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godfreybrown

Listed below are comments made by godfreybrown between Tuesday, 4th August 2009 and Wednesday, 21st October 2009.

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Bank reform: The radical way 9:37pm on 21 Oct 2009 Robert, along with all your other many well-wishers I to would like you to know that you have been sorely missed and I sincerly hope that the ticketyboo business at home will soon be cleared up and that normal services will be resummed as soon as pooible.

Best wishes old friend
Bank reform: The radical way 5:16pm on 21 Oct 2009 The Governor of the BOE is quite right to say that the only way to prevent another finacial market catastrophe like the one we just experienced is to separate the high risk speculative bank dealings from the functions that are vital to the economy.

To say the least there has to be a fundemental flaw with a banking system that is designed to allow groups of people from within the banking industry to recycle vast sums of money, in a way that only they understand, so they can pay themselves vast bonus payments before anyone from outside the banking industry knows for sure if the profits they claim to have made are genuine and are commercially sound for the future of the business.
Brown and markets 09:19am on 01 Oct 2009 Let's cut out some of the crap about blaming Gordon Brown and Labour policies for bringing the country to the point of ruin. It has taken more tha thirty years of deceit and bad planning by our political leaders (of all persuations) and the rulers in Whitehall to get the Uk into the appalling mess the country now finds itself in.

Whilst Gordon Brown might now be accussed of doing a u-turn away from the notion that the free market is a more efficient allocator of capital than the state, his cardinal sin was he trusted the bankers to deliver what they said they were delivering. Whereas we now know (what most of us have long suspected that most bankers and finacial experts are cunningly deceptive and incapable of delivering the sort of profits they frequently claim to be making. In that respect the Conservatives can take little comfort from what has happened because they have been similarly seduced by the deceit that has gone on for far too long within the finacial services sector.

The idea to let the banking and finacial services sector to dominate the UK all areas of the economy in the way that it now does, was concieved by the strategic planners (and no doubts gleefully supported by the stripe suited city types) way back in the 1970's. At that timeBritain's manufacturing industires were in deep decline and the resulting shortfall in the Treasury's coffers had to come from elsewhere in the economy, namely the banking and finacial services sector. There was also a problem with militant trade unionists(especially in the manufacturing sector) who needed to be brought into line because their continued industrial actions had renered the country almost, ungovernable.

When Mrs Thatcher came along the Tory party grandees and their pals in the city, decided she was the ideal candidate (a dominering, strong willed woman from a primarily working background) to push forward the reform they believed were necessary to achieve their objectives. Those objectives were to bring the trade unions into line, dismantle the manufacturing base and to make the city of London into a leading world finacial center. After Mrs Thatcher announced the city big bang and derreguation of the finacial markets her job was done and so they simply got rid of her.

Since then the bankers, like wayward kids in a sweet shop, have been helping themselves to as much as possible before being cought with their hands in the jar.
Can governments squeeze bankers' pay? 8:01pm on 04 Sep 2009 Robert you didn't need to go to New York to find out where we are in respect of reform and recovery as we approach the anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers. I can tell you from 3,000 miles away, we are still up the creek without a paddle.

How can the banks declare they are making such huge profits when the real engine driver, world trade, is still well down on the heady days when these banks were handing out money amongst themselves as if there was not tomorrow. If they are allowed to carry on as before then as sure as hell there will be no tomorrow for the rest of us anyway.

These banks are not making money they are simply circulating the money that we gave them and making a charge for the transactions they carry out.

It strikes me that these highly paid people are not genuine wealth creators their only contribution is help circulate other peoples money and charge whatever rate they wish for doing so and then call it profit. Then they multiply the number of transactions they have made to calculate how bonus they should recieve. Since most of their business is carried out electronically the figures are hardly indicative of their ability.
What RBS's results say about QE 7:32pm on 13 Aug 2009 Re: 289 and 298

I happen to agree with much of what you have to say about the society that we have long cherished but can no longer afford. What we need in this country is a quiet revolution to reassert some of the ideals and ethics that once made the UK a proud and prosperous nation. Albeit that the next time round we would need to see the wealth distributed more fairly and equally.

It seems to me that we have passed the point in this country where the wealth creating sectors can continue to support the cost of paying the people who are responsible for administering and distibuting this wealth.

The cost of maintaining the banking and finacial sector is way too high because the people working there are relatively speaking overpaid for what they actually have to do. There are far too many professional shysters and con men receiving vast sums of money simply because they are allowed use other peoples hard earned cash to circulate this money. Very few of them are genuinely talented wealth creators working to build a better nation. In fact a good number of them are genuinely talentless wealth destroyers whose only aim in life is to grab as much money while they can.

The cost of maintaining law and order and our leagal system is becoming prohibitive for many of the same reasons. And the cost of running our prisons seems to have gone way over the top.

That of course leads us to the continuing escalation in what it costs to run central government in Whitehall and local government in the shires.

There has to be a fundemental shift away from paying so many professional scroungers the grossly over inflated salaries that they now demand and a move has to be made towards rewarding these people with the more modest remuneration packages that engineers and scientists working in other wealth creating sectors recieve.

I hope I haven't upset anyone!
What RBS's results say about QE 5:30pm on 10 Aug 2009 So far it seems that the only real beneficiaries of the QE programmes (that governments around the world have initiated to unfreeze the money markets) are the large investment banks. It seems these banks are now declaring huge windfall profits based largely on their QE transactions and individual bonus payments are being inflated accordingly. That suggests these banks and bankers are making huge profits and aquiring huge bonus payouts straight off the back of government initiatives to get their economies moving again.

If that is true then these banks and bankers must not be allowed to proclaim or make spurious claims about their ability to make huge profits. at times like this, is down to their enterprising culture and finacial engineering skills.

I for one would like to our government (and other governments around the world engaged in QE initiatives) act quickly to ensure that these banks are hit with punitive taxes on the profits they have made from their QE transactions and on any bonus payments paid to any bank employee who will have benefitted from those transactions
What RBS's results say about QE 12:51pm on 07 Aug 2009 I do have some sympathy for the dilemma facing the banks (and banker) because they will never be able to satisfy the conflicting demands of the government, to build up their reserves and meet the needs of small businesses and homeowners to be able to borrow more money.

It is reasonable to assume that the BOE quantitative easing programme is helping the banks to build up their reserves and at some stage in the future the banks will have enough finacial resources to lend more freely. However I suspect it will be at least another twelve months before the banks feel confident enough to relax their lending criteria. Even then the banks will not be a position to lend anything like the ammount of money they were lending before the onset of the credit crunch. At a guess I would say no more than 90% of what they were lending before and at a much higher rate of interest.

What would would be of help to small businesses right now (especially the wealth creating ones) would be if the banks deferred paying out the billions they have set aside for bonus payments for at least the twelve to eighteen months. That total ammount of bonus money would help a considerable number of small businesses to weather this storm.
What was HBOS doing? 07:39am on 06 Aug 2009 Re: 227 smith1984

I agree with you when you say that the whole nation took advantage of the easy availabilty of cheap money and all the bankers did was to supply the rest of us with that money. I don't agree with you when you say that the bankers are being unfairly condemned for discrediting the capitalist financial system.

The simple fact of the matter is that the bankers could not repay the money they had borrowed to lend to the rest of us because they (bankers) had not been sufficiently diligent (fiducially) in their borrowing and lending. And so they were forced to go cap in hand to the taxpayers to prop up the system. They were entirely responsible for the collapse of the capitalist finacial system that caused the money markets to freeze up and caused untold hardship to millions of innocent people.

Bankers operate at the very pinacle of the capitalist finacial system they are rewarded handsomely to ensure that it works as it was intended and these people go to great lengths to insist that they be allowed to carry out their duties with the minimum of regulatory interference. It for that reason alone that they deserve to be humilliated and punished far more severely than they have been to date. I accept that they shouldn't go to prison but I do believe that they should not recieve any bonus payments or hikes in their salary's until after the banks have repaid their debts to the taxpayers. That might be hard on the most recent banking appointments but that is how the capitalist system is supposed to work and after all the salary's they recieve still rewards them well.
Are banks doing enough for us? 1:01pm on 05 Aug 2009 Re: 125 wholistens,

I sympathise with your predicament and would further add that I do not condone the actions of charlatans who want to get rich quickly using other peoples money, be they city slickers or smarmy business types.

The fundemental difference between your predicament and mine (as an ordinary taxpayer) is that you can choose who to lend your money to whereas the UK taxpayers had no choice in the decision to bale out the banks. Although I must confess that it was the only sensible option available.

None the less I standby what I said about city banks and bankers who misuesd other peoples money to discredit the financial system and caused misery and hardship to millions of innocent people. Those people should in, my opinion, not recieve a penny in bonus payments until the banks have cleared their obligations to the taxpayers of this country.

If the directors and senior managers of these banks (who espouce all the advantages of the capitalist system and are operating at the very pinicle of that system) had all been declared bankrupt and stripped of their wealth - as one would expect when a business fails in the capitalist system - before being told to get on with the jobs they are paid to do then that would be OK by me. It appears that investment banks and the people who work in them want all benefits of risk taking and none of the disadvantages.

Now having climbed down from off my soapbox I have nothing else to say to you on this matter other than to wish you well in the future.
Are banks doing enough for us? 12:07pm on 04 Aug 2009 Re: 3 sadbloke

Having seen to what cost the banking industry first decieved then destroyed the finacial credibilty of the UK and ruined the lives of many ordinary people I am surprised you have adopted the stance that you have taken

Like a good many other people I have no quarrel with privilged banking types using their own money to accumlate great wealth for themselves and at risk to themselves. In fact if they did I would be the first to wish them good luck and to congratulate them if they achieved their objectives by legitimate means.

However I do have a quarrel with privileged banking types who enjoy the luxury of using depositors money to fund their lifestyles, without risk to themselves and when they lose all the money to expect other people to bale them out so they can carry on regardless. Even when they know that their actions will have ruined a many innocent peoples lives.

That is one of the reasons why money deposited by ordinary people into retail banks (safe boring banking) must be kept completely outside the reach of finacally oversexed bankers working in the (high risk) investment banks.

I would also like the regulators to make sure that none of the costs associated with running and administering the investment arm of a bank is being unfairly loaded onto the retail arminvestment arm, to the detriment of the depositors.

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