Democracy - bought & paid for

[Bob8]

You'd think the Tories would be in favour of a 100% inheritance tax? After all everyone should be capable of making it from the bottom to the top...

I think people did see it coming. I held off buying a place and sharesas a crash was overdue. I am no finance expert. I went out with a lady who worked at a sub-prime lender and hated it and could clearly see it was a fraud actually intended to foreclosure on a massive scale.

On this thread, we have people at Barclays seeing the collapse coming. However, theist action was to cover their bum.

The Tories would have had a field day if Labour had intervened and then Labour lost the plot. The U.S. Government are not going to interfere in rich people's money making for the greater good. If a bank had tried to go onto lockdown while things seed to be booming, their owners and customers would be outraged and the individual bankers would have missed out on a fortune. Better to make hay while the sun shines.

[getdownmonkeyman]

FFS! The global economic crash was not of any political parties doing, there is an argument that tighter regulation could have been implemented. That said, I don't see how the FSA, or any other body could stop in effect an insurance underwritten payment default scam.

The only good to come of this, currently, is the end of 100+% mortgages. Which, frankly, was completely ridiculous.

[Saint Toppy]

 and he is trying to marginalise the Scots Nats,

In terms of Westminster seats Cameron did try to redress the balance during the last parliament by adding 4 additional English seats creating the current 650.

Based on the population split at that time its still not an exact split but fairly representative, But the scots & welsh still have a higher percentage of MP's than the population they represent

 

England makes up 83.9% of the population and has 82% of the MP's

Scotland 8.4% of population and 9.1% of MP's 

Wales 4.8% of population and 6.1% of MP's

NI 2.9% of population and 2.8% of MP's

 

With the creation of the scottish parliament & welsh assembly, along with some devolved powers there's a fair case for arguing that the Scots & Welsh have an influence across the UK far greater than their populations entitle them to.

 

I'm no fan of Cameron but the English votes for English MP's is one item i'd fully support them on.

[dhw]

You are right of course. Someone should have seen it coming.  But the government didn't see it coming, the Civil Service didn't see it coming, the Bank of England didn't see it coming and the Tories didn't see it coming. Whenever there's a crash, it's because no one saw it coming.

The government were warned it was coming. The Central Bank  was warned which also included the civil service. Internally certain Banks were warned by audit and risk staff. Given the nature of the financial iinstruments used and how they where being used The civil service, Bank of England, the government would have been aware of the risks. The regulatory authotrities setup for the finance industry concentrated on monitoring individuals, single banks/institutions, potential money laundering, insider trading but all but ignored the financial ecosystem. This was a big mistake, particualrly given how banks are interdependent on each other and it has happened before.

 

When Lehmans went under the your holy trinity of if the BoE, Civil Service and the Government should have sprung into action it did not. They all knew full well how interdependent the major banks were but only did soemthign when they were forced into action and what action they took did very little to deal with the problem.