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theSkipper

Listed below are comments made by theSkipper between Monday, 7th July 2008 and Monday, 13th October 2008.

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Momentous Monday 4:51pm on 13 Oct 2008 #252:
"Where has all the money gone? ... the sellers of all those sub prime houses got their money from the mortgage providers. We never hear that mentioned - I wonder why."

Yes, I wonder why this has been so quickly forgotten. OK, our banks had lent far, far too much, but what tipped them into a domino-like chain of insolvencies were the write-downs on the American CDSs, the derivatives that concealed the sub-prime motrgages.

What is also noteworthy, if hardly surprising, is how the American problems seem to be regarded as our own. No mention of the fact that it has been another country that has shafted ours. As I said earlier, the Americans flogged their opaque derivatives over here for huge amounts of money. Our banks were idiots to buy them ... but when someone sells a dodgy financial product and someone else buys it, who is most culpable??
Momentous Monday 11:17am on 13 Oct 2008 What I'd like to know is: when is the USofA going to compensate our banks for the billions of dollars-worth of toxic derivatives that they flogged to us?

I read (on the Guardian website) a detailed summary by a Californian economics professor of how the sub-prime debt was parcelled up in opaque financial instruments, and distributed throughout the western financial systems - more than A TRILLION DOLLARS of dodgy loans.

The fact they're in this mess too is no consolation to us!
Humbling of our banks 6:30pm on 12 Oct 2008 What share of responsibility does America bear for all this? To what extent is the "humbling of our banks" due to the toxic derivatives which they were sold, and which concealed vast sums of bad debt on the American sub-prime mortgage market?
Armageddon avoided 5:26pm on 08 Oct 2008 As a (horrified) onlooker without specialist knowledge, what astounds me is the toxicity of the mortgage debt that the Americans sold into the system. Thanks to the opaque derivatives (concealing dodgy loans) emanating from the States, the whole western financial system seems to be in very serious trouble. The UK is worst affected in the EU.

I hope if nothing else, this will shake our politicians out of their silly copying of everything American.
Why bank shares are falling 10:56am on 08 Oct 2008 The toxic derivatives that are the cause of the collapse of the western financial system originated in America, as we all know. A recent article in the Gurdian by an economics professor from California made clear the "originate and distribute" strategy that the US financial institutes followed. Dodgy mortgages were concealed within incomprehensible financial instruments and sold for vastly more than their true value.

Somewhere in the USofA there are some VERY RICH bankers who sold us ALL down the river. But what are the chances of getting the most powerful state in the world to get them to compensate us for our losses? SFA!
No compromise 6:36pm on 29 Aug 2008 Can I put in a plea for a (more) correct rendering of the organisation's name in our alphabet? It should be something like al-Qa`ida or al-Qa'ida.

The backtick (`) represents the Arabic letter `ayn, whose sound we don't have in English. It's a throaty "aa".

The problem is more with the following vowel. In Arabic it's the short vowel 'kasra' - an 'i', but may be pronounced like a short 'e' (as in 'wet'). However, if we spell the word "al-Qaeda" it is pronounced by English speakers with an "ee" sound, which is quite wrong.

You could dispense with the backtick, as even al-Qaida would be an improvement!
Top-secret files 6:00pm on 07 Jul 2008 Why can't you get the transliteration from the Arabic correct, even when, right in front of you, there's a better example to follow?

"Qaeda" is undoubtedly wrong - there's no 'e' in Arabic. (There is an 'i' and an 'ee' but no 'e'.) The closest transliteration would perhaps be al-Qa`ida, with the backtick indicating the Arabic letter `yn or ayn, and some media do follow this (e.g. The Independent). However, the compromise displayed prominently at the top of the secret report is a reasonable one: al-Qaida.

All the BBC has to do is copy it!

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