So who watched "Britains Banks, too big to save?" last night?
 

Shows you why we are in such a financial state, blame governments all you want but its the banks that are to blame for it all, will be a bit of an eye opener for alot of people ;)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...o_Big_to_Save/

Tony:D

PS, I have said all along that the banks are to blame for our financial predicament :p

I didn't watch it. Did not want confirmation of how the banks can make or break people. Usually breaking them seems the norm, these days. :thumb:

Yes Tony the banks have been very shall we say cavalier with our money but surely years of unregulation didn't help. The Government knows that they are a cornerstone of the economy so why let them be so profligate with OUR money. It irks me so much I want go down to the London Stock Exchange with a placard saying 'JUMP YOU FUKCERS!'.

Cant they go somewhere else ? that Basel place sounds a dead loss ..


Sounds very reasonable to have the choice , confirmed in writing , that they wont lend your money , but have banks ever worked this way ?? Maybe they couldnt even ?

It was a piece of grand theatre by Peston. There were some very good points made and the conclusion is unfortunately true, but there was a whole gamut of truth missed out in between.

To suggest that banks alone are to blame for leveraging our deposits is quite ludicrous.

I am sure all those 'customers' that were interviewed shopped around their banks to ensure that when they deposited their life savings they got the highest interest rates. I am pretty sure that if Mr Fisherman had his deposits locked in a safe with no returns he would have been straight to the bank next door that offered him 4, 5, or 6%. And in so doing we're as culpable as anyone else in the whole chain of events...

Or people with no or poor incomes who signed up for huge mortgages...

Or the mortgage brokers who falsified FICO scores...

Or Moodys and Standard and Poors who AAA rated mortgage backed securities, based on those same FICO scores...

Or buyers around the world who thought they could get rich quick by purchasing AAA rated instruments with high returns (when has this really ever paid off)...

Or the ISDA who lobbied the US Government to allow OTC instruments to self-regulate and so avoid oversight from any regulatory body...

Or AIG Financial Products, who are an insurer not a bank, whose team of twenty people located in London managed between them to lose $180,000,000,000 - the biggest single loss in the whole financial system that was instrumental in bringing the system down...

...and so it goes on.

The whole system is culpable, from those spending money, right up to central banks, regulators and Governments. And of course elements of the commercial banks themselves - from teams creating hyper-acceleration in leverage to the senior management who let them.

The real problem is that no one, and I am pretty sure it is no one, has a good answer.

One of the 'causes' was high levels of leverage (so called casino plays) and yet RBS had one of the lowest levels of leverage of all global banks at the time of the crash.

Or tier 1 core capital reserving - well as it said on the programme, Lehman Brothers was carrying around 11% capital reserves, 3% ahead of the norm at the time.

Banks such as JP Morgan and HSBC carried much less and yet survived the tsunami.

The only thing that is certainly true - nothing has really changed and if another bubble bursts then it will be much, much worse and all the money for bailouts has gone. The cupboard is bare.

Two sensible steps would be to reduce the ratio of short term borrowing by banks to support longer term debt (securitisation) and to create a degree of separation between retail and investment banks. That would be a start.

Some very good points made there and the last paragraph in particular. The programme whilst better then the usual TV fodder did leave out a lot of the 'in between' detail if you like. At least we now know it wasn't all Gordon's fault after all ;)

Trout, what I don't follow is why Mr Fisherman is culpable for merely seeking less interest on his deposits than he would be asked to pay for a loan, or less interest after tax than inflation?

I agree it was the system that caused the problems as opposed to the banks alone. I was sympathetic but seeing as we've all come to their rescue, wheres our share of the bonuses?

How ready they are to share the pain, but not return any gain... :mad:

Dont see it am afriad , end of the day maybe its the banks structurepractices/ethics to fault , but all the above wouldnt have been possible it it were not for their employees happy to cash in on the commisssion earnt !

Tell me im wrong

Altough it was quite clearly a quality piece of drama for the bbc/mr peston

The 'gain' was had before the crash, all the people who were getting money that they shouldn't have. Greed. Now you're feeling the pain. Ok, the banks behaved irresponsibly, but so did everyone else.

As for bonuses, yes, it's not good to see the people at the top getting ridiculous bonuses, especially if that particular bank is making a loss, but for the majority of staff in the banks back in profit, they are just getting rewarded for their hard work. What's wrong with that?

Yes, and all the people willing to lap up impossible credit to give them their commission.......

Geezer

So make a massive loss one year then post a proportionally tiny gain the next. Suddenly everythings forgotten because technically its a 'profit'.

And we wonder where things went wrong?!

I didn't see the programme, but no doubt it was a biased, one side sensationalist piece of journalism. Before the crunch, the economy saw massive growth but the banks received no credit (excuse the pun) for their part. The financial institutions facilitated the flow of money in a way that allowed nearly every Joe Public to easily buy nice cars, buy property/upscale to bigger property, create property millionaires, luxury goods that would normally be out of reach, go on expensive holidays, etc etc. everything was looking nice an rosy, didn't matter if you lived beyond your means, interest rates were low and credit was offered at 0% interest. The banks let you have what you wanted which would not have otherwise been possible if banks stayed with the old system of using depositors money to provide loans and mortgages.

Joe Public has to bare some of the responsibility as they played a major part. A self-fulfilling prophecy with Joe Public creating a run on banks by withdrawing all their savings from the same bank despite their savings being guaranteed to up to £50,000, taking away the capital that the banks needed to operate. Joe Public defaulting on loan payments because they overstretched themselves too much, hedge funds and speculators shorting stocks of troubled banks also had a part.

Do bankers deserve their bonuses. Well I'd argue it's not as simple as that. Within the bank there are many teams that trade many different types of financial instruments. Some teams bring in substantial amounts of revenue while other teams not so much and their internal bonus structure reflects this. Also bonuses are distributed to not just traders, but also non-trading front and back office staff, operations, IT staff etc. If you take away these bonuses, what other incentive is there to stay and work the long hours and for some unsociable hours to ensure you're ready for the opening or closing of other markets around the globe? You can't expect them to or even enforce that they stay if you take away the incentive. Often when a head of a team leaves, they usually take their whole team with them to setup in another bank or start up their own hedge fund sometimes out of the jurisdiction of this country. Don't forget, bonuses generate a huge amount of revenue for Government, the bigger the bonus the bigger the tax revenue and this inevitably goes back into the economy.

Excelent point :thumb:

I got pulled apart on here for saying much the same two years ago. Still it was fashionable to blame everything on the government then so I doubt partly pointing the finger at the people that were actually taking all this credit through a combination of greed and stupidity was going to go down well even if it iwas the truth

You are wrong :)


On a more serious note - the same OTC credit derivative structures that were at the heart of the mortgage market crash were also the same financial instruments that protected worldwide markets and institutions when the dot.com bubble burst and then the markets crashed after 9/11. If it wasn't for CDS products many more companies would have gone bust at that time.

A CDS used well is a fantastic product to manage and diffuse market risk when used well. Of course some, such as AIG FP, can get a bit carried away.

As any investment manager will tell you, you should NEVER get concentrated into a single asset class. With mortgage backed securities that is exactly what happened!!

The system would have self-corrected w/out government intervention.

Now we are seeking people to blame when we could have had a solution created by market forces.

Utter tripe. So typical in the current climate, nothing new and certainly not proof that 'the banks are bad' and everyone else is a victim.

If I print money and pay the government tax then I am generating revenue for the government.

But like banking I'm not creating wealth. If everyone in the economy was a hedge fund manager we would be in poverty. There would be nothing to spend the money on!

I believe in market forces and that means no bail outs. Banks should be rewarded by doing the only thing they do which is manage and evaluate RISK. They DO NOT create wealth, they just ENABLE.

If the state steps in to save the banking/financial industry then bonuses and pay become the states business though.

Here here... :D

And how do they enable?

By deploying capital. And everything that was discussed last night was the tightrope of risk v. capital deployment.

They enable wealth creation by allocating liquidity to deserving capitalists....i.e ones with 'good' ideas, 'deserving projects' etc. Banks thus must be able to properly assess risk. They lend to good risks and reject bad risks.

It's all about allocating resources in the economy.

Debt is like a license to use capital to produce goods and services. If the banks don't think those goods and services are wanted by the market then they don't lend. It's more efficient than an economy taking a 'trial and error' approach....this would be wasteful.

The Communists used bureaucrats to allocate resources. They would give you a license to say build a factory. Debt is just the same think really.

Basically, this just smacks of envy. The majority of people working for banks work very hard, the schemes in places means that will pay out a bonus under certain circumstances (unfortunately, there also seems to be a system where bonuses are written into contracts regardless of performance).

Lots of other directors in non-banking companies will have got bonuses, but does anyone complain about that?

It also makes me laugh, because all the people moaning about bonuses are the people who won't get them. I'm sure a few are not, but the majority of people who whine on about it would happily accept one in the same circumstances.

What do you want the banks to do with their profit? Paying a paltry amount back to the public purse will make little difference. The banks that were bailed out will make a load of money for the government if they are allowed to succeed so it is the national interest to make sure they do.

Obviously they need to to better in the future, but so does the government with regards to regulation or legislation, and so does Joe Public. Save up FFS! Stop leaving beyond your means.

Geezer

But everyone likes a scapegoat, a fallguy to take all the flak. It means that the people doing the lynching don't have to admit responsibility for their own failings, and there are many; those living beyond their means, those who borrowed excessively, those who created the run on the banks, the FSA for failing to regulate the industry, the ratings agency for failing to rate securities, the hedge funds and speculators for shorting bank stocks, the Government for failing to acknowledge the looming economic crisis until it was too late and the media for effectively "pouring fuel on the fire". I'm not saying the banks are completely blameless, but neither are those some of whom I've mentioned.

Sure and 'The Bankers' are that to some extent. They are a typical target for populist demagogues in times of economic stress; you had Nazi rhetoric blaming 'international Capitalists' and 'greedy Bankers' etc. You have the same de-humanising crap now as well.

Rewarding failure is never going to be popular with the public especially when public money was risked to bail out said failure.

Many banks accepted public money so it would only seem right that the public is able to criticise bonuses.

Out of interest, do you take out any insurance policies other than car insurance? i.e. house insurance, contents insurance, life assurance etc etc

If you do then the part you mention about believing in no bail outs is rubbish as you yourself are paying to be bailed out if the worst happens are you not?

Banks pay taxes and, just as important, dividends on their shares. I am sure than now most of the banks are seeing profitable gains again those dividends will be paid and guess who will receive a large percentage of these dividends? Thats right, the state as it has many many shares. The dividend payment is a bonus to shareholders is it not and as such, are you saying that banks should not be paying dividends as well - despite returning to profit and adhering to the conditions of the bailout?

I pay taxes but I don't expect the state to bail me out if I crash my car or go bankrupt (except for dole).

Private insurance is just that. It is purchased privately.

By your logic any company facing a financial crisis should expect to be bailed out with tax payers money, just because they pay taxes.

@ chris -... Except that the taxes banks pay aren't in any way similar to an insurance policy... nor are dividends, which are simply the distribution of profit to the company's owners.

The public can vilify the banks all they like. When foreign banks are paying their staff large bonuses, the British banks, bailed out with public money or not, have to follow otherwise they risk loosing their "revenue generating" staff to these overseas banks.

Says who? The Bankers would say that because they want their bonus'.

What exactly do they do anyway that is so difficult? It's not like they are Surgeons or Scientists.

If they could evaluate risk properly then the crisis would not have happened.

Banking should be grey and boring, a ponderous affair of giving loans to low risk parties, instead we turned it into this illusion of wealth generation and gambling dressed up as 'investment'.