because they developed a fondness for the tax revenues, the well-paid jobs and the glamour of having the world’s leading financial centre on their doorstep. These were Brown’s “winnings”. They also wrongly believed that London’s best chance of remaining one of the world’s leading financial centres was to allow the financial sector to write its own rules.

In this deregulated jungle, paper tigers like Sir Fred Goodwin were briefly able to roam abroad and deceptive accounting practices were tolerated or ignored. In a speech to the CBI conference in November 2005, Brown said that he did not just want “light touch” regulation. He wanted “limited touch” regulation.

Chancellor Brown, the Treasury and the FSA ignored a string of red flags –- including one raised by the legendary hedge fund investor Jim Chanos at the G7 summit in Washington DC in April 2007. Chanos and another hedge fund manger told the G7 finance ministers that the world’s banking system was already in such parlous state that a systemic collapse was inevitable. But Brown’s ears were stuffed with City cash.

Brown and the FSA were also repeatedly told that something was not quite right at HBOS -– particularly the way in which the bank was pricing its loans, the way it was securitizing and collateralizing its corporate loan book and the way in which it was abusing off-balance-sheet vehicles to massage down its bad debt position. Repeated warnings about this catastrophic behaviour bounced off the FSA. It just didn’t want to know and the chancellor remained entranced.

He persisted with his “light touch, limited touch” approach until it was too late. By the summer of 2008 RBS, HBOS and a few smaller banks had done what any hubristic and overly aggressive bank will do when it is inadequately supervised –- drive themselves to the brink of collapse.

This was the time to learn some lessons from the fiasco, right?

Er no. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and chancellor Alistair Darling instead ploughed in some £1.3 trillion of UK taxpayers’ money into the busted banks but with very few conditions attached. Vague requirements to lend a certain amount to UK SMEs have been ignored with impunity.

Brown didn’t seem to have any interest in restructuring or imposing behavioural change on the failed banks. All he wants to do is to ensure they can rebuild their balance sheets and return to the private sector as quickly as possible. And the only way that can be achieved is if they behave in ways that are antipathetic to economic recovery. Nor has Brown promoted any justice for the customers who were defrauded or who had their assets expropriated by out-of-control banks such as HBOS during the boom.

Brown had a crooked regulatory structure which incubated and encouraged risk. That was actually worse than a free market.

[msi]

57 minutes ago, Si1 said:

Brown had a crooked regulatory structure which incubated and encouraged risk. That was actually worse than a free market.

Brown did that to keep Big money support for Labour. The Tories had it on tap

[zugzwang]

1 hour ago, Si1 said:

Brown had a crooked regulatory structure which incubated and encouraged risk. That was actually worse than a free market.

He offshored the City of London because the economists (and bankers) assured him that unregulated markets were efficient and self-correcting.

They are neither.

The free market Tories cheered him to the echo.

[Warlord]

2 hours ago, Si1 said:

Brown had a crooked regulatory structure which incubated and encouraged risk. That was actually worse than a free market.

Basically they were doing what Brown wanted. He was the one giving the orders like a general. There was no "light touch regulation" this is a figment in @zugzwang's imagination. All banks are licensed the State and have massive compliance departments and costs to comply with all the necessary regulations. Light touch ?HA !

Try opening a bank and see  how difficult it is with all the regulations.. now or before 2008. 

Edited April 28, 2021 by Warlord

[zugzwang]

2 minutes ago, Warlord said:

Basically they were doing what Brown wanted. He was the one giving the orders like a general. There was no "light touch regulation" this is a figment in @zugzwang's imagination. All banks are licensed the State and have massive compliance departments and costs to comply with all the necessary regulations. Light touch ?HA !

Try opening a bank and see  how difficult it is with all the regulations.. now or before 2008. 

 

The very idea is preposterous!

These are vast commercial entities run for profit in the interests of their shareholders. It's a matter of historical record that Brown established a 'light touch' regulatory environment to encourage the yanks to migrate here and the home-grown outfits to stay.

Besides, the banksters were up to the same tricks everywhere. Was Brown calling the shots on Wall Street too?

[Warlord]

1 minute ago, zugzwang said:

 

The very idea is preposterous!

These are vast commercial entities run for profit in the interests of their shareholders. It's a matter of historical record that Brown established a 'light touch' regulatory environment to encourage the yanks to migrate here and the home-grown outfits to stay.

Besides, the banksters were up to the same tricks everywhere. Was Brown calling the shots on Wall Street too?

No . They're established players who were being ordered by the Treasury to relax lending standards.

As i say try opening a bank and see how far you get....  it's not a free market it's a cartel and state licensed.

[zugzwang]

2 minutes ago, Warlord said:

No . They're established players who were being ordered by the Treasury to relax lending standards.

As i say try opening a bank and see how far you get....  it's not a free market it's a cartel and state licensed.

 

The Treasury didn't run the likes of RBS and Barclays! Again, the idea is simply preposterous.

RBS was destroyed by the greed and malfeasance of a coterie of fantasists, Fred Goodwin chief among them.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin

Goodwin's strategy of aggressive expansion primarily through acquisition, including the takeover of ABN Amro, eventually proved disastrous and led to the near-collapse of RBS in the October 2008 liquidity crisis. The €71 billion (£55 billion) ABN Amro deal (of which RBS's share was £10 billion^[25]) in particular stretched the bank's capital position – £16.8 billion of RBS's record £24.1 billion loss is attributed to writedowns relating to the takeover of ABN Amro.^[6]

It was not, however, the sole source of RBS's problems, as RBS was exposed to the liquidity crisis in a number of ways, particularly through US subsidiaries including RBS Greenwich Capital. Although the takeover of NatWest launched RBS's meteoric rise, it came with an investment bank subsidiary, Greenwich NatWest. RBS was unable to dispose of it as planned as a result of the involvement of the NatWest Three with the collapsed energy trader Enron.^{[clarification needed]}

However the business (now RBS Greenwich Capital) started making money, and under pressure of comparison with rapidly growing competitors such as Barclays Capital, saw major expansion in 2005–7, not least in private equity loans and in the sub-prime mortgage market.^[15] It became one of the top three underwriters of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs).^[26] This increased exposure to the eventual "credit crunch" contributed to RBS's financial problems.

 

[morty]

Rich people lose a few bob and it’s MSM news.
 

There’s people losing jobs even becoming homeless, maybe some developing mental illnesses etc.  I’ve had nasty neighbours that have changed the course of my life yet I’m not crying to anyone.  

[A.steve]

1 hour ago, Si1 said:

That's just taking it to nonsense extremes.

Reductio-ad-absurdum, dude!

A major problem with political discourse is failure of communication.  It simply isn't adequate that the person making a political statement thinks they know what it should mean to the audience.  Coherence when communicating any idea, especially a political idea, requires that the actual statements stand up to the scrutiny of rational consideration.

 

[Warlord]

6 hours ago, zugzwang said:

 

The Treasury didn't run the likes of RBS and Barclays! Again, the idea is simply preposterous.

RBS was destroyed by the greed and malfeasance of a coterie of fantasists, Fred Goodwin chief among them.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin

Goodwin's strategy of aggressive expansion primarily through acquisition, including the takeover of ABN Amro, eventually proved disastrous and led to the near-collapse of RBS in the October 2008 liquidity crisis. The €71 billion (£55 billion) ABN Amro deal (of which RBS's share was £10 billion^[25]) in particular stretched the bank's capital position – £16.8 billion of RBS's record £24.1 billion loss is attributed to writedowns relating to the takeover of ABN Amro.^[6]

It was not, however, the sole source of RBS's problems, as RBS was exposed to the liquidity crisis in a number of ways, particularly through US subsidiaries including RBS Greenwich Capital. Although the takeover of NatWest launched RBS's meteoric rise, it came with an investment bank subsidiary, Greenwich NatWest. RBS was unable to dispose of it as planned as a result of the involvement of the NatWest Three with the collapsed energy trader Enron.^{[clarification needed]}

However the business (now RBS Greenwich Capital) started making money, and under pressure of comparison with rapidly growing competitors such as Barclays Capital, saw major expansion in 2005–7, not least in private equity loans and in the sub-prime mortgage market.^[15] It became one of the top three underwriters of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs).^[26] This increased exposure to the eventual "credit crunch" contributed to RBS's financial problems.

 

Fred the Shred was very close to Brown and Nu Labour. You should know this.  And it wasn't just Fred who brought down the system there were others.

Do I need to dig up Browns Mansion House speeches for you? 

Open your eyes!

 

[zugzwang]

1 hour ago, Warlord said:

Fred the Shred was very close to Brown and Nu Labour. You should know this.  And it wasn't just Fred who brought down the system there were others.

Do I need to dig up Browns Mansion House speeches for you? 

Open your eyes!

 

 

Fred Goodwin and his acolytes were in charge of RBS not Gordon Brown! The entire debacle is captured in minute detail in Ian Martin's book Making It Happen.

Here's a short list of financial entities implicated in the GFC that Gordon Brown also didn't run:

Northern Rock, Barclays, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Fannie and Freddie, JP Morgan, DeutscheBank, BNP Paribas and Citigroup.

Gordon Brown may have helped one or more of the big banks unwind their gold shorts, however.

But even that isn't clear.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gordon-brown-gold-reserves-sold-economy-analysis-financial-bullion-a8909611.html

 

 

[Pop321]

14 hours ago, iamnumerate said:

A fair society isn't one where people in London who work and pay taxes live in smaller houses than pro single parents.

A fair society isn't one where people on benefits can get £50K p.a as did Abu Qatada for many years.

Yep agree. My ‘socialism’ wouldn’t be overtly left...I am much more central than that. I would have a true safety net....no more. I would even go so far as a universal income if it were cheaper than the current system. If someone had 7 kids or wanted a council flat in Mayfair....they would need to work. agree £50k is very wrong  

£50k on benefits is terrible as is a new employee of a bank being paid £15m under the guise of ‘director’.

[Eddie_George]

On 26/04/2021 at 10:26, Si1 said:

I think you need a bit of socialism and a bit of capitalism. In life you need a bit of it all, and so the same in economics, in appropriate doses and types.

We already have it.

Child benefit
Child tax credits
Guardian's allowance
Statutory maternity/paternity/adoption pay
Marriage allowance
Maternity grant
Maternity allowance
Widowed parent's allowance

Jobseeker's allowance (JSA)
Working tax credit

Income-based jobseeker's allowance
Income-based employment and support allowance
Pension credit
Housing benefit
Council tax reduction
Free school meals, milk or uniforms and healthcare
Support for mortgage interest
Budgeting loans and advances
Funeral payment
Local council support schemes
Cold weather payments

Attendance allowance
Personal independence payment
Carer's allowance
Contribution-based employment support allowance
Statutory sick pay
State pension
Bereavement allowance
Bereavement Support Payment
Winter fuel payments

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/benefits-check/

 

[Pop321]

7 minutes ago, Eddie_George said:

We already have it.

Child benefit
Child tax credits
Guardian's allowance
Statutory maternity/paternity/adoption pay
Marriage allowance
Maternity grant
Maternity allowance
Widowed parent's allowance

Jobseeker's allowance (JSA)
Working tax credit

Income-based jobseeker's allowance
Income-based employment and support allowance
Pension credit
Housing benefit
Council tax reduction
Free school meals, milk or uniforms and healthcare
Support for mortgage interest
Budgeting loans and advances
Funeral payment
Local council support schemes
Cold weather payments

Attendance allowance
Personal independence payment
Carer's allowance
Contribution-based employment support allowance
Statutory sick pay
State pension
Bereavement allowance
Bereavement Support Payment
Winter fuel payments

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/benefits-check/

 

Yep, too complicated, too convoluted...as a ‘middle of the road liberal’ I think we seem to have the worst of both worlds at the moment. 

I guess that must suit TPTB. 

[Warlord]

11 hours ago, zugzwang said:

 

Fred Goodwin and his acolytes were in charge of RBS not Gordon Brown! The entire debacle is captured in minute detail in Ian Martin's book Making It Happen.

Here's a short list of financial entities implicated in the GFC that Gordon Brown also didn't run:

Northern Rock, Barclays, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Fannie and Freddie, JP Morgan, DeutscheBank, BNP Paribas and Citigroup.

Gordon Brown may have helped one or more of the big banks unwind their gold shorts, however.

But even that isn't clear.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gordon-brown-gold-reserves-sold-economy-analysis-financial-bullion-a8909611.html

 

 

They were all encouraged to lower their standards by the Treasury/BoE.  It was government policy just like in the US. They could not have done this without gov't approval especially the takeover of ABN AMRO

@spyguy will confirm this I think and has the Mansion House speeches.

Your book is worthless and seeks to blame "capitalism" or the "free market" when it is anything BUT a free market or capitalism. True capitalism would have let them all go bust and rightly so.

If you want to read a proper book about the 08 crisis I suggest "Meltdown" by Thomas Woods. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meltdown-Classic-Free-Market-Analysis-Financial/dp/1621579557/

 

[spyguy]

12 hours ago, zugzwang said:

 

Fred Goodwin and his acolytes were in charge of RBS not Gordon Brown! The entire debacle is captured in minute detail in Ian Martin's book Making It Happen.

Here's a short list of financial entities implicated in the GFC that Gordon Brown also didn't run:

Northern Rock, Barclays, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Fannie and Freddie, JP Morgan, DeutscheBank, BNP Paribas and Citigroup.

Gordon Brown may have helped one or more of the big banks unwind their gold shorts, however.

But even that isn't clear.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gordon-brown-gold-reserves-sold-economy-analysis-financial-bullion-a8909611.html

 

 

 

50 minutes ago, Warlord said:

They were all encouraged to lower their standards by the Treasury/BoE.  It was government policy just like in the US. They could not have done this without gov't approval especially the takeover of ABN AMRO

@spyguy will confirm this I think and has the Mansion House speeches.

Your book is worthless and seeks to blame "capitalism" or the "free market" when it is anything BUT a free market or capitalism. True capitalism would have let them all go bust and rightly so.

If you want to read a proper book about the 08 crisis I suggest "Meltdown" by Thomas Woods. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meltdown-Classic-Free-Market-Analysis-Financial/dp/1621579557/

 

I can point you to this classic -

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/jun/22/politics.economicpolicy

Financial services are now 7 per cent of our economy. Financial and business services as much as 10 per cent. A larger share of our economy than they are in any other major economy, contributing £19 billion of net exports to our balance of payments, a success all the more remarkable because while New York and Tokyo rely for business on their large domestic base, London's international ranking is founded on a large and expanding global market.

London now the home and natural location for 20 per cent of all cross border lending: 30 per cent of world foreign exchange turnover, 40 per cent of over-the-counter derivatives trades, 70 per cent of the global secondary bond market.

London is the favoured location of choice for more international business than ever before, the world's leading banking centre with more foreign banks than in any other city, the location for 200 foreign law firms - including home for six of the worlds largest ten, and last year new foreign listings not only from China, India and Russia, but also the USA itself.

or earlier, when the idiot, removed BoE from regulation, splitting it between 3 new bodies, guaranteeing that noone was in charge.

You can look at charts from the late 90s til ~08 for RBS, HBOS, LLoyds Nr etc etc etc.

You see those share prices doubling, tripling quintupling? Thats the banks assets i.e. loans/debts increasign at a rte of 10%+ a year. Every bank - everyone was a winner under Brown.

Or this   -

https://www.businessinsider.com/2008/9/meet-the-man-who-blew-up-aig-?r=US&IR=T

Why do you think an American , working for AIG, was based in London? 

Love of warm beer???

Or that the UK was the largest plugged in financial sector that had sod all regulation or rules.

Brown was trying to get everyone wither working for UKGOV or paid by UKGOV. And he was going to pay for it by taxes from the finsec.

He removed all regulation and sanity to grown the finsec so that he could spend the taxes it generated.
 

All brown extra spend - tax credits, 3m extra public sector workers, tripling of education and NHS spend should have been rolled bak when the bubble burst in 2008.

 

 

[zugzwang]

1 hour ago, Warlord said:

They were all encouraged to lower their standards by the Treasury/BoE.  It was government policy just like in the US. They could not have done this without gov't approval especially the takeover of ABN AMRO

@spyguy will confirm this I think and has the Mansion House speeches.

Your book is worthless and seeks to blame "capitalism" or the "free market" when it is anything BUT a free market or capitalism. True capitalism would have let them all go bust and rightly so.

If you want to read a proper book about the 08 crisis I suggest "Meltdown" by Thomas Woods. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meltdown-Classic-Free-Market-Analysis-Financial/dp/1621579557/

 

 

Ian Martin's book explicitly documents the downfall of RBS. At no point did Gordon Brown instruct or direct the bank to lower its lending standards. The takeover of ABN was Fred Goodwin's pet project. The FSA failed its due diligence responsibility, although it had no legal authority at the time to approve the takeover of a Dutch bank. The RBS board did too little to resist Goodwin's megalomania even though several individuals had grave misgivings about the direction the bank was taking.

The creation of a free market shadow banking system from the early 80s onwards allowed financial institutions to largely circumvent the regulatory strictures imposed upon them locally. The illusion of capital adequacy could be maintained by shifting debt off the balance sheet on a continuous basis. The repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act in 1999 separating commercial and investment banking finally gave the casino culture full rein.

The entire sordid enterprise came crashing down less than a decade later when the $700 trillion tower of credit derivatives it had created fell over. Thousands of banks, non-bank financial intermediaries and hedge funds were bankrupted in the process.

[zugzwang]

11 minutes ago, spyguy said:

 

I can point you to this classic -

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/jun/22/politics.economicpolicy

Financial services are now 7 per cent of our economy. Financial and business services as much as 10 per cent. A larger share of our economy than they are in any other major economy, contributing £19 billion of net exports to our balance of payments, a success all the more remarkable because while New York and Tokyo rely for business on their large domestic base, London's international ranking is founded on a large and expanding global market.

London now the home and natural location for 20 per cent of all cross border lending: 30 per cent of world foreign exchange turnover, 40 per cent of over-the-counter derivatives trades, 70 per cent of the global secondary bond market.

London is the favoured location of choice for more international business than ever before, the world's leading banking centre with more foreign banks than in any other city, the location for 200 foreign law firms - including home for six of the worlds largest ten, and last year new foreign listings not only from China, India and Russia, but also the USA itself.

or earlier, when the idiot, removed BoE from regulation, splitting it between 3 new bodies, guaranteeing that noone was in charge.

You can look at charts from the late 90s til ~08 for RBS, HBOS, LLoyds Nr etc etc etc.

You see those share prices doubling, tripling quintupling? Thats the banks assets i.e. loans/debts increasign at a rte of 10%+ a year. Every bank - everyone was a winner under Brown.

Or this   -

https://www.businessinsider.com/2008/9/meet-the-man-who-blew-up-aig-?r=US&IR=T

Why do you think an American , working for AIG, was based in London? 

Love of warm beer???

Or that the UK was the largest plugged in financial sector that had sod all regulation or rules.

Brown was trying to get everyone wither working for UKGOV or paid by UKGOV. And he was going to pay for it by taxes from the finsec.

He removed all regulation and sanity to grown the finsec so that he could spend the taxes it generated.
 

All brown extra spend - tax credits, 3m extra public sector workers, tripling of education and NHS spend should have been rolled bak when the bubble burst in 2008.

 

 

 

Brown was a free market pusher who believed every word of the rubbish he was taught about 'The End of History'.

[Warlord]

21 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

 

Brown was a free market pusher who believed every word of the rubbish he was taught about 'The End of History'.

its not a free market otherwise they would have collapsed and depositors lost all their money WHICH IS WHAT SHOULD HAVE HA[PPENED!

It's called MORAL HAZAARD.

Fred and his cohorts did what they did because the Treasury had their back with loans and bailouts.

 

 

[zugzwang]

3 hours ago, Warlord said:

its not a free market otherwise they would have collapsed and depositors lost all their money WHICH IS WHAT SHOULD HAVE HA[PPENED!

It's called MORAL HAZAARD.

Fred and his cohorts did what they did because the Treasury had their back with loans and bailouts.

 

 

 

It did happen! Lehman Brothers was left to die. Bear Stearns' investors lost everything. AIG and Merrill Lynch had near death experiences. Thousand of local and provincial banks went pffft. Dozens of hedge funds got cleaned out, including Bernie Madoff's infamous ponzi operation.

So much for the idea of the Fed acting as guarantor!

It was only after AIG blew up in September 2008 that the true extent of its credit derivatives exposure became known. i.e. an existential threat to industrial civilisation. Too big to fail.