The BBC’s Today programme had the ex-governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, on as guest editor (08:55)….and used the occasion to try and rewrite the history of the financial crash by whitewashing Labour’s part in it.
King was asked about the crash and then led into the trap, Naughtie quietly asking about ‘the whole argument that there was light touch regulation that was in retrospect a terrible mistake’.
King, trying to be politically neutral, and no doubt partially to save his own reputation, at first said it had nothing to do with regulation but then admits it had everything to do with it saying the banks’ leverage was ‘absurdly high’….in other words they had been allowed to borrow vast sums at high risk..he goes on ‘we should learn the lesson from that in the future’.
Naughtie then tries to pass the blame onto the Bank of England….King says the Bank didn’t have responsibility for the regulations….so the regulation, the lack of, was crucial then….who did have responsibility? The government…the Labour government.
Justin Webb then jumps in at the end of the interview and persistently tries to get King to say the Coaliton’s ‘Help to buy’ scheme was ‘unwise’…apparently it is a personal concern of Webb’s.
So whitewashing Labour and maligning the Coalition. Just another day on the leftwings’ favourite political programme.
Must be an election coming.
>but then admits it had everything to do with it saying the banks’ leverage was ‘absurdly high’….in other words they had been allowed to borrow vast sums at high risk..<
I'm sorry, but this statement as written is not completely accurate.
It is true that customers were allowed to borrow too much at high risk (in many cases they were unable to cover the interest payments or repay), but once the loan had been made by the bank the asset on the bank's balance sheet (the loan/ mortgage) was leveraged massively off-balance sheet in the MBS and CDO derivative markets. This is where the leverage took place, and it is probably true to say that a lot of residual risk remains since not all the portfolio went bad.
So technically, King was correct in what he said.
As an aside, some might say that a considerable amount of this risk rests off-balance sheet, principally within the European Banking system.
Part of the reporting problem at the time was that Vince Cable coined the phrase "casino banking" and this was taken up with alacrity by the BBC and others without even understanding banking structure in many cases, let alone the products that were at the heart of the issue. In some cases, they still don't understand it all.
Alan I am sure you will have a good deal to say about the guest editor on this morning’s edition. Not a ‘hideous’ white person in sight !
If you thought Mervyn King was bad, then you did not hear the ghastly Lennie Henry this morning on Today complaining (as always) about the lack of black and ethnic minority folk on TV.
I don’t know what programmes Henry has been watching, but BBC News only seems to have a token white here and there – and these are women who know nothing.
Next time Lenny does his cow eyes shite on comic relief, i suggest someone leave the tosser out in some dusty shithole in Africa….then he will see as many black faces on bongo-bongo tv as he likes…and, as an added bonus, not a single white face…..racists.
I caught a bit of bbc breakfast from oop north , Manchester I think , don`t watch it very often , but I think LH has already been at work here . There was a new effnick female reporter , who i have not seen before, wittering on about Red squirrels . I wonder what `Hideously White` jobbing journo got the boot to let her in . I think that`s waycist , L.H.
The BBC studio is in the city of Salford, not Manchester. It’s part of Greater Manchester, but not the city of Manchester.
Where does he say it’s in the city of Manchester?
It’s also why BBC Breakfast only has guests from within a five-mile radius of the Salford studio. So endless Mancunians – especially on Sunday morning. Nothing wrong with that per se, but let’s have a bit more variety and also get rid of the so-called business reporter who has never ventured south of Stoke, it would seem. And needs elocution lessons.
Well Manchester to me , there is Man Utd ,& City , haven`t heard of Salford Town or Rover`s FC . When things happen down in London its normally referred to as London , maybe pinpointed to a local area later . If I flew, it would be to Manchester Airport ,or train to Manchester Piccadilly .
One would think our state broadcaster could easily explain the worst financial legacy ever left by Labour for the incoming Coalition in 2010.
Notwithstanding the BBC have an army of some of the highest paid economic analysis experts on their staff in the land, courtesy of our taxes. They are now so entrenched and infected with their choice ‘left’ ethos, (with recruitment policies to match for decades now), they can no longer help themselves any more with political biased reporting, including re-writing history.
Even in this critical period in the run-up to the BBC Licence review, where one would think they would try and ‘screw the bobbin’ with more balanced reporting, without fear or favour, the BBC have become so addicted with comprehensive ‘left infection’ and complacent ‘metro’ isolation they are just no longer able to help themselves anymore in spewing out Labour propaganda!
I am just a mere ex-soldier and small businessman and the 2008 financial crash is all pretty clear to me and Labours part in the downfall is obvious.
In 1997, the Conservatives bequeathed Labour a growing economy and best projected positive finances ever handed over to an incoming Government in this land. Labour, in part, got elected somewhat on this promise not to screw it up by promising in their 1997 manifesto to continue these sound Conservative financial policies for the first few years in power. Like today Labour needed to counter the polls showing electorate fear of a repeat of history.
The public has also not forgot when Labour were in power in the 70s, when they handed over to Thatcher such a dire, desperate situation of our nation degraded to the ‘sick man of Europe’, requesting an IMF bailout like a third world African nation, due to the horrendous Labour Political and Economic incompetence.
Such too was the gigantic scale of the Blair and Brown legacy of huge deficit and debt it would not matter which Government was in power from 2010 onwards, things were again desparate and had to change.
Predictably as soon as they got into opposition Labour got it wrong again with ‘TOO FAR – TOO FAST’ advice, and opposed every welfare reforms so far completed. Had we followed their advice we certainly would not now be a world leading growing nation again, but instead facing a ‘Greek Tragedy’.
Under Labour, our country contributed greatly to the world financial crisis with infection of many other nations via the Governments light touch regulated ‘London’ financial centre’, where so many of the worlds financial transactions were conducted.
It is of course accepted that the USA initiated the scaled up sub-prime , CDOs and other lax and corrupt banking practices, which London followed with gusto and Labour Treasury Ministers failed spectacularly in their dereliction of duty to regulate properly the City of London.
They let these London based banks run riot, at great cost to the rest of us and also to the other Nations banks who obviously were encouraged to follow the ‘world class’ London example we set and that is now clear!
One should not forget it was Brown Balls & Milliband, more than any other MPs who were in the treasury and are most to to blame for not regulating and the recession legacy they left.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6240362.stm
The country was basically on the brink of bankruptcy after 13 years of Labour. They certainly ‘did not fix the roof whilst the sun was shining’ borrowing to the hilt even during those financial good times when they should have been building the reserves, (not selling off 400 tons of gold at bargain basement prices) and leaving notes to their successors that there was ‘nothing left’.
Even, now Labour have the brass neck to ‘slag off’ the other parties for wanting to privatise the NHS!
They really think us ‘plebs’ did not notice PFI, for example, which is going to require our children and grandchildren to pay off £300 bn PFI Labour Privatisation – YES £300bn to be repaid – for the NHS over the next generation. This is causing great hardship in the NHS already!
http://www.channel4.com/news/counting-the-cost-of-pfi-in-the-nhs
Add to that their illegal wars and importing 4 extra million people into the country, depressing the working mans wage and putting enormous strain on our NHS, Housing, Doctors, Schools, cultural cohesion etc etc, Labour’s legacy is shameful!
I live in hope that most others can see what I can see with the Labour propaganda dished out by the BBC and the Broadcaster Licence review will right an obvious wrong.
If there were any justice, a new career as BBC economics analyst would await you. That’s as neat an encapsulation of the current mess we are in as I have seen.
My only quibble would be that the “London based banks” were the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS, both domiciled in Edinburgh. If the Scots had voted to leave the UK we should certainly have insisted they assumed the debts of those two basket cases.
Parts of both RBS Group and HBOS were registered in Edinburgh – other parts were of course registered elsewhere in the UK and elsewhere in the world. For RBS those business inherited from NatWest remained registered in London and the US including the divisions which raked up the vast majority of losses. (A perusal of the RBS Group accounts will validate this). This is one reason why the US contributed more to the bail out of RBS Group than did the UK.
For HBOs the clue is in the title – HALIFAX Bank of Scotland.
The enlargement of RBS under the incompetent Fred ‘No’ Goodwin’s management team coupled with his disastrous bid for ABN Amro stretched the bank’s capital to breaking point and left it in a dire state with which to face the financial crash a few months later; this, you’ll remember forced it to launch its rights issue of £12 billion. Of course, it needed much more and as creditors withdrew their money, UK taxpayers bailed out the bank to the tune of 52 billion – yep, that is 52 billion! Not US dollars, UK pounds Albertman. Yes, the US and other overseas investors have helped significantly to keep parts of its operations afloat within world markets, mainly those conducive to oil production, investment and bonds markets, but if Scotland had voted for its infantile and selfish independence fantasy and in light of recent oil price fluctuations, it would have been filing for bankruptcy within 24 hours. But the Nationalist Scots always know that they’ll have the English taxpayer to pick up the tab for their failed ventures.
Hardly – as at today’s date and until spring 2017 Scotland would, in the event of a YES vote, be part of the UK.
It really is rather strange to see all those Unionists pontificating on the dire straights an Independent Scotland (hypothetical) would be in rather than concentrating on the effect it is having on the UK (reality) economy.
As for the bail out:
“It’s worth also noting that the UK Government bail out of RBS and HBOS amounted to £65bn. That’s a lot of money, but the US Federal Reserve made emergency loans available to RBS of £285bn and to HBOS of £115bn. The US bailed out these UK banks too, in the same way as Scottish taxpayers contributed to liquidity support for international banks based in London (including American ones).”
http://www.businessforscotland.co.uk/bizforscotland-destroys-the-no-campaigns-bank-bail-out-lies/
Let’s just avoid the red herring of external contributions and focus on the crux of the matter, shall we?
‘That’s a lot of money…’ – Yes, it sure is Abna, and a sum that’s beyond the means of an independent Scotland to shoulder, even more so considering current oil fluctuations. And, if you are going to attempt to provide warranting for your assertions, please don’t refer to ‘bizforscotland’ biased rubbish.
The reality is that the economic future would be very bleak in an independent Scotland; it’s not looking entirely rosy within a UK context, but we are significantly stronger together.
The old discount what is said because the source is “biased” argument favoured by many posting here. By your own argument the BBC can safely ignore everything posted here as the source is clearly biased!!!
>In 1997, the Conservatives bequeathed Labour a growing economy and best projected positive finances ever handed over to an incoming Government in this land.<
There is no better example of this statement than in the treatment of Stamp Duty on property transactions.
In 1997, this was on a downward trend with a stated intention (by the Tories) to eradicate it after the 1997 election. Consideration was also being given to scaling back Stamp Duty on share transactions in a similar way.
In the first Parliament after the election, Stamp Duty on property transactions was re-vamped by Labour, some would say contributing to the property asset bubble and all that followed. Stamp Duty on share transactions remained, and there was a further blistering attack on the country's pensions.
Now, Stamp Duty on property transactions is here to stay, structured differently but to all extent and purposes with us forever. All thanks to Labour and the terrible legacy they left and now, supported by the BBC, they propose foisting the dreaded Mansion Tax upon us.
Yep taxes have gone up since 2010 (other than the headline 50p tax that Labour harp on about) especially for the better off (as it should be). The coalition have also been very proactive in removing tax loopholes – of course since many on the left were caught in the squeeze they did not like it!
The question is: will the conservatives have the balls (pun intended) to show all the increases that they have imposed targeted at the top 1 – 10% at the next election.
King has a point. There is a difference between regulation (the fixed set of rules that banks must abide by, generally agreed by OECD central banks at the BIS), and supervision (the friendly or perhaps not so friendly chats that the central banks have with the senior management of the banks after going through their accounts and monthly returns).
The latter disappeared down a crack between the floorboards when GBrown reorganised the banking system. Supervision was supposed to be taken on by the FSA but they thought the Bsnk f. England was still responsible. And nobody could decide whether AIGAIG Financial Products was a bank or an insurance company, do nobody bothered to regulate it.
Why would liebour’s chief media outlet apportion any sort of blame for the ongoing financial crisis that the country is suffering, in virtually every department, on their pet? It simply isn’t in their interest. Plus, show me a lefty who is truly sorry for their transgressions and I’ll show you a liar.
Whilst liebour are happy to blame all of the UK’s ills on the Thatcher era they simply will never accept their past and recent government’s part in the countries near downfall, and, no matter what the disaster or scandal, it is always someone else’s fault. It is the default setting for them.
There is a General election looming and the war has been started with gusto by the bbc. Like their ‘drip,drip’ reporting on racism so the political reporting follows with a constant stream of subversive, subliminal and wholly biased anti government messages .
Take the bbc mobile news app and the political section, out of nine reports six of them are about the tories and are negative with messages such as;
The government is tackling the deficit the wrong way;
The plan the prevent prescription fraud will hinder the ‘most vulnerable’..but saving £150 million in fraud won’t;
The old ‘poll tax’ favourite and Thatcher’s idea to force it on Scotland first, prompting a remark of ‘the same people 30 years ago making the same mistakes today’, from the SNP, and a liebour nobody stating the Scots are safe with liebour…please vote for us;
Thatcher’s ‘exploration’ of education overhaul and how the current tory government has adopted the same unpopular policies;
How the Westland affair caused huge infighting and the resulting advice, by Heseltine, that a PRO European/British solution was the only option to save Westland.
All of the above reports in full are, of course, negative spin and designed to make the reader link the hated Thatcher era with today’s ‘nasty’ tory party and how they will lead the country to disaster with the same nasty policies..drip,drip,drip.
This is just the start of trying to get the ‘nasty’ party out of office, the problem is that the bbc want it replaced with a nasty party beset with cowards, liars and charlatans who, if power is regained, will do what liebour always do..destroy what’s left of Great Britain.
How Britain prepared for the ‘millennium bug’ and the over-reaction of the ‘media’.
Not a word about the BBC’s role though. Always the observer, never a player.