[deepinthewoods]

Highest estimated cost of UK riots: £100m.
Tax Avoidance by Vodafone: £6 Billion.
Tax avoidance in 2010 by richest people in UK: £7 Billion.
Tax payers' bill for banking crisis: £131 Billion
Perspective: priceless

[little blue]

      

[Rosemary]

  Sickening, eh?

[waterhouse]

Isn't it interesting how there has not been a report, official or otherwise, into the events leading to the collapse of the two Scottish Banks?  A heady mixture of hubris, incompetence, greed and corruption (and thats just the regulator) for which no-one has been punished or even brought to account.  Yes, a bunch of senior people in the banks got fired*  but the people who actually did the crap business then got promoted.

The banks aren't sorry for what they did (though many of their clients were willing participants in the game) and the regulators remain anonymous - remember that this is a highly regulated business and the whole regulatory regime had been rewritten and tightened up (thats a joke) on 1st January 2008.  The criminal irresponsibility of the Basel 2 implementation is a story that is also yet to be told.

*fired has a different meaning in banking. If a shelf stacker gets caught nicking custard creams from tesco he/she is dismissed and gets a criminal record.  If a banker gets caught giving bad loans which generate him a big bonus he gets made redundant with a generous payout in exchange for signing a contract forbidding any perjoritive remarks being made about his ex employer. He/she then goes on to another overpaid job at another bank with a useful pot of cash and good feelings about self-worth.

The only good news is that the general banking environment is so crap that all banks are downsizing and a lot of pointless highly paid jobs are vaporising.

And in case anyone out there thinks that I'm talking only of the City fat cats think again.  Branch bankers never saw the stratospheric rewards of the City but were paid handsomely for generating volume, not quality and for up-selling unclaimable insurance policies on personal lending.

This model needs to be changed.  I don't mean bringing back Capt Mannering - he was a different banking disaster.  I mean reinstalling ethics and loyalty to stakeholders back into the business.  If bonuses are to be paid (and there is a case, despite everything) then they get paid after the loan is repaid, not when it's made.  It just defers things a whole lot longer.


Rant over for the time being

[SallyintNorth]

Good rant, waterhouse.

The Banks will never be held to account, nor the regulator.  The problem is the government was at the very least complicit.  We have an ecomomy built on sand - no, sand is tangible - built on vapour and, as Rogue Trader Nick Leeson found out, so long as there is activity and the money keeps moving around, it's really hard to spot that the numbers on the computer screen have no basis in the real world.

There's no doubt the government at the least turned a blind eye, at the worst were actively encouraging the banks to lend unwisely in order to keep money circulating in the economy.  When the money stops moving it's easier to see the holes where collateral should be.

[waterhouse]

Thanks Sally, I sometimes think it's only me who gets it.

[robert waddell]

from other post some of you may have gathered that i am Scottish              when the crisis started i advocated that the banks should have went down as well     they are a bussines after all no different to all the businesses that they latter pulled the carpet from
the banks are not alone the government police lawyers in fact every professional group of people out there they are all at the scamming thieving and it was not me      the Saudis have the right justice CUT THERE THIEVING HANDS OFF

[doganjo]

Oh Robert, you are a one!

[waterhouse]

The rescue of RBS was a great investment by HMG at around 51p given the current share price is 21p

[jonkil]

You think the UK is bad !
Ireland is in abysmal dire straits......
I predicted in 08 that the crisis wasn't even beginning, government said "It isn't a problem, its a fiscal adjustment" when everyone with any sense saw this juggernaut steaming down the line. Now with the IMF in, Germany dictating the terms, massive tax hikes and cuts to the poorest/eldest/youngest and no way out of the mess. Its imperative that Ireland puts its hands up and says "WERE BROKE, WE AINT PAYING IT BACK" in other words "default". This will happen, when?.. I don't know... but before it does the powers that be will skin the tax-payer alive, decimate the education system, raid the pension funds out, leave the elderly just enough to stay alive, and leave the working people desolate. Time to move out me thinks!
So, in perspective... the UK isn't too bad yet, it has its sovereignty , it has a functioning banking system (Ireland has not) and most of all the UK maintained it's own currency.... wise move. The UK has a pretty strong hand, it can dictate terms much stronger than others and punches way beyond its weight, don't write her off.

[waterhouse]

I agree.

Ireland can't ever afford the debt that its government took on when it nationalised the banks.  OK at the time it didn't know what it was taking on, but it didn't need to keep paying out the banks' investors when the size of the hole started to become clear.  That was deeply stupid and unnecessary.  The initial guarantee was the final trigger for the collapse of RBS as bank deposits briefly moved from the then unguaranteed UK banks to Ireland.  The late Mr Lenihan wasn't really to blame because RBS was going down anyway.

The reason the Euro chappies don't want it to default is because a whole lot of Ireland's debt is held by other governments or their banks.  OECD state risk was classified as risk free, so no capital had to be provided against it.  If Ireland removes its chair someone else will fall over when the music stops. 

With a small population based around tourism and agriculture I don't see the compelling reason for Ireland to stay either in the Euro or in the good books of the Germans.  And maybe it could still attract its newer multinational industries if it gets to be back in charge of its tax regime