Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Business Secretary Vince Cable has announced from the LibDem party conference in Brighton plans for the creation of a Business Bank run by the State.
Sky News announced that the project, which is to come into effect in about 12 to 18 months time, will see £1 billion of tax-payers money go on to the bank's balance sheet, but which the Treasury will not reclaim.
This sum is expected to be matched or exceeded by private money.
The aim is for the bank to boost lending to small and medium sized firms, and the move has been welcomed by the British Chamber for Commerce, whose Director General, John Longworth, stated that "six in 10 firms say they would feel more confident if the UK had a state-backed business bank".
Vince Cable declared: "for too long the mirage of growth based on property speculation and financial gambling has hidden the harder virtues of making things productively".
Hopefully we will be seeing an end to the Blairism style of banking, currently backed by the Tories, where the banking sector, rather than being there to boost private enterprise through responsible lending, indulged in mass-profiteering, strangling the economy and gobbling up masses of money in bonuses.
We may also assume that this State-owned bank will not indulge in toxic debt style investments, in bogus paper values and hokus pokus stuff, all that gobbledegook stuff which no normal person can fathom and that sent the banks into bankruptcy in 2008.
In other words, a business bank that's there for the real economy, for honst businesses in an honest economy! Let's hope so for now!
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
I certainly will not be having anything to do with it.
You can expect this to be embroiled in scandals of its own within 10 years and massive losses for the taxpayer can be expected.
The State cannot run anything properly.
Guest 714- Registered: 14 Apr 2011
- Posts: 2,594
Correct Barry nothing but a gimmick from the clueless Cable
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
Vince was right on cue with this... he borrowed it from the script of 'The Thick of it' shown the other night. So much so that they mentioned this fact on the Politics Today programme earlier in the day...pointing out of course that it is really only one of those Libdem aspirations, and we know what happens to those!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
interesting to see the uk chamber of commerce backing the idea.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Indeed no, Paul, it's a Government initiative, as shown form the Conservatives website:
"The Government has announced the first steps in a Government-funded bank to help small and medium sized businesses."
Clear as crystal that all parties are seeing that we are moving into a State-backed economic system, where the State will be the major guarantor for free enterprise, through clear and honest rules, without tens of thousands of self-serving chief execs first lining their own pockets.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
No Alexander. No-one is moving to a communist totalitarian system as you suggest.
The thought of 'state backed economic system' and the State as a 'major guarantor' is a horror story and is the opposite to free enterprise. Bonkers, to put it as politely as is possible.
This is a daft small scale piece of big government interference that will have massive problems and huge losses to the taxpayer. Eventually it will have to be privatised.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
" massive problems and huge losses to the taxpayer"
We have not to done too well so far.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Correct - the key economic problems we face today are entirely brought about by governments trying to control and interfering in the markets while also taxing and spending too much money to pay for their mistakes.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Tommy-rot Barry. Rather the unrestricted greed-fest of piss-poor bonus-fuelled managers in concert with their company boardrooms, typified by the offer of high position, and the acceptance of high position by the likes of Fred Goodwin and the unerring trust and support such wasters received.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
tom,a good clear straight talking post,i like it.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Barry, "communist totalitarian system as you suggest"....
Well now we can see, that your constant attributes of communism and stalinism towards me, are now ripe to be attributed by you to the Government.
So this relieves me of the burden of being out in the cold. And it so appears that both the Government and the major opposition party, Labour, are embracing themselves to enact policies, be it a State-owned bank to be soon created, or a Wealth Tax, that you consider to be Communism and destructive.
So now the tables are turned, and Barry is more and more alone in his opinions on the economy. And my "out-in-the-cold" ideas are now becoming mainstream State policies.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Do get real Alexander.
#10 Tom - tommy-rot indeed, yours. Only the government was responsible for the level of public spending, failing to close the deficit during the 'long boom'. Only the government was responsible for delivering the inflation brief to the Bank of England that held interest rates too low for too long creating a private debt bubble and property bubble. Only the government was responsible for raising more and more taxes, by stealth or not. I could go on about the discouraging of savings, the taxation of pension funds, the sale of gold etc etc. All of which added to the main errors I referred to. You cannot blame anyone in the private sector for any of that.
Did you not watch the programmes about Keynes and Hayek to wise up on how these things work? I may disagree with Keynes but if Brown, the Keynseyan, had properly followed all of Keynes theory and not just the bits that suited him we would not have been in such an appalling position when the downturn started.
Guest 714- Registered: 14 Apr 2011
- Posts: 2,594
Does Tom refer to the same Fred Goodwin who was knighted by govt for hi services to banking?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Correct David
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
think we need better on this
more so if the cobbled together govt is supporting it
got to be wrong,,,,,,,,
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Knighted and benighted are two different things...
"Report confirms bank incentives led to mis-selling
The FSA review of 22 firms' financial incentive schemes has uncovered a range of serious failings, including:
Most incentive schemes were likely to drive people to mis-sell.
Firms failed to identify how incentive schemes might encourage staff to mis-sell, suggesting they had not properly thought about the risks or simply turned a blind eye to them.
Firms failed to understand their own incentive schemes because they were so complex.
Sales managers had clear conflicts of interests, such as a responsibility to manage the conduct of sales staff whilst themselves able to earn a bonus if their team made more sales.
Specific examples of poor practice included:
One firm operated a 'first past the post' system where the first 21 sales staff to reach a target could earn a 'super bonus' of £10,000.
Basic salaries for sales staff at one firm could move up or down by more than £10,000 per year, depending on how much they sold.
Another firm excessively incentivised one product over another, despite claiming to offer impartial advice.
One firm allowed sales staff to earn a bonus of 100% of their basic salary for the sale of loans and PPI, but the bonus was only payable to those who had sold PPI to at least half their customers.
Martin Wheatley, managing director of the Financial Services Authority, has announced that he wants to see an end to mis-selling created by sales incentives."
Read more...
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?364402-FSA-targets-bank-incentives-that-lead-to-mis-sellingIgnorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 714- Registered: 14 Apr 2011
- Posts: 2,594
I think you're muddled Tom, you blame people like Goodwin for causing the crisis but govt thought he was doing such a good job they recommended him to be knighted.
Had he been imprisoned your view might carry some weight
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Things in the garden were lovely, so thought Parliament as a whole. The house price 'boom' was especially favoured by those in Parliament, almost without exception. As house-price-inflation was, and perhaps still is, one of the percs of being an MP.
Things did get out-of-hand in the financial sector over in the US, so much so that markets had to found further afield - preferably somewhere more lax as to regulation - somewhere that could speak the language (English and greed-fest-mumble wise).
Governments, can't do this, can't do that. Leave it to the Market and all will be well, is still the Mantra.
The truth is never complex, that is chief amongst it's charms.
Profits go to and remain in Private Hands. Losses are to be borne by the public in general.
ANY and ALL who seek to turn the focus of the debacle onto the fact that Government gave the Financial Sector sufficient rope - all the rope they requested - and must now accept the responsibility, and cast it upon the 'unsuspecting' public are those who insist that the gains should remain in the coffers of the culprits just so they themselves can hang on to the bit they got.
The muddle IMO. Is that those that insist on talking-up a seed-leaf as a tree - in all but name ( the better to boost confidence) are the same people who descry this particular knighthood, but I suspect it is much the same nonsense.
Imprisoned?! For what? In any event...he would never be lonely, and he would not have been first.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Tom you are always directing fire at the wrong people.
The house price bubble and debt bubble was a direct result of the way the Bank of England was given it independence and the inflation brief devised by Brown that was all Balls....
It ignored levels of debt in the economy leading to interest rates being held down too low for too long amid what became a false boom.
In that period a range of Treasury policies also discouraged investment, reducing tax benefits and reducing the amounts allowed to be invested. Added to low interest rates this was truly toxic. Too many people, far too many, turned to property for investment seeking better returns. For several years I was warning and advising clients against this not always with success. In addition without savings people turned more and more to credit cards and borrowing to fund large purchases making a bad situation worse.
When 2007 came along and the quite predictable cyclical downturn arrived, the appalling private debt situation added to the dreadful public debt and a massive State deficit we had an impossible situation that will take years to recover from.
The public responded in a way predicted by Keynes and his 'animal instincts' - lessons ignored by Keynseyan Brown because it was not the convenient part of Keynes theory.
The banks are not innocent, far from it, but they responded to the market conditions created by Brown unchecked by his reformed regulatory system that reduced oversight.