I wouldn't bank on it

[ahinton]

See EDIT in my earlier message - there's a link to a published memoir

Thanks for that. I have indeed now seen and read it, but do bear in mind that it ultimately declares itself to be a work of fiction, whatever real-life experiences (if any) on which all or any part of it might or might not be based - and its disclaimer ought also to be borne in mind in this regard. Furthermore, my concerns are in any event not just directed at those who do these things in the investment banks but the big guns who first invent the schemes, make them implementable and, to a greater or lesser extent, direct their implementation - in other words, those who are ultimately responsible for what goes on. The prospect that tens if not hundreds of millions of people across the globe might have suffered financially as a sole and direct consequence of the consumption of too much Pol Roger Winston Churchill on the part of a comparatively minuscule number of investment banks' miscreants is, I submit, at best most interesting and at worst unimaginable.

[amateur51]

Thanks for that. I have indeed now seen and read it, but do bear in mind that it ultimately declares itself to be a work of fiction, whatever real-life experiences (if any) on which all or any part of it might or might not be based - and its disclaimer ought also to be borne in mind in this regard. Furthermore, my concerns are in any event not just directed at those who do these things in the investment banks but the big guns who first invent the schemes, make them implementable and, to a greater or lesser extent, direct their implementation - in other words, those who are ultimately responsible for what goes on. The prospect that tens if not hundreds of millions of people across the globe might have suffered financially as a sole and direct consequence of the consumption of too much Pol Roger Winston Churchill on the part of a comparatively minuscule number of investment banks' miscreants is, I submit, at best most interesting and at worst unimaginable.

It's not the Pol Roger that's the problem, ahinton

If you take a look at the amazon.uk page for City Boy you'll find there are perhaps half-a-dozen similar memoirs. Smoke, fire, - go figure

Later: For more smoke - or fire, you decide - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aGS4vvPvwFl8

[ahinton]

It's not the Pol Roger that's the problem, ahinton

If you take a look at the amazon.uk page for City Boy you'll find there are perhaps half-a-dozen similar memoirs. Smoke, fire, - go figure

Later: For more smoke - or fire, you decide - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aGS4vvPvwFl8

Well, whatever - it's happened, it's happening and it will continue to happen, whatever the cause/s may or may not be; due compensation will rather obviously not be forthcoming, nor will such exercises ever be stopped...

[Lateralthinking1]

Well, whatever - it's happened, it's happening and it will continue to happen, whatever the cause/s may or may not be; due compensation will rather obviously not be forthcoming, nor will such exercises ever be stopped...

Serial_Apologist interpreted my comments about generation and age accurately.

I agree with amateur51 about the influence of cocaine. Never having seen the stuff, let alone taken it, I am nevertheless aware of its characteristics on users from reading material. The last dozen years of behaviour, attitudes and emotions in the banking sector, and the downward course, are virtually identical. I am also aware of cocaine use in the very recent past by senior civil servants.

The huge responsibilities among the young in these sectors, when given to them, are often in line with their personal ambitions. They are also in this climate in line with their sense that they must achieve quickly for their future security. As I have said, this responsibility prevents them from forming fully developed ideas that are distinct from those of older generations. It ties them in to the same old course and it is essential for that habit to be broken. However, there is another point. As this has been going on for several decades, it means that those in middle age now are still emotionally partially in their youth or perhaps their 'lost youth'. Hence cocaine in banking is mainly self-comprehended by bankers etc as everyone living the good life. On a deeper level it is in truth medication for often unexpressed inabilities to cope. It is bound to be a roller coaster for them and hence for us all.

The word 'infantile' was used earlier in relation to those reliant on social security. Mature systems can cope with the needs of the genuinely vulnerable. The fact that increasingly those in liberal markets, and indeed politicians, describe such needs as infantile says much about them. It shows that they are pretty close to the concept of 'infantile' themselves, close enough to be in some sort of personal battle with it. If we run our societies on the basis that everyone from 9 to 99 should be equally 'grown up', no one will be. Everyone will be a teenager. That is where things are now and it is entirely unnatural. When it gets to the point that police stations in trading rooms would look like a pretty good idea, if only the police themselves had any measured authority, you know that progress will only happen once society manages to be a reflection of the natural progress of individuals through the decades.

[Resurrection Man]

Up to a point - but surely the problem is that the touch wasn't light enough? I know it's fashionable now for politicians and journalists to bash the banks, but seriously - if the banks make more money, if they make more money for their shareholders, if other financial institutions make more money ... where's the problem? That's what they are meant to do <doh>. The disaster would be if we returned to the bad old days before capitalism was however inadequately set free from the red tape choking off enterprise, strangling initiative.

Sure some 'citizens' will feel sore about it. Give them counseling or something. Touch luck. It's in the greater good, getting people off their dependency on the State and Big Regulator. As for PFI: the problem there, of course, was the public bit. Not the contracts signed (which at least transferred money from the State to the private sector). What should have been done was the wholesale selling off of the public sector to the highest bidder. The lot: transport infrastructure, healthcare. There are good profits to be made and unquestionable benefits in terms of making the 'citizen' wake up and smell the coffee. Imagine if the unemployed, the disabled, the low paid, had no access to healthcare? At last we'd ALL have to grow up. And the money raised could go to establishing a flat rate of tax, set at a nominal 1p in the £.

(Admittedly some sort of public contagion / epidemic provision might be necessary. So 1p in the £ might not be possible. But that, the police - mostly privatised, but with some subsidy for riot control, protecting private property - and the military and that should be that. If only the politicians had the courage. The vision).

Your point is .....?

[Resurrection Man]

.....
- I was always against PFI. I was against all privatisation of the utilities and still am.

[Resurrection Man]

It would be everything of a non-starter, since it would be impossible of achievement and, even if it were feasible, the first and perhaps most significant thing that it would likely achieve is to give each and every member of bank staff equal opportunities to create his/her own greasy pole up which to climb to the point at which more of the same could and would re-occur; as someone once said, "if power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, all that a level playing field will ever do to discourage either is inject the need for a greater degree of patience in those who'll remain determined seize them".

No it would not be a non-starter. All it requires is a change in outllook and objectives. Greasy-poles are only there because they are man-made.

[Resurrection Man]

Oh so it's Mrs Thatcher whom we have to thank for Britain's thriving manufacturing sector is it

No and how many more times do we have to tell you.. It is called Globalisation. Nothing to do with Margaret Thatcher.

[Resurrection Man]

OK..I admit defeat...I don't have the time to wade through all of this. I got to about page 4 when ahinton started quoting sentence by sentence and replying in equal vain that I lost the will to live.

Too many blinkered viewpoints IMO but I have to confess that my sentiments are with Lat on this one.

EDIT: And lastly, I must congratulate ahinton on achieving what, I believe, might be the world record for a Fog Index of over 65. If there was an Olympic event for Fog index then you'd win us Gold every time. Well done, that man (or woman)

[ahinton]

No it would not be a non-starter. All it requires is a change in outllook and objectives. Greasy-poles are only there because they are man-made.

OK, so who's going to be in any position to effect this wonderful change in outlook and objectives, then, if it's not those very men (and women) who, as you point out, make those greasy poles?

[ahinton]

OK..I admit defeat...I don't have the time to wade through all of this. I got to about page 4 when ahinton started quoting sentence by sentence and replying in equal vain that I lost the will to live.

Too many blinkered viewpoints IMO but I have to confess that my sentiments are with Lat on this one.

EDIT: And lastly, I must congratulate ahinton on achieving what, I believe, might be the world record for a Fog Index of over 65. If there was an Olympic event for Fog index then you'd win us Gold every time. Well done, that man (or woman)

I'll accept the compliment with as much grace as I can muster.

Full stop.

The congratulations, however flattering, are nevertheless unnecessary.

Full stop.

I have no more idea than I care to what a fog index is.

Full stop.

What I do neverthless know is that, whatever it is, it is not any part of an Olympic event.

Full stop.

Even if it were one, why might you suggest (as you appear to do here) that I would win "Gold" in it "every time" for "us" (whoever that may be)?

Full stop.

Olympic competitors (of which I am not and have never been one) usually win medals of various colours for themselves, don't they?

Full stop.

Do you consider this topic to be of such simple and straightforward nature as to merit little more than ten-word sentence responses?

Full stop.

What are "complex words" and who decides which ones are so and on what grounds?

Full stop.

Have you ever read Finnegan's Wake?

Full stop.

It's not by David Harvey, incidentally (just thought that I might mention that en passant).

Full stop.

Don't bother to answer that anyway.

Full stop.

As I am not "vain", I assume that, by "equal vain", you meant "equal vein".

Full stop.

There are some quite long sentences (albeit musical ones, of course) in the sometimes so-called Resurrection Symphony, Resurrection Man.

Full stop.

Yawn.

Full st zzzzzzz

[Vile Consort]

Ditch computers talking to computers, have friendly uncles and aunts at the interface, destroy the fanciful notion that anyone at the top is worth what it is said, help desks to be staffed by people in the same countries as customers, a proper division of wings doing different things, get Governments to firm up on underwriting guarantees to customers with better terms for small businesses, absolutely no bail outs, clear statements that they are working inside democratic systems and subservient to those.

That would be something of a start.

How exactly would that help? The Barclays issue was caused by people conspiring with each other to corruptly get better deals so as to jack up their bonuses. Replacing computers with people would presumably make that more likely, not less. Computers don't get paid bonuses, so they wouldn't be interested in doing it.

[ahinton]

How exactly would that help? The Barclays issue was caused by people conspiring with each other to corruptly get better deals so as to jack up their bonuses. Replacing computers with people would presumably make that more likely, not less. Computers don't get paid bonuses, so they wouldn't be interested in doing it.

That's correct. These issues did not occur by accident, technological or otherwise; they were and are the result of careful, inventive and wilful planning and execution by humans who must have a pretty good idea of the kind and extent of damage that it has caused and will cause; just how widespread it has been outside Barclays has yet to be fully ascertained, but it's already becoming clear that there's an awful lot of it about and, as I've suggested above, I suspect also tht there have been similar dodgy deals in the line of currency value and exchange rate fixing by banks and perhaps also other financial institutions. Full investigations of all of this could take years and the outcome of these activities to date will likely last for decades.

Lat's suggestions imply that the problems have been allowed to develop as a consequence of inadequate systems and controls being in place at the institutions concerned; I'm afraid that I see it from the opposite perspective, in that, without such systems and controls (albeit not the ones that one would wish to see), what's happened would not have been possible. I don't see how or why governments - especially those in as much debt as the current British one - could or should "firm up on underwriting guarantees to customers with better terms for small businesses", especially in combination with "absolutely no bail outs" (which seems like a contradiction in terms) when it is financial institutions rather than governments that are at fault here, but perhaps I'm missing something in my understanding of what's being suggested.

[JohnSkelton]

Your point is .....?

What don't you understand about what I wrote? A lot of people who not many years ago were hot on deregulating the financial sector (including George Osborne and David Cameron: Osborne's speech on the model Irish economy being the best known example) are now pretending that all along they were in favour of robust regulation and that Brown's 'softly, softly' approach was a crying shame. When at the time they were yelling from the rooftops that so-called New Labour was strangling the financial sector and would kill off the City (Boris Johnson is still keen on that riff). Routine disclaimer: I don't support New Labour and I didn't support New Labour and I'm not defending New Labour on deregulation or PFI.

I wish they'd be consistent, now that The Daily Mail has jumped on this particular bandwagon and people are walking around demanding 'fat cats' give up their bonuses. They know that the basic rule of capitalism is to make as much profit as possible, to pay shareholders enough to keep them sweet, and to make as much money individually as possible. There have always been financial smashes, from the C18 'Bubbles' through the great banking crises of the C19 and the interventions of James Rothschild. The dynamic has changed to the extent that the proportion of profit generated from moving money around, from speculating on futures and derivatives, has bubbled, then bubbled, then hyper-BUBBLED over the past 30 odd years. And every time the bubble bursts it bubbles up again. The particular politicians getting so morally exercised about this know all that. They know what goes on. They come from families who have made a lot of money from speculation and rigging and they know perfectly well that it's pie-in-the-sky to say that speculation and rigging are separable from proper, upstanding, financial sector practices. Obviously they can't come clean and say 'stuff happens' so we get the usual squawking. And the usual squawking comes in very handy, because if they were being logically as against self-interestedly consistent they wouldn't support the use of public money to prop up financial institutions. But, suddenly, public spending becomes essential again. And when that's happened public spending once more becomes a drain on the taxpayer and austerity is non-negotiable; until The Sun runs a the poor ordinary guy motorist campaign and the money gets found from departmental under-spends.

Obviously I have no way of knowing your views on anything other than those you express here, but impressionistically from your contributions here I'm surprised you weren't supportive of aggressive deregulation and privatisation of public services. The former especially in light of your comment higher up this thread about 'globalisation'. But obviously you weren't, so I hope you see the light and join me and other consistent libertarian right-wingers in saying away with all the nonsense! There's money to be made and that's what makes the world vibrantly spin around. Everything else is a fairy tale.

[Lateralthinking1]

I don't agree JohnSkelton that everything else is a fairly tale because everything else isn't a fairy tale.

When my grandmother ran a rented greengrocers shop, she regularly gave produce away to those who didn't have any money. As soon as they did have money, they went down the East Lane market where they could buy fruit and veg slightly more cheaply. Being a middle aged/elderly woman on her own and without a vehicle, she was unable to transport the produce from Central London to her shop. She therefore paid traders to transport them, men - yes, of course, men - who consistently over-charged her.

How, you might ask, did her business manage to survive for a few years? Well it didn't. It survived for at least 30 years from 1940 to circa 1970, starting from a point when most produce was severely rationed, as it was for more than the next 15 years. However, she got up at 4am in the morning to walk into Central London to ensure that she got there early and bought things of quality. She never charged more than she thought appropriate and was always warm, welcoming and friendly to customers.

In a nutshell, she was popular, reliable and trusted. As it happens, she was quite incapable of basic accounting, although she could count money and understand weights and measures. Consequently members of the family did the bookwork. They kept it entirely straightforward, paid any necessary taxes and rarely, if ever, sought external creative accountancy advice. Some might understand that this tiny example is my basic blueprint for business. It isn't in the DNA of business that it should seek to maximum profit, let alone make a not wholly proverbial killing. Rather it can be a functional and human way of enabling people to survive.

Perhaps I could present this alien concept to the likes of George Osborne and Bob Diamond. Oh no sorry. They know it all.