| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Bashing the bankers? | |
| Posted by: | John Gorst | |
| Date/Time: | 09/12/09 15:26:00 |
| Healthy, good natured debate only Richard :-) And I don’t disagree with you entirely, I think you are right in some of what you say. For example, I can understand people’s anger that the people who got the economy into such a mess are not the ones who are going to suffer the consequences. But isn’t that the case for all recessions, redundancies and negative things in life generally? And I agree that the blame really lies with the politicians and system, not with the bankers. Regarding the non-public owned banks being self sufficient, ok, yes, they have benefited because the whole system has not collapsed. But if you’re going to take it to that level, then if you take it one step further then so has every other company and individual. There were many banks who were not involved with CDOs and who remained profitable throughout, yet it’s trendy to bash them because of their success. They’re dammed if they make money, dammed if they don’t. Greedy swine: I’m not convinced in this concept. It’s not greed, it’s just capitalism. It’s the objective of any profit making organisation to make as much money as they can. The more the better. Any organisation has to play within the “rules” (eg laws, regulations, tolerable public perception etc etc), and so to be as competitive as possible you must get as close to the boundary of those rules as you can. So I’m sorry if those “rules” were too lenient, but that’s not the fault of the players. It may have been irresponsible for some credit providing companies to have offered Americans cheap loans for mortgages, but is it not also their responsibility to ensure they can pay it back before taking it? Interesting idea about getting the nationalised banks to invest in manufacturing and not financial instruments. Nice, but I suspect they wouldn’t last a week. Yes, they are casinos. Betting on the market is what a bank does. And no one, including the government, FSA or other regulators made any complaint when the times were good and it was earning the country a fortune. And here’s another theory on the table for discussion: Recession is cyclical and unavoidable. Some of the banks recently got their risk estimates wrong, which acted as a catalyst and has attracted the blame, but the downturn on a whole was unavoidable. |