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stablescotland

Listed below are comments made by stablescotland between Monday, 22nd September 2008 and Tuesday, 9th June 2009.

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The prime minister is safe - for now 12:52pm on 09 Jun 2009 The last time we, the citizens of the United Kingdom, by our actions changed the mind of a senior establishment figure was when the Queen finally came back to London from Balmoral to recognise Princess Diana's death and the outpouring of grief felt by us all.
Maybe it's time to do something along the same lines to make Gordon Brown understand that we do not want him as our Prime Minister and that we want a General Election now.
Maybe we should go and stand en masse in front of Buckingham Palace holding placards or some other symbol asking Her Majesty to dissolve Parliament NOW.
....because right now we are helpless. Nobody is listening to us. We need somebody like our Queen to interfere on our behalf.
"We will remember them" 09:23am on 30 Apr 2009 I was in Iraq working for a contractor to the coalition troops.
While we remember our British military who died since 2003, please also remember also those Iraqi men and women who were murdered only because they were working for us.
Made off with all our money 3:48pm on 19 Dec 2008 I'd previously commented on one of your other blogs about Mr Madoff - here is what I said then
"Robert,
Is it true that Madoff Securities' auditors were a small 3 man firm based in Rockland County New York ?
If so how could a 3 man firm properly audit a securities firm worth tens of billions of dollars ?
The short answer is they couldn't but no doubt that suited Mr Madoff's purposes.
The US Treasury and the Certified Public Accountants regulatory authorities should never have allowed such a small firm to carry out Madoff's Securities' audit without their work being examined by external regulators.
Didn't they learn anything from Enron ???"
Made off with $50bn 09:54am on 19 Dec 2008 Robert,
Is it true that Madoff Securities' auditors were a small 3 man firm based in Rockland County New York ?
If so how could a 3 man firm properly audit a securities firm worth tens of billions of dollars ?
The short answer is they couldn't but no doubt that suited Mr Madoff's purposes.
The US Treasury and the Certified Public Accountants regulatory authorities should never have allowed such a small firm to carry out Madoff's Securities' audit without their work being examined by external regulators.
Didn't they learn anything from Enron ???
A very big rescue 09:50am on 08 Oct 2008 Mr Peston,
The British banks bought blocks of toxic mortgages from US banks.
There are 2 issues.
1. Did the US banks lie about the credit ratings of these toxic mortgages up for sale, telling the British banks that they were AAA ?
or
2. Were the British banks so incompetent that they didn't check the credit ratings of the toxic mortgages before agreeing to buy them ?
Whatever - the only people who are going to be rich in the future are lawyers when all this unravels - but where will they put their money ?
B&B: end of an era 11:00pm on 28 Sep 2008 Mr Peston,
I refer to my blog of approx 11.36am this morning.
You rightly state that every demutualised building society has either been nationalised, collapsed or taken over by a larger bank.
Can I ask again, if the building societies had not been demutualised, would they have survived this banking meltdown ?
.....and where are these persons who forced the building societies to demutualise ?
They should be brought to account. More than anyone else they are to blame for destroying a stable property financing system which had lived through economic and financial meltdowns over the last 100 years.
Find them please. See what they have to say for themselves now.
B&B: end of an era 11:26am on 28 Sep 2008 Mr Peston,
There was a group of guys in the late nineties and early 2000's who together opened deposit accounts in all the major mutual building societies in the UK and then after their membership had passed the statutory time limit to allow them to propose a resolution, forced the management of these societies to ballot members to change the societies' status from a mutual basis owned by its members to that of a limited company with share capital usually quoted on the stock exchange.
The carrot to entice members to vote for the change was a free issue of shares depending on the value of qualifying deposits held by these members. Members could either keep the shares or sell them for cash.
Where is the "group of guys" now ? Did they keep their shares or did they sell them for profit ?
Am I correct in assuming that if the building societies had kept their mutual status they would have/would be surviving the banking meltdown ?
When we had a housing value crisis in the past these societies survived even although the value of their securities in the form of the value of homes mortgaged, fell.
The "group of guys" have a lot to answer for by exposing the old mutual building societies to the dangers of the stock markets, but no doubt they don't care as at the time they made a killing on the originalchangeovers and resulting takeovers by the big banks.
No shame to European defeat 09:55am on 22 Sep 2008 It's a bit like Michael Schumacher - he kept on winning, winning, winning and Formula One became boring.
Maybe the golfing "powers that be" wanted Europe to stop winning in order that interest in the Ryder Cup would be reignited in the USA.
So they appointed Nick Faldo as captain knowing his jaggy relationship with the press and his total lack of personality and man management skills would hand a win to the USA on a plate.
.......and it worked !!

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