Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Britain's banks; too big to save?
The crash began 2007, went into hyperspeed 2008 and produced a coalition government 2010. The world spent $9 trillion bailing out the banks, $1400 per person on earth. Now we're paying that back through higher vat and cuts in local services.
Have the big banks changed their ways? Find out here; Britain's banks; too big to save?
Oh, and see if you can spot a flyover shot of our very own 'ladder' area, Harringay.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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'The crash began 2007' Only in Anglo-Saxon type economies.. The economies that previously sniffed at other, more prudent economies..
So sorry, hard luck - get on with it..
Thank goodness you're not also in the Euro.. we German taxpayers would be bailing you out too..
Ireland tried to run an Anglo-Saxon type 'boom and bust' economy (bolstered by British banks) within the Eurozone.. Hopefully they've now learnt where their bread is buttered..
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Stephen, some of us sought help from Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914 and again in 1939 from that chap with the mini'tache. All to no avail. Between 1960 and 2000 Germans bought up the best bits of Cork, Kerry, Clare, Galway and Donegal for their holiday homes. The least the Angel from the East can do is bail us out with a few (tens of billions of) Merkel-euros from time to time, and not bellyache too much about it.
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@OAE - lol
They will do.. What the speculators and the Murdoch press often forget is that the Euro is currently the second currency in the world.. If it were to go down (which they desire, because if not they expect to have their wings clipped in the coming years) it would have implications for everyone.
The (West /Bundes) Germans/Deutschen after 1945 had a written constitution laid upon them by the Brits and Americans, who were keenly aware of what the mistakes of 1919 were.
In that constituition, it is clearly stated that the German Nation will continually strive for a !/ a United Germany (acheived 1990) and 2/ a United Europe. All German governments since 1949 have worked within that constitution and will continue to do so.
The UK is the country out of step with the rest. It has no written constitution, no real functioning 'democratic' political system .. look at the so-called Lords and your unfair voting system - Has IMO still not come to terms with it's position in the world (somewhere between Spain & Italy) and still doesn't know how to react. Would it be too harsh to say it's floundering?
Look ahead twenty to thirty years, with the American Empire falling apart, no doubt the Chinese currency will become n°1 in the world and I do expect the Euro will remain N°2. I imagine the Irish know that and will stay exactly where they are.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Yes, everyone should see this; it confirms all my fears about the almost wholly unreformed, broken payments system at the heart of capitalism.
The programme talked about the need to increase the capital requirements of banks, which are of course companies themselves, i.e. the debt to equity ratio needs to be decreased. The banks still don't have adequate capital reserves.
But the other side is for central banks to be able to exercise control over the amount of re-lending of deposits that banks do, via reserve asset ratios: i.e. the proportion of their deposits that must be held by central banks and cannot be re-lent: and this ratio could be varied depending on whehter the econony was heading for boom or bust. This (Keynesian) system of control is wholly absent.
It needs to be indepenently controlled because the hardest thing for a politician to do is to put the brakes on when the boom starts gathering steam again ... i.e. laying the foundations for the next bust.
The banks of course, detest all these controls because it reduces their profits (in the short term); all citizens should welcome these controls as it would reduce the likelihood of banks going bust again: and there is no more money left to bail them out when it happens again.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Yes there were some good interviews. Scary thing is if 4 people out of 100 decided to withdraw all their monies from their bank at anyone time the bank wouldn't be able to meet their requests! The money is 'invested' elsewhere. In addition nobody particularly knows where that money goes because there are so many different & complicated instruments used worldwide.
Thus far the banks have not agreed to increase their reserves held to an acceptable level, that level being debateable, but about 20%. Some big banks are moving towards 7 - 10%, which Lehman Brothers had when they imploded, but then apparently they were the fall guy (at the decision of the Fed). A number of banks only had 1% in reserve when the 2007 financial collapse happened.
But as you say, if it happens again in the next few years countries affected currently will not have the money this time to bail out our banks. Hello China.
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The banks have already forgotten who it was who came to their rescue. How would the giant banker bonuses be able to be paid out if the taxpayer had not stepped in to stop the banks failing?
The government is in a tricky position, owning as it does, swathes of Britain's banking sector.
But if the Coalition government has not instituted drastic banking reform before the end of its five year term, it will have failed us all enormously. I assume of course that the next systemic bank failure does not occur before the right bank regulation is in place.
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Dave & George aren't going to regulate their friends in the city unfortunately. All puff and no fire!
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The banks are all governments' friends ... whether the government wants them or not, just like the members of a protection racket are the shopkeeper's friends.
The big question for this government: will they be able to bell the cat?
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