CVs - again.

(M J Carley) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying:

As has already been suggested - nobody held them down and made them
borrow the money.

They're told a lot of things every day by advertising messages. Most of
them vary between wild exaggeration and complete bollocks.

And why was that? Because everybody was greedily taking out 110% loans
because they wanted to cash in on the spiralling gravy train that
couldn't possibly ever stop. Nobody bothered to pause and think about the
fact that continuing rises just weren't sustainable, since most people
were already straining every financial tendon to get on the bottom rung.

 

<hands Golden Cock Award to first halfwit to blame it on Thatcher>

 

That's not their fault, though, is it?

 

(The Older Gentleman) wrote in

Liteweight

 

There seems to be a bit of pot - kettle interaction going on here.

 

Surely you wouldn't try and blame it on son of thatcher?

 

http://xkcd.com/610/

 

"The end of boom and bust".

[1] I had fun imagining this as a rather tentative bird.

 

You reckon?

 

So why *did* they it? Did they not know what they were doing? If they
didn't know who they were selling mortgages to, or check their ability
to pay, they were grossly negligent.

Having somewhere to live?

 

Because they too are true believers. I wouldn't think you read the
Sindo, but this is spectacular:

The typed drafts are full of cross-outs and scribbled additions, as
civil servants groped towards a credible public statement. There's a
"question and answer" document, anticipating what questions might be
thrown at Brian Lenihan and suggesting answers.

(This kind of thing is standard -- when Cowen or Coughlan or Lenihan
pops up on TV, you don't think they're talking off the top of their
heads, do you? Ministers are provided with agreed answers drawn up
by advisers, which they memorise.)

In the Q&A on prospective nationalisation, there are such questions
as, "What is the Government doing?", "Why did the Government need to
do this?" and "Is my money safe?"

Then there's a key question: "How was this allowed to happen?" And
the miserable civil servant typing this shifted into panicky block
capitals: "NEED AN ANSWER. . .", followed by a blank space.

Again and again, there's evidence that these people were out of
their depth. They had no idea of the scale of the trouble they had
created.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/c...-work-lads-now-youre-due-a-break-2263409.html

 

They can only do that if the houses can be sold. They can't, so we are
now bailing out the banks instead.

Which `speculators'? The buy-to-let crowd can swing as far as I'm
concerned, but they're not the only ones suffering.

 

So bribing politicians is the fault of the politicians but not of the
people handing over the bribes?

 

They were being deregulated, not regulated.

Name the ones which didn't. I can't think of a major bank which has
not been bailed out one way or another (I'm with the Co-op which
hasn't but then it's not a major bank). Which banks did not get into
the business of CDOs et al?

 

Abbey, Barclays, HSBC and Nationwide never received any govt. money.

Although, I'm not saying that they didn't benefit to some extent by
*others* being bailed out

 

Assuming we're talking about UK lenders, they were playing the odds,
the way they always have done. Making potentially dangerous lending
decisions is nothing new, there were plenty of building societies
offering 6,7,8 times salary in the early 90s when I first bought a
house, at very high LTVs. And 100%+ LTVs have been around for ages,
even for first time buyers with no history of being able to pay.

The thing that caught them out was the collapse of inter-bank lending.
Most businesses need to 'borrow' money at some point, whether through a
loan, overdraft or share issue. If you're used to, & rely on that
facility, & it suddenly disappears with very little notice, you're
screwed.

 

They were claiming to have eliminated risk.

Banks need to borrow money all the time and they've been `borrowing'
more of it: the `money' banks lend is a fantasy.

 

"bailed out one way or another"

Barclays certainly had to be bailed out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7701405.stm
So did HSBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7918175.stm

 

They can. Stick 'em in an auction & they will sell for market value.

I really don't understand that attitude. Rental income has nose dived
over the last few years as more rental properties become available,
which obviously helps the poorer end of society who will never be able
to buy a house.

Had that been the case a decade ago, there would've been far fewer
people taking out sub-prime mortgages in the first place as rent
payments would've been significantly less than mortgage payments on an
equivalent property. And *that* is the reason why lots of 'proles' took
out mortgages they couldn't afford to pay.

 

The UK government has announced a package of measures aimed at
rescuing the banking system that makes available £400bn ($692bn) of
fresh money.

It will initially make extra capital available to eight of the UK's
largest banks and building societies in return for preference shares
in them.

The lenders that have confirmed their participation in aspects of
the scheme are Abbey, Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide
Building Society, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7658277.stm