Yeah lets ignore the billions of pounds the banks and other financial instituions have paid directly in tax and and indirectly income tax from the millions they employ to keep the country aflaot for the last twenty years.
Without the banks and financial services what would keep the dole mongers in fags and pot noodles....certainly not a few call centres up north and a few soho juice bars.
[cite]Posted By: Friend Or Defoe[/cite]The recession was caused by people spending money they didn't have on things they didn't need.
A combination of this and greedy, incompetent bankers. But to say that it was just the bankers is blinkered.
99% of people in this country will have somehow benefitted from Overdrafts, credit cards, mortgages and other such borrowings on credit so to then piously blame the institutions that allowed them this luxury (albeit it dubiously as we have since found out) is a tad hypocritical.
However I think they are scum in the way they treat the man in the street (on the retail side) and some of the bonuses the top bods are paid in their investment arms after borrowing public money is disgusting.
Piss off to Switzerland if you must... you aint that good.
All that implementing the policy change in this way will do is muller the 'traditional' family (if such a thing exists any more) - hammering the stay at home mums who will now be FORCED into part time work just to cover the costs of the childminder.
Why would stay at home Mums need to pay a child minder?
They don't. What I'm saying is they won't BE stay-at-home Mums if removing child benefit tips them over the edge of not being able to afford mortgage repayments. A family of four, where the father works and earns just over 44k whilst his wife stays at home in their three-bedroom terraced house which costs them an absolutely outrageous amount in mortgage repayments because of the housing (ahem) 'boom' of the last decade will no longer be able to survive. The woman will HAVE to go back to work simply to make ends meet - working three days a week in essence for 'free' (paying off the childminder) before they are in 'credit' and start earning whatever they need to make up the shortfall. Doesn't take a genius to figure this out.
The problem is the tax system is not refined enough to add up 2 incomes so you will get the unfair system where peole on joint annual incomes of @£70-80k can still get it. You can't argue with the statement that it is unfair apart from making the obvious comment - 'Life is unfair'!
It was definitely the bankers to blame. Not all of them but too many of them. Before the crisis, the debt under Labour was 3/4s of what it was under the Conservatives. Of course Labour increased public spending which compounded the problems when the bankers got us into the mess. People we see and are seeing that cuts to public spending will cause pain - to be fair the conservatives are not claiming otherwise. You can't ignore the massive amounts of public spending used to bail out the banks and it is galling that they have done so little to help us get out of it by not supporting business now with the lending they should be making. They are a disgrace and have proven that anybody who thainks that capitalism can be unchecked is wrong.
As you ask shag... My idea quite a few years ago was that the government should have announced that they would stop paying child benefit to anyone whose sprog was born later than nine months and one week hence. Would never happen because that would be a long term strategy, and no politician is interested in what is for the long term good of the country, just what will keep them in power for the relatively few years where they can have their snout in the trough. That way no-one could complain because they would have been aware as they were making the beast with two backs that they would never be entitled to this benefit for their offspring.
As a short term fix, which is needed, their proposed policy seems to be the only way to do it without adding a whole load more beaurocracy - and therefore expense - on to the system. If they also introduce my idea alongside it, it will show they have both long and short term goals, and the saving made will start to have an impact long before the end of the present term of office, both in benefit paid out, and reduction in staff needed to administer it. The gradual winding down of the CB system should enable natural wastage to eliminate the likelyhood of forced redundancies.
[cite]Posted By: MuttleyCAFC[/cite]It was definitely the bankers to blame. Not all of them but too many of them.
An element of truth in that ... risk assessment became too haphazard and long-term risk did not match short-term reward ... what was missing to a large extent was accountability. However, just to balance things, a contrary view from the Independent:
Case for the prosecution
Greed, symbolised by vast bonuses for taking unacceptable risks with other people's money and futures, destroyed the livelihoods of many far removed from Wall Street and the City of London. Even as the suffering continues and they have had to be rescued by the taxpayer, they carry on with lavish lifestyles and business as usual. Now they won't even lend to small businesses.
Case for the defence
Bankers are no more genetically greedy than, say, politicians, journalists or vets. The world was content when they were generating wealth and paying huge amounts in tax. They are not being bloody-minded now, all they're doing is trying to build up their capital, just as the public demand, but to do that they have to lend less. Besides, lots of householders and firms want to save, not borrow.
Verdict: Not guilty
A shock verdict, but the duty of government is to prevent people misbehaving. Like speeding drivers, we needed to stop bankers doing themselves and others harm when they followed their natural instructs.
I agree it is the duty of Government to stop it happening but think it is a bit choice the Conservatives criticisng Labour for not doing so when everybody knows had they acted, they would have accused them vociferously of stifling eneterprise. But to claim that they are not guilty because everybody is greedy is a bit generous. I think there are degrees of guilt. When people protested that bonusses were too great, they were defended by bankers as being necessary to encourage wealth creation. Now that theory has been shot out of the water - they are reverting back to the pre crash justifications for massive bonuses. They have power and all political parties have to stop targeting each other and agree to target them. Anybody who believes we wouldn't be in a similar mess if the Conservatives had been in power is living in cloud cuckoo land.
[cite]Posted By: MuttleyCAFC[/cite]It was definitely the bankers to blame. Not all of them but too many of them.
An element of truth in that ... risk assessment became too haphazard and long-term risk did not match short-term reward ... what was missing to a large extent was accountability. However, just to balance things, a contrary view from the Independent:
Case for the prosecution
Greed, symbolised by vast bonuses for taking unacceptable risks with other people's money and futures, destroyed the livelihoods of many far removed from Wall Street and the City of London. Even as the suffering continues and they have had to be rescued by the taxpayer, they carry on with lavish lifestyles and business as usual. Now they won't even lend to small businesses.
Case for the defence
Bankers are no more genetically greedy than, say, politicians, journalists or vets. The world was content when they were generating wealth and paying huge amounts in tax. They are not being bloody-minded now, all they're doing is trying to build up their capital, just as the public demand, but to do that they have to lend less. Besides, lots of householders and firms want to save, not borrow.
Verdict: Not guilty
A shock verdict, but the duty of government is to prevent people misbehaving. Like speeding drivers, we needed to stop bankers doing themselves and others harm when they followed their natural instructs.
I am no fan of bankers and their often obscene bonuses but governments (not just in the UK) conveniently choose to forget that they put pressure on banks to make loans and credit "more accessible" to those who would normally not be considered.
"More accessible" ="greater risk" and, in simple terms, failures from greater risk caused the US sub prime crisis which in turn buggered up our banks who were looking for greater returns (and thus bonuses) by investing in these riskier markets.
The key point though is that government started it by cajoling banks to become more accessible and thus take greater risk.
The US sub prime risks were not encouraged by governments - they were always known to be risky but before it all blew up - they were a license to print money. They were Bentleys and swimming pools today rather than strife tomorrow. They were also hidden within safer loans when sold to the banks who didn't scrutinise too hard as they didn't believe the disaster that occured would happen -through smugness and a mistaken belief in capitalism.
Thanks Len for pointing out that it was/is a global problem. The Tories are surely even more keen on a free market economy than Labour, so what would they have done differently?
With regards to what went on during the election, none of the parties wanted to talk in detail about how they'd tackle the deficit because they all knew that any cuts they made were going to be unpopular. I think they all were well aware of the extent of the problem.
[cite]Posted By: JorgeCosta[/cite][It's amazing how the banking industry has pulled this off. With the collusion of both Labour and Conservative/Liberal and much of the press, they have been exonerated of causing the deficit. It was all apparently caused by the public sector and those receiving benefits . I'm not against reform, but it's a bit rich (no pun intended) that the slate has been wiped clean for the banks - if we hadn't bailed them out, we would not need to make such savage cuts.
This government and the previous one were/are happy to subsidise rich bankers withOURtax money. And what do we get in return?
A very decent profit. Our (the Government's) shares in the banks are now worth substantially more than the costs of the bail out. The reason we need to make cuts is because public spending had risen so much after 2001. We also spent very large sums on stimulus programmes to prevent the recession becoming a depression. You can still blame the banks though - they played a major part in the credit boom and therefore helped cause the recession.
Taking benefits away from a household earning £45k and keeping paying it to one earning £83K is unfair. All other insults and conclusions on here are wrong and unjust.
[cite]Posted By: MuttleyCAFC[/cite]The US sub prime risks were not encouraged by governments-.
Yes they were. From the Wiki entry on Fanny Mae
In 1999, Fannie Mae came under pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans to low and moderate income borrowers by increasing the ratios of their loan portfolios in distressed inner city areas designated in the CRA of 1977.[10] Because of the increased ratio requirements, institutions in the primary mortgage market pressed Fannie Mae to ease credit requirements on the mortgages it was willing to purchase, enabling them to make loans to subprime borrowers at interest rates higher than conventional loans. Shareholders also pressured Fannie Mae to maintain its record profits.[10]
In 2000, because of a re-assessment of the housing market by HUD, anti-predatory lending rules were put into place that disallowed risky, high-cost loans from being credited toward affordable housing goals. In 2004, these rules were dropped and high-risk loans were again counted toward affordable housing goals.[11]
The intent was that Fannie Mae's enforcement of the underwriting standards they maintained for standard conforming mortgages would also provide safe and stable means of lending to buyers who did not have prime credit. As Daniel Mudd, then President and CEO of Fannie Mae, testified in 2007, instead the agency's underwriting requirements drove business into the arms of the private mortgage industry who marketed aggressive products without regard to future consequences: "We also set conservative underwriting standards for loans we finance to ensure the homebuyers can afford their loans over the long term. We sought to bring the standards we apply to the prime space to the subprime market with our industry partners primarily to expand our services to underserved families.
I don't think Wiki is the font of all wisdom - just a person's view/bias.
Maybe the whole concept of Child benefit is unfair seeing as it has always been paid irrespective of wealth. What we have now is definitely unfair but to different people.
[cite]Posted By: Saga Lout[/cite]Thanks Len for pointing out that it was/is a global problem. The Tories are surely even more keen on a free market economy than Labour, so what would they have done differently?
With regards to what went on during the election, none of the parties wanted to talk in detail about how they'd tackle the deficit because they all knew that any cuts they made were going to be unpopular. I think they all were well aware of the extent of the problem.
I don't think the Tories under "Cast Iron" Dave would have done too much different, despite the rhetoric being employed as part of justifying this child benefit fiasco, as this was a global crisis and,as EU members wanting to be seen as "good Europeans," the EU effectively told us what we could and couldn't do. The rhetoric of course was something like "after consultation with our European partners." Politician speak for getting our instructions from our real government.
However I digress and Southend didn't want this to become political so I'll shut up now!
[cite]Posted By: RalphMilnesgut[/cite]Taking benefits away from a household earning £45k and keeping paying it to one earning £83K is unfair. All other insults and conclusions on here are wrong and unjust.
All that implementing the policy change in this way will do is muller the 'traditional' family (if such a thing exists any more) - hammering the stay at home mums who will now be FORCED into part time work just to cover the costs of the childminder.
Why would stay at home Mums need to pay a child minder?
They don't. What I'm saying is they won't BE stay-at-home Mums if removing child benefit tips them over the edge of not being able to afford mortgage repayments. A family of four, where the father works and earns just over 44k whilst his wife stays at home in their three-bedroom terraced house which costs them an absolutely outrageous amount in mortgage repayments because of the housing (ahem) 'boom' of the last decade will no longer be able to survive. The woman will HAVE to go back to work simply to make ends meet - working three days a week in essence for 'free' (paying off the childminder) before they are in 'credit' and start earning whatever they need to make up the shortfall. Doesn't take a genius to figure this out.
"Rest assured that they do have to sell it to the public, otherwise their MPs (Libs as well as Cons) may not vote for it. It will have to be in a future finance bill."
Sadly this simply isn't true of today's politics, once elected, nothing is 'sold' to the public. You vote for your MP to make decision on your behalf, they do not have to consult you.
And sadly once an MP is elected they will follow the whips and do what they are told. The rare occasions when there is a back-bench revolt, it only happens when enough MPs know enough other MPs will do the same and they will not be left to face the music. This is why back bench MPS complain a lot but vote against the government rarely.
The Whips in parliament have ALL the power. If there is a three line whip telling both Tory and Lib Dem MPs that they WILL back the government on it then what a particular members constituents think of it matters very little. If you alone go against a three line whip, then the Whips not only have the power to destroy your political career, they will generally wreck your personal life and your future career prospects.
"Where do the childless couples in your argument think the food industry workers/care workers/health professionals who will feed & look after them etc in the future come from? Surely the progression of any society is based upon people having children. I can't see why anyone would be against the encouragement & promotion of child rearing!"
Why do parents think the world needs them to produce off-spring. The world is massively over populated. If the whole of Britain stopped baring children then we would survive. Immigration would increase, the gap between rich and poo might reduce and we might stand a better chance of feeding the world equally.
Plus the biggest threat to global warming is population expansion.
So please don't think for a second that you having children is doing the world a favour.
considering this is a coalition with the lib dems I would suggest these policies do need to be sold as the dems want their seats after the next election. Were it a huge tory or lab majority it might be as you say.. however this is the 'new politics' iniit..
bringing 2 or more well brought up, educated, contributors into the world has to be a good thing in my view, whether we all get that lucky is another question, however we are not responsible for world population issues by a long chalk.
[cite]Posted By: RalphMilnesGut[/cite]Taking benefits away from a household earning £45k and keeping paying it to one earning £83K is unfair. All other insults and conclusions on here are wrong and unjust.
To paraphrase the words of Paul Weller "the weak get crushed as the rich grow richer"
At the risk of being controversial -there is a an argument that you would want to encourage some people to have more Children and some less. If any families are discouraged from having Children because of this development, I would suggest it will probably be the ones we want to encourage to have more Children. The ones who set good examples, care about their Childrens' development and will be more likely to nuture contributing versions of themselves!!
Whilst I see you point Muttley, surely anyone who wants to have a child simply because of the tax incentives will automatically fall into the category of person who should not be having children?
Lets face it, people have children because they want them, and don't have them because they don't want them (or sadly can't have them).
Tax breaks, affordability and the benefits to mankind don't really come into play.
Yes probably - although the more responsible with jobs will often make considerations based on income/ ability to support where as others might see it as a means to get more benefits or a bigger house off the state.
All that implementing the policy change in this way will do is muller the 'traditional' family (if such a thing exists any more) - hammering the stay at home mums who will now be FORCED into part time work just to cover the costs of the childminder.
Why would stay at home Mums need to pay a child minder?
They don't. What I'm saying is they won't BE stay-at-home Mums if removing child benefit tips them over the edge of not being able to afford mortgage repayments. A family of four, where the father works and earns just over 44k whilst his wife stays at home in their three-bedroom terraced house which costs them an absolutely outrageous amount in mortgage repayments because of the housing (ahem) 'boom' of the last decade will no longer be able to survive. The woman will HAVE to go back to work simply to make ends meet - working three days a week in essence for 'free' (paying off the childminder) before they are in 'credit' and start earning whatever they need to make up the shortfall. Doesn't take a genius to figure this out.
Easy tiger, i only asked.
LOL - apologies if it came across as a dig - in hindsight that last remark certainly made it appear so!
The arguments on here about 'bankers' are ridiculous as they, almost without exception, do not draw a distinction between the different TYPES of bankers in question. I know that all banking is linked, but what people need to be pissed off about isn't the day-to-day banking activities that they're exposed to (credit, debit, savings etc) but the culture and system behind the scenes that underpins it all. Most people know how the fractional reserve system works (only a certain percentage of the money in a system at any one time is 'real') - and, for the most part, when the ratio was about 10/1, the system worked reasonably well. The more the system has been stressed in the last thirty years or so, the more it's creaked - people moan about the inequities of the system in the UK - if you understand how the global economy affects the rest of the world, you'd realise just how petty all our squabbling about it is. FR is now hopelessly broken - driven by the greed of corporations and stockholders over the general 'good' of the capitalist system - and sooner or later, everything has to come crashing down.
Communism has been proven not to work, due to human nature. Free-Market Capitalism is going the same way, for the same reason. Whatever system arises next, it isn't going to be pretty - but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there HAS to be some change of system, because you can't just keep lumping debt on future generations... and that's all the perpetuation of the FR system will do. Sound like a conspiracry theory? Do your own research about it - there's plenty of stuff out there - even though most of the economic literature about FR is incredibly dull and boring.
Changes to tax credits, child benefit, income support etc are papering over the cracks.
Comments
Without the banks and financial services what would keep the dole mongers in fags and pot noodles....certainly not a few call centres up north and a few soho juice bars.
A combination of this and greedy, incompetent bankers. But to say that it was just the bankers is blinkered.
99% of people in this country will have somehow benefitted from Overdrafts, credit cards, mortgages and other such borrowings on credit so to then piously blame the institutions that allowed them this luxury (albeit it dubiously as we have since found out) is a tad hypocritical.
However I think they are scum in the way they treat the man in the street (on the retail side) and some of the bonuses the top bods are paid in their investment arms after borrowing public money is disgusting.
Piss off to Switzerland if you must... you aint that good.
It was definitely the bankers to blame. Not all of them but too many of them. Before the crisis, the debt under Labour was 3/4s of what it was under the Conservatives. Of course Labour increased public spending which compounded the problems when the bankers got us into the mess. People we see and are seeing that cuts to public spending will cause pain - to be fair the conservatives are not claiming otherwise. You can't ignore the massive amounts of public spending used to bail out the banks and it is galling that they have done so little to help us get out of it by not supporting business now with the lending they should be making. They are a disgrace and have proven that anybody who thainks that capitalism can be unchecked is wrong.
As a short term fix, which is needed, their proposed policy seems to be the only way to do it without adding a whole load more beaurocracy - and therefore expense - on to the system. If they also introduce my idea alongside it, it will show they have both long and short term goals, and the saving made will start to have an impact long before the end of the present term of office, both in benefit paid out, and reduction in staff needed to administer it. The gradual winding down of the CB system should enable natural wastage to eliminate the likelyhood of forced redundancies.
Ithangyew...
An element of truth in that ... risk assessment became too haphazard and long-term risk did not match short-term reward ... what was missing to a large extent was accountability. However, just to balance things, a contrary view from the Independent:
Case for the prosecution
Greed, symbolised by vast bonuses for taking unacceptable risks with other people's money and futures, destroyed the livelihoods of many far removed from Wall Street and the City of London. Even as the suffering continues and they have had to be rescued by the taxpayer, they carry on with lavish lifestyles and business as usual. Now they won't even lend to small businesses.
Case for the defence
Bankers are no more genetically greedy than, say, politicians, journalists or vets. The world was content when they were generating wealth and paying huge amounts in tax. They are not being bloody-minded now, all they're doing is trying to build up their capital, just as the public demand, but to do that they have to lend less. Besides, lots of householders and firms want to save, not borrow.
Verdict: Not guilty
A shock verdict, but the duty of government is to prevent people misbehaving. Like speeding drivers, we needed to stop bankers doing themselves and others harm when they followed their natural instructs.
that summary ignores the fact that they got where they are by being the greediest people in society
I am no fan of bankers and their often obscene bonuses but governments (not just in the UK) conveniently choose to forget that they put pressure on banks to make loans and credit "more accessible" to those who would normally not be considered.
"More accessible" ="greater risk" and, in simple terms, failures from greater risk caused the US sub prime crisis which in turn buggered up our banks who were looking for greater returns (and thus bonuses) by investing in these riskier markets.
The key point though is that government started it by cajoling banks to become more accessible and thus take greater risk.
With regards to what went on during the election, none of the parties wanted to talk in detail about how they'd tackle the deficit because they all knew that any cuts they made were going to be unpopular. I think they all were well aware of the extent of the problem.
A very decent profit. Our (the Government's) shares in the banks are now worth substantially more than the costs of the bail out. The reason we need to make cuts is because public spending had risen so much after 2001. We also spent very large sums on stimulus programmes to prevent the recession becoming a depression. You can still blame the banks though - they played a major part in the credit boom and therefore helped cause the recession.
Yes they were. From the Wiki entry on Fanny Mae
In 1999, Fannie Mae came under pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans to low and moderate income borrowers by increasing the ratios of their loan portfolios in distressed inner city areas designated in the CRA of 1977.[10] Because of the increased ratio requirements, institutions in the primary mortgage market pressed Fannie Mae to ease credit requirements on the mortgages it was willing to purchase, enabling them to make loans to subprime borrowers at interest rates higher than conventional loans. Shareholders also pressured Fannie Mae to maintain its record profits.[10]
In 2000, because of a re-assessment of the housing market by HUD, anti-predatory lending rules were put into place that disallowed risky, high-cost loans from being credited toward affordable housing goals. In 2004, these rules were dropped and high-risk loans were again counted toward affordable housing goals.[11]
The intent was that Fannie Mae's enforcement of the underwriting standards they maintained for standard conforming mortgages would also provide safe and stable means of lending to buyers who did not have prime credit. As Daniel Mudd, then President and CEO of Fannie Mae, testified in 2007, instead the agency's underwriting requirements drove business into the arms of the private mortgage industry who marketed aggressive products without regard to future consequences: "We also set conservative underwriting standards for loans we finance to ensure the homebuyers can afford their loans over the long term. We sought to bring the standards we apply to the prime space to the subprime market with our industry partners primarily to expand our services to underserved families.
Maybe the whole concept of Child benefit is unfair seeing as it has always been paid irrespective of wealth. What we have now is definitely unfair but to different people.
I don't think the Tories under "Cast Iron" Dave would have done too much different, despite the rhetoric being employed as part of justifying this child benefit fiasco, as this was a global crisis and,as EU members wanting to be seen as "good Europeans," the EU effectively told us what we could and couldn't do. The rhetoric of course was something like "after consultation with our European partners." Politician speak for getting our instructions from our real government.
However I digress and Southend didn't want this to become political so I'll shut up now!
Quite.
Easy tiger, i only asked.
Sadly this simply isn't true of today's politics, once elected, nothing is 'sold' to the public. You vote for your MP to make decision on your behalf, they do not have to consult you.
And sadly once an MP is elected they will follow the whips and do what they are told. The rare occasions when there is a back-bench revolt, it only happens when enough MPs know enough other MPs will do the same and they will not be left to face the music. This is why back bench MPS complain a lot but vote against the government rarely.
The Whips in parliament have ALL the power. If there is a three line whip telling both Tory and Lib Dem MPs that they WILL back the government on it then what a particular members constituents think of it matters very little.
If you alone go against a three line whip, then the Whips not only have the power to destroy your political career, they will generally wreck your personal life and your future career prospects.
Most MP like their comfy lives too much to risk.
Why do parents think the world needs them to produce off-spring. The world is massively over populated. If the whole of Britain stopped baring children then we would survive. Immigration would increase, the gap between rich and poo might reduce and we might stand a better chance of feeding the world equally.
Plus the biggest threat to global warming is population expansion.
So please don't think for a second that you having children is doing the world a favour.
bringing 2 or more well brought up, educated, contributors into the world has to be a good thing in my view, whether we all get that lucky is another question, however we are not responsible for world population issues by a long chalk.
To paraphrase the words of Paul Weller "the weak get crushed as the rich grow richer"
Lets face it, people have children because they want them, and don't have them because they don't want them (or sadly can't have them).
Tax breaks, affordability and the benefits to mankind don't really come into play.
The arguments on here about 'bankers' are ridiculous as they, almost without exception, do not draw a distinction between the different TYPES of bankers in question. I know that all banking is linked, but what people need to be pissed off about isn't the day-to-day banking activities that they're exposed to (credit, debit, savings etc) but the culture and system behind the scenes that underpins it all. Most people know how the fractional reserve system works (only a certain percentage of the money in a system at any one time is 'real') - and, for the most part, when the ratio was about 10/1, the system worked reasonably well. The more the system has been stressed in the last thirty years or so, the more it's creaked - people moan about the inequities of the system in the UK - if you understand how the global economy affects the rest of the world, you'd realise just how petty all our squabbling about it is. FR is now hopelessly broken - driven by the greed of corporations and stockholders over the general 'good' of the capitalist system - and sooner or later, everything has to come crashing down.
Communism has been proven not to work, due to human nature. Free-Market Capitalism is going the same way, for the same reason. Whatever system arises next, it isn't going to be pretty - but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there HAS to be some change of system, because you can't just keep lumping debt on future generations... and that's all the perpetuation of the FR system will do. Sound like a conspiracry theory? Do your own research about it - there's plenty of stuff out there - even though most of the economic literature about FR is incredibly dull and boring.
Changes to tax credits, child benefit, income support etc are papering over the cracks.