The narrative is pretty clear – it woz the Banks wot done it! The BBC is retailing the government spin that our current financial meltdown is primarily down to the reckless behaviour of the Banks – the so-called “Casino Banking”. If you read this BBC article you will note that it finishes by giving the Lib-Dems the final word on the issue, allowing the wretched Nick Clegg the opportunity to push one more polished knife into the back of the Banks. But it is not that simple and we are not that gullible. Why does the BBC shy away from talking about casino politics? After more than a decade of debt driven “growth” with Brown crowing he had done away with boom and bust isn’t there at least a case for Brown to answer? So why is the BBC so coy about prosecuting this as it seeks to identify all the causes of the depres…sorry recession we are now living in? During all those years when the Conservatives were in power, the BBC was in full on attack mode. But once Labour entered Downing Street, the reverse gear was engaged and a decade of benign indifference to the handling of the UK economy commenced – and clearly old habits die hard. Can you IMAGINE if Thatcher were still PM and she had assured us that she had abolished boom and bust the BBC response? But the BBC allows Brown to hunker in his bunker and instead reserves the bile for the Bankers.
CASINO BANKING
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Yes and the BBC gets 3.5 billion a year in free chips to play the Casino. Money stolen from the public at knife point.
I wonder if the BBC will be so keen to clean its own house of overpaid luvvies?
And the BBC has over £100million from the EU to play with as well.
‘So why is the BBC so coy about prosecuting this as it seeks to identify all the causes of the depres…sorry recession we are now living in?’
===
Erm, does that really need to be asked on a blog committed to bias in the government’s media outlet?
And the frightening thing is that it’s working. Intelligent friends and work colleagues bleat on about the banks (put criminal charges forward in my eyes)and how they’ve destroyed the country. They seem oblivious to the fact that the finance industry is heavily regulated and it failed.
And who set up the regultory system? Peter Schiff, a US economist who saw this financial disaster coming, put it succinctly. A teacher gives her reception class a bag of sweets, tells them NOT to eat them but goes out of class for an hour. When she returns, the sweets have been eaten. Who do you blame? The children or the teacher?
Anyone watching News 24 (or whatever it’s called this week)?
Brown is getting a shoeing, he’s trying his usual bullshitting tactics but it isn’t working…
Of course al Beeb won’t pick up on this.
I am just as capitalist as anyone, but the banks have not helped their cause by having a feeding frenzy on the money they were supposed to be looking after (12 billion bonuses was the Sun Tel headline before the crisis).
In addition to this, as soon as a borrower gets into trouble, they rip their smiling masks off and show you that underneath they are a bunch of spiteful accountants trying by whatever means to stamp on people who owe them money. They need someone like Jesus to give them a good whipping, like he did last time.
They cannot see any difference between a professional fraudster with twenty stolen identities, and an old lady who cannot afford her gas bill – in their eyes they are just account numbers to be pursued (‘Now…let’s see, which debt collector outfit seems the most vicious and nasty…’) Then they try and pretend the debt collector has nothing to do with them. (‘We just sold on the debt’).
How can you feel sympathy for people who knowingly pass debts on to these heartless types who are professionally cruel for their chosen career, meanwhile lending recklessly so they can run off with their pockets stuffed with millions.
Caveman,
I rather agree with you. I am most certainly not absolving banking but neither am I excusing government! The BBC has a partisan approach which is a disgrace.
Maybe this explains the BBC reticence?
If this is true then does this mean everything – that’s EVERYTHING – this government is doing regarding the EU is illegal.
Caveman – it’s not a question of whether the banks were at fault. I don’t think anyone believes they behaved anything but stupidly.
What is at issue, is that the government is trying to wriggle out of its role in having precipitated this crisis and is receiving massive and unqualified support from the BBC in its efforts to escape blame.
The BBC repeatedly portrays Gordon Brown in a light which suggests he might possibly know something about banking and finance. But on what possible grounds?
McBean’s doctorate was a pretend thesis on some obscure aspect of Scottish Labour party history. He has barely held a ‘proper’ job since leaving university and he has absolutely no experience of commercial life whatsoever.
The fact that he was appointed by the mountebank and charlatan Tony Blair to be the country’s chancellor is no proof of competence at all – as subsequent events have more than proved.
Brown is an empty, bullying windbag and the BBC is as guilty as any banker, for lying to the public about his transparent culpability for this mess.
GCooper
Brown as Chancellor presided over the biggest, most absurd credit boom and house-price inflation in our history – because it suited his book, fuelled growth. Which enabled him to increase state spending ad infinitum.
Now the bubble has burst – he claims to have had no part in it, it is all the fault of the bankers.
This is the core of the BBC lie about Brown – his Chancellorship is now being shown by harsh events to have been an economic disaster. Tye BBC typically portrays him as a poor innocent caught up in problems caused by others, not as a prime mover in the crash.
It would seem that Gordon Brown did know there was a vast problem with the system, As usual, either to dim to understand or control it or too mendacious do anything.
The bankers will lose on this issue simply because the stock in trade of politicians is to take credit and avoid blame.
The same process can be observed in America,where Schumer, Franks and assorted miscreants are dodging the bullet.
Johna writes: ”
This is the core of the BBC lie about Brown – his Chancellorship is now being shown by harsh events to have been an economic disaster. The BBC typically portrays him as a poor innocent caught up in problems caused by others, not as a prime mover in the crash.”
I absolutely agree. It is astonishing, the extent to which Brown’s role in this fiasco is being whitewashed by the BBC.
It is true that other countries are suffering from this recession, but none of them (certainly in Europe) so badly.
Brown, in effect, took our money and hosed it onto the socialist apparatchiks so approved of by the BBC – the dull legions of the braindead who staff so many of our our schools ‘n ‘ospitals, street football co-ordinators, five a day advisers, ‘diversity’ trainers, bogus asylum seekers, bone-idle mendicants grasping ‘benefits’and all the rest of ZaNuLabour’s parade of fools.
Now the game is up, they are doing everything they can to keep this neo-Marxist paradise alive and shield its paymaster from public examination.
Brown is hugely at fault, I condemn him big time and his cronies, but lets not state fictions.
Britain is not the country suffering the worst of any in this recession either now or in the future and particularly not in Europe as stated – this is a myth.
How can Britain be suffering worse than countries already bailed out by the IMF, Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia?
Experiencing a worse downturn in production than Japan?
Worse off than third world countries?
Come on, things are appalling but talking the UK down as the worst in the world just makes a mockery of the argument.
Bron
How about – “the UK is suffering worse than virtually every other leading economy ?” That leaves out all the basket cases you mention.
Bron: We’re better off than Zimbabwe. Just.
“The BBC has a partisan approach which is a disgrace.”
David Vance | Homepage | 12.02.09 – 11:42 am
I don’t think the BBC’s coverage is out of kilter with any of the broadcast media. Or much of the print media for that matter. The Daily Hell seems most animated by the banks.
The article linked to is all factual stuff, and b-bbc usually equate being relegated down the article as a sign that a view is being buried.
I’ve searched “casino-Banking on the BBC website and was told there no references to it.
And here’s Robert Peston pointing the figure rather at the PM (see 3 and 4 in particular):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/09/creditcrunched_gordon_brown.html
Apart from that David, you might well be right.
MWL: Most of the MSM is lefty in outlook. In order of leftiness I would put it this way
BBC
Channel4
Sky
ITV
If you watch the BBC 6PM news then ITV news at 6:30 you often get totally different versions of stories.
GMTV is very pro Liebour, hardly surprising since the fat vile Garroway is humping the even more vile Derek Draper.
Notice that McFatty One Eye only seems to do one to ones on the BBC or GMTV. Why might that be?
Would Snotty ever go one on one with Jeff Randall? I think not.
mikewineliberal | 12.02.09 – 1:21 pm
The msm are an idle lot. On the whole, they can’t be arsed to get to grips with the AGW controversy, they can’t be arsed to do a proper investigation of MMR, they can’t be arsed to see the Israel-Pally thing from both sides and they certainly can’t be arsed to investigate ‘tricky’ subjects like immigration and Islamist extremism. So they certainly won’t be arsed to do this subject justice either.
There are honourable exceptions. But the BBC are the worst offenders. They take the received wisdom line of least effort on every story.
‘…the depres…sorry recession…’
That reminds me I heard Nick Robinson the other day stumbling over the same word before hastily correcting himself: “the repress…er… recession”.
Heh…a Freudian slip or what? Well, we know what the BBC does with the truth and with unwanted thoughts, opinions etc.
Breaking News: Wilders stopped at Heathrow
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7885918.stm
Good for him. BBC broadcasting Muslim attacks on Wilders
Last year the home sec banned Martha Stewart, the US home & cookery guru, from entering the UK on the slender grounds that she’d been sentenced to five months in jail for lying to federal investigators.
Stewart was coming to the UK for 2 reasons: to have dinner with Andrew Neil; and to visit the Wedgewood factory to discuss a Martha Stewart line of crockery that would create employment in the Stoke area.
I expect Andrew Neil found another date. But Wedgewood went into administration the other day.
Another triumph of symbolism over common sense for NuLab…….
Well the next time some unwashed smelly bushy bearded halfwit dressed in an old white sheet wants to come to the UK at the invite of that jock tosspot Galloway or Jew hater Livingturd Spliff will have to ban them. Won’t she……?
Tom | 12.02.09 – 2:05 pm
Tell me you’re not on the JABS side of the argument. This is one area where I thought the bbc did get things wrong, by giving jabs and similar a voice.
mikewineliberal | 12.02.09 – 3:38 pm
Could I ask you to do me a favour? Could you read this all the way through, without anticipating the line of argument, thinking you know what’s coming etc. but just taking it para by para until you reach the end?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3346281/the-witchhunt-against-andrew-wakefield.thtml
In the interests of balance, I’ll copy you a piece by the best journo of his type in the country.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5696902.ece
We’ll have to disagree on this.
From libertus’s link, the BBC writes:
Errr what! Lord Ahmed didn’t merely express ‘concerns’: he threatened to mobilise 10,000 muslims to do what 10,000 muslims would be expected to do outside the House of Lords if Wilders were allowed into the House.
The BBC is lying for islam.
Ed Milliband wants to kick the poor in the teeth with a “Remewables Heating Incentive”.A tax on the poor,at least Jacquboot’s sister will benefit.
It was amazing today how the BBC website announced the new train deal. It was a full on Labour party press release all about UK jobs etc. The BBC even had a puff pieces by the unions supporting the announcement. But all the paper’s websites headlined with the contract going to a Japanese company, Hitachi and asking where exactly the trains will be built. And so the BBC has now done a quick about face and reported the real story like the papers and now reports that the unions are upset about the deal.
Doug, what amazes me more is how the BBC keeps publishing Labour press releases without any checks being made.
Nick Robinson in his Editors Blog seems to have to spend half his time updating his posts, normally after members of the public point out the obvious holes in whatever government spin he is attempting to pass off as factual.
The new train order. The BBC report was just plain poor. The 1970s Inter City 125 was the very best thing ever built by BR.It ushered in the modern railway and still more than holds it’s own. If successive governments had not allowed our train building industry to be run down this country would have been more than capable of building a second generation. It has been obvious for years that it would be necessary to replace the 125. No attempt was ever made to build it here. Now it is to be built in Japan. I suspect some complex money deal which keeps the true cost off the Government’s balance sheet is at the root of it. I am sure neither Germany nor France would for one moment consider placing such an order outside their own countries. TGVs made in Japan? The French unions and people would never stand for it.
Bron writes: “Britain is not the country suffering the worst of any in this recession either now or in the future and particularly not in Europe as stated – this is a myth.”
Do you never trouble to read newspapers? Here is just one link. There are many others to the IMF report.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=471309&in_page_id=2&expand=true
CASINO BANKING
It seems that The BBC and yourself David Vance, do not understand or do not want to understand how the system works.
Casino is a game where the BANK or HOUSE always wins EVERYTHING in the end.
Therefore there is NO point trying to find out the names of the ‘always were going to be losers’.
What we want need to know is. Who are the HOUSE, and where has all of their infinitely large winnings suddenly gone to?
Wealth does not simply vanish. It either changes form and or goes somewhere else.
Shut up Atlas shrug you knob!
Sorry
Atlas shrugged | 12.02.09 – 9:31 pm |
Wealth does not simply vanish. It either changes form and or goes somewhere else.
Oh, come on. Sometimes wealth is based on inflated values or just plain old junk. When those values deflate, the wealth isn’t stolen by someone else. It really does vanish because it never existed in the first place.
If I have a comic book that’s worth $!000, and the creator goes mad and makes everybody hate him, and the value of the comic drops to $300, nobody stole that $700 from me. It did not go into someone else’s pocket, not even Nate Rothschild’s. That $700 existed only as potential wealth, not actual capital. It vanished. Really.
Sometimes there is a real scam, like Madoff. Outside of actual scams, wealth based on value-inflated assets and assets that are worthless doesn’t go into somebody else’s pocket because it never existed in the first place. Yes, wealth is transferred initially, when the asset is first sold, but if its value goes up then down, only the short traders make any money.
You cannot make a valid case for all the world’s money going into the pockets of the Rothschilds and their friends. You’ll have to spell out – in actual detail, with proof and not “it is well known….” – exactly how this wealth was transferred into other pockets.
Of course, The Obamessiah’s Spendulus Package really is taking money from my pocket and funneling into the hands of his friends and fellow travelers.
It really does vanish because it never existed in the first place.
Oh come on yourself.
IF IT DID NOT EXIST in the first place IT CAN NOT VANISH.
Only wealth that exists can vanish. I contend that REAL wealth that actually exists can not vanish.
Money is not wealth. Money is just money.
Try to understand basic economics. Or should I say how REAL business actually works? I have been in business for over 30 years, so try to have a little respect.
I make things. You very likely do not.
Therefore I know that when the price of production go’s up in terms of money. I can charge more money for my products. This because my competitors have the same problem I do. Which is rampant inflation.
Therefore my REAL wealth is created by my real production. This is one of the main advantages of being an efficient producer in a highly competitive market place.
The Chinese are highly productive and efficient generally ( but not always) therefore they can put their prices up with inflation. You most likely can not because your wealth is very possibly based on some kind of illusion or temporary unsustainable boom.
As a highly efficient manufacturer of essential products my order book has never been more full, and my stock is appreciating at an incredible rate.
The cash flow has yet again deliberately removed from the market to cause a WORLD WIDE depression. This is often done by the central WORLD banks hording GOLD and creating more of there ‘funny money’. Which is why the price is now at its highest in history and set to go much much higher.
This is the criminal ruling classes, greatest trick in the book. They hold onto the money supply causing people and markets to panic. Then buy it all back again when the price hits rock bottom.
Some call this the economic cycle, others call it boom and bust. I call it a criminal conspiracy at the very top. You can call it what you want.
Those in the KNOW like myself, build even bigger businesses by knocking out inefficient competitors, and get even more filthy RICH. Those that trust their government, system, or establishment, go belly up and lose their shirts.
THATS BUSINESS MY FRIEND, it may be an utter c..t, but that is how it has ALWAYS BEEN.
However one very important side effect of all this criminal activity is that society takes on a more and more authoritarian character. As poverty and starvation always spawns more Fascism and or Communism.
They cause the problem.
We beg for salvation.
They always come up with their ever more controlling, well planned in advance solution. Which we the people have no choice other then to accept.
ALL and I do mean ALL our utterly controlled media has to do to literally STAY ALIVE is to never let the public look any higher then their elected representative and retail w/bankers to act as the systems FALL GUYS.
The BBC is very reluctant to allow criticism of the Labour Government’s advocacy of ‘Sharia banking’ in Britain:
“Britain’s a world-leader in sharia banking – but we haven’t grasped the sinister and dangerous implications”
(Melanie Phillips)
[Extract]:
“The $18billion (£12bn) in assets of Britain’s Islamic banks are said to dwarf those of Muslim states such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Egypt. And there are also 55 colleges and professional institutions offering education in Islamic finance in Britain • more than anywhere else in the world.
“This development has been actively pushed by the government. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown declared that he wanted London to become the global centre of Islamic banking. You can obviously see the attraction, especially in these straightened times. But the only thing our politicians and bankers appear to see is the seductive prospect of trillions of pound and dollar signs dancing before their bedazzled eyes.
“What they refuse to acknowledge is the real price that is to be paid for this. They don’t understand that the spread of sharia banking in Britain and America is a significant part of the attempt to Islamise Britain and America. Acceptance of sharia finance furthers the Islamist objective of gradually legitimising Islamic sharia law more generally in the west.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1141087/Britains-world-leader-sharia-banking–havent-grasped-sinister-dangerous-implications.html?ITO=1490
David Preiser (USA):
Atlas shrugged | 12.02.09 – 9:31 pm |
Regarding the intrinsic wealth of the the comic in your example.
The best example of creating wealth I have come accross, as was told to me by a child, is on a children’s website, where they show the kid a room with a carpet and curtains etc and then, believe it or not, a parent’s credit card is used to actually buy what they call ‘virtual furniture’ for this room, piece by piece!
The child will find, if she ever tries to sell some of her furniture assets, just how illusory her wealth is.
Atlas shrugged | 13.02.09 – 1:54 am |
Money is not wealth. Money is just money.
Not when it exists only on paper. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. But you know what I mean.
Yes, people do make real money off the transactions of these artificially inflated things. I think that’s the real problem with all this, and I know you know that.
But the cash value difference between the top of the bubble and the bottom of the pit doesn’t “go” anywhere. It’s just value, which is ultimately ethereal.
caveman | 13.02.09 – 1:13 pm |
The child will find, if she ever tries to sell some of her furniture assets, just how illusory her wealth is.
Actually, in Second Life, people really do sell virtual furniture, buildings, clothing, and jewelry for very real money. Right now, this economy exists, so these things all have real value. If Second Life ever shuts down, though, the value of all those assets will be $0, yet the actual cash will have gone nowhere because it never really existed until the value was transformed into cash.
Re: Sir James Crosby
Not too sure if any of you have seen this article. Apparently – unlike many of mere mortals whom he helped to make unemployed – Sir James Crosby wasn’t on the dole for long (see article from the city dairy of the Times below).
Now call me an old cynic, but the speed with which Sir James moved from one quango (the FSA) to the next (Northern Way) • well it’s almost as if someone had lined another job up for him. Could this have been the price for Sir James’ rapid resignation? On second thoughts, surely not • the system doesn’t work like that – does it?
Still either way, this new – well funded public job – hardly fits with the GVN’s often repeated mantra of no rewards for failure. Ditto Hornby’s nice little earner at Lloyds.
Strange that no-one form the BBC has spotted these little inconsistencies…?
“Sir James goes back to his northern roots
One door closes and another one opens for Sir James Crosby. No sooner does he leave the Financial Services Authority than he becomes chairman of some ludicrous quango in his native Yorkshire. To be strictly accurate, Northern Way has been bolted together by three other ludicrous quangos, including the inevitable regional development agency, and is forming a new commission which Crosby will chair to support investment Oop North.”
Jonathan
Seems to me that Brown is responsible for three major – catastrophic- blunders during his time as Chancellor :
He went along with the boom-at-any-cost culture, when it was obvious that the house-price boom and the related credit boom were out of control. The economy should have been reined back in.
Secondly, he is directly resposible for splitting the responsibility for regulating the banking sector between the Bank of England and the FSA. It is at least possible that the old form of behind-closed-doors regulation by the Bank would have averted some or much of the trouble, by fiercer insistence on proper capitalisation of the banks. Or, when trouble hit eg Northern Rock, by stitching up a solution before it collapsed – setting off further collapses of confidence.
Thirdly – he has so increased the UK debt that people are no longer willing to regard the pound sterling as safe. It has devalued by up to 30% against other currencies in the past year – any other Government would have been out on its ear for such a ravaging of our currency.
JohnA – all true but never forget the great pile of gold sold by McBean, who was so stupid he even informed the market beforehand – thus ensuring the lowest possible price for an asset he should never have touched.
The man is a complete and utter fool.
An alternative view of Labour economic policy to that of BBC economists-
‘Telegraph’
Jeff Randall:
‘Bit by bit, Gordon Brown’s fantasy is being pulled apart by the facts’
[Extract]:
“He [Brown] clings to the fantasy that, thanks to his genius of administration, British citizens are far better placed than competitors to handle a battering.
“Bit by bit, however, the credibility of that claim is being pulled apart by brutal facts, not least of which was the Office for National Statistics’ revelation that while the number of foreign workers getting jobs in the UK continues to grow (up by 175,000 to 2.4 million last year), domestic unemployment is rising sharply.”
“…when the Bank [of England] talks of ‘quantitative easing’, what it really means is printing money: increasing the amount of paper stuff swishing through the economy. You get more, I get more and, in a flash, we’ll all be millionaires.
“You can see where this is going. From here, all roads lead to Harare.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/4605022/Bit-by-bit-Gordon-Browns-fantasy-is-being-pulled-apart-by-the-facts.html
“How about – “the UK is suffering worse than virtually every other leading economy ?” That leaves out all the basket cases you mention.
JohnA | 12.02.09 – 1:10 pm”
Would be a good point, but its not true either.
Leading economies…
Fourth quarter GDP
China +6.8%
Russia +1.1%
USA -3.8%
Japan -3.2% (forecast)
Canada -2.5% (forecast)
Germany -2.1%
Italy -1.8%
UK -1.5%
France -1.2%
Spain -1.0%
JohnA
plus PFIs
Make that Japan -3.3% actual.
Brown is a total donkey whose resignation should be first up, but the woeful tactic of claiming figures to back you up which are ‘common perception’ but in reality are totally false is an abysmal bbc tactic, I hope for better from these pages.