Ernie SWEENEY - The real culprits
12:10 | 13 Jun 2008
The carpetbaggers, and I was one, were not to blame or responsible for the recent banking disasters. The blame for that lies squarely on the City who knew what was going on and kept pocketing the bonuses and knighthoods.
It also falls, quite rightly ,on Parliament who also had their noses in the trough and failed to ensure an effective supervisory role over the banks and financial institutions. Both the Bank of England and the FSA are a complete failure in this respect mostly due to the greed of our so called 'leaders' .
The Serious Fraud Office is a classic example of how to prevent effective investigation and convictions.
Timothy Atkins - Equitable Life
15:01 | 13 Jun 2008
Of course Equitable life was a mutual, but that didn't stop it destroying itself.
Theo - The banking crisis
16:55 | 13 Jun 2008
The culprits for the banking crisis were not the demutualisation carpet baggers but Thatcher and her gang who opened the door for them. And the disgusting greed, selfishness and denial of the existence of society were fully supported by the press and the Church, whose inaudible sqeaks of protest did more harm than good.
Worse than the carpet baggers were also the top managers of the building societies who saw demutualisation as a sure way to directorship, hugely increased salaries and telephone number bonuses.
The ugly and unacceptable face of raw capitalism ushered in by Thatcher is still here and residing at 10 Downing Street. Vide the shift in the distribution of wealth from the poor to the rich since New
"Labour" (LOL) with Mr Brown came in. Can this successor of Thatcher and worse, really expect us to vote for him?
Cape Town - Capitalism needs rules
17:15 | 13 Jun 2008
The beneficiaries were the banks' and BSs' managers. All those bonuses. The cause was weak controls at the end of the cycle when there was too much, that banks and building socieities couoldn't get rid of fast enough, in silly imprudent loans.
But human nature is so greedy that we need rules to control it. And naive to think otherwise.
Look.
The money pumped back into the system by governments has been used not to lubricate it, but to speculate on commodities and energy, compounding our problems.
There's a second credit crunch around the corner now, broader than the first.
So the carpet baggers are just examples of the greed in all of us. We are seeing capitalism crack open in its present form. Money is moving out of the "West" and the now global monetary system will resturcutre around new rules and former weaker partners will come to the front.
It's too late to tax those baggers windfalls. It's always too late. Better to bolt the doors before. One good thing would be to make company's stick to their mission statements and not speculate with shareholders money - make the managers share the profits with the state (us tax payers) and the losses they can keep for themselves.
The baggers were just feral fat cats.
Cape
Cape Town
17:15 | 13 Jun 2008
The beneficiaries were the banks' and BSs' managers. All those bonuses. The cause was weak controls at the end of the cycle when there was too much, that banks and building socieities couoldn't get rid of fast enough, in silly imprudent loans.
But human nature is so greedy that we need rules to control it. And naive to think otherwise.
Look.
The money pumped back into the system by governments has been used not to lubricate it, but to speculate on commodities and energy, compounding our problems.
There's a second credit crunch around the corner now, broader than the first.
So the carpet baggers are just examples of the greed in all of us. We are seeing capitalism crack open in its present form. Money is moving out of the "West" and the now global monetary system will resturcutre around new rules and former weaker partners will come to the front.
It's too late to tax those baggers windfalls. It's always too late. Better to bolt the doors before. One good thing would be to make company's stick to their mission statements and not speculate with shareholders money - make the managers share the profits with the state (us tax payers) and the losses they can keep for themselves.
The baggers were just feral fat cats.
Cape
Shielin Faere
17:30 | 13 Jun 2008
What a badly written article. Example
"These people – and younger readers may not know - craftily opened dozens of bank accounts in order to become members of building societies."
How can one open a BANK a/c with a BUILDING SOCIETY ??
Just one of several errors of fact.
Another ;
The carpetbaggers had NOTHING whatsoever to do with ANY BS (or LIfe Office ) demutualisation.
All those who DMd did so because THEY wanted to, not because of carpetbagger pressure (witness the shenanigans at Standard Life).
Ernie SWEENEY
18:26 | 13 Jun 2008
Some highly intuitive comments coming up.
I was in fact a poor carpetbagger not a rich one!
The building societies had completely lost sight of what they were founded for and still have. Cooking the interest rates in favour of the rich and giving minimal interst to those desperately trying to save for a house is a fact of mutual and converted societies.
What did successive governments do about it? Answer Absolutely nothing!
Jamie B - Mutuals are Mutual
13:04 | 14 Jun 2008
Don't forget that for mutuals it's the members who get a vote on election of board members.
If the majority are too apathetic to bother thinking about what they're voting for are are simply too dumb, what else can one expect.
Greasybiker1 - Onlt part of the whole picture
15:16 | 15 Jun 2008
Good comments, nice article but ten years too late and only part of the picture.
I say this because when good old maggie took the self correcting brakes of the B S's off the finanance money machine -
it went into a frenzy hyperdrive.
With no governor to stop it , and being fuelled by greed and "massive state sell offs of the family silver" ( quote by Harold MacMillan),
Also being fueled by the endowment mis- selling fiasco and the relaxing of the old city regimes- it all added up to the newcomers and their managers filling there boots and every one jumping on the gravy train.
As if this wasn't bad enough some one added Nitro to the tank and squandered all the revenue of the north sea oil ( How much was invested? Where is it now?)
The carpet baggers, the lunatics, scoundrels and the charlatans were in control-- running the country like a provincial greengrocers- with the result that they all became drunk with power and did very well, but forgot that their children would inherit the consequences.
How do the kids today get affordable housing, answer they can't- the community stock was sold off with a right to buy bribe.
That fueled today's silly housing boom.
How do they get decent jobs? they can't Maggie killed the car and steel, ships and coal industry because she hated them and thought them a dirty job. Decimating them removed any real manufacturing base we had left apart from farming, because the fisheries were sold out as well.
When history is written next century we will view it like this;
A) that the two world wars as waste of the cream lives and brains of the best all of european countries- for no real gain. So that they were a total waste, that only let new immigrants in and ruined a hard working protestant family centred industrious country and europe forever.
B) we will view Maggie thatcher in her true light of a deluded leader who thought she knew better than the old guard. Wasted the oil, the technology and gave our city institutions, powers, navy, industrial history to a load of yuppies and freeloaders who fleeced the country and lowered it to the third world, with beggars and waste on the streets.
I wish I were wrong.