The Labour Government

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.
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
It was reported years ago, and Farage never denied it, just came out with some quip about doing silly things when he was young.

And silly comment from Lammy, our politicians should be above that and debate the policies.
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Agree, it was stupid of Lammy to come out with that without concrete evidence.
Given Frog face ammunition to fire at Labour now
 
mosssideblue said:
Agree, it was stupid of Lammy to come out with that without concrete evidence.
Given Frog face ammunition to fire at Labour now
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Not sure that Farage would want to use it too much seeing that there was documentary evidence that he didn’t refute. It won’t stop his minions though.
 
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