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bbc has some responsibility here. In the same way the bbc announced a dawn attack on goose green they seem ever eager to announce every secret they hear about. Financial battle plans, because they move markets, need to be kept secret. With the current attitude if the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ had heard about the secret plans for d day they would have blogged it?

everyone needs to stop and think? careless talk can cost jobs, savings, etc?

Whatever faith and confidence we use to get us through this financial crisis will not change the longer term outcome.

We abandoned our previous strength of manufacturing and invention, replacing it with the so-called industry of finance. Now it is clear to all the world that those hordes of young guys in shirt-sleeves and red braces, staring into computer screens and shouting buy! buy! were just big-time gamblers in a virtual reality game with money that didn't really exist.

What becomes now of the 'financial capital of the world'? Whatever quick-fix solutions Brown and his enlarged cabinet of 'experts' come up with (none of whom saw this coming, or blew the whistle) the whole world will in future regard bankers, stock-brokers and their ilk as gamblers and potential frauds.

Best get back to ship-building, coal mining, or farming again: it's more of a man's way of life anyway.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

the bbc does have responsibility and it uses it well although it caved in before Hutton but I blame the governors for that....the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is trusted throughout the world and the present financial difficulties have been given all the oxygen this subject deserves but mainly through the output of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, if you want mischief making look at the Daily Mail or Tory press releases. The last financial disaster on this scale was in 1929 and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ secured it's charter in 1923 but I bet it was as objective and unbiased in it's reporting as it is today, Lord Reith would have seen to it.

'Men of the cloth'? What planet is this?

I'm not the first to point out the bbc's sexism, and if the banking system was less sexist we might have a better run financial services sector.

4.

yes its also the other's who play at yapparrazzi . Also the Govt who seem to be using political methods of leaking rather than financial methods of silence.

Markets buy on rumour and sell on fact [or vica versa]. So if you put a rumour, leak, what have you out it will move the markets opposite to what you think until its fact and if it doesn't become fact then its just gets worse. Leaking might be the correct method in politics but not in markets because money rather than political kudos is at stake.

So like they kept bank of england independence secret they shouldn't say anything until its fact.

perhaps the government can now ensure the banks stop the dubious tax avoidence schemes they all seem to embrace to reduce the tax they pay in the uk?

it would seem an ideal oportunity to get them back on course and to pay what they should do to the tax man who has bailed them out.

who will win out of this? will darling and brown bow to the buisness world as usual?

will the bankers change their ways or will the 'bankers' change their ways?

Depressing discussion of the state of the banking system for the ignoring of the elephant in the room - debt.

Recapitalisation is one step but the personal and financial debt burden on the UK economy needs to be tackled. £50bn is dwarfed by the liabilities of the banks. I fear that this is not the measure required for either protecting the banks or boosting the economy.

I can't see trust being returned to UK banks due to this measure.

I'm with hillsideboy, we abandonned real wealth for fictitional gains n the Casino mentality of the City.

The rot set in in the 80's and 90's with the get rich quick Thatcher policies taken up by New labour. We have flogged off our industrial base to France, Spain and Japan and the British tax payer is subsidising the power industries.
Whatever happened to the Bank Manager who sieved applications for loans on the basis if the bank had enough money to cover them?
We got our mortgage in 1967 the worst crisis but then we had to save and put down 10% of the deposit. We saved for it. The Halifax then could only lend if money was DEPOSITED. Luckily my Union had deposited some with them and we got one.

As I have blogged many times , the whole economic structure is built on a pack of cards or "non money".
Should we be surprised we are in this situation whilst those who got us into this expect the tax payer to bail them out whist they pocket their £millions?
Meanwhile "pundits" posture as if they know what they are talkiung about. WHERE WAS THEIR OPINION IN ALL THES YEARS?? NOWHERE. They haven't a clue so don't believe a word they say.

To present left wing journalist Greg Palast as 'independent' and then let him produce a one sided report about possible voting problems in the US suggests that you think we the viewers are either to stupid to notice, or unable to do anything about it.

How about an investigation into why Obama is being so deceptive about his connections to terrorists to even things out?

Palomica (#5)

"I'm not the first to point out the bbc's sexism, and if the banking system was less sexist we might have a better run financial services sector."

More of us need to be grounded on the planet Earth.

Could you explicate a little please? What do you mean by sexism in the banking system? Higher verbal/symbolic than spatial (grounded) skills tends to be a female brain-gender profile does it not? Males tend to be tilted spatial > verbal/symbolic and females the reverse. It shows up in all the data. It's a universal sex difference. It's why (see Article 17 onwards) I suspect.

The reality is that there's been a deluge of females into all sorts of service industries in recent times. More females go to university than males these days, and we live in a culture which is 80% Service Sector. The subjects which females study are more verbal than spatial (see HESA data).

If anything this has exacerbated the problems we currently face, I suggest (and what I say above is based on sound empirical data, just as there are marked mean differences in height and muscle mass, these cognitive differences are biological, but not genitalia driven, but genetic). The femininisation of Liberal-Democracies has had a huge cost in terms of groundedness in empirical fact as well as birth rates and dysgenesis. We have lost groundedness along with our manufacturing/industrial sector.

Note that sexual dismorphism is complex: some males have more female tilted brains and vice-versa. But are important, (especially at the tails). Significantly, some ethnic groups' males are more feminised than others, whilst some other ethnic groups' females are more masculinized. See PISA data or our SATs. Look in the financial services. Which group is overrepresented? Why? As I say, this is subtle. It's all about brain gender.

A couple of thoughts for some quid pro quo for all our money being used to bail out the banks

Perhaps the government can now ensure the banks stop their dubious off shore tax avoidance schemes they all seem to embrace to reduce the tax they pay to the exchequer?

Am i the only one who is annoyed that my debit card transactions go via jersey to save the bank its full tax exposure and up their profits?

How about cutting the enormous dividends these banks have been giving on the back of ordinary people? Link dividends to growth for the next few years till the taxpayer gets decent returns and some more?

Another one, how about stopping the profligate schmoozing, dining and entertaining of civil servants and politicians by these banks? now they are partially public they can all sit in a boring meeting room like everyone else.

It seems to me there will never be a better opportunity to get these greed led companies back on course and to make sure they pay what they should do to the country that bailed them out.

The question is will the government continue its appalling love in with anything that comes out of the city as seems to have been the way for most of the bliar years


Will Darling and Brown cow tow to the business world and capitulate as usual or will they find ways to alter bankers behaviour and ensure the public purse benefit out of this?


Will the bankers change their ways or will the 'bankers' change their ways

NEOCONS, TROTTS and DARK FORCES

and McCain (allegedly) effectively reducing the number of 'sub-prime' (Democrat) voters.

The Credit Crisis and the USA election.

Only in the USA?

Mind you, with Ireland playing the Lisbon renegade, maybe we need a bit of EU solidarity to bail-out our financial fears?

Just think what might happen without the Lisbon Treaty?.......

Terrorists, Bird Flu, Global Warming, no uniform EU economic response to credit crises....

If you want to take anything seriously, think about and Frattini's uncontrolled low-skilled immigration, and the of 'education, education, education' and 'Equal Opportunities'.

Then again, as it's non PC....perhaps you won't.

I have been trying to grasp the function of debt working successfully in capitalist/banking driven systems.

Seems it can, though I have always personally operated on a 'don't spend it if you cannot afford it' model.

But it seems this mysterious mechanism is mirrored in many ways with our media... at least some of it.

So much I hear is what I 'will' be told, derived from the gossip of 'reputable' sources, interpreted by 'serious' commentators who may or may not know the 'right' folk and/or be able to assess what they are saying is trustworthy.

Hence we seem to be in an era of news futures.

What if the PM did not end up saying what I was informed he 'would'?

Is it not more sensible to have news that goes out based on what 'is' as opposed to what, at best 'might be'?

Are the pols and some media so inter-twined that meeting a broadcast deadline seems to require making things up to avoid dead air: pre-PR PR?

In my business there is a saying: 'better to get it right than in a hurry'.

Though, so far, I am seeing neither promptness or accuracy from the politico-media establishment.

With the only victims being those whose pay and pensions are not under slightly different, and more secure systems.

I have also just had to write to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Breakfast News to make a small but, to me at least, important point following an empathetic statement from a presenter:

That's '...how much MORE money the taxpayer is stumping up'.

I seem to recall we have already had our pockets dipped into already.

And Mr. Brown would be well advised to remember that they are not bottomless.

WHO ARE THE CROOKS (#14)

Hi Junkk. I keep humming 'self Preservation Society' and 'The Global Job' wanders round my head as Alistair Darling plays Charlie Croker saying: 'Hold on, I've got an idea' while the unbalanced monetary-coach rocks on the edge of the abyss with real money out of reach and a bunch of frightened dupes (who can't get at it) wondering what to do next.

The plot is arrogant crooks, led by a criminal mindset, who have succeeded in wrecking global money because they were not smart enough to pull the job off.

The crooks are well connected in all seats of power - as you allude.

As always I end up pondering Havel's: "Living within the lie."

Outstanding programme. I thought that Robinson, Clarke and Cable were excellent - measured, informed and pleasingly un-Party Political. I also thought that Emily Maitlis chaired the discussion splendidly well. Newsnight at its best.

Two Items Re; tonights programm.
One) American election.
I hope that McCain is not there just to Barrack Obama.

Two) Bankers
When Thatcher privatised our utilities etc. I, as a tax paying law abiding citizen, did not receive any shares from her action. I was supposed to 'BUY' something that already belonged to me?

Will Gondor Broon (son of Borrowmore) and his 'precious' (Darling), renounce such bad Hobbits and give us all shares in the greedy Banks that we are paying to fleece us?

I find it ironic that when (and if) the dust settles on the present crisis, we will be expected to put our trust in bankers that don't trust each other.
Sean Appleby-Simpkin (socialist). We told you so!

IMAGINED WORLDS

JunkkMale (#14) "Hence we seem to be in an era of news futures. What if the PM did not end up saying what I was informed he 'would'? Is it not more sensible to have news that goes out based on what 'is' as opposed to what, at best 'might be'?"

Astutely put, but they'd lose ratings given that most people today want to be entertained not informed. The is an intensional idiom, and as such, not useful for very much other than speculating (which is rather important these days). They cause such a lot of trouble that at least one eminent philosopher of logic wrote them off as toxic for serious talk like science. But science is dry, and people want entertainment and excitement. See the traders shout, see the Newsnight graphics, see the animated panel discussions, see Frank and his twiddly-knobs?

Sadly, it's how most of us are taught to think and talk, and some are more versed in these ways than others. There's a paradox there.

Bring back the German Ambassador.

YOU VILL TALK TOMMY - BUT MOSTLY RUBBISH. (#18)

Thought provoking as usual JJ. I am moved to post (totally off - surface - theme but right on underlying truth):

Radio 4 has two highly informative science programs: Leading Edge and Material World.
The former is a model of gravitas while the latter subjects erudite minds, well versed in their fields, to a prancing Brian Cant clone, who sniggers breathily and breaks guest narrative to make puns. I devour science, especially when straight from the horse's mouth - but the Donkey drove me away.

Caught up with a bit of Newsnight after long time away.

Excellent panel discussion on the banking crisis: let's have the same team again some time.

Normally I would have resented the time given to your US election piece ("only one story in town tonight") but it was interesting and very well presented. If that's what 'gonzo' journalism is then let's have a weebit more - in small beeb doses of course, mustn't get carried away chaps.

I'll look out for Wednesday's edition.