Miliband blamed the banks and ‘someone’ in his speech today for the lack of regulation and oversight on the banking world but it seems to have been forgotten, conveniently buried by Labour’s non-dom shambles…
We are still paying – you are still paying – the British people are still paying – for what happened because of the global financial crisis.
We were told that the wealth flowed from these institutions, and while it appeared that in bonuses, practices and cultures, there were a different set of rules, that was to our benefit.
And if only the regulation came off, the wealth would magically flow.
For a time, it did.
And then we saw the financial crash.
What the banks called over-regulation turned out to be the dam protecting us from a tide of disaster.
The dam was weakened and it burst.
With all that followed.
So just who de-regulated the banks and allowed them to run riot? Who pulled the finger from the dam and let the tidal wave of debt in to overwhelm us?
Here’s Gordon Brown in his Mansion House speech in 2007:
Over the ten years that I have had the privilege of addressing you as Chancellor, I have been able year by year to record how the City of London has risen by your efforts, ingenuity and creativity to become a new world leader….So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London.
Your international success is critical to that of Britain’s overall and considering together the things that we must do to maintain our competitiveness….enhancing a risk based regulatory approach.
A year earlier in 2006 he made quite clear that he believed light touch, risk based regulatory system was the way ahead….a policy headed up by one Ed Balls…..
London has enjoyed one of its most successful years ever, for which I congratulate all of you here on your leadership skills and entrepreneurship.
Financial services are now 7 per cent of our economy. Financial and business services as much as 10 per cent. A larger share of our economy than they are in any other major economy, contributing £19 billion of net exports to our balance of payments, a success all the more remarkable because while New York and Tokyo rely for business on their large domestic base, London’s international ranking is founded on a large and expanding global market.
I believe that London, like New York, is already the capital marketplace of the world.
And I do not believe this has happened by accident.
The message London’s success sends out to the whole British economy is that we will succeed if like London we think globally. Move forward if we are not closed but open to competition and to new ideas. Progress if we invest in and nurture the skills of the future, advance with light touch regulation, a competitive tax environment and flexibility.
Mr Lord Mayor, we will not forget that the first and foremost duty of government is to maintain and indeed to strengthen the monetary and fiscal stability that has enabled us, successively, to grow and remain free of recession.
Ed Balls, our new City Minister, will work with you to develop publish and then promote a long term strategy for the development of London’s financial services and promoting our unique advantages and assets. We will set a clear ambition to make Britain the location of choice for headquarters and services, including R&D, for even more of the world’s leading companies.
In 2003, just at the time of a previous Mansion House speech, the Worldcom accounting scandal broke. And I will be honest with you, many who advised me including not a few newspapers, favoured a regulatory crackdown.
I believe that we were right not to go down that road which in the United States led to Sarbannes-Oxley, and we were right to build upon our light touch system through the leadership of Sir Callum McCarthy – fair, proportionate, predictable and increasingly risk based.
Perhaps the BBC will catch up on that important narrative and tell us who really is to blame for the economic crash we have suffered and the subsequent austerity that had to be imposed rather than allowing Miliband to make a completely false pitch to the electorate that denies Labour’s part in the worst recession in one hundred years.
Perhaps the BBC will catch up on that important narrative and tell us who really is to blame for the economic crash we have suffered and the subsequent austerity that had to be imposed …….
…..and a UK-wide Aerial Porcine Alert has just been declared.
Exactly. It was the job of the BBC, which was and remains, as it frequently boasts, where 80% of people get their news from, to reveal the profligate spending of the last Labour government and to hold them to account . But their leftist bias prevented them from doing this, just as today the bias means that Labour is given every facility that the BBC has to offer in order to get back into power.
Of course, unless something remarkable happens, Labour in power will bankrupt the country once again. They just can’t resist spending other people’s money or borrowing more to fund yet more spending. It is true that EVERY Labour government that there has EVER been has left the country in a financial shambles. It is equally true that without the steadfast support of the BBC Labour would be unelectable.
Thousands of academic papers from around the world tell us exactly how the 2007/2008 world financial crisis came about!
Yes it started in the USA!
The crisis that infested the rest of the globe was mainly facilitated through the world’s, premier financial centre, i.e. allowing most other Nations banks to utilise London ‘light’ regulations with little bank stress testing, allowing PPI, LIBOR, FOREX scandals and doling out BONUS’ like confetti!
Labour was in control and the only people able to legislate and enforce any regulation, therefore clearly they have a particular blame for that!
http://www.positivemoney.org/issues/recessions-crisis/
One has to ask why our state broadcaster has not explained to us how the worst financial legacy EVER, ever, which was left by Labour for the incoming Coalition in 2010, since the BBC have an army of some of the highest paid economic analysis experts, courtesy of our taxes.
Unfortunately the BBC are so entrenched and infected with their ‘left’ ethos, (backed up by decades of recruitment placements to match), they can no longer penetrate the ‘red mist’ resulting in political obfuscation and biased reporting as a matter of course, including subtly re-writing history in aid of the cause where necessary.
Otherwise, if the Nation was properly informed, by it’s Public Service Broadcaster, as one would expect if it was neutral, Labour would not be showing anywhere near it’s elevated level in the polls.
I am just a mere ex-soldier and small businessman. The 2008 financial crash is all pretty clear to me, with Labours part in the downfall being so obvious and fact based.
In 1997, the Conservatives bequeathed Labour a growing economy and impressive projected positive finances, the best ever, EVER, handed over to an incoming Government in this land.
Labour, in part, got elected in 1997 somewhat on this promise not to ‘screw it up’ by inputting in their manifesto to continue these sound Conservative financial policies for the first few years in power.
Once bitten and twice shy, just like today Labour needed to counter the polls showing the electorate fear of a repeat of their economic history. With good reason, since the public has not forgotten 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’, even requesting an IMF bailout like a poor third world African nation, solely due to the horrendous Labour Political and Economic incompetence.
Such was the gigantic scale of the Blair and Brown deficit and debt legacy, it would not matter which Government was in power from 2010 onwards, things were again so desperate, (for the second time Labour were in power in my lifetime), austerity and financial prudence was again rapidly needed or we go Zimbabwean.
Predictably, as soon as they got into opposition, Labour got it wrong all over again with ‘TOO FAR – TOO FAST’ advice. They voted against every welfare Bill reform put through. Had we followed Balls, Milliband, McCluskey and the party’s traitorous propaganda we certainly would not now be EU and world leading growth champions, but instead facing a ‘Greek Tragedy’?
One should never forget it was Brown Balls & Milliband, more than any other MPs who were in the treasury and are most 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’.
I live in hope that most others can see what I can see with the Labour propaganda dished out by the BBC and just pray the Broadcaster Licence review will right an obvious wrong for the future benefit of our nation.
Well put well said-and who was at the top that duplicitous pile? Yes Tony (traitor) Blair. Since his sudden departure from the torrential mess he left behind, the power his position as Prime Minister gave him the bases from which to build a massive fortune-seemingly offensive to us all no doubt, who had to cope with the wake of his departing and still are paying for it. Yet he has the audacity to show his face in support of the political party that almost brought this nation to its knees. Let’s have no more of this individual.
Blair left the finances to one Gordon Brown.
For three years he followed Tory spending plans and got to a situation of more tax income than spending. Tax income was on a rising trend but he could not resist borrowing to spend even more.
Yes, the banking crisis set off the world “downturn” (do the BBC even now use the R word?), but Gordon had pumped up such a bubble here predicated on ever rising tax revenues such that our downturn was like falling off a cliff compared with that in other European countries.
This led of course to Labour taunts that we did no recover to pre bust GDP levels until long after many other European countries – hardly surprising really considering the depth of Gordon’s downturn!
The banking crash was a world phenomenon. So you need to provide evidence how the Labour Party was able to effect the whole world. You also need to explain how peer to peer finance can be regulated.Particularly how for example CDs or indeed any part of the shadow banking system may be regulated. Perhaps you can also comment on the fact that under Labour the deficit started falling after 2005 and put the UK finances in a stronger position than most other western economies. Verify this by entering ‘Osbourne select committee ‘ in YouTube and hear Osborne say it him self.
You might also like to reflect that the Tories were clamouring for lighter regulation and after the crash the likes of Northern Rock to go to the wall with everyone’s savings.
Interestingly you left the bit out about Thatcher and mass unemployment,total collapse of the north and interest rates of 17% percent. You also left out the bit of the massive oil hike which caused Labour to seek financial assistance. You also failed to mention that following Major, Health and Social services were again left flat on their backs and required enormous quantities of spending in order to put back neglected infrastructure.You also ,by implication, seem to think that in someway the current administration engineered this so called recovery. Perhaps you can give some evidence of this as well.
It’s nice for you to have a script.Maybe you could start to justify it.
The ‘banking crash was a world phenomenon’ is a tired cliche that misses the point that London is the second most important financial hub in the world, and therefore the actions of the British government in the context of the City have/had ramifications that extended well beyond our shores.
There is some validity in the other points in your comment, but it misses the woods for the trees – arguing about how the left or the right reacts to things that are unfolding on the world stage and that our governments have little agency in what happens is the wrong frame of reference.
The underlying, and fundamental, problem we have as an economy is that financialisation has gone too far – and the City’s pre-eminent role in world financial affairs hasn’t helped matters as the top banks are able to coerce british governments with fatuous demands and claims of impending doom.
The answer is a politics that places the real economy over the financial one, that fully opens up the banking sector by dropping all barriers to entry, that removes the banks’ monopoly on money creation by getting rid of all taxpayer backing of bank deposits and insisting on vaulting money if people want to safely store wealth, that ignores banks’ claims that their proprietary activities are inextricably linked to their deposits and settlements activities.
This would of course have consequential impacts, that big-government types would hate: government spending as transfers of wealth from one group to another would become impossible to hide, and the british government would no longer be able to use money printing and inflation as backdoor taxes to pay for its policies. This would affect both Labour and the Conservatives, who are different mainly in how they want to spend money rather than how extensive government should be compared to the private economy.
But on the flip side, by forcing politicians to be honest about where the money government spends really comes from, we could perhaps have a proper and honest public debate about what should be included in public infrastructure, and how best to fund it sustainably. The promises of previous generations of politicians would have to be re-evaluated wholesale, which would be a difficult transition, but it would be far better doing that on our own terms than being forced into it when the next economic crash happens (which I suspect will be cataclysmic and make 2007/8 look like a picnic).
Maybe a tired old cliche but nonetheless having to be constantly made in response to comments of this site suggesting Gordon Brown was responsible for a worldwide financial crash. The list of ya boo points was made entirely to show that mud slinging on either side of the fence is relatively futile. What the points do show are two things however. The first is that the overall arbiter of politics is economics.The second is that for all the will in the world Capitalism as currently structured cannot easily withstand economic shocks.
As to your points about the operators of financial capital I would question your faith in the ability of any Government to regulate the market to the extent now required particularly since considerable trade is done through shadow banking and peer to peer transactions .I think you are wrong to underestimate the power and ubiquity of the City of London and its consequent lack of external governability. This goes for the rest of the financial market where issues that of wealth and political power are inextricably linked.
On that note the suggestion along the lines of ‘we need a new kind of politics’ ignores the existing politics we have and why we have it. One of the obvious difficulties is that Nation states operate within the confines of their own boundaries whereas international capital by definition does not.
If you will note carefully, I did not suggest more regulation or ‘better’ regulation. The problem is that historically we have allowed banks to hold a monopoly on money creation (the quid pro quo here being that the bankers turned round and financed the stupidity of the politicians in return).
Your note on shadow banking is equivalent to the idea that regulations cannot be comprehensive – shadow banking apes the activities of actual banking without having to submit to whatever regulations government has imposed.
Ironically, the cure to not being able to regulate is to drop any pretence of regulation entirely, and open up the financial sector to the full light of day. This means getting rid of things like depositor protections and make it very clear to everyone that when you put your money on deposit in a bank, its at risk. This would quickly lead to two types of money storage: risk-based deposits, where maturity transformation would be explicit and where banks would be forced to pay appropriate premia to depositors for the risks undertaken, and vaulting where people would pay fees to institutions to store their money in a completely risk-free manner.
I do understand the power of the City of London and its banks, and the only way to break that power is to end government support of banking entirely – i.e. drop all barriers to entry, and force the established banks to make a profit for real work rather than their current process of rent extraction via control of the money supply.
Finally, I never said ‘a new kind of politics’ unless you think that honest politics is ‘new’ in that sense. The problem isn’t wholly that banking is too powerful for politicians to handle, its that existing politics is the bedfellow of the banking industry. A faustian pact was made when the first central banks were created, which enabled rulers and politicians to finance bad policies (in the beginning wars, but more recently the welfare state) and in return for which the wider population was yoked to support the banking sector via government-enforced monopolies on money creation.
MOCO you wearing those Rose Tinted blinkered spectacles again!
Facts: There was a shared intellectual responsibility across the world’s financial institutions for failing to foresee the problems, no doubt about that.
But in London, the world’s second largest financial centre, where vast amount of the global transactions were facilitated, it was only the Labour Government, that had the power to regulate banks!
Particularly required was the ‘stress testing’ aspects to negate the ability for the leverage of banks which was absurdly high and the root cause of much of the problem for the actual crash.
When the money ran out for UK Banks it was left to the British taxpayer to pick up the bill, (plus our Government gave cover to some UK account holders of Icelandic Banks that crashed here, since they also had no money left).
But the warnings signs for LIBOR, FOREX and plethora of other heinous bank practices were also overlooked by non-regulation, (as opposed to de-regulation) which would have outlawed the excesses.
Spot on. I can’t imagine a Ken Clarke, John Major or Maggie Thatcher reading adverts for 125% self-certified mortgages in their morning papers without choking on their cornflakes then getting on to the B of E pronto…….oh, sorry, B of E – that’s who Golden Gordon binned.
So as a Gordon Brown-admiring, Labour-supporting man of the Left, what is it that brings you on here to defend the BBC Mr Omnibust?
Brilliant analysis.
I’m sorry but this is plainly ridiculous !
To suggest that it happened on Labours watch and to blame them for a crisis which happened because of mad socialism in the USA is sheer insanity!
Frankfurt was at the time playing for the position London has & if the UK government had not relaxed the rules they would have upped sticks and moved their head offices to Frankfurt.
Obviously some here feel that losing London as a financial capital would be a price worth paying, after all why do we need any of that tax revenue ? We can just get it from the money tree !
You seriously think that if the Tories had been in power they wouldn’t have deregulated? Margaret Thatcher began deregulation way before Labour ever did. I have no doubt the Tories would have gone even further.
Deregulation didn’t cause the crisis in any event, it just made it worse. Maybe the banks would have not needed bailing out so much if the rules hadn’t been changed, but that’s only a maybe.
And what has it got to with BBC bias in any event? The BBC has never even told the people how & why this crisis happened, or the ins & outs of it. All they have ever done is to stick to the Labour mantra – “Greedy Bankers” without ever offering an explanation as to how these “Greedy Bankers” caused such chaos, because it isn’t true !
‘To suggest that it happened on Labours watch and to blame them for a crisis which happened because of mad socialism in the USA is sheer insanity!’
For the umpteenth time do a bit of research (I’m sick to the back teeth of spoon-feeding it) on the Northern rock, B and B, HBOS etc. business models which had nothing to do with American sub-prime lending and were a disaster waiting to happen – and it would have done eventually anyway, regardless of the events of 2008. The Lehman brothers crash just hastened it, by banks suddenly shutting up shop and withdrawing from the inter-bank lending market because they didn’t know who was going bust next. This withdrawal of credit left Northern Rock and their ilk high and dry because they couldn’t rollover their borrowing which was running ten times what their balance sheets could sustain.
As Gordon would endlessly repeat: It wasn’t us guv, it was global.
The fact that London was a huge part of the world finance system never crossed his mind. Gordon was the global in global.
G.Brown…….that useless, slack-jawed donkey would have trouble understanding the abacus let alone domestic finance….i remember a school pupil asked him a simple arithmetical question, and the prat thought, grunted, and joked that maths was never his strong point!!!!!…Arithmetic!!…simple stuff….is it any wonder the ape fucked up our country…..
Thoughtful: What you post is total fiction and just does not pass the reality test!
EXAMPLE: “To suggest that it happened on Labours watch”
What?
Who do fantasize was in power 1997-2010?
Then you say something else quite extraordinary:
“….blame them (Labour) for a crisis which happened because of mad socialism in the USA is sheer insanity!”
Where you get that from?
Where is this “mad socialism in the USA” mentioned anywhere on this page? Give us a clue what your thinking is here?
Thoughtful you then go on to say:
“Frankfurt was at the time playing for the position London has & if the UK government had not relaxed the rules they would have upped sticks and moved their head offices to Frankfurt.”
What the hell has EU got to do with Labour not regulating London financial centre in a proper manner to avoid BOOM and BUST, LIBOR scandals, FOREX scandals, CDOs, banks not properly stress tested and totally out of control bank practices like PPI and bonus’ being thrown around like confetti etc, etc? The EU has of course been very jealous of the London position, but that is never an excuse just standard competition:
http://qz.com/61247/the-city-of-londons-future-as-a-global-financial-center-is-safe-for-now/
Of course it is normal Labour blame shifting with their HYPOTHETICAL first response that the Conservatives were calling for more deregulation! FACT: Labour were in power and the ONLY ones able to pass any Financial Acts and it all went t*ts up under their watch!
You answered your own question about:
“what has it got to with BBC bias in any event? ”
You got this dead right:
“The BBC has never even told the people how & why this crisis happened”
So much here it’s difficult to know where to start !
‘Where is this “mad socialism in the USA” mentioned anywhere on this page?’
That’s the whole point ! The cause of the economic crisis isn’t mentioned.
‘Give us a clue what your thinking is here?’
Look to the Community Reinvestment Act and the effect it had on banking practices. If you don’t know all about the arguments as to the effect this had then what kind of position are you in to start questioning any of what happened? Still less to start passing judgement !
There are loads of google results for Community reinvestment act financial crisis pick one and learn about how the cause of the crisis was Socialism NOT deregulation which was actually a good thing !
‘What the hell has EU got to do with Labour ‘
I never mentioned the EU so why have you?
Never the less Frankfurt and Germany did deregulate your position appears to be that Labour should not have deregulated and allowed the city of London banks to move to Frankfurt !
There were two choices and they were stark ones.
a) deregulate and match the rest of the world regulation
b) Keep the existing rules and watch all the banks move their trading operations offshore.
I know which I’d pick, and even with hindsight Labour made the right choice !
If you think that Labour got it so wrong, you might have had a point if it was only the UK affected. The FACT that all the worlds banks were affected means that they were also subject to similar regulation, or that the regulation such as there was wasn’t a factor.
Thoughtful – thanks for your reply. Yes, you right on that one, I should have said Germany instead of EU, but all the rest stands!
London as the world leader in Forex alone tells you why LABOUR got it so wrong on regulation, (& LIBOR corruption), not to mention London is the Fourth Largest Stock Market in the world (and the oldest):
http://www.tradersdna.com/news/london-still-number-one-forex-trading-centre-world/
The LIBOR wasn’t something which was covered by legislation at any time so de regulating didn’t affect anything.
Nice to know your view is that de regulation shouldn’t have happened, and you would have been happy to have lost London as a financial centre and given it all away to the Germans.
Beeboids relegate the threat of Labour Party to U.K economy.
Negative market sentiment to Labour poll figures is relegated by Beeboids, of course, who emphasise this:-
“Pound at five-year low against dollar on weak output”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32246657
Yes, U.K industrial output has not risen as much as markets had hoped, but it did rise 0.1% in latest month.
On currency values, yes, the Pound is down further against the Dollar today, but the Pound is up against the Euro- the latter not mentioned by Beeboids.
The pound is HUGELY up against the Euro. And keeps going up further.