The government,ARE TO BALE OUT THE BANKS?

A real conundrum this. The problem is that banks have regularly ripped off the public with no conscience whatsoever. I went to a meeting of SAFE - Struggle Against Financial Exploitation in the House of Commons in around 2004 / 05.

Lord Ahmed stood up and talked about Equity mortgages - sold to the elderly. One case cited was of an elderly couple who had taken out a mortgage on the £100,000 house for £25,000 - repayable on death. They had been verbally assured that they could move should they need to and seven years later the wife developed MS and they needed to move to a bungalow. Since compound interests on the mortgage and a stake of 25% in the house had meant their debt had risen to nearly £70,000 - they were then told they would have to repay the 'loan' before they could move. This left insufficient funds to move.

When Barclays Bank were asked where the mortgage was - since they had told Lord Ahmed and SAFE they no longer held the mortgage, the bank said they had converted the mortgage into bonds - which are untraceable. However some bright sp[ark did trace the bond and located in an offshore account in the Channel Isles held in a Barclays Bank Directors pension fund account.

With that sort of corruption so commonplace - you are absolutely right - we should not just bale out the banks with the present incumbents still in power. If we are to bale out banks we should do so by ensuring that we place people of integrity in the positions of power to prevent more slumps fuelled by corrupt bankers who believe themselves immune from prosecution.

However since banking and the financial industry is the one sector for which Britain has pre-eminence in the world - not to bale out the banks would mean that money would move permanently out of the UK and we would be bankrupted if all our banks failed to honour their savers money. It would be an utter disaster. This is surely an opportunity to turn around a very corrupt industry to ensure that we regain our reputation for integrity. Unfortunately the bankers appear to have our Members of Parliament in their pockets and feel that can carry on as usual with tax payers money to prop up their diseased deals.

At the SAFE meeting Lord Ahmed told us that he had been invited to a Director's Box at Lords Cricket Club - instead of chairing the meeting of SAFE. The Bank had done its research - they knew Lord Ahmed was a keen cricket fan - they probably knew his own finances too - this sort of intelligence is apparently very easy to find out if one has the right connections.

Good for Lord Ahmed - he chose instead to chair the SAFE meeting in the Houses of Parliament rather than attend the cricket match. Unfortunately that sort of integrity is far too rare.

What is the alternative?

Unless someone comes up with a better plan to enable the banks to start lending to consumers and business more people will lose their jobs and homes it is as simple as that. If the Government fails to step in and lend (and that is what it is - not a gift) money then they will go bust taking peoples savings, investments and pensions with them. As security we have shares in the banks that we have lent the money to - so will also get a share of the profits when they start making them until they pay off the loan.

Additionally spending on health is still at record levels as it is in education.

Firstly - It is HAL not HAT and I am thinking that the vast majority of the money is being wasted as you clearly cannot read, spell or put together a sentence.

But anyway - the money is being spent on ensuring that class sizes are brought down, investment in new technology and getting results. Yes some schools (not even close to half) did close last week but the fact is that they where desperately underfunded for years. The school I went to in the 1980's was supposed to have been demolished in 1980 as where hundreds of schools in the UK, a long term rebuilding programme is going on currently - my old school was rebuilt two years ago and building is currently taking place at two more where I live - in the meantime they are old and boilers pack up.

In terms of health - there are now more NHS drop in points and small health centres dealing with minor out patients and taking a lot of the pressure from major hospitals.

Well you seem to be thinking of only the bank bosses etc here the people they are actually helping is the savers and the people who have morgatges through these banks so they are helping the man on the street, they also have various schemes to help people find work already and benefits are paid to those who lose their jobs, can't say I've ever lost a hospital they are quite large buildings and tend to be tricky to misplace. Unfortunately the public only really have themselves to blame for placing so much misguided confidence in Gordon Browns economic ability in the first place an end to boom and bust haha made me laugh so much back in 1997. Also governments around the world have let banks run riot lending irresponsibly and making dodgy investments without proper regulation so its not all down to the British government.

In terms of bailing out the banks the investors can go screw themselves, I find it a disgrace that they marched to Parliament to demand compensation for their shares, without the banks being helped by the govt the banks would have gone bust and the investors would have got nothing anyway. Shares come with liability they lost out they should just accept they made bad investments and move on.

I don't now about schools closing here but I can not understand it apart from the fact that if a heating system is properly maintained they should not go down in cold weather one or two might but not even 25% of them. When I was a boy this did not happen but the attitude would be lets jump up and down to keep warm Ik keep your coat on in the classroom. Legislation has been brought in with minimum temperatures which I think is 60% F after one hour which if you are in an office is very cold.

Bailing the Banks out really does stick in my throat because it is their failure to act in a prudent manner which has landed us in this. If they had acted in a prudent manner many people who are in grave financial trouble would not have been in trouble and neither would the banks. Be that as it may I can see little alternative because if the system actually goes into melt down we are ALL not just some or many of us in deep deep mire, I can only hope that the conditions of the bail out are fair but severe and will cut them down to a size in which governments are bigger than they are rather than the other way around. I know this smacks of Socialism but it is a case of needs must

I may be being very unjust here but the whole thing smacks of Harvard/Yale business schools theory

I think you mean 37 Billion pounds and it's a further 'bale out' rather than the first one. They're into the banks for 100's of billion pounds of liabilities already..

Pity we can't make the stupid twits who put New McLabour into power pay - anything to do with Labour always ends in tears - none of them has ever had a real job - and they certainly don't care much about who else loses theirs.

Bailing out banks is one of the functions of governments. The concept of "lender of last resort" originated in England. The U.S.'s banking system also uses "lender of last resort".

"Lender Of Last Resort"
"classical theory of the lender of last resort, those rule stressed (1) protecting the aggregate money stock, not individual institutions, (2)letting insolvent institutions fail, (3) accommodating sound but temporarily illiquid institutions only, (4) charging penalty rates, (5) requiring good collateral, and (6) preannouncing these conditions in advance of crises so as to remove uncertainty. These precepts continue to inform central bank policy today. "..."to let insolvent institutions fail, to lend to creditworthy institutions only, to charge penalty rates, and to require good collateral. Such rules they thought would minimize problems of moral hazard and remove bankers’ incentives to take undue risks.These precepts, though honored in the breach as wellas in the observance, continue to serve as a benchmarkand model for central bank policy today."
http://richmondfed.org/publications/...
http://richmondfed.org/publications/...
(U.S. Federal Reserve webites)

Y!A is blocking this link because it contains the truth and they are obvious trying to hide it.

j e w i s h r a c i s m . b l o g s p o t . c o m

nothing! they would have done better to give each taxpayer 10,000!