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Why is it always Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?

Is the future a period where no competiton exists, and value for money (for the taxpayer) a prehistoric concept? This stinks. A bit like how only a select few management consultants now actually tender a bid for government contracts (IT and especially the Olympics) as the unfavoured consultants do not stand a chance in the bidding process.

Scorched Earth policy part II, on its way...

"Some might say that an ill wind they generated is rewarding them."

'Some might say' indeed Robert, but who's listening?

Who told the IMF to take their spreadsheet off the website ??


Why ?? Are they frit ??

"Except that the banks and bankers are bound to be handsomely remunerated for flogging this debt - much of which is only necessary because of the huge costs of bailing out our big battered banks.

Some might say that an ill wind they generated is rewarding them. "

Heads I win, tails you lose - absolutely shamelessly disgusting !!

Oh, and when is £ 200 bn not £ 200 bn ??

When it is at the 'higher end of the range' of forecasts and, despite being therefore quite a plausible figure for how much the 'bank bailouts' will cost, is politically embarrassing to the Treasury and the Government, and can therefore be attacked by them for being 'too high'....

Alice In Wonderland stuff.

If this is really 'inaccurate' can they guarantee that the cost will not be more than £ 130 billion ? No, I didn't think so either...

Disingenuous wastrels...

Why not just privatise the entire political process and openly hand all power, all assets and all money to Goldman Sachs. Maybe they would be interested in employing the Queen as an in-country PR advisor.

I'm tired of Peston's blinkered reporting here. If you want to understand more about this economic collapse read Michel Chossudovsky or Noam Chomsky, there are plenty of recent articles that don't pussy foot.
Peston has become shallow, artificial, conservative and obedient to his ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ masters.
Check this, something like 95% of those consulted on TV for "expert opinions" are from the usual sources, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ uncritically allow Labour, the Tories, the Bank of England, investment bankers, fund managers to give us their opinions, we never get any exposure to experts that hold totally different views, we are spoon feed a predictable, confusing mantra.
It is all about presentation now, not content, the public have been totally screwed and will never recover, this is the truth.

Why worry - the BoE have probably got another 68 billion of their "money" to spend on gilts through the APF. Only 132 billion to find.

More bad news buried on budget day

Penance?....

I think not.

This is some sort of Faustian bargain emerging here.

Is there a quid pro quo for the investment banks apart from the continuing extortionate fees and bonuses for them?

Along the lines of the government agreeing not to split retail banking from investment banking, so these bankers can carry on betting with our money at zero downside to themselves?

This is very scary indeed! The public takeover of corporate bodies amounts to nothing more than fascism in the long run! This seems to be happening globally with government bailouts coming from everywhere! To keep a healthy balance in society between public and corporate interests we need to let some the big corporate players fall on their own sword and start again with a clean slate.

Gerald Celente (Trend Analyst) gives a very good oversight of what is happening with this here: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

Financing the ballooning government debt is where reality trounces spin. Resorting to the IMF will be the final nail in Brown and New Labour's coffin. If those in the Parliamentary Labour Party not travelling first class on the allowances gravy train have got any self respect left they will oust G Brown and the New Labour headbangers well before the next election.

Hey leave Peston alone. This guy has it all. Good looks, easy delivery and makes hearing the gloomy economic news the highlight of my day. Looking forward to 6pm so I can sit back and let him explain it all

If we had a instead of a spend spend spend approach we would not need to borrow so much money. bankers making a mint and my children who are toddlers' will be the ones still paying the bill. It's sick.

As the taxpayer (or more accurately the Treasury) has a stake in several large financial institutions, I would imagine there will be dividend payments made dependent on the size and type of the shares held. Surely this, as well as the sale of the shares thereof, will assist in rebalancing the public books at this point. Or are we all meant to ignore this and grumblingly accpet tax rises without question?

1. Let's face it nobody knows and anybody who says that they do has an extremely high probability of being wrong!

2. Inflation will kick in caused by the dramatic increase in the money supply (or the whole basis of economic theory and policy in the last thirty years has been rubbish - which it may have been!)

3. All of the figures that are quoted are in constant prices (today's money) however inflation could reduce the historic value to these figures to insignificance - just divide them by 10 are you will see what I mean.

4. What matters today is the immediate effect of the budget on the poor (the mass of the population). E.G. Interest rates MUST be returned to a reasonable level PDQ unless the poor are to be devastated this year not in fiver years time.

Good old labour still helping the hard pressed bankers (sorry families) I see.

Don't think for a second the tories will be any different - We NEED a revolution in this country!

When will folk realise that the whole system is social security for bankers?
Those that cannot contribute have to be supported by the rest of us.
The problem of course is that there are fewer and fewer of us that can actually contribute.
What is the point of having zillions if it will not actually buy anything useful?

.7. At 11:59am on 22 Apr 2009, Governage wrote:
"I'm tired of Peston's blinkered reporting here. If you want to understand more about this economic collapse read Michel Chossudovsky or Noam Chomsky, there are plenty of recent articles that don't pussy foot.
Peston has become shallow, artificial, conservative and obedient to his ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ masters.
Check this, something like 95% of those consulted on TV for "expert opinions" are from the usual sources, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ uncritically allow Labour, the Tories, the Bank of England, investment bankers, fund managers to give us their opinions, we never get any exposure to experts that hold totally different views, we are spoon feed a predictable, confusing mantra.
It is all about presentation now, not content, the public have been totally screwed and will never recover, this is the truth."

Noam Chomsky may well be a genius in his specialist field of linguistics,that doesn't mean he has any idea about how economies function however and Professor Chossudovsky,whilst amassing a very impressive looking portfolio of academic and political posts, is basically a paranoid conspiracy theorist of the highest order. The fact that he is a regular contributor to David Icke's website immediately raises questions about the validity of his opinions.

The reason that you don't see people like this being asked for their opinions on the important news events of the day is because they have ABSOLUTELY NO INFLUENCE on how anything works in politics or economics. You might as well ask any of us here what we think should be happening, it isn't going to make any difference, only those who are already ensconsed in positions of power and influence or who have the possibility of access to, and influence over, those people will determine how things turn out. Thats why The Usual Suspects are wheeled out to comment on things, their opinions actually mean something.

Expecting 1.25 % growth next year.

Hilarious !!

Dear neialian2366 (post 13)
An example of what I referred to in post 7 (above) is the total absence of any talk about cancelling or curtailing large military projects. Have you heard Peston even mention this? of course not, nor do the usual "experts" because it is taboo and Peston doesn't do taboo.
For example the UK currently has a project to build a new class ("Astute") of nuclear submarines, the cost of EACH submarine is approx 2.4 billion USD and four are on order, i.e. 10 billion USD (est).
This is just one project financed by us, the public, yet curtailing or even discussing curtailing these projects is taboo, instead we must bear the burden, lose jobs, see society decay.
Even today's budget WILL not adress or review these expenses.
The beneficiaries of these projects are the stockholders of BAE etc; when I see Peston or Marr discuss this on TV and mention the real costs, and press those in charge, then I may change my view of them.

So the 'government' will pay a fee to US investment banks which will probably increase the average cost of borrowing.

Why not just offer the gilts to the market at a higher coupon and help the UK institutions/savers who are in dire need of higher income now?

After all, this 'government' has artificially managed interest rates down.

Citygambler - Post 19
So you think the British public should only be permitted to hear the views of those with "influence"? How can such a model of news reporting be relied upon to get at the truth?
Those "with influence" will do all that is possible to retain influence, and this includes lying, which we see all the time. Although I gree with some of the cynicism you express, I wont go so far as to actually endorse it as the way a democractic society should run its news services, paid for incidentally by the public.
Finally your off-hand dismissal of Chomsky and Chossodvsky is precisley the line the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ take, as a way of "justifying" prejudicial reporting. I receommend that people here look him up, for example read his book the "Globalization of Poverty" then dismiss it if you wish, have you read ths book?

"Plainly the Treasury wants to borrow as much as possible at a long maturity, so that it's not bequeathing a massive refinancing problem to the next government or the one after that."

Just the second one after the next....?

"public service as penance to help get us through it." "banks and bankers are bound to be handsomely remunerated for flogging this debt"

So their penance is - to be handsomely rewarded..?

Is this not just making the hole even bigger? Have I lost my grip on the English language?

Finally, I suggest those with an interest pay a visit to youtube, listen to Chossudovsky's recent public lecture on the meltdown and then draw your conclusions, dont allow the sweeping negative one-liners of other posters be your basis for evaluating a disenting opinion.

Yes..quite pathetic that banks should be paid to raise monies to help us out of the mess they created! But dig a little deeper & look at the real problem...the governments still have not learnt their lesson & are relying on the 'failed system' to try to help us out of this. When will they understand- the old system is defunct & until there is a fundamental & total re-structure we cannot hope to get out of this mess..the governments & big business pressure groups still 'can't get their head around this' as too many 'vested interests' feel threatened. When the crisis began talk was of credit crunch losses of $400 bn, then £1.7 tr a year ago and now heading towards $4tr..if they're talking $4 tr now...add another 50% at least. The fact is 'THEY' have lost control.The idea that we are 'bottoming out' & 'green shoots' of recovery are appearing is indeed a false dawn..I feel we are heading for the 2nd/3rd waves of a colossal 'financial tsunami'. Governments not allowing a complete melt down & fundamental restructure in effect serves only to worsen the eventual carnage..perhaps even resulting in social revolutions or worse as those 'in power' strive to 'cling-on' to their power by any means....as per....

21 Governage
Defence projects - don't forget the very expensive new aircraft carriers that are still in the pipeline.
But none of these will be cancelled, no matter how much you rail against them. Why? Jobs.
Can you seriously imagine a government in this situation (ie economy in disarray, unemployment rising etc) actually canning a large defence contract that would put thousands more out of jobs? Doubly so when you consider that it's a labour government and most of the jobs would be in traditional labour areas.
Don't think so - in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the government took the opportunity to order more hardware - after all, manpower is cheaper these days and the government needs to get people employed somehow.

Robert, I hope you're working on the next and most crucial story of today's trilogy, entitled, "How to REPAY £200bn, without causing over a decade's worth of deflation."

However, if we have to ban the "free-market" in future will deflation be an inevitable result?

Investment Bankers.... Excellent at selling worthless paper to mug punters !

And where exactly will the IMF get the sort of money that would be needed to bail out the UK?

19# Citygambler

Couldn't have put it better myself.

16# john_from_hendon

"the poor- most of us"

5% unemployment in the UK, so 95% of the pop working.
Way over 50% of houseowners have 50+ equity in their still highly valued houses.

There are VERY few poor people in this country, and most of those are suffering from some chronic, irreparable, social dysfunction.

This country works, will keep on working and will continue to be reasonably fair to MOST of us with some criminals at either end of the social spectrum ripping off the rest of us. But only as much as we allow them, the bankers got away with exceptional theivery because the rest of us felt better off than we ever had before.

What were a puny organisation like a government going to do?

"STOP the world" We wan't to get off!"

There was, is and will be NO mechanism by which any government (even the mighty US of A ) can buck the mkts. Moey now due to electronic globalisation is a gresed snake, you can not get a grip of it, only try to keep an eye on where you think it is and where you think it might be going.

Everything else is wishful thinking.

The various Govt's had a fair idea that this was coming, but could only ride the Tiger. Unfortunately this one ran longer and climbed higher than thought possible before the automatic correction mechanism called arithmatic kicked in.

Why do I feel that 99% of the anti New Labour posters on here would be so,so much happier with a National Socialist government and a few out of the way "holiday camps" in northern Scotland.

I personally would be very happy with my own personal dictatorship and would probably employ such facilities, but I think there may be some considerable variation in their temporary residents.

#19 citygambler, #23 etc Governage

For a dissenting voice you both might respect, consider James K Galbraith, who is certainly a worthy son to his emminent father.

He has been a strong critic of the Establishment for a long time, and also a critic of military spending.

Look at the Wikipedia entry below, and follow the link to his Milton Friedman memorial lecture: "I come to bury Milton not to praise him" he wrote.



The challenge for all economic (and other) experts is not to let their political/social views blind them to inconvenient realities. I'll reserve judgement on Chossudovsky until I know more about him.

Lest we forget that we do not have to incur this debt.

GB could have considered the greater good, bitten the bullet and have already pulled the plug on non crucial public expenditure to the level needed to balance the public finances. Unemployment would be sadly somewhat higher and the start of the recovery a lot closer, but not close enough for GB to avoid a debacle at the coming election. Alas he has chosen to fiddle away til then and postpone implementing the real measures to lay the foundations of recovery for reasons difficult to understand. Perhaps his future relationship with GS is under discussion?

Doubled the public debt under a single party's period of office indeed. Rather than 'Gordon Bennett!' it is now 'Gordon Brown!'

A question that's been going round my head is, if the BOE are engaged in Quantative easing, i.e. creating money to buy government debt. Why can't they reduce old debt by the amount equal to the new borrowing required. If this is possible would it be effective in lessoning the blow for this huge level of new borrowing? Thanks Gareth London

#31 Moncursalion-Monochrome! I seem to recall reading something from you bemoaning the lack of factual understanding of most posters.

Maybe you can explain how it can be that in the UK there are almost 9 million people of working age who are not working, and how this can possibly equate to 5% of the work force.

35# armagediontimes

9 million would equate to approximately 25% or one quarter of the working population. There are about 60 milliom in this country, children and those past retirement age, housewives/husbands who can aford to choose not to work, higher education students, the disabled and other groups not eligible/willing to work account for aprox 24 million+. So a max working pop of 36mill (highest); where are your hidden 6 million on top of the headline figures?

where do you get your figures from? The Socialist Worker?

#19 citygambler. You have a losing betting slip. In any functioning democracy a whole range of opinions would be readily presented by news organisations so that people could make their own minds up on a range of matters. This must be the case since democracy requires that power and influence reside with the enfranchised - and you can only be truly enfranchised if you have access to information.

Either you have made a mistake, or you are advocating some form of authoratarian dictatorship. If neither is the case then please remember the words of Goethe: "There are none so firmly enslaved as those who falsely believe themselves to be free."

As frustrating as it is, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are probably the last remaining institutions in the World capable of dealing with politicians in UK/USA who have no one else to turn to. Most if not all western banks are technically bankrupt and the governments of UK/USA have no alternative to using them. The liabilities in world OTC derivative trades which must be settled by June this year are astronomic (see "BIS" statistics) and if exposed, would simply cause the total collapse of the world financial system as we know it. Prevention of a complete meltdown is what is happening today. Let's hope they succeed!!!!

were doomed with broon,doomed

#36 Moncursalion-Monochrome! No, the Socialist Worker is not something I am overly familiar with. Here are some examples:

Why not take a look at how many people have been "forced" to take early retirement but would nonetheless come out of retirement if they could find a job. You could also look at how many people are not working, are ineligible for benefits and so don´t register anywhere. You may want to take a look at the almost 2.9 million people who are registered as long term disabled. I think you will find some of the disabilities these people suffer from range from a preference to taking drugs rather than going to work, through to a preference for eating as oppossed to going to work.

When you add all of this up (all available from official sources) you will get to a number not far shy of 9 million or 25% of the workforce.

Once you have verified the numbers you may want to ask yourself why as work becomes less physical (e.g. coal mining replaced with IT data entry the number of people medically unfit to engage in any form of work is rising exponentially.

Someone is telling you lies - and it is not me.

40# armagediontimes

Of the 2.9 million a substantial number are actually what you and I would call disabled and not just work shy. of the workshy a substantial number are defacto unemployable due to illiteracy, ignorance and just being fairly sub-human.

Of the early retired, millions planned for this, ask any IFA. huge numbers of mainly public service workers aimed their pension plans at a 55 yr cut off. They may be technically available to work but are not actually on the market. The huge bull run paid off the mortgages of this lucky generarion and provided large tax free retirement sums; though of course the moaners on these pages prefer to forget about how many people did very well out of the "good" times.

The returns on pension plans were quite recenty and for almost two decades based on 8% growth and for years achieved this, leaving us with some of the wealthiest pensioners in any developed country.

They are so used to this "something for nothing" that they are now disgusted to find they are having to cut back on their cruise itineries.

Those that missed the boat are now moaning effectively that while in their unproductive latter years, they will not be "rich" and poor little Johnny and Sarah won't get a freebie half million when they kick off due to actually having some of their asset accumulation taken to care for them in their dotage.

If we actually did the research and allowing for some of your reclassification we may come to a figure of 4.5 to 5 million who COULD be working out of my conservative estimate of a 36m work force; so about 11-13% give or take. No other country so accounts for its unemployed, but it still gives getting on for 90% in employment.

We an all make the figures look as good or bad as we wish, which is why, if honest economists can only deal in generalities and trends.

The world isn't ending and the only real sufferers are going to be people who were at the economic margins or chancers, neither group I give a fig about.

Calm down everybody and get on with it, its only a bad recession.

Ah, I see.

The banks charge the government
for raising the loan
to support the debt
that the government got into
for bailing out the banks...

so the banks can charge the government...

RE: 23 Governage & 37 Armagediontimes

I was only pointing out the reality of what goes on, the reason that Fund Manager 'x' will be given airtime to pontificate on what the government should be doing and Professor Michel Chussodovsky won't is because the fund manager actually puts money at risk every day betting on how the markets will move and Chussodovsky exists in an academic cocoon of theories and hypotheses regarding what should have happened in the past and what might or could happen in the future. You will notice that the present is carefully omitted...

#41 Moncursalion-Monochrome! What you say may or may not be true, and some of it is clearly subjective.

The fact is there are 9 million people of working age who are not working. Whatever else they may or not be they are unemployed. That is my only point.

number 6 - you are hillarious. made me wet my undergarments. good comment.

AD would be better off as a Stand up comedian, he must be having a
giraffe.

3.5% growth next year, More Alice in wonderland economics and maths.

More tax dogging loop holes to closure, ah yeah just like the back bench bone of IR35, more smoke and mirror's.

And Investment Banks get more commission selling the gov debt too.


lies dam lies and stats , the Turkeys are coming home to rost.

But will they vote for Christmas at the next election ?

buying votes on a large scale

armageddontimes and Moncursalion-Monochrome

I have been following your discussion with interest and it never ceases to amaze me how accurately he behaviour of he capitalist is predicted.

When there is a crisis of Capitalism the defenders of the system alwys BLAME THE UNEMPLOYED.

This is classic behaviour - rather than blame the system - which is clearly at the heart of this, it's easy to divert attention to the weakest and most defenceless in society. However your argument will weaken as more and more people you know will end up jobless.

If you're looking for answers as to why there are so many 'skivers' as you seem to indicate then try the following ideas.
a) The de-skilling of the workforce, which is exacly what is happening now, meaning people have to take poorly paid depressing jobs which do not challenge them.
b) The high number of disability claimants has several sources,
1 - The 'fiddling' of the unemployment statistics in the 80's where they systematically moved the unemployed onto disability benefit to hide the shocking numbers.
2 - The steady destruction of the NHS meaning small joint problems that wouldn't have stopped people working - are in fact made worse by botched operations and poor after care (trust me, it happened to my father)
3 - The fact that most people are so depressed by the inequality in his world that they simply 'give up' on themselves and start a long slow road to destrucion.

I work, but I appreciate that many people are no as lucky as me and are doing degrading work for a salary the rich will spend on a lunch.

47# WRITINGSONTHEWALL

I don't blame the unemployed, I mainly ignore them as decent worthwhile people are not often unemployed for long.

I do a mindless job for 84 hrs at a stretch and have hourly earnings little above minimum wage, but two nights ago my wife and I had roast sea bass in a very good restaurant with two bottles of excellent Soave riserva, starters of pear and prosciutto fro my wife and a full portion of linguine del frutti di mare for me, deserts, coffee, and grappa/amaretto.
The bill with taxi there and back was around £160. We budget for such treats. I smoke, but not too much (and I buy them from shops) We usually have a bottle of wine with our evening meal.

Our last meal out before that was on an overnight stay in Calais at the Holiday inn with the Chefs 7 course menu de degustation at the Channel restaurant, 112 euros for the menu and I told the sommelier to pick two suitable wines from the list but not to spend more than 100 euro.

We had budgeted for it.

We are not special, did not inherit money (At All) or win some.

We both work hard for between £7.00 and £7.26 an hour and do overtime as available, both averaging 60 hrs per week.

Simples! We are not lazy scum.

#47 writingsonthewall. You are possibly the only person who has ever implied that I am in some way a defender of the system.

You have a system that has no use for a substantial minority of the population, but under no circumstances is it prepared to admit this. It therefore wilfully mis classifies some of these people as being too disabled to undertake any work at all.

However life is a 2 way street and it can only achieve this false classificsation with the passive connivance of people willing to allow themselves to be labelled as something they are not.

Many of the reasons for their passive connivance are as you describe - but this still does not mean that people (any people anywhere) can legitimately abrogate all personal responsibility for everything. If you are not willing to even try to save yourself, no matter how ineffectual your efforts may be, then why should someone else try to save you?

Au revoir Great Britain. All my money is now in USD and EURO! hurray

#50

You're due for a terrible shock on your USD holdings sometime in the not too distant future. The only thing keeping the dollar afloat at the moment is that the financial crisis has spooked the herd and it is stampeding into dollar territory. What the herd does not know is that the territory ends at a cliff with rocks waaaaay below

I was led to this article by the title:
"How to borrow £200m."
Am I thick or something?
Mr Peston does not in any way explain, how an ordinary citizen can borrow £200m!
Indeed he doesn't really explain anything, other than this mythic, naive belief, that capitalism can solve capitalism.
I can only say it is a very misleading title.

I was led to this article by the title:
"How to borrow £200 billion."
Am I thick or something?
Mr Peston does not in any way explain, how an ordinary citizen can borrow £200billion!
Indeed he doesn't really explain anything, other than this mythic, naive belief, that capitalism can solve capitalism.
I can only say it is a very misleading title.

This scenario is being repeated all over the world. The bankers had seemingly sank our ship, chopped a hole in our lifeboat and are now demanding premium accommodation on the rescue vessels.

"But they rarely turn up and buy the stuff in conventional auctions."

Why?

Who were and are in connivance to fleece the country and the public, again ?