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economic situation is dire


ianrobo1

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yes he does and I think we all agree, the bg mistake was not clamping dow on stupid multiples, un checked wage claims ad LTV of more than 90%

not that you heard many calling for it mind you

also it appears that byt the end of this week the taxpayer will be the guarntor of £500m of lloyds and RSB debts

huge numbers but of course much of this will not be paid but it does beggar the question of whether there is any other possible solution at this stage, i do not hear much of it

The biggest point there is un-checked wage claims. THAT is so wrong you have no idea. I used to work at a mortgage company and wages were so stringently looked at. Generally you would need your last 3 payslips if you were employed. If you were self employed you needed to provide further information to proove the state of your companies situation.

Footballers etc had to send in their contracts (the whole thing) to show any extras and stuff they might have had.

I don't think the problem is the LTV in all honesty, it's the persons ability to pay the mortgage payment and having enough money to live on.

When Northern Rock was offering 125% LTV, the 25% was as a seperate loan, but on the same rate as the mortgage. Basically an easy way to get a low cost loan. At the height of Northern Rocks business, interest rates were pretty high, hence their business grew.

The fact they didn't stringently ask for detailed wage information was a bit of a joke to me. Especially as I used to be indirectly involved with the department at the mortgage company I used to work for.

PLUS I should know...I have a 125% mortgage. Can easily cover the payments, providing the recession doesn't get me laid off. Even then I can get a 6 month mortgage break that gets added onto the end of the life of the mortgage, so I have 6 months to find a new job if that happens.

But all that was in place before they went down the shitter.

basically it proves the FSA didn't regulate the bad boys properly and that was their ONLY job. The FSA should be given a massive kick up the arse, or disbanded.

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Kid, I like the idea of limiting to 90% LTV because it encourages people to think about the fact they need a deposit and it will keep house price rises down.

as for income not being checked that is plain stupid and both NR and B&B were the two biggest culprits and look what happened to them ...

Also you will know if your mortgage is 4 times or more than salary it is unaffordable (unless you do **** all else than work) and this is another area that should be laid down strict regs

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RBS reports record corporate loss

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has announced the largest annual loss in UK corporate history.

RBS, which had to be bailed out by the government last year, said that its 2008 loss totalled £24.1bn.

Look - I've said I'm sorry, can I have my money now?

Outrage at ex-RBS boss's pension

Ministers are "extremely concerned" at reports that the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland's being paid a massive pension.

Sir Fred Goodwin - who lost his job as chief executive when the firm collapsed - is apparently getting £650,000-a-year even though the bank had to be bailed out by the taxpayer.

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Head of ther FSA was on the radio last night blaming it all on the softly softly approach of politicians ..also seems to be in various newspaers as well

Gordon Brown helped fuel Britain’s banking crisis by pressuring the City regulator not to intervene and stop reckless lending, Lord Turner, the head of the Financial Services Authority, said.

The authority’s chairman claimed the regulator was under political “pressure” not to be “heavy and intrusive” with banks such as HBOS and Northern Rock.

Instead, it was told to operate a “light touch” approach, which had now been proved to be “mistaken”, he told a Commons committee.

The failure of the regulator to intervene earlier has been blamed for the banking crisis, which has led to the near-collapse of several of the country’s biggest banks.

Mr Brown and Ed Balls, previously his key adviser, had regularly boasted of the benefits of so-called “light touch” regulation.

The Prime Minister has also faced accusations that he became too close to senior bankers such as Sir Fred.

Lord Turner, himself a former investment banker, said: “There was a philosophy rooted in political assumptions which suggested the key priority was to keep it light rather than to ask more questions.” He effectively admitted that the regulator had not been fit for purpose for much of the past decade.

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is there any quotes from the FSA over the years stating the approach was wrong

Paul Moore claimed he was sacked five years ago by Sir James, who was at the time head of HBOS, for warning that the bank was taking excessive risks.

The former chief executive of Singer & Friedlander warned the Financial Services Authority in 2005 that the management of Kaupthing, the Icelandic bank that took it over and subsequently collapsed last year, was not 'fit and proper' to run a British bank.

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so say Lord Turner is right, is there any quotes from the FSA over the years stating the approach was wrong or is it all hindsight on his part ?

I think it is called analysis and coming to a conclusion, Ian.

Hindsight is such a pejorative word.

Adair Turner wasn't at the FSA at the time so he is giving his judgement on what went wrong.

Head of ther FSA was on the radio last night blaming it all on the softly softly approach of politicians ..also seems to be in various newspaers as well

He and Hector Sants were giving evidence to the Treasury select committee.

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so say Lord Turner is right, is there any quotes from the FSA over the years stating the approach was wrong or is it all hindsight on his part ?

You could turn that question around and look at Blair's 2005 speech slating the FSA for trying to regulate banks too heavily. The implication of that is clearly that political interference to do less was preventing the FSA carrying out it's job of regulating banks. But of course it all started in 'Amerika' and had nothing to do with anyone in government, ever. Apart from when banks were raking it in and the government were taking all of the credit.

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they were and seemed somewhat trying to brush the FSA of some of the blame, it seems they could have been happy with Liassez-faire at the time.

the issue has always been the lax regulation, the markets wanted 'laissez-faire' especially after 9/11 and polticians and head bankers like greenspan were happy to play along with this because the city would have cried excess red tape and poltical intervention.

Times have moved on and clearly from now on the Banks will have heavy regulation a philopshy abanoned in the 80's with allowing Building soceities to de-mutalise as an example

is anyone one here brave enough to say (apart from Lev) that the free market should have laissez-faire applied to it ?

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clearly from now on the Banks will have heavy regulation

Where has this been made clear?

I've seen lots of people (the FSA, the BoE, the government, the opposition et al) saying that the system was wrong, the regulations were too lax, &c. but apart from a rather woolly 'we intend to make regulation tougher', I haven't seen many steps to take things in another direction.

In fact, I have seen and heard the same types of things being said but with a slightly different emphasis: we shan't split retail and investment banking because this globalisation has brought us unprecedented economic benefits; banking decisions are always best made on a commercial basis; we must get lending back to the levels immediately prior to everything going tits up, &c.

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maybe Snowy and that will be the test, I am interested from a political point to note as you say not many calling for that but it will have to come

not heard Osbourne, Clarke, Cameron, Darling, brown come out yet for far stricter regulation

those wedded to the free market are still in denial it failed

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Look - I've said I'm sorry, can I have my money now?

Outrage at ex-RBS boss's pension

Ministers are "extremely concerned" at reports that the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland's being paid a massive pension.

Sir Fred Goodwin - who lost his job as chief executive when the firm collapsed - is apparently getting £650,000-a-year even though the bank had to be bailed out by the taxpayer.

Of course you can - oops, guv, the gov didn't bother to look into whether it was legally binding:

Sir Fred 'won't give up pension'

Ex-Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred Goodwin has rejected calls to give up his £650,000-a-year pension.

Chancellor Alistair Darling had asked him to hand back his £16m pension pot amid anger about rewards for failure.

But Sir Fred rejected that request in a letter to the Treasury in which he also says ministers agreed to the deal.

Mr Darling says that the government had thought the deal was legally binding when it was agreed in October, but now realised they could have blocked it.

He asked Sir Fred, who helped drive the bank to the brink of ruin, to hand back some of the pension money.

But in a letter to Treasury minister Lord Myners, Sir Fred rejects the chancellor's plea, saying: "I hope that you understand my rationale for declining your request to voluntarily reduce my pension entitlement".

Sir Fred says he agreed to a series of "gestures" in October, when he was negotiating his departure from the bank, such as foregoing the equivalent of 15 months salary.

But when it came to the issue of his pension "you indicated that you were aware of my entitlement and that no further 'gestures' would be required", writes Sir Fred.

At the time he stood down Mr Darling had hailed the fact Sir Fred had waived his contractual entitlement and decided "to do the right thing".

There was no mention of the size of pension he was going to receive.

Mr Darling, who had asked Lord Myners to speak to Sir Fred about giving up his pension, said that the government had been under the impression in October that the pension deal was legally binding.

But in the past week it had realised that that was not the case.

"It was only very recently that we became aware that the decision of the previous board of RBS to allow Sir Fred to take early retirement had the effect of increasing his pension entitlement and that might have been a discretionary choice," Mr Darling told MPs.

He said the government was investigating the possibility of "clawing back" some of the money through legal action.

But critics, including deputy chairman of the Treasury committee, Tory MP Michael Fallon, say the chances of recovering the money through the courts were slim.

Mr Fallon said the episode demonstrated the government's "sheer incompetence".

"I think it will be very hard to put this right unless Sir Fred does the decent thing," he told BBC News.

Do the decent thing? Yep, that's likely.

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Since when were pensions performance related anyway?

I don't understand this pensions fuss. Imagine if you work somewhere where you get a pension and when they decide eventually that you've been crap at the job and make you redundant, it would be a tad bloody harsh to take your pension away wouldn't it? What would be even harsher would be the company agreeing your pension as part of the redundancy deal and then 4 months later trying to persuade you that you shouldn't have it because some newspaper decided to scapegoat you for the planet being polluted because you worked in a car plant

If I was Fred Goodwin, I'd have told the government to **** off as well

This pension thing is a fuss manufactured by the print media again and its been done for a reason I presume. These things usually are. Now is it a govt spin story to try and deflect the issues from their **** ups with the FSA etc ? Or is it the media doing because they simply like scapegoats and it might turn out that the Govt might look a little bit more incompetent as a result. In fact its probably a little bit of both as the government are getting egg on their faces after trying to make an issue of this.

Now the real question is, what are they trying to hide this time?

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Apparently his pension was DOUBLED !! at the last minute in order to make him go. Why not just sack the c***t. How many of us will find our pensions suddenly doubled in order for us to retire at 50.

See now whose fault is that? Certainly isn't Mr Goodwins is it?

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