HBOS Gone

[pauld]

If you're the Chief Exec of one of the big financial institutions you're in a great position. You can take as much risk as you want and if it works then you get shed loads of money. If it fails then you get shed loads of money and someone else will pick up the tab and your garden gets to look nice I'm not quite sure how this will lead to responsible behaviuor and you can forget the FSA they're as effective as our back 4.

Well, quite. There was an economist on the radio this week who summed it up brilliantly "It's like socialism in reverse - we've socialised the risk, but privatised the profit". The market is king - until the city boys start to make a loss, then they're all government interventionists all of a sudden. And no I'm not suggesting HBOS should have been allowed to fail, any more than the US govt could have allowed AIG or Freddie/Fannie to fail - neither govt could have afforded the knock-on damage to the rest of the economy. Thanks Maggie and Ron.

[Don Rogers Shop]

The banning of shortselling would have helped a hell of alot today

[Samdy Gray]

Bloody hell Sam you really go by short term events.  Medium to long term will tell us if the "panic's over mate", not a morning's trading on the LSE.  Would not enjoy having a financial adviser like your good self looking after my affairs ;-)

Who said I'd want to give you advice anyway

[Lumps]

Well, quite. There was an economist on the radio this week who summed it up brilliantly "It's like socialism in reverse - we've socialised the risk, but privatised the profit". The market is king - until the city boys start to make a loss, then they're all government interventionists all of a sudden. And no I'm not suggesting HBOS should have been allowed to fail, any more than the US govt could have allowed AIG or Freddie/Fannie to fail - neither govt could have afforded the knock-on damage to the rest of the economy. Thanks Maggie and Ron.

But the answer in that case is pretty obvious surely. If you're going to nationalise stuff for the good of the national and international economy then you take the fucking lot, good debt as well as bad debt, profits and well as losses, assets as well as liabilities, and the masters of the frigging universe can do one.

I'm getting sick of people from the city appearing on newsnight telling us all what a vital role the financial and stock markets play in the economy when it's so abundantly clear to most of us that their role in the creation of REAL wealth is absolutely zero. Sure they're absolutely essential to the economy as it is currently established, but they're only required to make the free market "work". It's not the best mechanism for funding investment in industry and commerce for them to function and produce the things we all need, it's just the best way for the owners of capital to make profit out of that investment.

Does any share trading in any company ever really reflect the value of that company in terms of it's assets and it's prospects? That's what it is supposed to do. To send capital to those companies that will do well with it and withold it from those that will do badly. That's worked really well lately hasn't it?

How can shares in HBOS were worth £10 one day and £3 a few days later, drop to 90p in a matter of hours and then rebound back up to over £3 again?  Was the value of their assets fluctuating that wildly? Of course it bloody wasn't. But half a dozen hedge funds smelt blood and the chance to short sell their way to a few quid and a load of the major investment funds got whipped into a panic and jumped ship as fast as they could. It's the posh version of the queues outside Northern Rock.

It's a shame. I can't even feel pleased about the collapse of the smug middle class, middle ground New Labour / Tory / Liberal consensus that the problems of free market economies and the boom/bust cycle had all been solved and that Marx with his stupid theories about the inevitable crisis of overproduction was just so last century, because of the complete lack of any political figure capable of delivering any analysis of the situation and providing a reasoned alternative.

Sadly the total absence of any left alternative in this country either within or outside Labour is looking like giving us a Cameron government which is utterly clueless. Every one of the figures that pop up in the media speaking for them is an identikit public school debating society twat without the first idea of how the world works.

Bollocks!

[Ardiles]

Great post.  Agree with what you say, in the main, but I have a slightly more optimistic take on this.

The events of the last year - and the last week, in particular - has brought the City in to people's living rooms like never before.  The man on the street now understands 'credit crunch' and 'short selling', where as this time last year he wouldn't have understood either term.  He understands that what happens in the Square Mile has a direct bearing on his standard of living - on how much he pays to service his mortgage.  He also understands that house prices don't always go up.  In effect, he is financially much more savvy than he used to be.

As a result, I think there will now be concerted political pressure from the public to reform the way in which the City operates - even if, as expected, the next administration is Tory.  I'm sure Cameron has more mates in the City than we have fans, but he will not be able to escape the public pressure to reform.

The US is leading the way in this respect.  Before long, I'm sure text books will have to be rewritten to reflect that the US is no longer the free-market economy it was.  The US, and Europe, will be relatively weaker and more interventionist in future.  The balance of power is heading east - in particular, to China, a giant with a planned economy.

[pauld]

But the answer in that case is pretty obvious surely. If you're going to nationalise stuff for the good of the national and international economy then you take the fucking lot, good debt as well as bad debt, profits and well as losses, assets as well as liabilities, and the masters of the frigging universe can do one.

Well, yes. And you go through the books with a fine tooth comb, find all the "masters" who've raked in 6-figure bonuses over the past couple of decades and confiscate every asset of theirs you can lay your hands on and use it to offset some of the losses their greed and stupidity has saddled us all with. But that ain't gonna happen either. Not least because there's no-one on either side of the Atlantic, of any political shade, who have either the wit or the will to abandon their slavery to the Gods of the market

[Colin Todd]

I dont think its the system itself thats really the problem by and large

This issue is that relationship between risk and reward is now pretty much non existant and that people are rewarded for short termism.

Even as a right winger who generally supports free market thinking (although not at all costs, there always comes a point where intervention is neccessary) the bonuses and salaries being handed out to traders and execs of failing and loss making companies are obscene and are what drives the whole problem. 

I doubt I'd give a fuck if the company i ran when bust if I got a £2m reward for being shite

[pauld]

I dont think its the system itself thats really the problem by and large

This issue is that relationship between risk and reward is now pretty much non existant and that people are rewarded for short termism.

Even as a right winger who generally supports free market thinking (although not at all costs, there always comes a point where intervention is neccessary) the bonuses and salaries being handed out to traders and execs of failing and loss making companies are obscene and are what drives the whole problem. 

I doubt I'd give a fuck if the company i ran when bust if I got a £2m reward for being shite

Well quite, but under my "We will hunt you down and asset strip you and kill you" scheme, they'd have to.

[Colin Todd]

Sounds good Paul.

Can we extend it to other groups as well, including pox and slave trader fans?

[ronnie21]

I doubt I'd give a fuck if the company i ran when bust if I got a £2m reward for being shite

I know who you are now, sounds like you could be a certain greek gentleman who is fond of running companies into the ground and taking a handsome reward from it!

[Lumps]

I think the problem that people have in getting their heads around the question of free market versus a planned economy is actually pretty straightforward.

Free marketeers will always tell you that market forces are the best means of creating efficient production. Demand drives suppliers to fill that demand and the best of those suppliers does well, the worst fails. Which kind of ignores the evidence of all our life experiences.

We all know there's a chronic shortage of family homes in this country, but the target of building 3 million new ones by 2010 looks like it's going to be missed by about a decade. Meanwhile just about all developers have been piling into building city centre apartments thousands of which are standing empty. (And guess what, just like the fucking banks they're looking for you and me to pick up the bill through local authorities buying the bloody things for public housing, despite the fact that they're not the family homes that are actually needed.)

Now I grant you that the upshot of this is that "market forces will come into play" and some of the builders that overcommited in this market will go tits up, but it's a bit fucking late now isn't it. Things that people don't want have been built and things that people do want haven't.

The simple fact is that capitalism isn't a particulary efficient way to make THINGS, but is a really effcient way to make MONEY. If the free market really was the best way to get the things that you need produced quickly and efficiently how the fuck do you explain the fact that in wartime, by which I mean proper wartime when the entire nation is involved not the sort of misguided adventures we're involved in at the moment, governments of all political colours revert to a planned economy?

It wasn't market forces that got Britains car makers and engineering companies to start building tanks and aricraft, they were bloody told to. Coal production, steel making, agriculture, all of it was centrally planned and administered throughout the war, because at that time actually making stuff, and making it correctly and on time was more important that making money.

As soon as the crisis was over though back it all moved to the "proper", "efficient" methods, where making money is more important that making things. Where, regardless of how much they're needed, things don't get produced unless it offers the best profit margin. Where loads of suppliers will pile into a market that's "hot" until that market is completely flooded and then all look around at each other wondering what they're going to so with all the overproduction they're left with. A system that throughout the late 80's and early 90's saw over 1 million people homeless in Britain, whilst 150,000 construction workers were paid to sit on the dole and enough bricks to build a city the size of Salisbury sat covered in earth in a field in Essex owned by the London Brick Company, and was incabable of putting those three together.

Efficient my arse.

[Don Rogers Shop]

I think the problem that people have in getting their heads around the question of free market versus a planned economy is actually pretty straightforward.

Free marketeers will always tell you that market forces are the best means of creating efficient production. Demand drives suppliers to fill that demand and the best of those suppliers does well, the worst fails. Which kind of ignores the evidence of all our life experiences.

We all know there's a chronic shortage of family homes in this country, but the target of building 3 million new ones by 2010 looks like it's going to be missed by about a decade. Meanwhile just about all developers have been piling into building city centre apartments thousands of which are standing empty. (And guess what, just like the fucking banks they're looking for you and me to pick up the bill through local authorities buying the bloody things for public housing, despite the fact that they're not the family homes that are actually needed.)

Now I grant you that the upshot of this is that "market forces will come into play" and some of the builders that overcommited in this market will go tits up, but it's a bit fucking late now isn't it. Things that people don't want have been built and things that people do want haven't.

The simple fact is that capitalism isn't a particulary efficient way to make THINGS, but is a really effcient way to make MONEY. If the free market really was the best way to get the things that you need produced quickly and efficiently how the fuck do you explain the fact that in wartime, by which I mean proper wartime when the entire nation is involved not the sort of misguided adventures we're involved in at the moment, governments of all political colours revert to a planned economy?

It wasn't market forces that got Britains car makers and engineering companies to start building tanks and aricraft, they were bloody told to. Coal production, steel making, agriculture, all of it was centrally planned and administered throughout the war, because at that time actually making stuff, and making it correctly and on time was more important that making money.

As soon as the crisis was over though back it all moved to the "proper", "efficient" methods, where making money is more important that making things. Where, regardless of how much they're needed, things don't get produced unless it offers the best profit margin. Where loads of suppliers will pile into a market that's "hot" until that market is completely flooded and then all look around at each other wondering what they're going to so with all the overproduction they're left with. A system that throughout the late 80's and early 90's saw over 1 million people homeless in Britain, whilst 150,000 construction workers were paid to sit on the dole and enough bricks to build a city the size of Salisbury sat covered in earth in a field in Essex owned by the London Brick Company, and was incabable of putting those three together.

Efficient my arse.

Translated easily as they are not Efficient

[Lumps]

Translated easily as they are not Efficient

Yeah but that one line doesn't really let me vent sufficiently does it.

[Colin Todd]

I think the problem that people have in getting their heads around the question of free market versus a planned economy is actually pretty straightforward.

Free marketeers will always tell you that market forces are the best means of creating efficient production. Demand drives suppliers to fill that demand and the best of those suppliers does well, the worst fails. Which kind of ignores the evidence of all our life experiences.

We all know there's a chronic shortage of family homes in this country, but the target of building 3 million new ones by 2010 looks like it's going to be missed by about a decade. Meanwhile just about all developers have been piling into building city centre apartments thousands of which are standing empty. (And guess what, just like the fucking banks they're looking for you and me to pick up the bill through local authorities buying the bloody things for public housing, despite the fact that they're not the family homes that are actually needed.)

Now I grant you that the upshot of this is that "market forces will come into play" and some of the builders that overcommited in this market will go tits up, but it's a bit fucking late now isn't it. Things that people don't want have been built and things that people do want haven't.

The simple fact is that capitalism isn't a particulary efficient way to make THINGS, but is a really effcient way to make MONEY. If the free market really was the best way to get the things that you need produced quickly and efficiently how the fuck do you explain the fact that in wartime, by which I mean proper wartime when the entire nation is involved not the sort of misguided adventures we're involved in at the moment, governments of all political colours revert to a planned economy?

It wasn't market forces that got Britains car makers and engineering companies to start building tanks and aricraft, they were bloody told to. Coal production, steel making, agriculture, all of it was centrally planned and administered throughout the war, because at that time actually making stuff, and making it correctly and on time was more important that making money.

As soon as the crisis was over though back it all moved to the "proper", "efficient" methods, where making money is more important that making things. Where, regardless of how much they're needed, things don't get produced unless it offers the best profit margin. Where loads of suppliers will pile into a market that's "hot" until that market is completely flooded and then all look around at each other wondering what they're going to so with all the overproduction they're left with. A system that throughout the late 80's and early 90's saw over 1 million people homeless in Britain, whilst 150,000 construction workers were paid to sit on the dole and enough bricks to build a city the size of Salisbury sat covered in earth in a field in Essex owned by the London Brick Company, and was incabable of putting those three together.

Efficient my arse.

Its hard to argue with your point lumps, other than to counter it with the fact the british central government orgainsiations and councils must be some of the most ineffiecient on the planet.

They are not there to make money, they are there to provide jobs that quite often are not needed and make unemployement figure look better.

Tax credits being the best example i can think off. We take money off you in tax, then employ an army of nobheads to tell you how much we are going to give you back depending on your unique circumstances.  ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH WHY NOT JUST TAKE LESS IN THE 1ST PLACE YOU CUNTS AND REMOVE THE NEED FOR THOUSANDS OF CIVIL SERVANTS

[Ardiles]

I think you need to make sure you don't throw the baby out with the bath water.  Market forces are not always a bad thing - the best model (in my view) being a relatively free market with more controls than we have at present.  The choice is not between red blooded capitalism vs communism.  There are many shades of grey in the middle, and selecting your ideal shade of grey is what it's all about.

The worst thing we could have right now, in fact, is a knee jerk reaction.  The reason that Thatcher was given such a free rein to impose her brand of unfettered free market consumerism in the 1980s was the vivid and painful recent memories of trade union led paralysis in the 1970s.  The electorate was prepared to give her the tools to knee cap the unions.  It was a violent swing to the right - the effects of which - some good, others certainly bad - are still being debated 20 years on.

Similarly, a violent anti-capitalist reaction is not what we need right now.  Capitalism has its plusses, and we need to keep the best bits of it whilst remembering that if you fail to regulate it, it can turn ugly.  (That was the bit that Thatcher never really understood.)