Toon army v me
Here's a short Newsnight film about my recent visit to the North East, where I discussed the BBC's coverage of Northern Rock and the banking crisis with local business people, former Rock employees, trade unionists and shareholders.
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I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~32~RS~)
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That funereal tie wont have helped, nor the sub-Brian Clough hairdo
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Who on earth out there believes that Northern Rock and its ludicrous business model should ever have been preserved or protected in its 2007 form? Is this civic pride, or stupidity? Perhaps the Northern Rock customers queueing outside were also to blame for their lack of loyalty to their bank?
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These people need to tune into Sanity FM.........Take aim at the messenger and fire!!!
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I have now watched the clip, and the same question need answering, why not months earlier?
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I watched with interest your visit to Newcastle on Newsnight. At no stage did your reporting of the Northern Rock saga fill me with concern. I only became alarmed about my cash deposits was when Mr Darling advised the nation that their money was safe. Panic then set in. Such is my faith in the political classes.
Keep up your excellent reporting.
Paul Hellier
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"can understand why they are so angry at me for the loss of their small nest egg"
Extremely patronising!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I fear that you will not convince many people.
Whilst you broke the news on this I fear that you have not been as equally critical of every establishment.
I have found some of your "holier than thou" home spun philosophy sometimes grates, but your inability to actually get questions answered is probably your achilles heel.
When you return from your holidays, however, you will have the opportunity to fully ask our authorities if they should enjoy bonuses, when they have clearly failed...no reward for failure.
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The subject of this programme seems a pretty pointless exercise. Robert Peston remarks at one point that 'it's all about confidence, it's all about confidence'. This seems a contradiction with his earlier argument that 'it's all about facts'! If it is all about confidence, then surely it can be argued that his reporting of Northern Rock helped to undermine confidence in it?
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It seems to me that most people want a scape-goat for their own failings, either for not speaking up, not doing their research before investing large chunks of their life savings or for simply trusting others with those life savings. Had the BBC or Mr Peston not run with the Northern Rock or the Bradford and Bingly etc. stories the self-same people would be complaining that they should have been warned...
Sorry Robert, you were going to be dammed if you did or if you hadn't, and of course the above doesn't even touch the issue of other media organisations being more than a little upset that you obviously have better contacts and sources than they do and 'whipping up' the hysteria during 'bash Peston' period!
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Well Robert........for your next sojourn you could always go up to Halifax and gauge the mood of the locals.Believe me,it won't be pretty.
Some good ale to be had round these here parts though.We could always drown our sorrows together.
whilst vying for that most delectable of "new"experiences-the big mac or was it subway special,kfc bargain bucket,domino pizza et al ?
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Robert,
you appear to be almost as delusional as the incumbents of Downing Street!
Although I agree with your basic point that your reporting was not to blame for the collapse of NR et al, your reporting style is sensationalist at best. You are all about self-aggrandissement - as highlighted by the style of the Panorama biopic and last night's report.
Furthermore - the way that you talk to people in the report is very patronising - I'm amazed that you haven't got a black eye or bloody nose.
Try analysing information to come to a coherent conclusion, rather than just pushing out the latest "scoop" that you have managed to source.
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As a native of god's own kingdom of Northeast England, I'd just like to say that your reporting has been top notch and I can't see how reporting the news confers any blame on R Peston at all.
If Northern Rock had been properly run, rather than trying to push too many mortgages and not getting enough savings accounts, then it might well be trading currently. People queuing up outside NR were probably mostly covered by the savings guarantee scheme so should have been told that by NR itself.
The board of NR should be hauled over the coals, but where are they now?
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Robert, I saw your film and wandered why you bothered to waste your time attempting to appeal to reason.
That Northern Rock has been proved to be nothing but a Ponzi Scheme, lending upto 125% of a properties value to anyone who asked regardless of status - as proved now by their dreadful loan defaults, was never going to persuade 'Geordies' who having invested most or all of their money in just 1 stock that the fault lay with their ignorance or greed.
Did any of them bother to stop and ask once how it was possible for their small regional bank to be suddenly undercutting the entire mortgage market and providing a staggering 10% of the total UK capacity while offering saving rates above most other banks. No they did not.
A fool and their money are easily parted.
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I enjoyed the piece, and especially the music....
Dire Straits is an apt term...
;-)
ed
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I think it was irresponsible to release information about Northern Rock just to make a personal bid for stardom. Had the authorities been given time they may have been able to halt the run on the bank. It could then have been handled like RBS or HBOS.
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Did this film have to broadcast 90% comments showing that the people of the Northeast had not a clue what had caused Northern to go bust. I lived in the North East and the people there are not as stupid as this film makes them out to be. I only wish Northern Rock had been brought to its knees earlier it would have done far less damage. I personally took all money out a year earlier when the Finacial Times (I suspect Mr P again) exposed the huge imbalance in its short term wholesale borrowing versus long term lending, which all sane and honest bankers have known for ever is a really stupid thing to do. It also operated other distasteful policies such as when a high interest rate bond finished it put money into a very low rate account rather than rolling it over into another bond unless you specifically asked for it to be removed.
Any member of the public who had invested once could tell it was clearly being run by a group of sharpies rather than proper bankers. The staff must have recognized this by the banks policies, so while I have some sympathy with the members of the public who may just not have noticed, the long term staff who whinge should be partly blaming themselves for not having done more to make Northern Rock honourable or just moving jobs to a more upright employer.
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We have developed a pathetic culture. One would have hoped that blaming the messenger would have died out with Caligula. With people as woefully ignorant as some of those who spoke during your clip, one can only say that we deserve every scrap of what has happened. We also deserve the appalling government we have.
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You handled it with great poise and dignity. You did your job in keeping people informed, and you shouldn't have to apologise for that. It's sad that they lost money, but you didn't 'kick anybody in the balls when they were down.'
Keep up the good work.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
My observations on last night programme are being "moderated" , censored or just take your pick.
I should soon according the the BBC blogging code, either have it published or get an email explaining why ..... I'm still waiting........
So he thougt the two days were "fun" how very sad and fully shows his awareness and concern for the impact on those that were affected.
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What a bunch of losers.
If you buy stocks from a company you better understand and accept the risks involved into it. If you invest all or sizeable amount of your money into a one stock instead of diversifying your portfolio, you are taking a huge risk.
What the people in North East and Newcastle should do is to accept their looses, accept that they local economy was based on a lie, stop accusing others from their own mistakes and start building their future from real basis.
My advice to Robert would be to just forget any whiny noises about this issue. Journalists job and duty is to report, if somebody can't handle the truth coming out then its not the journalists fault.
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Every NR staffer is VERY lucky to still have a job - The bank should have been allowed to fail and the assets (and liabilities) of mortgages and savings be picked over by LLoyds (before LLoyds went ahead with a much more disastrous "merger".
The NR staff then got 10% bonuses last month, with a further 40%(!!!) to come over the next year... For what, exactly?
It's a disgrace! I know it's a shame about the "average" teller, etc, but I don't want to be paying their wages out of the public purse for non-productive "busy work" either!
They get paid more for failing than they did for making profits!
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The title (Toon Army v me) says it all! Me, me, me, me, me, me!
A cliched piece of film, backdrop of the Tyne Bridge, sound track of Local Hero and Fog on the Tyne the good Lord even organised snow!
My only hope is that RP takes to heart his own words that the lives and futures of REAL people are behind this and any story about business and economics.
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Good to see the BBC using rail standard class at least for the interviews. :-)
More importantly, as the Stanford debacle shows bad financial news travels very fast (but good news eg ATMs giving double money trevels more slowly).
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Dear Robert
You have been a constant source of accurate information, truth and insight to me- in a sea of fog, denial and deception by all and sundry.
May your tribe increase.
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You were right to report as you did.
Where you and other journalists can be criticised, is for not reminding people more often of the old adage that something that looks to good to be true, probably is.
The newspapers still carry tables of "best buys" based on interest rates offered on savings accounts, without any attempt to warn readers that higher interest rates probably mean higher expectation of loss of capital. They still allow the marketing people for banks and building societies to get away with the implication that they can offer a higher rate than their competitors without greater risk, because they are so much cleverer.
Someone should have kept reminding people that banks and building societies rarely fail, but when they do it is catastrophic.
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i dont see anything wrong with robert pestons reporting on northern rock.
fact is its business model was un-sustainable and the people with savings and other accounts with them had ought to be told about it at the time it was reported if not sooner.
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As sad as it is that people have lost money through the total mis-management of NR I just can't see how the reporting of this, sensationalist or not would have ultimatley made any difference!
Greed is the fundamental point here and that is true for both management and for the people who were happy to believe that share options/investments were always going to make them money.
Please get on the bonuses case and name and shame these people. From top to bottom, people in these shockingly run banks should simply be grateful they have a job.
Keep up the good work
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Don't fret pet! Fame is fleeting.
You could have released the bad news to the anonymity of the BBC news reader. You instead chose to be the messenger.
Very few are prepared to stick their head above the parapet in this way for obvious reasons?
Why did NR happen? You are not getting this across within a lay persons attention span. You need to work on this?
It happened because a mortgage could be sold on to somebody else just like a pair of shoes. NR did not need to be canny with its risk management because it did not matter. The more 'shoes' it sold the merrier.
What has the government done to totally prohibit the sale of property secured loans to others? Nothing I suspect!
Surely, a property secured loan should now stay with its provider in just the same way as a borrower stays with their deposit?
Please, no more securitisation, ever!
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With whom am I to be more sympathetic: a employee of Manpower working on the Mini line at weekends who is sacked without compensation at one minutes' notice, or, someone who had acquired shares in a former building society which had then to be bailed out by the taxpayer?
I am afraid the Mini worker gets my sympathy even though I accept they must have been advised of the potential downside of their employment arrangement.
The attitude of the people in the programme seems rather like Basil Faulty not wanting to speak about the war. The bank was bust because of its trading model probably unwittingly approved by the shareholders.
What do the shareholders in Northern Rock want? it seems to me they want the time and the opportunity to unload their shares at a good price onto an unsuspecting other who then takes the hit.
I am sorry that people have lost money but their delusion, their failure to control the economically illiterate directors of their bank caused this failure. The bloke who wrote about it was performing the same role as the boy who said the emperor has no clothes.
Since then my savings have also been decimated by the wider banking crash and I don't own one share of anything. I think I have a right to be angry. I know who is in my sights but it isn't the people who provide the information even though it continues to be very frightening at times.
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# 20 moraymint
Not sure why I was censored the first time around, so here's another attempt to post the same message
____________________
Robert
The Northern Rock thing seems to be so much history these days; almost a quaint piece of nostalgia. Meantime, we're watching more recent and, it seems to me, much more significant events unfolding:
Europe, we are told, is going into meltdown, with certain developing states edging ever closer to default
http://tinyurl.com/aavxj6
"IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has warned of a second round of nations that will be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy and seek IMF cash" (I wish he wouldn't equivocate like that).
Japan appears to be on the verge of depression with an annualised contraction of its economy at 12%.
America's situation seems to inch closer to catastrophe with each passing day
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
The UK public finances are on the point of becoming a national emergency (some of us think they are already)
http://tinyurl.com/ch37kh
... with more dire news today
http://tinyurl.com/b5h3tb
... and all the while Gordon Brown sails further into the outer reaches of the cosmos
http://tinyurl.com/agqyda
http://tinyurl.com/dlt5qe
... do you think he's alright?
Any danger of you picking up on one or more of the above closely related themes and enlightening us with a little more of your insight and wisdom?
Meantime, don't panic everyone.
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Ah, #18, Caligula. A wonderful man, without him we'd never have had Herod Agrippa thrown into jail and then put in place to pass the ball to Claudius, and without that Flavius Josephus would never have mentioned his cousin Saul as the leader of a wet-squad pushing Roman Imperial policy in handling the Jewish question. A rare insight into how Rome adapted local religions so as to ingest them...spin's nothing new.
Oh yes, confidence. Did you know that running the term "Mammon" back to its semantic origins, as far as possible, that's what it means in in Chaldean?
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With reference to the closing words of comment 14:
Gordon Gekko was more on the mark in "Wall Street":
"A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place."
It's the fools who have got together with OUR money that we should be worried about.
That name. Gordon. Keeps cropping up...
"If that guy owned a funeral parlour, nobody would die."
I think that that was another one.
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Robert, the more I see you on TV the more I realise that there is a distinct difference between what you write here and what you try to relay verbally.
I believe you are indeed the messenger and that there is someone else pulling your strings in all this.
You have simply become just another face in this banking crisis.
Please, please get some backbone and start asking the right questions. Do not give up until you have got to the bottom of things.
We want a reporter not a messenger.
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Wheeeee!
The end of Swiss banking as we knew it???
;-)
ed
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@15 ..... Dire Straits yes (actually no, it was a knopfler solo album) but "Going Home", the Theme from "Local Hero"? am not so sure the folk of the film thought of Peston that way. perhaps considering the initial reports "Private Investigations" but I think "Industrial Disease" is the best way of describing Northern Rock .... Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down
setting aside the first bit of music, a good piece, but why no mention of your 2003 concerns wouldnt that put the entire collapse in focus?
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Actually. There is another good example of why breaking news stories can sometimes do more harm than good.
When news broke that Gordon Strachan was going to leave Southampton FC at the end of the 2003-04 season, the local press, and Saints supporters immediately wanted to know who was going to take over the Managers job. It filled a great many column-inches in the local paper and many minutes of airtime on local radio and TV.
Southampton FC initially said that they would make an announcement at the end of the season, as G.S. had agreed to carry on until then. They wanted to manage the process of change in a calm collected way....
But calls for news of G.S. replacement grew louder and louder and eventually reached the point where something simply had to be done. G.S. resigned. The Saints Chairman explicitly commented at the time, that the media hadn't helped the situation...
Southampton F.C. have progressively gone down the tubes since then. So would it have been better to let the club manage the change of manager in the way that it wanted ?
It's very hard to say, but that was a very good example of how media attention forced important decisions to be rushed.
So far as the business world is concerned, it is not usually appropriate to break news of ongoing merger talks. As a general rule let the companies announce that when they are ready, as merger news always affects share price.
But the Lloyds/TSB and HBOS situation happened at a time of global banking crisis. The government was encouraging the merger, performing U-turns and suspending various rules so that it could happen. Without such action, major UK banks would probably have failed, within a matter of days. So it was a fair story I reckon, under the circumstances...
Equally, if a major UK Bank has to approach the Government for a handout, the first time that's happened in centuries, that's really big news which shouldn't be covered-up. If anybody gets that sort of story, report it. Give people a chance to get their money out if they want to.
The people responsible for Banks failing are the irresponsible Bankers, ineffective Regulators and inept Politicians.
Particularly the US officials who let Leehman Brothers go to the wall. That was the one really big catastrophic decision...
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Robert - I've done some research.
Apparently, if you respond to locals who blame you for everything by adopting a plaintive expression and declaring
"Why I man?"
this will establish an empathy and win over their hearts.
I hope that this is helpful.
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I live in the Nort East and agree with many of the comments like post 13 and 14 and especially 17 by tysonc.
I believe the decision to save Northern Rock was political...with the old heartland of Scotland gone pear shaped (SNP ); they didn't want to risk another "heartland" area going wrong...(Of course that bit of calculation has been overtaken by events more times than a Minardi racing a McLaren)
One very worrying aspect is illustrated by Northern Rock as well...in that Plan A was to run down the Bank (as it can't ever have a future without access to funds and those are never coming back) using Government funds...and marvellous news..last week it was ahead of timetable on paying us all back!!
But...wait a minute..... the 22 years into a 25 year 70% LtoV (back then in 1987 ) mortgages are easy to shift...even the 85% Lto V mortgages in the nineties will be easy to shift.....but didn't the Bank experience it's exponential growth in the 2000s??
So won't a lot of mortgages be tougher to shift from here on in???....Such as those involving 100% plus (125% even!!!!) loans make up a large proportion of the total loan book.... and as these are £250K out on a flat that was £200K then and is now £150K nominal (and less than £100K actual, in the market); where one partner is fearing redundancy and the other has already had a wage freeze followed by 4 day working and 20% salary drop.
Obviously that is a ludicrously overdrawn example merely to illustrate the point through exaggeration??
SO.... Plan B needed!!!..... and here it is ..forget Plan A (it never happened) now lend like mad to people who couldn't otherwise get a mrtgage./..so forget large deposits and so on.....
and maybe this way we can wrap ALL the toxic mortages together (the remaining hard to monetise ones AND the new 'helping out in the recession ones') and stick a flag saying " At least we did something" on top of it---- and quietly ignore the tax payers debt which is never going to get paid back......
" Its the Politics stupid!!"
(Which also explains whipping up this stupid "shoot the messenger stuff"...I said at the time that a financial reporter with good connections who DOESN'T report is actually an insider trader---- it's to his credit that he reported......and my satisfaction that the 'Gilligan manoeuvre' has failed
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So Roberto,
will you be heading back up north to Edinburgh when the debacle of RBS finals is pressed upon us next Thursday ?
I fear there will be a story or two then........
More like a bloodbath.
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I've no time for this criticism of RP. What worries me is that if financial journalists are "gagged", who will tell the "punters" that their savings are at risk? The providers of wholesale funds who are in the know see trouble coming and are able to withdraw funds leaving the retail depositors most exposed. Pre-Northen Rock, most retail depistors assumed that all UK banks were regulated and therefore safe but clearly this is not the case. In view of this, the more information the public can get on financial institutions to enable them to assess risk, the better. This idea that the revelations of RP destroyed the public's confidence in NR is not the point - NR was doomed as soon as the providers of wholsale funds stopped backing it. All RP did was to let the punters know what was going on so that we were not at such a disadvantage to the institutions.
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dictionary definition of bonus:an extra, unexpected windfall/advantage(Who's kidding who ? )
Thought the culture was that these were built into contracts of employment-hardly unexpected or hard won then ?
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Nice pictures of Newcastle. Did the image of the city a lot of good you going there.
It was brave of you to put yourself up front of the pack
'The Rock' was part of the establishment here and many people are still in a state of disbelief that this has happened.
After all they were given free shares which they thought would keep rising forever.
However it was known months before they went bust that Northern Rock could be in trouble. Shares were falling and rumour was rife. It's just that people didn't want to believe it.
They need someone to blame and you just happened to be available.
I do hope your next visit will be more pleasurable. Wales is lovely but Northumberland is even better.
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Stanford under suspicion of fraud.
Does anyone else see a similarity with missing Lord Lucan?
Are they related?
We should be told
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Personally I think that whoever dreamt up the (panic enducing) term
"Lender of Last resort"
should take the blame - not Robert.
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Robert
As a North Eastener I have no problems whatsoever with your reporting of the Northern Rock Debacle, though the state of denial from a lot of people with respect to the viability of the business, doesn't surprise me either.
What did annoy me was when catching a snippet of your interview with Radio Newcastle, presumably on the same visit. Whilst trying to stay upbeat and not send too much of a message of doom and gloom, you mentioned that some of the newly unemployed could be possibly cushioned by jobs in the public sector. Although laudible in sentiment, more jobs in the public sector is precisely what will the local economy does not need.
OK - reliance on government for work, is better than government handouts, not to work. It however breeds a different type of dependency culture. Already approx 60% of those in work in North East are employed within the public sector. The region needs government help to encourage private enterprise and not more "make work programs".
RE Northern Rock: Whilst appearing to undertake a risky road to finance their rapid growth, they didn't see fit to hire the best to manage the business even after demutualisation and floatation. I was amazed to find a "Ridley" at the helm at the time of their demise. The former building society had been run almost as their own personal familly fiefdom for a number of years prior. Yet another case of the old boy network. I doesn't matter whether or not your qualified to do the job - you have the right name / former school / club tie.
Until the banking sector is run by those who are qualified and that the senior practioners are licensed and abide an enforceable code of conduct - things will never get better.
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Where NR made its name as a mortgage lender was its ability to lend 125% of the value of the property you wanted to buy.
For example you wanted to buy a house valued at £200,000.
You went to NR and asked to borrow £200,000.
NR said: How much deposit are you willing to put down on the said property?
You said: Don't be daft! I haven't got a deposit.
NR said: No worries, we'll lend you 125% of the value of the property which means we will lend you £250,000 so long as you promise to use part of the extra £50,000 as a deposit, at least 10%.
You said: Just so I understand what you are saying. I borrow £250,000, £20,000 of which I have to use to put down as a deposit. What about the extra £30,000?
NR said: Well you did say it was your first house, didn't you? You can use the extra £30,000 for all those nice home furnishings from IKEA.
You said (actually you didn't because you couldn't believe your luck!): What can possibly go wrong?
NR said: Go wrong? Go wrong? Look man, we live on an island and there's more people than houses to go round. The only way for house prices to go is up, up, up (unlike our football team - chortle chortle).
===============================
RBS, Birminham and Midshires, B & B and HBOS were even better as far as mortgage lending went because with them, you could 'lie to buy'. So long as you put down a 5% - 10% deposit, you could dream up your fantasy salary to make sure it was sufficient for the amount you wanted to borrow.
For example, you were a cook in the canteen at A school earning £3,000 per year. The amount you wanted to borrow was £100,000. You put down a deposit of £10,000 as 10% deposit. Needing to borrow the remaining £90,000, you realised that your salary was insufficient. However what if you self-certificated your salAry so that with no questions asked you changed your job title from Canteen Cook to Restaurant Chef and your salary from £3,000 to £30,000. Job done!
===============================
It would be laughable if such practices were not true but the reality is, they were standard. Where was the Regulator?
Now Robert, when you have rested and return home to find a pile of government leaks ready to be disseminated to us in your 'In Tray', please find time to investigate why the success that is the FSA is awarding itself £33 million bonuses!!!
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Robert -- Don't worry what people say to you.
Truth alone triumphs.
We have lived in a very secretive and shady decade where the government have been found out.
Please continue your job of reporting the facts -- there is still much to unravel.
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guess moderator must be havin a snoooooozzzzzzzzzzze ?
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I can understand the shareholders being cross, but with so many places going to the wall they are not alone I fear, and RB can't be blamed for all ills. I don't think RB keeping his mouth shut would have saved their investments.
On the other hand if I had over the 35k limit (as it was at the time) in savings in NR I would be thanking RB for giving me the info (which the public needed) to get my cash into a safe place! No one knew NR would be saved by Mr Brown at the time!
I am a mad about the bonuses the banks STILL seem to handing out, in my line of work I would have been sacked for bad performance. I am also mad about the interest rates on my hard earned savings being so poor! Nothing to do with RB.
If only someone had spoke up sooner about the amount of toxic loans out there maybe we wouldn't be in this mess!
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Perhaps this will kick start a new trend in reporting where London based reporters are sent to the regions but at least the opinions from people are genuine, as opposed to political classes spin merchants. The north east has reinvented itself and local people are justifiably proud of their heritage. But this reinvention has also been replicated across the country.
Equivalent pieces on Lloyds, HBOS and RBS would also help show how different lending policies have contributed to the economic crisis and demolish the myths/ignorance that prevail reagrding their nationality. A video piece on HBOS corporate lending is required as a counter juxtaposition to the overheated housing market.
Ultimately this crisis has to be seen as a salutory lesson to us all. Banks cannot lend irresponsibly, nor buy overseas loans off other banks business recklessly on the mere say so of some credit agency's AAA rating. Bank customers have to learn to live within their means - just because your credit card limit has been extended by a grand, does not mean you are compelled to hit the high street and splash out!
The other area of debt is student loans - the figures are bandied about often enough, but my generation went to Uni on a grant. The concept of graduating and looking for a job in the current climate, with a GBP 20,000 loan (or more) weighing like a millstone around my neck is obscene. Some objective reporting is needed here, the young people I know who intend to go to Uni also have parents that are well off.
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Robert Peston didn't cause the run on Northern Rock. But he has cashed in on it.
This would float in the US where the media operates a very open personality culture. In the UK it feels distasteful, more so as it is the BBC and particularly so considering the subject matter.
Robert's comment: "I believe in the message not the messenger," sounds horribly insincere.
Robert Peston has become the story, and it has been entirely of his own making.
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TAX REVENUES DOWN!!
WHAT A SURPRISE? NOT!
ANSWER NULABOUR??
EAGLE BLUSTERS BULL
YAWN
MORE LIES MORE DECEIT.
GO GORDY GO.
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Yet more wild swings in banking shares today...........bigmoneybags dipping in and out perhaps ?????????
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Nearly one and a half hours DELAY on
moderation??
WHY CANT THIS BLOG BE POST MODERATED?
WHY DOES DEBATE HAVE TO BE STRANGLED?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Robert, you came across OK, ignore 'ooo how his approach offends me' nutters on here. It seems to me that you'd gladly sit down over a pint with anyone and chat about the issues. You can't say that about many people in public life. Hey, was a that a flat cap I saw on your head? Never know you might just whip-up a new trend here. Gordon Brown'll be wearing one soon, thinking as he will be, that hey, it'll just send out a message to the grass roots that I'm one of you. Anyway, media star, trend setter, good God: what next? the movies?
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Well.....there's definitely no danger of the FTSE top100 flatlining at moment !
More twists 'n turns than any racetrack and swings than our local park.
What frantic stuff then.......talka bout a rollercoaster ride-this makes a big dipper look like childs play.
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I’m continually amazed by some of your posters Robert....
We will always have the ones that know your job better than you...... and the ones that don’t seem to understand you are a journalist and not some sort of arbitration service....
But it is the ones that are still talking about the ‘Run on the Bank’ that amaze me....... as far as I can see the publicity and resulting panic was partly the reason the Gov stepped in so quickly, resulting in no one losing Money
Net direct result of your reporting = Some old people queuing for a few hours!!!!!!
Get over it people
Next time Robert - you don't report it and we won't bail it out...........
Then they'll know who to blame!
PS don’t forget to broadcast the report telling everyone that you knew about it before though, just to rub it in! That will get them riled......
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Sound Money? or the Sound of Silence (The blog software will trap the onomatopoeic word for a puff of smoke - apparently it's sometimes used as a derogatory term)
;-)
ed
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Would they still have those shares if the bank managed to survive a bit longer, or would they have sold them like a flash?
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What a shambles of a 12 minute prog. Came across as man with news meets simple folk who blame him for their troubles. Produced and directed by people who found camera and an old greatest hits album.
If you wanted to take this route you should have got in Terry Gilliam and the Python crew.
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Sorry Mr Peston, you have not even begun to convince me. You are all about sensationalist reporting, the main purpose of which appears to be your own aggrandisement.
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#22 - Jukka.
I could not agree with your comments more - "What a bunch of losers", "What the people in North East and Newcastle should do is to accept their looses, accept that they local economy was based on a lie, stop accusing others from their own mistakes and start building their future from real basis".
Yeah, quite so. I mean if another area of the UK were similarly affected, say like the City of London - they should accept their losses, accept that their(sp) losses were based on a lie, stop accusing others from their own mistakes etc etc - eh,oh?
Not happened has it?
From UK resident - not a Geordie.
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see BBC article about SAAB in emergency meeting - see last paragraph and Maud's position and statement - well done her/him(?).
Are we able to buy her in to UK govt?
Wouldn't it have been fantastic (don't blog telling me why it would have been terrible) to see all the bankers (CEO's etc, not poor tellers etc) faces if Ally D had stood up and said
'They appointed me to look after the finances for the NHS not to support bust banks and pay obscene bonuses'.
Love it.
PS Whilst it may sound like I am revelling in all this I'm not - times are tough - and I'm in with the sufferers at the moment despite having been careful with my cash all my life - but part of the British psyche is to manage to smile no matter what - can we export that to China?
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I'm afraid to say I think your reporting did cause the run on Northern Rock, you affected the confidence of the people watching the report, and people not being able to access the website, you try and get onto a website when the online sales are on or the inland revenue on the 31st Jan and you have the same problem you can not get access to the website. If you had allowed NR a bit of time to examine all the options, maybe people would not have lost their savings, their jobs and their confidence in the banking industry. Money is a very emotional thing and any financial journalist should realise this - if you have 'enjoyed' your visit to Newcastle, somehow I don't think you have learnt from your reporting on NR.
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SO GORDYS UP FOR SAVING PALESTINE
GOOD IDEA JUST 40 YEARS TOO LATE.
BUT HEY THERE GORDY HOW ARE WE GOING
TO PAY FOR IT.
THE MIRACLE OF A "SUSTAINABLE"ECONOMY
WHAT??
ONE LIKE OURS OF COURSE! BUST!!
END TO BOOM & BUST?? HA HA!!
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People need to start getting real and facing the facts, and stop blaming the messenger, thank god for Bob!
I cannot believe that we are just sitting back and letting this goverment get away with this financial mess. We should be out there voicing our concerns, aiming our anger at the bankers etc. Have we all become spineless, lets get out there and show them how we feel and what we want now!!! who's coming!!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Well done to Robert Peston for the discovery and revealing it and well done on the BBC for doing what they do and putting this sort of thing in front of the public.
Keep up the good work and get there earlier next time - somebody must have been in a position to see this mess we're in - I did.
Well done all
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Tyke, And the American banks are still
d
r
o
p
p
i
n
g.....
like a morbid feline...
Schadenfreude? Why ever not?
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I see the old Bank of America shares have been taking a right caning........if anyone would care to look at their 12monthly performance chart-it makes awful reading indeed !
Sentiment does not look good.
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Robert, in no way are you responsible for the run on Northern Rock, in the program nobody criticised the directors and their business model which without doubt was the sole cause of the demise of NR.
If you had not reported it very soon someone else would as soon as NR went for funding support.
If you work in journalism no way is life the same as it is to the man in the street and the two views will rarely meet and agree.
At least you bring us the facts, straight and honest. There is enough blurring of the facts in this world.
Keep up the good work.
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Does Betfair quote a price for you as next ''permanent Newcastle manager'' ??
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What could be more ridiculous? The FSA (our half-baked version of a regulator) are awarding themselves bonuses!, while the regulees drop like flies....
You've gotta laugh
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BACK IN THE UK.
CLEARED CUSTOMS.
LEFT THE AIRPORT.
THERES AN ODOUR OF BANKRUPTCY,DECAY
ETC.
WELCOME TO GORDYS BLIGHTY!!
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Northern Rock would appear to be a small building society that converted to a bank and tried to grab the biggest market share of the mortgage market.
The shareholders and savers in the bank should compare Northern Rock with the Nationwide. The Nationwide is still there as a functioning business, Northern Rock has no future.
The people who took the conversion money are primarily responsible.
All the converted building societies have failed or had to sell themselves. This is where the problem started.
Could Northern Rock have stayed a building society? It could have tried but the greed that the carpetbaggers unleashed would have probably meant that the savers at the time would have taken the conversion shilling.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Post 15 & 37 surely Mark Knoflers most famous song "Money for Nothing" from the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms would be the most appropriate music for Northern Rock and 125% mortgages.
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If Robert had been arround 2000years ago and done likewise ,he would have got nailed to a cross ,he should just thank God that he is living in a christian country .
Thanks to Robrt the ponzi's are dropping like ninepins.
The fact that pension fund managers and delusional individuals made their bonus from buying into ponzi schemees is not Roberts falt.
The fallen human suscepitibility to lieing conmen goes back to the fall of man and democracy [eve]is its chief victim .
lol things can only get worse .
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Irrespective of how dangerous NR's business model was and should it have been nationalised, I feel there should be a general responsibility by the media not to 'glamorise' failures / problems.
It was obvious from all the news reports at the time that people panicked from the outset of the story being reported by PR and not just when the government stepped in.
The government had to be seen to do something publicly instead of what of what I understand the BoE was trying to do behind the scenes - save NR as best it could without sending everyone into a panic.
The BoE may not have been able to save NR even this way but at least the run on the bank could have been curtailed.
From PR's sources I would've thought that the possibility of the BoE stepping in would have been known(?)
The question I would like to put to PR is should the media allow a 'scoop' to come before efforts to stop a possible meltdown of a bank and the resulting impact of the local and national economy?
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I thought Robert Peston was right to say that it is 'all about confidence'. However what he chooses to close his eyes to, along with the rest of the media, is that it is they who are the major cause of our lack of confidence. The economic situation is one thing to contend with, but the media - which relishes in its self-appointed role as a 24 hour doom machine - amplifies our fears and worries by a good 50%.
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Entirely unconvincing Mr. Peston.
Having spoken to so many people who believe your negative broadcasts have contributed heavily to the lack of confidence in the country a period of silence would be most welcome.
It is not just the North East of England who are sore with the BBC's business and economics team over their sometimes hysterical reaction to events..... which quite frankly has frightened the pants off consumers.
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Robert,
The Bourgoisie will blame anyone and anything for this crisis - including you - rather than admit that the system they so adamantly believe in (against all logic) cannot be wrong.
Well done for going and facing the people who are mis-guided and mis-led by the Bourgoisie leaders.
Sadly, the population simply cannot take on board the stark and honest truth and it's easier to blame you than them.
The young lady who asked you if you could have spoken to 'the Government' before you broke the story.
With the current anti-terror (or anti-citizen) laws you might find yourself bound and gagged and off to Guantamano or Eqypt where torture is 'legal'
However, what I think is more accurate is that if you didn't break the story then NR might have survived a bit longer, the Government wouldn't have taken it seriously and we would have had 3 banks fail 3 months later (HBOS, NR and RBS). Now that would have created much bigger waves than the NR effect.
If anything RP - YOU ACTUALLY SAVED THE BANKING INDUSTRY (if it survives). You created the scene for a steadier dismantling rather than what would have been an abrupt crash.
Once again though, it shoes that the public cannot comprehend that the Government works against their interests, and not for them. It's easier to blame you because you have 'a face' - where as the real culrpits of this mess are all anonymous Bourgoisie.
Hopefully, once their all starving and dying the public might wake up to this fact. I can understand their anger, but it's directed in the wrong place.
HELP US BRING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT, OUST THE BOURGOISIE AND REPLACE IT WITH A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST STATE WHERE EVERY MAN IS EQUAL AND PEOPLE ARE NOT OPPRESSED BECAUSER THEIR FOREFATHERS DIDN'T HAPPEN TO BE COLONIAL THIEVES.
If the public don't understand - then they must be left to rot. The only way to really change things is to take a leap into the unknown.
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Like #6 our call to action on Northern Rock was on the Friday night when Mr Darling again and again refused to say that the money was safe - only that the FSA, who were independant, said it was safe.
As an investor in Equitable Life, I had and still have, little faith in the FSA who tend to rely heavily on 'processes' rather than facts when carrying out their assessments.
We drew out our money when it was clear that (on the crisis Friday at least) the gov. attempting to distance themselves from the shambles. As it turned out, they were forced into supporting Northern Rock...
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67 goforcommonsense
There was a run on the bank because Alistair Darling took four days to reassure everyone their money was safe.
Government dithering was the cause.
Just as it took them too long before announcing the recapitalisation of the banks.
By the time they did billions had already been withdrawn.
In the electronic age there is no space for diitherers.
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I agree with some of the comments that when talking to the 'public' you can seem a little patronizing.
Ignoring the fact that they were invariably misguided in their criticism (not to mention their gung ho attitude to building up that small personal nest egg - i mean a small regional bank that quadrupled its share price in a decade - surely some diversification was necessary), but you seemed to lose patience with their stories and flick your head back, wave your arms and cut in once boredom limit was reached.
Actually on reading that back you sound very like me.
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78 NewsStudent
Nice piece and very true.
It was a very successful building society and could and should have stayed that way.
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#48 andfinally
There never were more people that houses!
There might have been more BUYERS than houses though
Don't think those in the housing market weren't as stupid as those in Banking!
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I'd rather see a Panorama investigating the leaks in government which led to your scoops.
Leaks which obviously intended to depress share prices before the government had to take stakes in the banks.
The fact that the FSA has refused to investigate this government leaking is astonishing, when this is clearly market abuse and well within its remit.
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At the end of the day, as they say, we all know the price of shares can go down as well as up....... whilst we do not expect the price/value of savings deposited in a bank to be able to go down as well as up.
This is the crucial dividing line between order and chaos for our western capitalist model, and one that many of the good people of Newcastle have unfortunately got confused about.
But, don't become too complacent Robert - it's now a good four months since you got this scoop, which in journalistic terms is now old hat I'm afraid, and I think you need to get back to the story being the story, not the messenger being the story.
Back to the front line please and start digging up some more important truths.
One suggestion as a starter....
UBS has just paid the US Govt $780m to settle allegations that it defrauded the US tax authorities.
Maybe I can outline my feeling about this by being very careful to stay the correct side of the law here, and explain what I think happened?
For the sake of the moderators on this blog and just so no-one gets the wrong idea, I'd like to say the following:
- there is no suggestion by me mentioning this that I believe UBS did anything wrong
- UBS have not admitted any guilt here, and as far as I know UBS has always been completely fair and transparent in its dealings with everyone, including the US Govt, and in fact with all governments.
- UBS, as far as I know, is one of the most honest and ethical banks in Europe
- UBS, as far as I know, employs some of the most upright, ethical and outstanding bankers who walk the face of this earth
- UBS is one of the pillars of the Swiss financial system, and has been, as far as I know, a great ambassador for Swiss probity.
So, I'm guessing maybe it was some sort of oversight on the part of a junior employee that led to this situation...... do you think?
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of course you feel sorry for the couple who lost their nestegg
we all feel sorry for all the people and ourselves too
am I right in thinking they had shares
deposits are covered and safe upto 50k
but shares CAN GO DOWN AS WELL AS UP
I found this out to my disadvantage years ago and learned my lesson
what did these people expect
did they read the small print
even I could see NR was dodgy 18 months ago and I fall asleep over the financial pages most of which, as you will have noted fellow bloggers, goes over my head, but it was just obviously too good to be true
no good blaming you
I want to hear information not have it gagged
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When are the Peston apologists going to realise that most of those who criticise his reporting are not blaming RP for the banking crisis or even NR's failure.
We would simply prefer a more robust analysis of the facts, presented in a sober and considered manner. Unfortunately, what we get is a regurgitation of partial data - with an incomplete and slanted analysis.
Please don't patronise your readers, viewers and listeners by assuming that lowest common denominator reporting is sufficient.
For more intelligent reporting - and much more interesting blog commentary - please turn to Paul Mason's Newsnight blog.
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I live is West Sussex and cannot find anyone that thinks that Robert's reporting style is appropriate. When he is supposed to be reporting facts he appears to add negative comments and interpretation at every opportunity and to enjoy doing it. He does not differentiate clearly if at all between fact, other people's opinion and his opinion. He seems to want the bad news to run and run. He carries on reporting on the opinions of people from banks and other discredited sources. He does not seek out people looking analyisng the issues to produce projections of the future based on analysis
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I was born and bred in the NE and realise that voting Labour is brainwashed into the local society.
I hope the NE teaches Labour a lesson at the next election.
Labour has kept the NE down as a way of preserving its grass roots working class vote in the area, and the treatment of NR illustrates how it takes this vote for granted.
HBOS' and RBS' mistakes have been far more serious than NR's, not only lending irresponsibly but also investing in US mortgage backed securities, which NR did not do.
RBS has liabilities of £2 trillion and net assets of less than £100b, £30b of which it is about to write off. A balance sheet which is far more dubious than NR's.
It thankfully has been saved, but why not NR? Why not a quiet bail out or a takeover by Lloyds?
Labour has not given the same support to NR that it has to the scottish banks, because it has taken the Labour vote in the NE for granted, which it cannot do in Scotland.
Your reporting was sensationalist and therefore irresponsible, and my impression at the time was that the sensationalist spin played a big part in the retail run, which did for NR, not the £3b facility it requested from the BoE, which at the time it did not immediately even have to draw upon, but which it wanted as a backstop.
As a depositor at the time with NR, directly as a result of your reporting I did consider withdrawing my money but as it was below £35k and as such I would have lost only a small part of it, I ignored the hysteria.
However many people would not have wanted to risk losing even a small part of their savings.
The sensationalism also has helped your career immensely as prior to this event I had not a clue who you were.
However the real culprits in destroying NR, which led the downwards spiral in confidence in the UK, and has made our current situation so much worse, are the person/body who leaked the information to you, which I believe was the BoE, and the subsequent lack of a definitive and rapid response in guaranteeing deposits, and if necessary other liabilities, by the government.
Millions have now lost so much money e.g. the 3m Lloyds shareholders who have bailed the government out over HBOS, and the millions of pension savers who have lost hundreds of billions in the share values of RBS, Lloyds and Barclays alone, largely through the government's inept handling of the crisis and its destruction of confidence (which started in my view with the run, the first in 160 years, on a British bank, and at that, a bank which was not exposed to US subprime).
These millions will no doubt have their losses fresh in mind at the time of the impending election, if the government fails to revive investor confidence.
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They say a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.
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Question,
The NRK have only got approx 10bln debt against the mortgage book, does this make them one of the best capitalised of the UK banks ;-)
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I got the impression most of the folk were angry (quite rightly IMO) that NRK had been dealt with differently (as opposed to RBS / Lloyds HBOS et al).
NRK's balance sheet is still MUCH stronger that the aforementioned.
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bobby
can you confirm if the tsunami that rodney marsh referred to was an underwater nuclear explosion test and if the financial tsunami will be anything similar.
why do the toon army not wear shirts when it is cold? have you seen any Tunami Japanese vids
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I've just heard Crash in a press conference with Berlusconi saying yet again that this credit thing is a global thing which "nobody predicted".
Well I'm sorry but he's not telling the truth. Dozens, hundreds, thousands if not tens of thousands of people in this country including myself saw this coming and said so!!
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Wow, talk about shooting the messenger. Surely it's not Robert's fault that the bank lended irresponsibly for years. Besides, breaking the news is better for the economy in the long run.
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To be honest I believe lot of ppl are being unfair towards Robert.
He got a scoop and he published it that is his job, I don’t think he really expected the level of panic that followed.
If Robert hadn't published it, someone else would have with the same result.
Imagine if the likes of the daily mail, sun or the mirror got the scoop instead.
"Shudders" trying to imagine that headline.
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Rob Peston is spot on when he says that the ones who are paying for the bad management of the banks and the feckless people overspending on their credit cards and paying more than they can afford for mortgages, thus driving up house prices are the very people who behaved sensibly and correctly. Its prudent savers who did the right thing by living within their means and saving to provide for their later years are who are bieng penalised by the reduction in interest rates making savings virtually worthless as a way to boost income. My fixed rate guaranteed income bonds which were paying 6% until last month, have now matured and I am now getting .05% which is a drop of over £80 per week through no fault of my own. The answer for savers is very simple. Since there are far more savers than borrowers and since the government have backed up the failing banks with public money, then savers have effectively been devalued and as with any commodity which is in surplus, the price is cheap. I decided that at only half of one percent interest, it hardly made any difference if my savings were earning interest at all so I withdrew ALL of my savings and placed them in the safety deposit box at my local bank where I keep my house deeds etc. This has effectively removed my savings from the banking system altogether while still keeping them safe. If enough people withdrew their savings then the banks would soon be crying out for people to save more money because its this money that they can loan out to potential borrowers. No money in from savers equals no money to lend to borrowers and so no banks! Market forces would soon dictate that since savers funds were in short supply, then the banks would have no choice but to increase the rates paid to savers. So the answer to all savers who are currently moaning about low interest rates is to stop moaning and do something about it.
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Guilty Conscience Robert ?
Why not just say Sorry for overdramatising the News, or indeed for reporting the the Scoop on a Friday!
What perfect timing to cause a riot !
You could also come clean about the Mole in the Bank of England.
Official Secrets Act, what an interesting piece of legislation..........
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If you don't think that a 15 billion bank run had an affect on the outcome of Northern Rock you are up a gumtree.
The 3 billion facility arranged with the BOE hadn't even been used until your glory seeking scoop.
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There it stands at the Regent Centre in Gosforth, a monument to the vanity and hubris of Applegarth and Northern Rock. What did you make of Northern Rock's new corporate headquarters, young Peston? I worked on several phases of the mammoth development. There must be at least FOUR multi-storey car parks and three huge office blocks.
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I like the comment about you excelling in bad news. Don't get me wrong, you are probably the only blog I visit daily, but I can see that reporting bad news is where you are best at. This must be your time with so many such news out!
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#95
Hawkespeter.
‘When he is supposed to be reporting facts he appears to add negative comments and interpretation at every opportunity and to enjoy doing it. He does not differentiate clearly if at all between fact, other people's opinion and his opinion. He seems to want the bad news to run and run’
I truly agree with you… Yet sadly, in recorded history this phenomenon is to be expected from most news media.
One wonders how many actually just use this space as an opportunity to vent their opinion and anger over the current economic affairs, regardless of Robert Preston and his Headliners. (I am sure he is a nice guy really… but I do need him to prove it)
It seems at the moment despite what Robert writes; the subject matter of our comments reaches the level of expressions of anger and resentment.
I believe most here are reaching to understand more.
The other day, Robert Preston said “Hello… I’m in Wales…” Number of off topic comments: in the hundreds.
God bless the internet and modern communications technology allowing millions to understand in an instant how others feel.
There really is no going back to the dark ages.
With the effortlessness of communication available in our modern times, it’s beyond the point of no return.
I personally would sacrifice many other luxuries if it meant me keeping the advantage of the internet and other modern communication technology.
Communication is the universal solvent.
The more we bat this problem around and understand the real truth the less it will truly affect us.
In this current dire economic situation there can be many comparisons to other Recession / Depressions but the people involved ages past had very limited communications to others and their nations. Many naturally accepted what they were told irrespective of truth. Keep the mass ignorant and keep rule.
I believe regardless of the apparent severity of the situation we have an opportunity communicate out of it.
Find out what’s really needed and wanted, humble our lifestyles temporarily if necessary, ultimately help and produce worthwhile products for our fellow man.
By the way, I don’t rule out many facts that these economic phenomena have been CAUSED, rather than an unfortunate series of inexplicable events.
The vast majority of us are interested in others survival as well as our own. There are only very few truly evil men out there causing the rest of us big problems.
I dare say… It may get violent and intense over the next decade to redress the balance.
Sincerely, I read this column with true interest in all opinions and comments to broaden my reality on how others feel.
Bless yer cotton socks all of you.
Kind regards.
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#104
How much does your bank charge for your safe deposit box?
Might be better for you to club together with other like-minded souls, buy your own secure safe, and take your bank out of the picture altogether.
Why, you could even lend this money out to those of good covenant and get more than 0.05% interest in return.
Hang on a minute.............................
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I note that, at close of business, Bank of America and Citigroup have each fallen by a further 13 per cent plus.
Have you been spreading more rumours, Robert? Or is this merely the surprisingly speedy death knell of Obamarama across the pond?
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People with life's savings here and there upon which we depend for life's essential and some comforts are used as the human shields sacrifices for those with 7-figure salaries, daily jollies and blood bonuses.
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And, just in passing, whatever happened to the Obama dog?
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The NR customers who caused the run on the bank, its former shareholders, and all the other shoot-the-messenger types need to get a reality check.
NR was going kaput whether or not Peston made the comments that he did.
It was a failing / about to fail bank.
If anything Peston forced the Govt's hand and in so doing saved the bank.
Anyway, back to the reality check.
If people think Peston is depressinly OTT, then they need check out Gerald Celente's trendcasting -- his message is absolutely horrific.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMGYWVfNp0g
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#104
I strongly recommend you take your savings out of the safety deposit box and buy GOLD.
The pending inflation will obliterate the value of your paper.
Indeed the actual box may be worth more in a few years.
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Well I finally got a stereo type answer for the suppression and opinion of my comment on the Newcastle programme.
The reasons for exclusion include
provoke, attack or offend others; are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable; are considered to have been posted with an intention to disrupt; contain swear words (including abbreviations or alternative spellings) or other language likely to offend.
It was certainly not racist, sexist, homophobic,sexually explicit, intended to disrupt, didn't contain swear words in any format.
Which leaves
Provoke,
Attack or offend others
Abusive or objectionable
Or language likely to offend
If only the blogs in the first place were moderated in the same fashion.
I think 103 said - He got a scoop and he published it that is his job, I don?t think he really expected the level of panic that followed.
So did that scoop on Northern Rock
Provoke
Attack or offend others.
I think the post scoop reaction finds it guilty of those, at the very least.
Apply that criteria to any blog published and you can find one of those reasons in most, otherwise they wouldn't get reaction unless everyone just write and agrees with them.
One rule for one, one for the journo's?
No of course the scoop didn't cause NR to fail, but the scoop as published inflamed the situation far beyond the wisdom of the messenger who was concerned more for the ego the revalation would than the people it would affect.
The first individual in the programme was right - the news release should have been stage managed whilst the level of protection under the scheme should have been highlighted which would have saved a degree of panic and worry amongst a vast majority of the savers.
I can't put my views more gently than this and if this gets moderated out, then so much for free speech.
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Any VIEWS on BLIARS little $ 1 million
award?
WORLD PEACE RUBBISH?
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Robert.
You keep going on about confidence and how the whole system depends on it.
I disagree.
The whole system actually depends on general acclamation.
Reasoning:
How can anybody have confidence in a known flawed system?
The system is used by those that know the flaws. They rely on general acclamation by the rest of us to keep the flawed system going.
Try explaining that to a bunch of angry Geordies on a cold day.
Or any day!
Then try explaining how bankers make their money from the rest of us.
Then try explaining how bankers can make money whilst the rest of us lose money.
Then scuttle off back to London as quick as you can!
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I feel I must point out a few facts.
1) Most people in the North East obtained shares in Northern Rock when it demutualised - they did NOT go around buying huge wads of shares being greedy. The only 'greed' was when they voted for demutualisation - and that was obviously as a result of the prospectus and comments in the news that savers with the Rock would get cash windfalls. There was nothing in the business model on demutualisation that suggested reckless lending!
2) These same people now look at a bank that is still trading, taking in millions from savers, paid back the cash that was loaned to them by the Government and still has a mortgage book.
3) They also hear rumours that the Governemnt will use the Rock to stimulate lending again
4) They therefore feel justifiably robbed in that their shares in the Rock are deemed worthless and feel that the Labour Government (which holds virtually every seat in Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland) has not treated them fairly.
5) You can bet what the BNP and other political parties are going to do in the North East when the General Election is called. - Unfortunately I suspect most of the words they will use would not pass moderation here.
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I can not believe some of the comments I have read on this blog blaming RP for this debacle at NR. In the event thet he had not reported this, do these people realy think that things would have been different.
Even if there had been no run on the bank the government would still have had to nationalise them, due to their bad management.
I never hear people moaning when their investments and shares are doing well and paying big dividens, only when it all goes wrong do they start moaning. That is the bottom line, shares can go up and they can go down. Any company can go bust, thats the risk, if you do not realise that then do not invest.
Many people are not in the position to be able to save or invest for their future, they earn enough to pay their bills. In this crisis they are the ones who will suffer the most, the loss of their job could well mean the loss of everything, not just their investments.
The people to blame have long gone with their massive salary, bonuses, and pensions. Doubt they will need to sign on for job seekers allowance, or worry about paying the mortgage.
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Ref 119
I agree with Prudeboy's disillusionment with the notion that the restoration of "confidence" will be some kind of panacea. "Confidence" is unattainable in the foreseeable future.
Bank solvency is an illusion. Every major bank in the western world is technically insolvent - some spectacularly so - and the feeble efforts of various chairmen and boards to imply otherwise is risible.
Significant parts of the world will experience financial meltdown over the next few weeks. Eastern Europe's problems will collapse the Austrian banks - and then mainland Europe will move into the next phase of meltdown.
Stockpickers' punts on British banks, which result in stunning share price rises one day, and panic sell-offs the next, are desperate chips placed at the spinning wheel in the last chance saloon.
We will not accept the restoration of "confidence" because we are not con-trick dense.
We are in very deep trouble, and we know it. And we have no "confidence" that our political leaders know how to get us out of the mess. They don't. They're talking politicians.
Tedious optimistic outpourings by British bank boards, designed to "restore confidence", fall on deaf ears because these people have totally lost credibility. I assume that I don't have to list some of the things which, ridiculously, have been declared by banking big shots over the past year or so.
When even Alan Greenspan is talking about nationalising America's banks, the game is well and truly up. Alternatively, Barclays might shortly be able to buy Bank of Americal and Citigroup with some of this year's "profits".
Meanwhile, back on planet earth...
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Robert still refuses to accept the blame for creating a run on Nothern Rock.
I complained the next day about his alarmist report.
Jounalists should be schooled in reporting good news, not alarmist destuctive information. like the lady said "these days with telephone and internet banking a bank could be wiped out in hours!". What a sadness.
It's about time that people woke up to journalistic power. I for one rarely buy a newspaper now or magazine as I do not want to sponsor sensational journalists. However I do rely on responsible TV journalism. Am I too trusting?
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Blaming those who break bad news for the bad news is ridiculous. It just shows that something's not quite right in people's minds if journalists are suddenly becoming celebrities.
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To build trust and confidence we need to focus on the facts and tell the truth - Governments, Banks and Politicians - the truth builds trust. The key issue now is how we rebuild truth and integrity, while securing employment.
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Many members of the public now accept that much of the news is released into the public domain for a reason. This was probably one example, to create an awareness of the nature of our financial problems but may have easily gathered a momentum of its own once you made your comments. My feeling is that N.R. was a terrible business model (before and after) and it was only a matter of time before it fell. I still cant understand why the regulators have not paid a price for their ineptitude but the political desire to shift blame is obscuring all just now. Many decent people lost money but they were gambling and have to accept that risk. What they needed more than anything was balanced reporting of information available to all. You gave them that but some chose not to notice,whilst the regulators were asleep.
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As I have no business interests in NR, my view is impartial.
Whilst there is little doubt that NR would have eventually failed, I do believe that Robert Peston's news report had hastened its demise.
The question I would put to Mr. Peston is this:
Suppose that you or some members of your family had a large stake in NR and that one your colleagues had broken the news (without your prior knowledge) about NR, which indirectly resulted in your family losing a fortune.
Would you have confronted your colleague about it?
Would you have wished that he/she had done it differently?
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Wannabe (104),
Don't they do paragraph breaks in Wales?
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If those at the helm of NR had been truthful, honest and open in all their dealings then there would have been no 'scoop' and no 'run on the bank'.
The 'scoop' was uncovering the long running and on going mismanagement of the bank and misinformation given out by the bank.
At the point of revelation of the correct information, the newly informed investors, seeing for themselves the reality of the management, decided to leave.
It is RP's (and other journalists) job to expose the lies and deceit of those with power over others.
For example, why is there concern over a bank when the chairman explicitly states that the bank is healthy and all the published figures confirm the chairmans statement that the bank is healthy.
Is it because we have heard those kind of statements from chairmen of banks and businesses, from governments and regulators before and later we find that some people have been 'economical[sic] with the truth'
They say it is all about confidence and it is, there is no confidence in unreliable and untrustworthy information.
Confidence will not return until we know the truth, the whole truth, warts and all.
Once we see that there is no more to tell, no more monsters under the bed and we have the full facts before us then we can have the confidence to make informed decisions.
Until that happens then rumour and fear will stalk the land and confidence in the dealings of business and governments will not occur.
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its 2020
we have just survived world war 3
looking back we should have seen the writing on the wall
Palestine had been allowed to fester for too long
the Western banking system had failed leading to a depression
people without hope were easy prey to extreme ideas
the impoverished West went to the right
extreme fundamentalism raged across the globe
Obama could not live up to expectations
a small spark in the Middle East lit the flame just like 100 years earlier
the rest is history
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#129 BobRocket.
Well said. All I hear from the politicians are demands for restoration for confidence. When will they get it? The banks and the governments ae going to have to own up to the hidden, massive nightmares - the true value of those assets. It is bad now. It will be so much worse when we finally hear the whole story.
For those who are angry, they will settle down at some point. It is not a nice place to be, knowing that you have been lulled into a false sense of security.
Robert, take it for what it is, frightened and upset people who need a face to blame.
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National debt = £2 trillion quid
That's one heck of an IOU.
Who exactly do we owe that money to ?
And at what point does UK Plc become bankrupt, and go to the wall, like Woolworths ?
It seems to me that the Government can't afford any more bailouts. The Banks and the Motor Industry will have to carry on and sort themselves out, without any more help from the Taxpayer...
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Re TigerJ previous post, GB Job offers
He's already engaged in light entertainment, it's called the end of the peer show.
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it is so hard for those who have lost , but their anger and frusrtation should be directed towards the decision makers within Northern Rock because after all it was them who created the tragedy not you . On a broader note we the public need investigative reporting more than ever because the "they "in all areas of authority are less and less accountable , very well protected from scrutiny , and more and more powerful influencing every section of our lives , just watching newsreports daily it is baffling how much we are controlled by these faceless decision makers robbing us of our basic liberties and values and replacing them with some warped structure of their making ..Who are these faceless "they
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Well, it sounds like the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme has failed from two directions this time: after a month, virtually no advances have been made under it because the Banks have done nothing to put it into place, local branch managers having all the get up and go of Captain Mainwaring to force "someone" to do it and the Head Office turkeys voting for Christmas, on the one hand, and because business would rather ask the mafia for funding than the banks.
That's some going, third strike, they should be out now.
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robert your so vain
i bet u think this recessions about u
your so vain
i bet u think this recessions about u
dont u dont u
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SomaliPirate
Re your challenge 658 on 17th to beat the Plausible but Implausible Conspiracy Theory record
Seen the thread running on Nick's blog recently? I just think I did.
Ref: Sorry, disqualified because you've not made it up.
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118. alexandercurzon wrote:
"Any VIEWS on BLIARS little $ 1 million"
+
it was 12 million big ones
in the middle east it is the
usual killing killing killing
war war war
maybe he should be held accountable
and fired with any last requests
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#116
Really? You've not been following my findings on Nick's blog, then.
#132
Part of the problem is that the Serious Fraud Office is seriously not doing its job. It should be tracking those cashflows down and stopping them: settling on a fraudulent deal is conspiracy at this level.
#128
Does ddim y ngymraigu, mae'n VBC.
In other words, you've been paying huge amounts in increased licence fees to develop this website, no real work's been done on it in at least a year, and the best they can do is offer a poor character set, non-existant HTML, nothing in the way of CSS, and you have to double-gap to get a paragraph break. Another excessive bubble.
#109
Re your off-topic posting question. There's only so much you can write about the extreme end of Wales. If I wanted to, I could be asking why it is I can't get a builder to repair a roof down there, so I'm going to have to go down and do it myself. That's asking for a short answer, bl°°dy sais, do it yourself! Yes, the area's just been thrown back into the 1970s, just after the pits closed, but the real solution's to get organised locally, get a credit union going to start funding what's needed, ask HMG for the funds and bwgr the banks.
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I am wondering if the current situation will allow for the political clases to do some serious cross border work on cornering individual and corporate tax evaders, and landered money from criminals held in 'secret' or offshore accounts. Let's face it, we, or rather The Treasury, need the money. Is the US case against UBS just the start of something much bigger? The finance sector, or aspects of it, has been a bigger threat to National Security than any so called terrorist so is Brown et al going to invoke some similarly 'hard line' measures to try to bring them to book? Or is it all just business as usual for the private 'wealthy' with the indebted public govt. quietly going bust as it tries to fix the mess?
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My Geordie mother told me, "never a borrower or lender be!"
It was rumoured that Northern Crock was in difficulties 2-3 years earlier.
People at the top were paying themselves too much for very little work.
Borrowers were borrowing far too much and greed is an awful addiction.
But Bradford Bingley Halifax and Newcastle all had large manufacturing backgrounds until certain politicians in the south deemed that banking was a cleaner way to make a living.
Well they are all in the muck now!
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Robert, I know you're TRYING to have some time off, but did you really have to post this Northern Rock stuff?
People are hurt and angry enough without you reopening wounds that had barely begun healing?
IMHO you did your job-the news would have surfaced anyway, you just happened tone first with it. The whole debacle was really just the beginning of the exposure of banking bad behaviour and greed.
Just the same with Lehmans.
All this toxic debt stuff was a ticking bomb-we were globally unaware of the sheer size of it, or so it would seem. All NR and Lehmans did was open the can of worms.
We all have our views on how rotten the whole system is, but we need to look at the present and future, not pick over the carcass of the past, save to really, really hope that this sort of meltdown absolutely never happens again.
Let's get through this nightmare first, then look at the past when we have the luxury of the time to do so.
There's far more rotten stuff to come.
Brace! Brace! Brace!
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Robert,
Most folks are in complete agreement with you over your findings with Northern Rock and a great pity you did not find out sooner. The two great Anglo Saxon Economies have been left gutted and nearly Filleted as well by the actions of people in control of our big Banks and big Companies.I firstly find it amazing that we have allowed somehow these low calibre people to infiltrate our Business and Political Institutions.Auditors firstly have not done their job,secondly Regulators have not done their job and thirdly Government Ministers have not done their job.All three try the blame someone else tactic but it is they who are to blame and they only. This Government is made up of Individuals who mainly have none or very,very little experience in life of Business ,Commerce or as Mrs Thatcher once said "Good Housekeeping". Anyone can get a Book and come out with an Academic analogy on any subject and think that this analogy will apply to all problems,not so and what Keynes proposed in the last Slump will not be the same answer now and only experience in life and Business will give one the where withall to deal with these situations. This has happened in the Banks and within the Regulators and here lies our problem. I pose this senario: Would we allow Nuclear Energy to be handled in the same sort of way as we have our Money,no ,because we know from the Top Scientist down to the Schoolboy that this would be extreme trouble.Our money represents who and what we have achieved in life ,by good, fair or fowl means.
If all our money were tainted with Radio Active Atoms we would lose whatever we all have strived to accumulate but this is exactly what these Bankers ,Regulators and Governments have allowed to happen by not endorsing the first Law of Money :be careful with it and look after it within strict codes of conduct just as Nuclear Atoms are looked after.
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Absolutely agree 129 BobRocket above.... Reporters expose the reality and then people make their (adult) minds up..that's how open societies work.
In a world where all the banks (virtually) had persuaded themselves that Greed really was good the greediest fell first...Bear Stearns, Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley.....
Northern Rock couldn't be saved because the entire system couldn't be saved ..as we have now witnessed through over 18 months of trying.
The underlying facts were that everyone in Britain wasn't a prpety investment genius..it was a bubble.
The underlying fact now is that only inflation can (80's style) eat the debts..the government is the largest debtor and will try and inflate it's way out of all of this.
Bad news for those prudent savers Mr Brown eulogisises.... one of whom is me.
Finally a colleague of mine made what I thought was a good comment.... saying that having this govt try and drive a 'just right inflation' policy was like giving a learner driver on their first drive the wheel of a Formula One car to take for a spin on the North Circular Road.........
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If you can afford to invest in shares, read the small print. Down as well as up. If you dont like the rules, dont play.
So, some of you got your shares during demutualisation? Ah, so you didnt actually BUY them then??
The two Hedge Funds? They piled in at 250p when the shares were on the slide, figuring that at some point it had to bounce, and they would make a killing... Er.... No.
The woman who was saying the samaritan should pick you up when you fall... yes, fair enough, they should... but if your falling over was self inflicted because you were drunk on the alcahol of exponential growth via a rather dodgy offshore vehicle in the Channel Islands, consider yourself lucky you were picked up off the floor at all. The loss of your watch and sore spuds should be the least of your concerns.
I understand that there is sensationalism in journalism these days. Thats what sells copy and that is all the print media is concerned about. A public service broadcaster though, like the BBC, is notionally a very different beast. If some of you seriously think that the BBC should have been in possession of this information and sat on it then you truly are naive and delusional. How long should they have sat on it? As another poster says, just long enough for you to have liquidated your own NR shares, then stuff everyone else?
NR failed because it was run on a failed business model. Plain and simple. Labour saved as much of it as it did because the NE is a Labour heartland. Taxpayer revenue has bought your votes. For now.
I am intrigued as to who your source is Robert. I know someone who was at that meeting that weekend, just before the story broke... they hadnt even made it from the Treasury to the BoE before the roof fell in and the story came out. The source is either in HMT or No10, I'm inclined to think.
Eitherway... the lynch mobs should be going after Messrs Applegarth, Ridley, Brown and Balls, not RP.
Personally RP, as you're a former Political Editor of the FT, I'm of the opinion you should "promoted" (would that be a poisoned chalice, I wonder?) into the position at the BBC as well. The current incumbent is so deep in New Labour's pocket any hint of any backbone he may have once had is disappearing on a daily basis.
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It’s a good job that the story was run, just a shame that so many naive individuals got way out of their depth at this party and are now recovering from the hangover.
Just imagine where things would be now if the Government (Gordon Brown) has had his way and things had been swept under the carpet.
We are not at the end of the banking bad news era by any means. There are a lot of banking managers out there still trying to hide away the bad practices they have developed. Some (slightly stronger) banks have refused Government “help” to avoid exposure. Others have accepted “help” which has turned out to be a poison pill. This has happened with Lloyds Bank; the mad Directors of Lloyds have been “helped” by Gordon Brown to buy a “pup” in the form of Halifax BOS a company that really should have folded or at least have been exposed then nationalised like Northern Rock. If that had happened perhaps Robert Peston would now be facing the wrath of people in Halifax and Scotland too.
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I'm getting fed up with all you media guys talking about doom and gloom. Retired, I rely on my savings and investments, and living abroad, the poor value of the pound hurts. More or less every day, the stock market recovers a bit, and the pound increases in value, then some well cushioned idiot in the banks, government or media, secure in their own pensions, has to go and open their big mouth sending the lemmings into panic again. Why dont you all just shut up, desist with the doom and gloom and let the market take its course. Sooner or later it will recover, and sooner if the talking down stops.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
sorry wrong bog
toon army!
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"it is so hard for those who have lost , but their anger and frustration should be directed towards the decision makers within Northern Rock because after all it was them who created the tragedy not you .
On a broader note we the public need investigative reporting more than ever because the "they "in all areas of authority are less and less accountable , very well protected from scrutiny and more and more powerful influencing every section of our lives , just watching news reports daily it is baffling how much we are controlled by these faceless decision makers robbing us of our basic liberties and values and replacing them with some warped structure of their making ..Who are these faceless "they"
This is so true. Keep up the good work Robert.
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72: How very true and the mining stocks now.....
121:agreed-very naive to think if left unreported things would somehow"be different"
123:Wake up and smell the coffee please-get a grip.
miners & bankers stock.........beware !!!!!
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We are staring into the abyss..............
It looks dark and dangerous..............
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Re BOS - if it had been allowed to go bust what actually would have happened to the validity of Scottish Bank notes?
Say something like 'Bank of Scotland promise to pay the bearer the sum of £X'
Would this have meant all currency in Scotland would suddenly have become worthless? Effectively are all Scottish notes a creditor of BOS?
Can anybody explain the position.
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Ref:147
How naive to imagine a "few good men" could influence the worldwide economy !
The market will always find itself,no matter what.It's all about sentiment and reality and no blog on earth can influence that.
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I don't think that Robert is to blame for the fate of Northern Rock. The seeds for disaster were already there and no amount of 'talking the bank up' would have worked.
I do see dangers though in the news blackout which I perceive to be taking place at the moment. Quantitative easing was presented on t.v. by Stephanie Flanders as though she was a weather girl, commenting on some cloudy weather.
There are 2 schools of thought on this and I read an interesting article on the subject in 'Le Monde' this week:-
According to one school of thought, bad news, honestly broadcast, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - 'une propthetie auto-realisatrice'.
However, another school of thought suggests that bad news, honestly broadcast, becomes a self-defeating prophecy - 'une prophetie auto-destructrice'.
According to the second theory, the fact of identifying a problem means that the best minds gather together to solve the problem, which is far, far better than ignoring it. The perfect example of this is the millennium bug, which failed to materialise as a problem precisely because it was identified early and solutions were found.
If whistleblowers at the banks had not been sacked, we would not be in this mess.
So I personally believe in the second theory. It is true that hiding the truth, as our dishonest politicians wish to do, may have short term benefits - e.g. the announcements of the latest interest rate cut and the announcement of the decision to start quantitative easing have, strangely, caused the pound to go up vis a vis the euro !!!
However, in the long run, I believe holding back the truth will cause a much bigger crash, something which is confirmed by a study of the first bubble in history - started by John Law.
We need to debate issues and Robert Peston has done a good job of making the public take an interest in what is going on.
Now that quantitative easing has started I predict that there will be enormous opportunities for fraud. I am particularly concerned about companies receiving unearned income and then dissolving the company, taking taxpayer's money in the process. Any large exchange of money is an opportunity for the pocket liners. Any comments?
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Just before I lost my job.........a friend said "Cheer up-things could be worse"......so I did and they got worse.
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In these record home repossessions how many of them are at the request of Northern Rock?
I had thought that Crash had introduced new guidelines that meant repossession was the course of last resort? Or are we saying that the figures would be much greater if the banks weren't adhering to this advice?
We need some transparency in the figures so that we can fully understand what is happening.
It looks like house prices might set at 3x income, so therefore the floor would appear to be 3x average income for the average home
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IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.......Hmmm where have I heard this before?
P.S. didn't "quantitative easing" used to be called "printing more money"? And as for "securitisation".... would this have been a eupemism for "how to conceal too great a risk"?
No, I have no problems with R Peston.
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Re post 153 from GRIMUPNORTH77
I would imagine that the BOS notes would be worthless as there would be no institution to back the notes. However, it must be remembered that Scotland has three banks who issue bank notes: BOS, RBS and Clydesdale.
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There continues to be a failure to recognise, up here in the north, that Northern Rock was technically insolvent. As a Newcastle resident it gives me no pleasure to write that had The Rock been any other business it's creditors would have foreclosed on it. It did not have accessible assets to cover its immediate liabilities. Robert was correct to expose this, and the responsibility for the position of The Rock rests almost entirely with the well remunerated, well bonused and well pensioned (former) directors. It's no use shooting the messanger. As for the shareholders, I feel desperately sorry for the small shareholders who lost money, but holding shares is a risky business. I don't feel sorry for the predatory funds who bought shares late, hoping to see their value rise following a taxpayer bailout. Well done Robert, continue yt
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Ref:157
The pot will always call the kettle black.......
Two faced government is the truth....don't do as I do.........do as I say.
Hey,always been the case.....
It's scandalous........but we"tolerate"it cos we are very naive as a nation in believing that government does the best for us.It's called democracy.......that in itself is a paradox.
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Ref:157
3 x average income=no house sales.
average income £27.5k ????(if you're lucky enough)
House for sale £82.5k ?????
I don't think so.
The gearing vis a vis house cost and affordability is way beyond achievability by the vast majority of ordinary folk.
Greed........and misguided aspirational dreams caused this.I want what my neighbours got etc etc and bigger.
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Why during this economic crisis do I get the distinct impression that the government are as much use as a chocolate fireguard ???
Because they are.
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Somali-Pirate: saw some footage of you being shot-at on the news last night, did you get wounded?
Went into the bank this morning to withdraw some cash from a savings account. Teller said I'd lose interest if I withdrew more than ... in one month. HEHEHEHE. How much will that be then? Not much came (red-faced) reply.
If the wholesale money markets have effectively closed, and banks et al are relying more than ever for deposits to finance loans??
Crash and his crew should either nationalize the banks properly and direct them, or leave them tothe market. The halfway-house we have at the moment is turning them into a bottomless pit for taxpayers cash with no return.
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It is not R. Peston per se that is the issue, it is the news hungry 24 media that will report anything and exaggerate stories to make a headline. R. Peston is just an example of this. If his job, or people in the same field had their jobs on the line would the reporting have been as dramatic.
People have lost jobs and livelihoods over this, not the rich, but normal people who are pawns to be played with whilst the media continues in it own self agrandisment.
The recession is about confidence, and the continuous negative rhetoric makes is a self fulfilling prophecy.
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#159 - ok so if I change my post to - 'what would have happened if BOS & RBS had been allowed to go bust - would 80% of notes issued in Scotland have suddenly become worthless with only Clydesdale issued notes having any value?'
Then your answer is 80% of Scottish money would have become worthless - I can't decided whether to write WOW or OUCH next - what would have happened in Scotland at this point?
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So Anglo American profits down 3% to £6billion.........what a disaster !
The market sentiment is typical of what's wrong with our profit driven society.
It's all about profit and sustainability.Just like life you will take a few knocks but it shouldn't cause the share price to implode.
So 3% down........(let's cut '000,s of jobs then-that'll make it right)
So what.£6 billion profit ain't quite a disaster is it ?
Six thousand million pounds.That's all.
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Seems the government has just admitted that their plan to save house repossessions won't take effect until at least April at the earliest as they are still in negotiations with the lenders.
Seems this soundbite government is finally having to admit stuff
Who is asking these questions? The banks because of all the negative sentiments expressed by Crash et al?
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Ref:164
I've asked the question many times before.........just what are the so called banks up to ???
Not much it seems.Can't lend or borrow.Stalemate.Costs still there.......disaster looms.
They are no more than a debt collecting service attempting vainly to prise money from their debtors.And it get's harder by the minute.The cash you and I "lend"them does no more than to maintain the status quo in this uncomfortable arrangement.
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Good old Peston! Breaking through parochial smugness in the country and ex-cathedra smugness in the media. Earns his keep. Nice vid.
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Dear Mr Peston,
Every time the Government issue a statement, please ask the question:
"When will that take effect?"
Keep asking that question until you get a straight answer.
Until that question is answered we can have no idea whatsoever how effective are any of the multitude of policy announcements.
Surely a simple neough request?
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#166 "ok so if I change my post to - 'what would have happened if BOS & RBS had been allowed to go bust - would 80% of notes issued in Scotland have suddenly become worthless with only Clydesdale issued notes having any value?'"
Every banknote in circulation in Scotland must, by law, be backed by an equivalent amount of Bank of England notes. The Scottish banks do not create money but, in effect, simply issue pretty pieces of paper to represent "real" banknotes that they hold in their (or the BoE's) vaults. So if a Scottish bank were to collapse it would make no difference as the Scottish notes can simply be exchanged for this real money. (And I accept that this is a gross over-simplification that will undoubtedly infuriate many).
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166,
Barter system employed, the ‘buckfast’ would have become legal tender obviously. Mind you it’s a tangible asset that has real value in that ‘it gets you drunk!’
Unlike the pound!
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Seeing as many people have pointed out that the North East is a Labour heartland, then they should have known better than anybody that the Capitalist system is flawed and prone to such crises.
I think this proves the misguided loyalty the current voting system has. Any left winger worth his salt would not have got into investments and the accumulation of wealth as they would know about the inevitable collapse.
The only question is whether this dumbing down of the electorate is through laziness on their behalf or whether it's down to the continual falling education standards in this country.
It's not helped of course by the bankers trying to make the system as complicated as possible - actually practising the art of alienation - described by Marx as the alienation of the worker - but now they are applying it to everyone.
Confuse, confuse, confuse - that's how the Bourgoisie get away with it.
Don't listen to them, just work it out for yourself. "Where does the profit come from?"
The couple in the video have never asked this question obviously - no, they simply rely on their mis-guided trust of bankers, financial advisors and of course the Government.
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reflectandthink wrote:
"People have lost jobs and livelihoods over this, not the rich, but normal people who are pawns to be played with whilst the media continues in it own self agrandisment."
....we're all pawns I'm afraid, and have been all or lives.
I agree the media is out of control in this country, but it's been allowed to by the ever closer ties with Government.
Look how they rely on each other - like master and slave rely on each other. A marriage of survival instincts.
They both claim to be 'friend of the people' but the reality is they couldn't be further from that.
There is a phrase to describe this situation perfectly, unfortunately using it before got my post moderated out so I cannot use it here (even though I used medical descriptions and not the original slang)
If you want to make this right again, make sure you turn up to the rally's in the summer when the masses of unemployed take to the streets of London in protest - whether you have a job or not.
The ONLY thing the government fears is a population that can no longer be controlled.
That is the fear we need to create if we want to see real change and not the 'same old change' Cameron will promise.
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#172 Thanks - I'm fine with the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) - I thought something like this must exist but wasn't sure.
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The Alt-A mortgage collapse is just getting underway in the USA. This will be the next shock wave to hit the UK over the next few months.
Nationalization of most UK banks is now inevitable.
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Come off Petson! The ego that broke the story is the ego that dragged you up their to patronise northerners, you hoping you would be able to make them look silly. But the fact id Brtians sub-prime mortgage debt is less than 6% and most of it is in the Midlands and down south. Your a business hack not Alan Sugar..lol
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In Italy yesterday....."Mr Brown defended Britain's levels of debt claiming it was one of the lowest of the major economies at 40% of national income. "
i keep seeing figures of nearer 60% than 40%...! then yesterday the ONS came out with a debt of 1.5trillion..........is brown lying or just playing with statistics?
Robert perhaps you could ask one of your friends........
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#153:
Scottish bank notes are all Sterling.
They're not BoS or RBS currency per sé, but British currency printed by a private bank, just as the BoE is an English private bank which prints its own promisary notes
If BoS, RBS, or Clydesdale disappeared, the money wouldn't become worthless because it's still Sterling, regardless of the name on the note.
Kapiche?
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All the NR shareholders need to count themselves lucky for the following reason.
If RP hadn't broke the story then NR would have been borrowing money on the LIBOR at a higher rate than they were already commited to lending it out in mortgages and loans. (I know, I was one of them)
Further drawdowns on LIBOR would have pushed the rate up higher, making it more and more difficult to get back to a profitable level. (after all the LIBOR is simply a market for money)
The attitude of the board was clearly that they could 'catch up again when the market turned'
...however we now have the benefit of hindsight and we know the market wouldn't have turned - in fact it only recently did after HM Goverment took charge of the biggest failures, releasing the pressure on the LIBOR.
The cumalative effect of more and more banks (like NR) making more and more draw downs on the money markets would have put more banks in the red zone. The LIBOR rose because banks feared a lack of cash - what would they be thinking now as the LIBOR hit 7%?
If you need convincing, simply look at how many banks used the BoE facility once it was made available and how much they have borrowed.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/daf0f962-f233-11dd-9678-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
£185 Billion is no chicken feed - and that implies that there was £185 billion out there in loans which were outstanding at a lower rate than the LIBOR (and a much lower rate if you account for the penalty of getting caught using the facility - i.e. you're the weakest bank - shareholders fly into the wind!)
So that little lot would have been pushing the LIBOR up further and further making it near impossible for Northern Rock to get back to levelling the books.
The result would have been a crash for the bank, and unfortunately as the Government would have also had RBS and HBOS to deal with at the same time (and potentially others) I think they would have got preferrential treatment and NR would have gone bust - free market stylee.
The result is that the shareholders would have got nothing - not a bean. At least with Nationalisation they get some compensation - albeit a much lesser value than the perceived value of the shares.
.....and that's why they want to count themselves lucky. What will the shareholders of businesses that go bust this year get?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING.
What will shareolders in Icelandic banks get?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING
What will shareholders in Lehmans get?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING
What will shareholders of Woolworths get?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING
What will shareholders of Baugur group be getting?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING
What will the world economy be worth in 10 years?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING
What is between Alistair Darling's ears?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING
How many votes will the Labour party get at the next election if Gordy's in charge?
- A BIG FAT NOTHING
Don't worry though - from what I hear the Government has a plan to sort this out.
It's called:
0 + 0 = 1
With a simple change to logical mathematics this Government will re-inflate the Economy.
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The Governor of the Bank of England was warned in 2005 by Gillian Shephard that the business model of Northern Rock was not sustainable. If action had been taken, perhaps this fiasco could have been avoided. Peoples anger should be first directed to London before Robert Peston is blamed for the run on Northern Rock.
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Come on Robert do the brave thing and resign.
You have not answered the question as to why you delivered the news about the destruction of a bank in the way that you did. You somehow think that being first to deliver the news is all that matters. The writing was on the wall for the banks for years, and there have been plenty of commentators out there who have said so.
It is the method of delivery, and who says it, which is far more important ..... ask any advertiser ... or ask any grief counsellor .... or ask any policeman, who routinely tells people their partner has died ..... no you simply want to splash it on the 9 o'clock news ... because that's 'your job'.
How the collapse of the western banking system is related is of massive importance.
Our society depends on confidence and trust. The sort of hysteria which you bizarrely seem to enjoy is completely out of place and you have pandered to people's fears. How you ever got to any sort of senior position is beyond me. I am sure you are a decent chap, but your polemic views may be better served reporting youthful misbehaviour in the Bexhill Evening News ... or possibly abroad ... but please get out of the BBC. Naive comments about the honesty of the message sounds like collosal irresponsibility.
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Ref Posting 136
And to think of all the hours that I've wasted, over the years, trying to work out if it was Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty that Carly was hacked off with.
All the time... it was Bobby P.
Mind you, I didn't know either that Carly had a Silver Savings Account with Northern Rock, hence her disillusionment with the Great Man.
Rock on, Bobby.
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Smarmy Egotistical Journalist 0
Normal People from the North East 1
No replay, please.
Robert, I don't think you've got it have you? It is the evident self satisfaction, smugness and ego-laden presentation that gets to people. Stick with the analysis, which you do well most of the time, and try to avoid becoming a caricature.
Also try, please try, to see the economy as an equilibrating - if not an equilibrium - system. Talking the economy down on this side of the cycle is easy; predicting and spotting the 'green shoots' will be a more spectacular and valuable contribution from you.
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Robert,
this business of the government announcing the mortgage help, and then sometime later we hear that it won't be introduced until later...
Does this contravene the regulations set down by the FSA on advertising and market distortion?
Are we talking language, or following the letter rather than the spirit of the law? Can you provide the whitewash?
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I think the people on this blog that live in the North East know that part of the problem was the bunker mentality that virtually amounted to Northern Rock right or wrong.... and any attack on 'The Rock' is an attack on the North East by people with shady motives for doing so..(ie southerners, southern banks, people down south).
(This happened in Scotland as well where a similar bunker mentality was engendered around the demis of BOS --they aren't THAT bothered about the 'H' part--though I guess it's a mirror image in West Yorkshire)
The facts are just so much blah blah to these people .
The fact about Northern Rock (and RBS /HBOS) that I think is the most telling is that the story was in the share price anyway.... the shares had already plummeted for months prior to the 'run on the bank'.
The story was 'out there ' and judgements were being made--- but all us 'ordinary people' weren't privy to them.. the only ones in the know were the traders....until the biggest economic story in 100 years broke.
The run on the bank...in my opinion formed as a journalist of over 30 years experience...was down to the useless "weekend off gone fishin'" approach to crisis management....coupled with the crazy inability (especially in a government comprised almost entirely of navel gazing image-presentation worshippers, to fail to spot the latent power of the phrase "Lender of Last resort".)
(Which has now disappeared from use...... and rightly)
The small savers who went onto the pavement had heard that phrase, raced to the web and crashed the site and then arrived at the same conclusion almost simultaneously.
I remain convinced that if the phrase had been " the usual lending provision from the Bank of England is now in place for the Rock and other banks"....then there wouldn't have been a run, whatever Mr Peston said...and whatever tone people imagined they heard him use.
It wouldn't have saved the Northern Rock in any way.... that bank was dead...and remains dead... the Govt just don't want to say so in case it scares the children.
In pre-enlightenment times the confusion of cause and effect was the usual state of affairs and in post enlightment times it is again...
In case anyone thinks I am related to Mr Peston I can say I think his presentational style and delivery is useless...however he obviously has great contacts, checks what they tell him, and then tells the public things they wouldn't otherwise know...so that makes him a great reporter.
AND--He is working in an area where a wrong step can result in litigation from people and companies who DO have the financial wherewithal to sue..and even out-cash the Beeb.... none have bothered...... probably because 'Truth and Fair comment" are a defence to libel, defamation and consequential loss----- well until someone in the Policy group manages to nail an anti-terror label on business reporting I guess!
bye!!
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Robert.
Whilst you were there could you not have asked the ONLY NATIONALISED BANK why they are not helping homeowners?
The insistence by Gordon Brown that the banks will be allowing two years grace for those who fall foul of the recession ( ironically caused by the banks) has turned out to be a nonsense! Not one person has been helped.
Today....Friday 20th February..... Northern Rock will be kicking hundreds of people out of their homes. Their criteria is 3 months late with payment and you are out.
Meanwhile their standard mortgage rate at 4.79% stands as one of the markets steepest rates and at a massive three hundred per cent above the bank of England base rate!
Oh. And why hasn't the 10% bonus to all NR staff been mentioned.
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Robert
Nobody should be taking you to task. The problems of NR weren't just the run on the bank, it was more where would they get the wholesale money from and who were they lending to?
My concern now is that the Chancellors claim of selling it back into the private sector at a profit is looking more and more like his PBR; pie in the sky. As the decent mortgages have moved to new providers the Northern Rock really is becoming a Toxic Bank. Those people who took out a Together loan in the last couple of years are now looking at having a house currently valued at half the outstanding mortgage. The government (you and me) have already swapped debt for equity to the tune of 3 bn with more likely as the need arises. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the total goes up to over 10bn. A poor decision paid for by British taxpayers to support NuLabour. It is a disgrace.
Northern Rock should not have been nationalised, it should have been put into administration then sorted out.
And while we are at it could someone explain why British taxpayers should underwrite the international losses of the RBS where a substantial part of the shareholders were from abroad? It was and is a P.L.C. up until 3 months ago we the taxpayer didn't have an interest in the company.
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Hey, Robert, there's a crash on, in London and New York.
Catch my analysis at the Furrowed Brow on the PM Blog or clicking on my name above, here.
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have all the mods gone out to buy robert a welcome back present? no moderation for 90 minutes!
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#164 newponzi
not wounded in the latest hi-jinks on the high seas, but always wear bullet-proof vests stuffed with old BankofScotland £20 notes just to be on the safe side
today's piracy award however has to go to GM; having gone back to the US govt on Tuesday without a plan except to ask for $2bn a month for another few months, they immediately proceeded to use threats and extortion on govts of Sweden, Germany, UK and Canada ... give us a few $billion too, otherwise the branch plants and marques in your country get it
looks like Swe and Ger are refusing to throw money at GM but they are going to have to renationalise Saab and Opel instead, so same difference
union guy here says a major UK car plant about to go bust, along with suppliers; does he mean GM-Vauxhall? what is 'Lord' Starbucks Mandelson doing?!
and what of the repossession protection scheme; the bank insurance scheme etc?
all these initiatives and no implementation; growing noises-off in Europe too and no sign of all that co-ordinated action except that they would like to include London in the list of tax havens to be penalised
given today's capitulation by stock markets and the other rapidly developing disasters it seems that the numpties are at least proved wrong:
BAD THINGS HAPPEN WITH OR WITHOUT PESTON in DA HOUSE!
we're all getting MULLERED Robert; the weekend can't arrive too soon
what chances Obama to part-nationalise BoA or Citibank? squadrons of pigs flying past right now
at this rate Gordy's pre-announced triumph at 'his' G20 conference in April is looking less than a sure thing.....
even my recent investment in RBS shares at 12.8p is looking shaky....
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From Dail Maily 15 December 2007
Bank of England governor Mervyn King was warned two years ago that Northern Rock was in danger of collapse ? but he brushed the concern aside dismissively.
Former Tory Cabinet Minister Gillian Shephard told Mr King she feared a 'day of reckoning' because Northern Rock was consistently offering cut-price home loans.
Mr King responded by telling her she did not understand banking and insisted there was nothing to worry about. The confrontation took place in 2005 when Mr King went to the House of Lords to address Conservative peers.
Perhaps Rpbert could ask Mr King what he thinks of shephard's "understanding" now....!
http://tinyurl.com/cdlgth
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Message for the moderator. I have tried 3 times to get my post sent to you. I wrote it offline 'cos I am v slow on the keyboard. Would that be a problem ?
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I see it is a problem 'cos my last message (to you ) appeared in the Q straight away.
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If Northern Rock had been a robust Bank and the story by the BBC a lie, the Bank would have been able to overcome the issues raised. A call to shoot the messenger is only relevant in a society that is no longer free. Freedom comes at a high price and there are individuals in our society who already think that perception is fact. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free – New Testament – John, viii, 32 – They even knew it then!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Robert, you are a good reporter so bring in the news & the views. This self-indulgent "visit to the North East" is diminishing your value.
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No need to shoot the mesenger but lets face the facts. The BBC did not successfully report the facts. They created the run on the Northern Rock and they were even bragging about how clever they were.
The BBC does seem to have a doom and gloom adgenda these days, and they certainly like to report any speculation on the downturn. Personally I would like to see the head of BBC news fired!
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This just in from CNN...
(CNN) -- Bank of America CEO and Chairman Kenneth Lewis has been issued a subpoena by the New York State Attorney General's Office, which is investigating whether the bank violated state law by withholding information from investors, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN.
Hello, this looks to be an interesting development. Wonder if the (ex) directors of Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, HBOS, RBS et al have made any travel plans yet - because if this is seem to assauge public anger in the US, you can bet your bottom dollar that Gordon will think it's a good idea.
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with the easy extradition to US......rbs and hbos directors must be getting worried.......
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e2toe4,
The merger was a disaster, and I speak as a BOS customer of almost four decades. I almost bought shares once, and then regretted I hadn't, and now am glad I didn't...Service and most other aspects went straight down the drain, and many employees confided (off the record) that the atmosphere was toxic...
Grrrr!
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No 117
"The first individual was talking rubbish. She could presumably have applied for a job elsewhere. I guess she'd heard the stupid report that Mr Peston had been voted "one of the ten sexiest brains in Britain" and thought it would be cool to try to get in on the action. Can't think of any other valid reason for her being there.
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I think this is a case of emotion vs cold hard facts. In truth, Robert did not cause or affect the Northern Rock scenario, its business model did all that months beforehand.
People want a scapegoat, who better than thr bloke who reported it? Any business problems are hard to handle especially with a flagship company like Norther Rock.
The same scenario is now playing out with the car industry. People are not buying yet unions cry out for subsidy to retain the capacity that will not be needed for at least 18 months. Emotional response indeed and understandable, but practically it doesn't stack up.
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I watched the original Newsnight report and asked myself if Adam Applegarth would have subjected himself to the same ordeal as Robert Peston did. Or Gordon Brown for that matter. Or the chairman of the Financial Services Authority. Or any of the people who are actually responsible for this enormous mess. If it wasn't for journalists like Peston, we'd still be totally in the dark. How dare people blame him, or other reporters, for this shambles? It's just ludicrous. Good on ya, Robert. Keep up the good work.
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h-dumpty,
Some text editors insert (hidden) characters that cause comments to be rejected Wurd is one of them, sometimes, but sometimes you can adjust things under 'options' or 'preferences' to output utf-8 which is what the software here uses...notebook seems to work ok, and, of course, using firefox and ubuntu/linux is better than windoze...meantime, just type directly into the comment form
Hints for links and stuff
Good luck
ed
P.S. Firefox does spellchecking right here in the comment bos, and in British English (or Swahili)
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200. At 4:30pm on 20 Feb 2009, eddixon
Isn't RBS quoted on the NY Stock Exchange? If so some of their US investors could well have lost money on the Rights Issue last year.
It wasn't so long ago that RBS staff were extradited to the USA so there is precedent.
This happened last month in the UK.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4338945/Police-may-launch-investigation-into-RBSs--rights-issue.html
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#39 Zootmac
A much better way for our Robert to curry favour with the toon locals would be for him to emulate Jimmy Carter on his 1977 trip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQD7LiUpi4
"Howay the lads"
Would he have the bottle to try it though?
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#147 HiTechPoint
Please be careful in your comments here: I see you're new and are finding your way, and may have valid angles others don't have.
For a week now, Bob's been on a much-deserved holiday. He has posted twice - which is two more than Nick Robinson has - but neither of those were massively earthshaking, which is how it should be - in fact, he should rather copy Nick, but even Bob's partly succumbed to habits others of us here have, posting at odd hours, even right through the night. Mina Harker for Mod...
That therefore makes aspects of your posting incomprehensible.
All you media guys...the people on here are an admixture of businessmen, housewives, shopfloor workers, you name it, it's here. About the only profession not to own up to having a presence is the media.
The value of the pound against the Euro, which I would expect to be your chief concern, has recovered from the sharp dip it took at the year-end, putatively as positions were unwound to close out profits, and is now headed back to the 1.25/0.80 band where it stood for most of last year. The FTSE100 and FT all-share indices have been fairly stable since November in the longer-term view (OK, intra-day volatility is up, but that's the worst kind of short-termism), which might suggest that the absolute drop for the medium-term future may have now settled at around 30% from the peaks, if it were not for the indication of a top cap running from September through early January and about a week ago, putting a ceiling on a head-and-shoulders pattern (2nd week Dec - early Jan - early Feb) which often suggests a market breakout preparing - in this case, downwards, as having tried a turn up, its not working, so it'll go down by maybe another 1000 points. That's highly speculative, though, and would have an upwards of 60% chance of being wrong if it weren't for the release of the first statistics in the near future covering the start of the dive, which subjectively looks as if it could be seriously bad news, given the double-hit of unemployment as productive workers become a load on the economy instead. So either your bank and advisers are conning you, or you're flying a kite, as at the moment at any rate, things should be better for you than they have been for months.
But that's not where the problems lie. Europe's weathering this relatively well, partially thanks to some of the stability mechanisms in the Euro machine. The real problem is in the UK banking sector, which has died the death. Retail settlements are about the only things still working: for example, foreign settlement charges for funds paid to the UK have just tripled in the last month, as the crooks turn from one racket to another in an attempt to milk the economy dry. Debt coming due is impossible to replace, quite apart from capital issues, and this is killing industry. Perfectly viable companies are going to the wall because they cannot service their debts, simply because the profile's all being brought into the short term, and no real governmental support is forthcoming as they insist on using the banks. The marigns on debt and exchange are ridiculous to the ordinary man - for instance, a 10000-point spread on Chinese Yuan, in other words we sell at half the market rate and buy back at 150%,, effectively raking in the equivalent of a 100% turn, or overnight interest rates at upwards of 10% when the funds are being sourced at less than 1%.
This is abuse of a high order, systematised, regulated and subsidised by the Treasury. It's like a fairground game of rats, knock one scam on the head and another one pops up without delay.
They crashed once, and have been warned twice. They have done nothing to sort it, obviously fancying picking over the carcase of the UK. It's time to fire the lot, retail, wholesale and directorate, as it's now clear that even nationalised they will continue in their merry japes until their brethren in the liquidators slip'em the backhander. Last bag of pick'n'mix for £1000, anyone?
And so, dear Hightech, you missed the point: do your research and don't just echo the herd, and you'll be a valuable and welcome representative of the Costa del Lot. Life's tough, but at least you're still getting income - imagine how things are for a man with a growing family, losing his job and house as a result of being overmortgaged. Could you face telling a four-year-old he'll have to be adopted and never see mummy and daddy again, because they can't look after him any longer, they've got no home and will be sleeping rough because the Councils have nowhere for them to stay? And then when it turns out there's nobody adopting, so he's dumped alone in a home until he's turfed out aged twelve (because by then 16 will have become a pipedream)? That's the truth that's starting to bite in the UK imminently. A return to Victorian values - with a vengeance. What, more?
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Planet Zog has been crying out for milking for a long time, and that statistic aberation is about the same size as the unexplained cash outflow. I wonder?
For the uninitiated, the Earth is surrounded by vacuum, and there's no trade across it: therefore, the Earth is a closed system. As a result, one would expect that the net sum of balance of payments and trade should equal zero, as what I sell to you matches what you buy from me. Unfortunately, it doesn't, which some wag back in the 1960s explained by an unknown entity dealing in the system which he named Planet Zog. A sizeable unknown party, in fact, roughly as important as the US. That scale of unknown tends to attract the unscrupulous with assets to launder, and one can imagine certain third-world - and, indeed, certain panhandlers from the first-world - to whom such a resource would be very attractive indeed.
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1. In this crisis I have learnt that for a bank or other financial company CONFIDENCE and TRUST are of huge importance. By undermining these one can destroy perfectly good bank (I am not saying that NR was perfectly good bank).
2. Media has big influence on societies and opinion of people
Based on 1 and 2, it is possible that journalists, if report their stories in irresponsible way, can destroy that fragile and moody Ms CONFIDENCE. With it a bank can go down and real people will suffer.
I trust Robert understands this.
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Robert
The depositors were publicly protected. The employees and shareholders should blame management and/or failing regulation/oversight.If politicians set the tone, them too.
But dont lose your sense of fairness when the addrenalin flows nor, above all, your compassion - unlike some of the soul-less numpties ( your word) contributing to this blog.
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Hey Robert, what's new labour doing are they on holiday too?
Good to see them helping the hard pressed bankers (sorry families)
Also,
What chance to you give NuLAbour of re-election?
Better than .00001% ?
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h-dumpty,
type carefully. look closely at your links. keep trying.
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did i hear this right, for every person in the uk we have 33000 of debt!!!! brown should be ashamed of himself, and i bet if we ever get a recovery, it will be a british recovery and not the world recovering.
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217,
No worries, gordo's hyper inflashion formulae will sort it all out in a jiff :-0
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Talk about not taking responsibility for your own actions..everybody needs someone else to blame these days when their own actions lead to loss, discomfort or inconvenience.
It was a less than savoury sight watching the hedge fund managers who tried to make a killing in the days before NR was nationalised bleating about the goverment 'confiscating private property' with reference to their WORTHLESS shares at the recent appeal hearing.. Buying shares is 'investing' if you tuck them away for ten years and don't look at the price until you redeem them, that covers, ooh, maybe one percent of all market trading - the other 99 percent is purely gambling on short term fluctuations in share prices..
Wall Street isn't known as The Worlds Biggest Casino for nothing, and just like in real casinos anybody who lays down a bet (sorry, 'Takes a Position') has to be prepared to lose everything when it goes horribly wrong.the whole 'investment' industry is desperate to disassociate itself from the 'Gambling' tag but look up a dictionary definition of Gambling and explain to me the difference from 'Investing' other than purely semantics
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Here's another way of looking at the financial crisis:
http://artipedia.org/artsnews/exhibitions/2009/02/08/the-global-mess-an-art-project-for-charity-in-sweden/
Well, it makes a change!
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really enjoy your honesty Robert...love the trip you made to the North..very useful to watch..well done.
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Howay and Shoot the Messenger.
What next? Let's blame the BBC for the panic when the Ripper was around!
Where's the forum where Applegarth faced his critics?
Where's the forum where Brown will face any probing question where he is not forewarned.
We need journalists like Robert.
[i]For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.
Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.
[/i]
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Ref 209 Prudeboy
Yep - good stuff.
Or, as Robert might approvingly say from his Welsh hideaway: "Now, THERE'S lovely!".
Incidentally, didn't Jimmy Carter have an embarrassing brother?
I wonder if Robert has one of those?
Alternatively, does he have a brother who's embarrassed?
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Citgroup has fallen by a further 22% plus by close of business today.
Come on, Barclays.
Tune in, Bobby Diamond.
We all know about your "ambitions" in the USA. Based upon your recent "update", and the current market valuation of Citigroup, you are now in a position to buy the biggest show in town, and all out of this year's "profits" alone.
Let's keep on dancin'...
Alternatively, just Chuck it, buy a pocket calculator, and behave yourselves.
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Right - that's it: too much to drink by 11.30 on a Friday night, and becoming bilious, so 225 (and this) will be removed by the moderators.
Still confused by the "Rahere" ramblings. Who, or what, is "Rahere"? Is it the Egyptian sungod: Ra Here?
Or is the "Ra" the initials of someone? R.A. Here?
Hang on... It's not Ron Atkinson is it?
IS it you, Ron? I thought that you'd left the media to open up a soft toy shop with Carol Thatcher.
I'm confused.
Goodnight, Robert.
Goodnight, everyone.
To-morrow is another day, we'll all still be skint, and it's all still Robert's fault.
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It's all being published... I'm going to regret this to-morrow...
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Trust.
Confidence.
Home.
Secretary.
Expenses.
Publish.
which of these words upsets the moderators
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LOOKS LIKE ALL IS BUST WITH A BIG BOOM!
GORDY?
"ITS EVERYBODY ELSES CRISIS"
PANTS!! PANTS ON FIRE!!!
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NR, not what it was but it followed the Thatcher model.
the result, heartache and pain.
and the people want to vote Tory who will SLASH public expenditure ?
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So... RBS bonus payments are not even defered...
RBS allegedly offering loans against defered payments... i.e. cash now!
GB and AD.... you've been had.
But don't expect us to fall for it... we can see straight through your spin.
Even the Pope & a few £££ from some Swiss tax evaders won't fix this one.
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Confidence and trust ?
No thanks.
Confidence, trust and secrecy are the cornerstone of every swindles, frauds, pyramids schemes and exploitations.
We don't need distrust but what we need is "never trust".
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or perhaps it was this ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/publishorbedamned.shtml
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Interested to see TV news programmes (all Channels), Politicians and Union officials being very careful not to name the Car Plant which is rumoured to be about to close...
They all said they didn't want to destabilise it.
Have they learned the lesson from the Banking system and been reading the comments on this blog posting ?
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The item would not play and frankly it is a lazy way of doing a blog. It does always seem to be about you. You are the messanger not the main event.
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The commentator on BBC 5 Live is saying that the floor is a long way off, the new banking laws don't achieve what is needed, there is no transparency, and it is too little too late
So looks like Robert has a lot to look into if these voices are getting more widespread broadcast if he's away from his desk
We need a calm and leading individual to point out what is wrong...and then maybe someone to suggest what would help...a lifeline to a floundering government
Don't they say that if you "go down" three times then you drown? Two bailouts and the markets still short the banks?
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To Zootmac (225):
Both Citigroup and Bank of America are heading into bankruptcy and they will be nationalized in the time-frame of the next three months. Barclays or any other investor should keep their hands of from them, they are literally poison.
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Just been reading about RBS lay offs-reported at 10,000 to 20,000. Small comfort for these staff that higher ups are getting bonuses, deferred or otherwise.
Also, Bloomberg are reporting a US car maker needs help or it will close European plants. Not saying the name in case it's the one with no name in the news today. Don't want to get moderated!
Microsoft are laying off American workers and wanting more foreign workers on visas-causing another storm, and Freddie and Fannie's toxic stuff won't be bought without a specific government guarantee-oh dear! More trouble across the pond with this, Citigroup and BofA. Wonder how long til the shockwave hits here?!
Globally and nationally, we're past the point of no return. I don't think there's much more governments can do, apart from look after their own people. Noone wants their government looking after other countries before their own-it doesn't need to be protectionist action, just nationalist!
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234
Obviously banks are valued more than car manufacturers.
It is vital to stop repossessions are most of them from Northen Rock.? probably not most fo then in the NE as posted earlier
National Banks should deal with this, and start lending the money. May be there could be some kind of a deal whereby those who are being bailed out are prevented for getting any other mortgates for some years or for the remainder of what should have been their mortgate or re-negotiate a new mortgage.
I was horrified a few months ago to whatch on TV the Abbey National adverts offering 6 times salary on mortgages (nice hedgehogs though)
If we own banks then we should use them to work for us. When things settle, and they will then they can be privatised again.
At the moment with the coverage becoming bleaker and bleaker we are being scared senseless about everything. At times I watch the news and am left closed to 'petrified'.
Things are very difficults and very worrying it is true but a bit of measure please.
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At a personal level, I have every sympathy with the likes of Doreen and sadly, I suspect my own reaction to her predicament would have been similar. Objectively however, her contentions are misguided and simply wrong. Robert Peston, indeed any journalist, has a duty to convey the truth, however unpalatable, as quickly as possible. This is a cornerstone of a functioning democracy and vital when the government of the day is authoritarion and repressive. To suggest that there is a way to 'nuance' such news as the failure of Northern Rock in order to avoid a panic is delusional. It would be like trying to pass of the eruption of Krakatoa as no more than a stray firework. As Mr Peston correctly pointed out, Northern Rock failed because it had a wholly unsustainable business plan, poor management and an exceptionally arrogant chief executive. It may have felt cathartic to sound off at Mr Peston but I am afraid there is little point in 'shooting the messenger' and ignoring thr real culprits.
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Back to the main topic.
Thing is, if Robert hadn't have reported it, the odds are people in government would have grossly under-estimated the seriousness of the situation and would have been none the wiser until the whole sector collapsed.
So you could argue that Robert, by his reporting, prevented a disaster being an absolute calamity.
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ok how many car plants are there in the UK? nissan, jaguar/rover, vauxhall, bmw any more? ok now which one is a subsidiary of GM..........? If robert was here he would have named it days ago!
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Mr Moderator.
I was astonished that my comments have been 'against house rules'.
Thank goodness you were not checking my books at the FSA.
The recent excitement up north may never have happened.
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244-I risk being moderated if the name is true-it sounds like an unlucky gem stone and the other name also make combat aircraft.
Hope this helps!
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Ref 238 Jukka_Rohilla
Hello. I assume from your contributions that you are from Finland. My apologies if I am wrong.
I agree with your assessment of Citi and Bank of America.
I was attempting to ridicule the Barclays management, their strategy, their recent update, and their declared "profits".
I suspect that this is a language thing.
I don't speak, or write, Finnish. You, on the other hand, communicate very well in written English; but you may have to develop further your awareness of irony.
Kind regards. Z
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guess it's out in the open now-sky have the same as bloomberg-they link the Unite union's warning with the story on Saab being ditched by GM, and the Swedish government are not going to help.
What's the point of 'secret' talks with Ally D when the news is available on other sites!!!
Playground cloak and dagger behaviour!
Pathetic!
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How bad actors and good intentions are doing in the stock market. The hole in housing.
My favourite columnist on top form, as usual...If the link don't work, let me know, and I'll archive the article...We Ride the Slide!
Wheeeeee
ed
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Post 175 - I agree. We are here to be farmed. That is what our family say every day.
When are these marches taking place? I still have a job, but I will be happy to go on a march against the politicians. I have seen how things changed as a result in France, where the population refuse to be farmed. Sarkozy has started eating humble pie and he has started talking repeatedly about the need for justice.
There is no justice in this country. My neighbour has 2 homes, has 'tapped into the equity' of his first home to finance the second and who is going to pay for it? Why I will, of course via depletion of pension and savings.
Oh, by the way, they are also busy farming my 2 sons, both of whom have Masters Degrees in Engineering and hefty student loans, which they were conned into believing carried no interest! They will help to pay for my neighbour's greedy lifestyle too.
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If nothing else the trivialising title of this blog - 'Toon army v me' - shows two things.
a) Peston is a fully paid-up member of an often ignorant metropolitan media elite. When BBC jobs were being planned for relocation from London to Salford his BBC colleague Jeremy Paxman talked of the horror of the people involved having to move to an 'alien' environment. People's lives have been harmed badly by this and to lazily refer to his North-East critics as the 'Toon army' is both patronising and somewhat childish.
b) Regardless of whether his journalistic integrity has been compromised or not, the image conveyed by the title 'Toon army v me' - of a lone journalistic warrior heading North to face down his many critics (who had reasonable and legitimate concerns), demonstrate that his massively credit crunch enhanced profile has brought with it a simultaneous swelling of his ego.
Robert is, of course, having a good crisis in professional terms.
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Robert your job title is "Business Editor" so
their was no need to waste time defending your accurate reporting on N.R to anyone.
Now is the time to report on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Only people with a vested interest in troubled banks, businesses or who have doggy financial affairs want or require silence.
Businesses and investors can only hope to stay ahead of the game by reading facts.
No doubt if you had heard about Madoff or Stanford, before their alleged bad behaviour ended in pain, you would have informed the globe rather than kept quiet for fear of upsetting people or altering events.
By the way can anybody tell me how did Stanford become a Sir?
Titles seem to have been dished out to undeserving people involved in the financial world like sweeties to children.
It requires investigation, if only the Eton boys were not so polite, crash and co would be squirming on a daily basis.
We need a British bull dog and you Robert are one.
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I love the way not one of them seemed to want to blame the people in charge at Northern Rock.
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I came across a hypothesis which seemed to offer major pieces in the puzzle for the diabolical financial situation we are experiencing.
I remain firm in my belief that many hardships for our fellow man are caused deliberately.
Collateral Damage
Collateral Damage Part 2
E.P. Heidner 28 June, 2008
I feel it puts many things into perspective.
But of course that’s my opinion.
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It's a clip of 12 minutes of what what was a 2 day trip by the looks of it.
Full of the sort of soundbites that journalists love and feed on, manipulated in a way that makes Robert look ok.
Where is the vitriol that must have been expressed towards you Robert? Is the best you can do a face to face with a passionate yet reasonable woman? Would a phone-in really have created no out-there, outlandish, or outrageous comment from a people who were very proud of THEIR bank?
I'm not sure how this clip protects you from the original argument that you were reckless with the truth you found out.
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254
gold is a no no then
the document looks
kosher to me cross
referencing real facts
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coming from the mountain top
house of the rising sun
you can not wake up someone
who's not sleeping
look around you
and you'll see
monsters stealing the works
with their yellow tongue
seek the monsters
catch them again
lets invade them in their sleep
and slew them while they sleep
wake up shake up
this is getting interesting
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If you are looking for subjects to write about, I would like to see an appraisal of the oil price fluctuations of the past six to eight months.
Oil is now less than one third of the price it was artificially pumped up to in the summer of last year.
As far as I understand, hundreds of tankers are berthed around the world with nowhere to drop their cargo. Oil purchased by speculators in a concerted effort to drive up the price.
They bought the oil, so one day had to take delivery of it; unfortunately for them they have no end-user, and are now paying thousands of dollars in tanker costs by the day.
A- Who was buying the oil? I don't think anyone believes it was the usual day-to-day customers.
B- How did they fund the purchases?
C-How much have they lost? (and are we paying for it......)
D- When they try to recover their losses, are they going to manipulate the oil price again?
Are we in for a decade of crazy fluctuations of basic commodites by a new generation of avaricious commodity hedgers, who have moved from the financial markets because there is no real growth there for the forseeable future.
Oil, wheat, soya, rice, all the staples. Just ripe for michievous traders to cream off a profit while they cause damage to millions around the world.
Regards
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#257 Kiki_dread
To the contrary, in my own opinion, it seems Gold is one of the only things that will maintain ones wealth at the moment.
Historically, a stable storage of wealth in troubled times and most likely will remain so regardless of the amount (allegedly) illegally dumped on the market. However, I'm no investment advisor. I just run a business and try to keep an open mind.
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NR, LLoyds/TSB/HBOS, bankers bonuses are old news now. (and have been for a while)
This is what the IMF have to say.
'The most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression has pushed advanced economies into recession. According to the IMF’s January forecasts, the output in these economies is expected to contract by 2 percent in 2009'
Remarks by Takatoshi Kato, IMF Deputy Managing Director 17-02-2009
No upturn in 2009 then, 2010 looking grim.
The wheels are only just coming off the Asian bus,
see his nice powerpoint slides at http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2009/021409.htm
They only now seem to understand the true nature of the interconnectedness of the global economy.
The thing is, the downturn in the Western economies has had a devastating effect on the Asian economies and now that they are entering the downward spiral there will be a knock-on effect on the Western economies.
Wave after wave of economic devastation will take out whole swathes of industry as it traverses the globe, weakening those that are left only for the next wave to take out those weakened and weakening any remaining.
It will only stop when there is nothing left.
We are only at the end of the beggining.
The first wave has only just gone global.
NR will soon fade into mythology.
HMG is now irrelevant.
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Is economics really a science?
How much knowledge of their field do the economics editors (in print, on tv,...) have? Some people in proper sciences could forsee a problem. For the economist to now tell us - like historians - what their opinion is of why we're in this mess, well, isn't that a bit late? Poltics-economics: everyone has an opinion...so, how credible is this field? Or is it really "voodoo economics"? Is it a default discipline for people who couldn't hack physics/chemistry/biology in school?
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#240 Tigerjayj
I'm glad you used nationalist with a small n.
Globalisation could never be seen as a good thing if a government takes care on non-tax paying, non-voting countries before it takes care of those who do.
Globalisation should mean the availability of spices to Europe, the availability of Whisky in Japan and America etc,
What is should never mean is the deskilling and impovirishment of an indigenious population in the name of profits.
Methinks globalisation has been hijacked by the mega-greedy.
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What a difference between the short piece on Newsnight and the full piece on the Politics Show. The former came over as self-indulgent, a bit like royalty visiting the north-east, reeking of celebrity, complaining about the weather, patronising in referring to the loss of "small nesteggs" and skating over the surface of the key issues. The latter was a great programme well managed by the presenter, with a fair and credible response from RP to the allegations that he was responsible for the run on NR. It's a great shame because I suspect Newsnight will have been seen by many and the Politics Show by relatively few. In a way it reflects the decline of Newsnight as a serious programme.
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Coral bloom-I absolutely agree!
I can't see how looking after your own country before the rest of the world should be seen as protectionist-I thought protectionism was a shutting down of imported trade and foreign currency? I think some of our politicians view any kind of looking after 'home' first as protectionist.
Talking of which, there's a bit of a storm brewing between China and the US. Is this another Tsunami headed our way I wonder?
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Anyway, enough of this, what about the Golem's latest. Yes, Golem Brown has decided to return to "Prudence".
Such a shame that not only has the horse bolted from the stable, it's raced down the lane, stumbled, broken it's leg and has been put down.
The man, if one can term the Golem a man (he hardly looks human, does he?), is a national disgrace.
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# 267 subedeithemomgol
One can only describe this as colossal insincerity.
Indeed a truly colossal hypocrisy.
During his time as chancellor, Mr Brown supported light-touch bank regulation. Without a doubt he was openly critical of other European banking systems for their strict regulation and inflexibility.
Britain, he said, was strong because of its light-touch regulatory environment, which encouraged investment and created jobs and wealth.
In 'The Observer' the prime minister sketches out a future where bankers will be the "servants" rather than the masters of Britain's currently ailing economy.
How much more unreserved bulls**t are we to be exposed to?
What I am most disturbed about is the UK's new Banking Act Resolution which gives greater powers of intervention and enables the Bank of England to take action which will be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Laws.
Government organised and conducted solely for self-interested individuals and groups gives the society a short lifespan. This imperils the survival of everyone in the land; History is full of such governmental deaths.
Would someone kindly tell me when and where the first big UK demonstration against our unscrupulous and incompetent government is taking place?
I feel very inclined to be there.
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#268
Bovine ordure it is: but worse, after having cocked the snook at HMG for centuries, and still even now, the banks most certainly will ignore the worst Prime Minister of all time. He suggests a return to fundamentals, such as we suggested here many weeks ago - and as a week is a long time in politics, that's many eternities ago. So many eternities, in fact, that the situation has now evolved so far that it has become a dodo, an evolutionary failure. And to add to it, he uses the passive sense, someone ought to. Who is that someone, Gordon? The Banks? They're not listening to you. The people? Any such attempt will be smothered by the Banks. Business? GE Capital is a bank, and if you hadn't noticed, they lie behind the bulk of shop credit cards.
This is half the problem, a total lack of practical hands-on leadership. He's guilty of ignoring the military maxim of Prior Planning and Proper Preparation Prevent Piddle Poor Performance, launching initiatives such as the last Enterprise Guarantee which have failed because there was no infrastructure in the Civil Service to drive the banks in the necessary direction or for them to claim on should things fail.
The other half of the problem is that like rather too many intellectual geriatrics, he's bed-blocking Parliament. Time to send him off to a rest-home and replace him with another case in need of a cure. And that, in fact, is what will finally defeat this country, the failure to appoint the brightest and best to government. This was always done by coopting them to sit on the working committees, and then by listening to them. However, it's been noticable that the working committees of this government have been noticably devoid of any unelected talent, or indeed of any listening into the bargain.
As the parties have now noticed, if sufficient of the population become disaffected, politics is reduced to the core support of the dogmatically committed (and most of those should be). That is about the same size for each party at constituency level, so we risk seeing a large number of similar results to the Swanley St Mary, ellecting either BNP or Monster Raving Loonies, or the like. As a joker himself, Rahere is looking for a coin to toss which to support for the greater amusement of the rest of the world.
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He wants the banks to lend,
He wants the folks to borrow,
He wants this too
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7903985.stm
What is wrong with Gordon Browns BRAIN? Or has it dawned on him WE ARE BANKRUPT!
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Each time I know GB is making some sort of declaration, my heart sinks and shudders run down my spine!
The time for the action he suggests is so far past that it's barely in living memory!
More useless rhetoric-aimed at the polls I wouldn't wonder.
What of RBS? Massive job losses, which if you calculate the average salary of, say, 18,000 a year, seems to be about the amount of the bonuses to be paid. Not to mention them still addicted to 'packaging' their bad stuff and selling it on! Who, exactly, will want to buy all their toxic debt and selected overseas bits amd pieces? Unbelievable!
Government intervention was obviously intended to ease the banks' positions to facilitate a knock on effect to home owners and business. We know it didn't work, and banks have swung too far the other way now.
Too much in the closet still, methinks. As chancellor, then Prime Minister, he should have done this a long time ago. His watch, and his responsibility.
Actions speak louder than words.
Time to go, Gordy!
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Now Ally D is on the band wagon telling Ally S he has to make cuts. If I read the article correctly, it seems that Ally D may cut the amount given to Scotland's budget.
Strikes me it's an easy target-Ally D should look at other spending cuts first-already mentioned here. He needs to get his own house in order first, before attacking someone else's!
Whatever happened to leading by example?!
This government isn't even funny anymore. Their credibility is beyond tatters.
Vote of no confidence, dissolution of parliament, general election. Now, please!
They absolutely have to go.
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Am I missing something with this RBS deal.
We own it
If we sell off the most profitable bit at the bottom of the market surely we won't get a fair price because the market is confused
If it is sold off then this profitable revenue stream would be set apart from actually paying off the huge debt and by implication not be as profitable as the bit sold off.
Thus is this to placate the big bankers and their bonuses and release them from their state control, or is Crash trying to sell at the bottom of the market again?
I think we need some comment to cut through what is happening here and shine a little clarity.
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My concerns aren't just about your style of reporting, but the way in which news has been turned into a soap opera, madly chasing ratings and extreme story lines. News should be about facts, not about over-hyping every subject to chase ratings. Sadly, over-hyping news is almost accepted as the only way to do it now. Even weather forecasts are frequently apocalyptic in tone. Many people noticed the glee with which reporters like you presented each bank collapse, and when the Country officially slipped into recession you guys could hardly contain yourselves. Some of this is down to the 24 hour news culture, as you desperately try to make every second of the day interesting. And for "interesting" read "dramatic", over-hyped etc. There is also the celeb culture which now pervades newsreaders and presenters. I fully expect to see you on "I'm a celebrity get me out of here" or something similar in the near future. Like many other reporters you have gone way beyond simply reporting the news. You want to BE the news, and sadly you are. I assume you have an agent, and spend as much time discussing your image as you do considering how to present a news item. This trip to the north-east will have been thought through to the nth degree, it is all good publicity for you. I'm adding to it by commenting here of course.
The bank collapses were clearly an accident waiting to happen, the financial systems were too loose, even corrupt in many ways. But you do not have to piggy back your own fame on the misery of ordinary people. Some reporters simply present the facts, you are clearly after much more than that.
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The Government under Mr Brown have decided that people have to have deposits for mortgages and cannot borrow more then they could repay.......A new era of Thridt, Prudence and firm Government regulation of bonus crazed banks is dawning!!
I will have to stop banging my head against the table top and find something harder!!
You have to wonder what is going on in the command bunker in Downing Street---I guess this week''s proposal for the pre-leak saturday/assess feedback Sunday & firmly leak/announce as Policy Monday----cycle was double 4 on the friday night policy conference when they rolled the dice.
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Not Thridt....Thrift!!... They can't think properly and I can't type anymore!
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273,
IMHO You are looking at a sustained and deliberate set of events that WILL break up the union. They (Labour) have been at it since 1997.
I am Scottish and have had such thoughts for some time, if the Barnett formulae is changed to disadvantage Scotland then an SNP Independance vote will be won for sure.
I work for the private sector btw
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Last year the Bank of England wanted to avoid moral hazard. This year they together with our Government plan to print hundreds of billions of £s and give it only to the Banks. Never mind low interest rates how are UK savers supposed to protect the value of their savings from the inevitable massive inflation this will cause?
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Message 263
"Is economics really a science?"
I can only stand back and let the economists themselves make their case for that.
What I can do is say what I think a science is and/or does.
1) Observe and record phenomena
2) Postulate plausible explanations for the phenomena
3) Derive mathematical equations which attempt to model an idealised form of the phenomena
4) Use the equations to make predictions about future phenomena under certain test conditions
5) Apply the test conditions and make a fresh round of observations and records of what happens compared to a control group where no intervention is made
6) repeat the cycle ad-infinitum, refining the theories and mathematical models until the stage 4 predictions begin to resemble what happens in the real world
...or at least until something useful, marketable, saleable comes from it.
If economists, as a collective group, failed to see the current crisis coming then either their models are fundamentally wrong or it could be that they are not perpetually running computer simulations, the way meteorologists do.
Or perhaps they need to do more inter-disciplinary collaberation with psychologists, behaviourologists and experts in chaos theory.
EYG
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"The medium is the message."
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It seems if you're stupid enough to invest large sums in one institution and that institutation fails then the BBC will give you lots of airspace to blame someone else for your loss.
I have no sympathy for that couple other than take lessons in investing.
Peston provides understandable financial journalism that the likes of Ewan Davies and Stephanie Flanders and others just can't.
He's successful at his trade and he is very good. But he's Brit and it seems we can't handle that.
Carry on as you were Peston and keep that Blog going.
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Moderators,
@ 20:27 on Friday 20th Feb 2009 I posted a comment, the comment appeared briefly and was then pulled with a 'referred to moderators message'.
Fair enough, I may have breached a rule that I was unaware of.
However, it has taken until today Tuesday 24th Feb 2009 to change the status of this post to
'19. At 8:27pm on 20 Feb 2009, BobRocket
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.'
Why has it taken so long to decide on the breach ?
Why have I not been informed of the particular rules that have been breached.
In the past I posted a link to a .pdf document, this posting was correctly rejected and I was informed very quickly (not allowed to post links that require external readers)
The posting referred to the Home Secretary, Expenses and at the end quoted a particular quotation that is on the BBC R4 website. It was not slanderous or libelous, so what was wrong with it.
Please inform me of my incursion of the rules so that I can self-moderate in the future.
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Please, please, PLEASE:
Send Robert Peston on garden leave. At least some of the present economic crisis (and its wider implications) are part of a self-fulfilling prophecy and Robert Peston is its main phrophet of doom. His slick comments are smug, arrogant, and without any insight. Could he occasionally stop the verbal ouflow and at least give the impression that he is thinking and as puzzled as the rest of us as to what is actually going on and what one could do?
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Robert:
I saw the clip in question, very informative piece of journalism....
~Dennis Junior~
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Some years ago a holiday charter jet was returning from somewhere hot but flakey, when it ran out of fuel and crashed some way short of the airport. The pilot managed to put it down safely in a field, and no-one was hurt.
He was praised by the newspapers as a hero, but promptly castigated by the aviation authorities for not having checked the fuel properly, and sacked by the company.
I asked my father about this, who was still a pilot himself then, and he told me bluntly that it was the job of a captain to check these things themselves, and that was what he was paid to do. He evidently had not done his job and had consequently put the lives of his passengers and crew at risk, and so it was quite right that he should have been fired.
This is why there was no sentimentality for the safe emergency landing, because it should not have been necessary in the first place. Would that this country's bankers, regulators and their political masters take such a clear view of their failures and responsibilities.
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