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Do you have anything positive to say? Do you have different views about different types of bankers. Who else is to blame for the crisis?
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881Once upon a time there were Building Societies for Mortgages and Savings and Banks for Cheques and Cards and loans and there were Merchant Banks for all the complicated stuff that we mere mortals didn't hear anything about.
Then the Building Societies started to offer cheque accounts and personal loans and started to de-mutualise, so the Banks retaliated by offering mortgages and taking over Building Societies or Ex-Building Societies and Insurance Companies and Merchant Banks.
Then the Bank divisions got out of control because they were no longer responsible for their own actions because there was the BIG Board supposedly in charge but which didn't know what was going on because they were bankers rather than merchant bankers and as long as the plus signs were twinkling, they assumed that all was ok.
They didn't even wake from their hypnosis when Leeson brought down Barings on his own.
Everyone was expected to produce bigger and bigger deals and 'due diligence' went out of the window.
I blame the dealers and their supervisors and everyone upwards, for failing to even think that it was all a pack of lies which was being hawked around the market.
However we could blame the Building Societies for poaching in Bank territory which sparked off the whole merry-go-round.
Governments didn't stand a chance because they didn't have a clue but some were worse than others like GB putting one of the major culprits in charge of the FSA.
Posted on 13 February 2009 |
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0You'll find about 11,000 answers to that topic over on the Banking Sector board....
http://boards.fool.co.uk/Messages.asp?bid=50033
The blame game is not terribly constructive at this point in time, but the FSA, FSMA, CFMA and Basel II all played their part. It's worth noting that Gordon Brown played a direct part in the creation of two of those, and was partly responsible for a third....
Posted on 13 February 2009 | Love 0 loves
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174On the other hand,
Some of us refused to play the game, warned what would happen, wrote papers re risk management, and got made redundant!
Posted on 13 February 2009 | Love 0 loves
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0and all the way at the "top", that's us, the shareholders (through our pension funds). we wanted high profits, and as long as the numbers were right, we didn't want to hear about risks anymore than the banking bosses did.
the difference being that some people made a lot of money out of all of this, and some people pay for it.
but can you blame people for taking the money others shove at them?
i think you can. i personally would be embarrassed to take such a lot of money for anything, and would like to think that i would refuse. so i do blame (some) bankers for being profiteering and arrogant. but i do not blame them for the crisis itself. that was inherent in the system, and we all played along. most of us anyway.
Posted on 13 February 2009 | Love 0 loves
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881 1 174Hi Birtles, Well there is the stuff written by Moore at HBOS that is now public domain, or at least the principle of what he tried to do is.
I am sure that there was a lot more, all over the place, but do not wish to go further than that generalisation.
I was part of the last generation of traditional bankers, trained to be a generalist capable of Managing a full service branch or department of a clearing bank. Such people were never trained to allow financial nonsense to go unchallenged, and whilst in Banking terms we are now as good as extinct, the last hangers on will have made some effort to warn away from the danger that was so clearly coming. Todays coprorate culture of bullying and pressure reacts badly to such people, who stick out like raised nails in a piece of wood. Such nails tend to get hammered down.
Posted on 14 February 2009 | Love 0 loves
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0On MikeGGs comments that the Building Societies should not have gone into Banking (are you sure it was that way round - not that it matters much).
When I was a child my Dad had a grocers which sold groceries, and you went to the Fish Monger for fish, butchers for meat, newsagent for your cigs and paper, petrol station ... etc. Then the newsagent started selling suger and tea, the green grocer tins of beans, the milkman yogurt and bread. Minimarkets, sypermarkets, hypermarkets came along. Dads shop ended up trying to sell everything else to compete, before it finally closed, along with the thousands of other corner shops. It seems So, I guess its can be grouped under the 'progress' word! Not sure then, why the Bankers or Building Societies should be fingered, is it greed or driven by a will to survive? The finger seems to be pointing back to me (as in the human condition) in my view.
Posted on 15 February 2009 | Love 0 loves
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0Who isn't to blame? The bankers are the most obvious culprits and for sure they played a big part in it, but the government, the regulatory authorities, the media and even the public were to blame. It suited everyone to carry on partying and not worry about the consequences.
Human nature seems to be designed to oscillate between euphoria and fear. The rational position is probably somewhere in the middle most of the time, but those who are cautious during booms or optimistic during busts are so often ridiculed or ignored.
Posted on 15 February 2009 |
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