I am heartened by the hysteria that currently surrounds the demands that "we" (who?) somehow punish the Greedy Bankers who are popularly imagined to have occasioned the global financial crisis. (See what Google News throws up for the term "greedy bankers", it's a hoot.) I can't offhand think of anything that will drive the FTSE more rapidly to a properly sustainable support level than the reasonable fear of wealthy investors that some portion of their assets are about to be seized to propitiate the mob. Still, once the bulk of Britain's wealth has finished fleeing to numbered Swiss bank accounts we can have a look at what's left and start again from there.
Update: I really like this from Paul K on nationalising the banking system: "There currently is no banking system, if by that you mean a network of organizations lending to one another and to quality companies in a predictable way...Instead, there are a bunch of paralyzed deposit-hoarding institutions stuck in a game theory experiment that no-one understands or can exit."
It's hilarious. I wonder why there are no articles about the 'Greedy Proles' who got us into this pickle in the first place, using minimum wage incomes to secure 110% mortgages and then additional loans to buy flat-screen tvs, trips to Torremolinos and diamonte collars for their pitbulls.
To read these articles, you'd think the loans had been shoved down their throats against their will. No, I'm afraid we're all in this together.
Posted by: Rick | 10 October 2008 at 12:06
Rick - indeed. When the housing bubble burst in the US and the hysteria focussed for a time on all those poor people being thrown out of their houses by the evil banks, my favourite observation then was that those "poor people" had been allowed to take a long bet on property with no collateral using someone else's money as stake and with the main inconvenience to themselves being allowed to live for a time in a nicer house than they could afford. Poor them.
Just in case anyone is willing to offer me the same deal, for the record I am happy to take a long position on any market rising on those terms - that I can keep the balance of the upside, borrow the whole of the stake against no collateral and live in a nicer house than I can afford while we wait to together to see whether my bet paid off.
Posted by: Seamus McCauley | 10 October 2008 at 12:15
Paul K's comment sounds like something that should pop up when you try to log into your online banking a/c
Posted by: peter xyz | 11 October 2008 at 15:01