The Labour Government

TinFoilHat said:
They were waving the flag of England.

The government of the day said fuck you to every other nation.
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I don’t tink anyone in the picture you posted was from Wales or Scotland so why would they wave those flags if they aren’t from there? I’m sure I saw some being waved around other parts of the room.
 
We've got Guardiola said:
It is a regulatory failure indeed but it's also a failure of moral compass. These people brought the entire system down through their fraud and greed. That's where the regulatory problem exists because there is still no punishment nor deterrent to excessive risk taking. Didn't Jeremy Hunt propose to remove the limits on banker bonuses only last year?

I suggest you watch the movie The Big Short if you think this is purely about regulatory oversight, it's also about actual criminal behaviour too and just remember that not a single one of these criminals went to prison. Their fraud caused the largest financial crash in living memory and some of the largest corporate collapses in living memory.

All of those people are now sunning it on handsome pensions and slush funds spending the money that you trusted them to keep safe and therefore money that our government had to give them to keep them afloat when it was lost.

I wonder if you are in favour of strict regulation of the city and financial sector, even if that restrains their growth?
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I've seen that film but a long time ago now. But I don't remember the key players doing anything illegal. Immoral perhaps, but illegal? Wasn't it merely that they were betting on a market crash and had an enormous short position, and were holding out waiting for it to happen? Unless I have forgotten a key element and there was something more underhand being done? The irresponsible lending which made a crash ultimately inevitable is of course a separate thing, but that wasn't the subject of the film, as I recall.

Trading with long or short positions is not illegal, in fact it's a key pillar of the entire financial system.
 
Chippy_boy said:
I've seen that film but a long time ago now. But I don't remember the key players doing anything illegal. Immoral perhaps, but illegal? Wasn't it merely that they were betting on a market crash and had an enormous short position, and were holding out waiting for it to happen? Unless I have forgotten a key element and there was something more underhand being done? The irresponsible lending which made a crash ultimately inevitable is of course a separate thing, but that wasn't the subject of the film, as I recall.

Trading with long or short positions is not illegal, in fact it's a key pillar of the entire financial system.
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What was happening could argued to be illegal and certainly from a fraud perspective because the people involved were at least defrauding each other and the system itself for the sake of their commissions and bonuses. At best it's incompetence alongside greed but it could very easily be argued as wilful fraud and/or negligence.

They first lent money that they shouldn't and they packaged debts that they knew that were crap hidden amongst debts that were okay. The credit reference agencies rated them as bullet proof because they were based upon housing and they wanted the business. As a result various other banks bought up these packages, they never looked at what was in them and the circus went on and on.

The thing that actually took RBS down was Fred the Shred wanted to expand RBS and so he bought into ABN Amro. They failed to do proper due diligence (housing never fails apparently) and ABN Amro had a shit ton of these crappy debts which ended up on the RBS balance sheet. All of the dominoes fell, RBS ran out of money and their corporate losses exceeded £25bn in 2008 and the taxpayer had to bail them out.

Would you expect criminal investigations, regulatory change and blah blah? No, nobody went to prison, some didn't even lose their jobs and post-2008 RBS bosses were given billions in bonuses and Fred the Shred himself is now living it up on a £600k per year pension!
 
We've got Guardiola said:
What was happening could argued to be illegal and certainly from a fraud perspective because the people involved were at least defrauding each other and the system itself for the sake of their commissions and bonuses. At best it's incompetence alongside greed but it could very easily be argued as wilful fraud and/or negligence.

They first lent money that they shouldn't and they packaged debts that they knew that were crap hidden amongst debts that were okay. The credit reference agencies rated them as bullet proof because they were based upon housing and they wanted the business. As a result various other banks bought up these packages, they never looked at what was in them and the circus went on and on.

The thing that actually took RBS down was Fred the Shred wanted to expand RBS and so he bought into ABN Amro. They failed to do proper due diligence (housing never fails apparently) and ABN Amro had a shit ton of these crappy debts which ended up on the RBS balance sheet. All of the dominoes fell, RBS ran out of money and their corporate losses exceeded £25bn in 2008 and the taxpayer had to bail them out.

Would you expect criminal investigations, regulatory change and blah blah? No, nobody went to prison, some didn't even lose their jobs and post-2008 RBS bosses were given billions in bonuses and Fred the Shred himself is now living it up on a £600k per year pension!
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Perhaps we're at cross-purposes? I fully agree that the irresponsible lending to people who the lenders KNEW would be unable to pay was wrong and probably illegal. And I am sure those re-packaging these sub-prime loans as being less flaky than they were, would have been guilty of fraud.

I was referred more specifically to the protagonist in the film who made gazillions from shorting the market. I am not aware / cannot remember anything illegal about that per se.
 
bluethrunthru said:
I just watched Farage's response - a mere 9 minutes of boo hoo the nasty PM is picking on me claptrap.

He basically proved Starmers point for him - he had nothing positive to say or offer on policy just talked the country down
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I caught about 30 seconds on LBC where he sounded like a wounded child, wibbling about things happening in the US, that could now happen here.
 
Blue and true said:
He could have delivered a speech akin to the Gettysburg address and you wouldn't have liked it.
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The Gettysburg address was two minutes long (271 words, ten setences)*. I've found Kier Stamer's speech on youtube, it appears to be close to an hour. I think Kier could learn something from Abe.



* other American civil war battles are available.
 
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