Friday, 5 April 2013

Parliamentary Standards Commission into the BOE/Treasury?

The HBOS leadership team is roundly and rightly condemned for the horrendous mess they made of HBOS. Under their watch a stable, non-investment bank was turned into a leverage monster which has blown up to a cost of something like £25 billion to UK taxpayers and now helps play a key role in crippling Lloyds and holding back our economic growth.

As I have said many times before, what has been done should be a crime and these men should be facing a long stretch in chokey - luckily for them the inept system that we have for tracking white collar crime means they are free instead to spend their ill-gotten gains and live the life of riley.

However, these constant reports into RBS, HBOS and such like play so nicely into the zeitgeist of banker bashing. But we all know that the decisions these men took must be put into context. Alan Greenspan had pumped up a huge bubble of leverage in America and the Bank of England had willingly followed his lead.

Moreover, the UK Government was blinded by its tax receipts and was inclined to watch on, glad of the money coming in which it could use to bribe voters with unrealistic promises of public services.

So where is the report into the Bank of England and the Government ministers of the time? I hope they are just waiting for St Mervyn to retire before taking him to the Tower, but somehow I doubt it.

13 comments:

DtP said...

Douglas Murray blogged a few days back on the irrelevance of the Prime Minister regarding Abu Quatada but in many ways I think he missed a trick. We've had more public inquiries of late, Hutton, Chilcott, Francis, the Bloody Sunday one, Hillsbrough etc and not a bloody thing ever happens. It's akin to firing an e-mail off @ work and thinking 'job done' where simply creating an audit trail is the end in itself.

It's as if government isn't able to work any more. I don't know if it's complicit intransigence, the rise and dominion of £500 per hour lawyers, the complexity of EU stipulations or what but it just doesn't work any more. We've moved from Showbusiness for ugly people to obfuscated and indolent deception. And the only inquiry that did offer a prescription, Leveson, was unmitigated bollox.

I don't think there's any will to attribute blame for anything but simply to avoid anyone pointing the finger at them. It's a circle jerk of ducking and diving with the highest offices in the land being used as scenery. Ho hum.

Blue Eyes said...

I'd be interested to know Bernanke's views on what caused the bubble and crash given that he's such an expert on the 1920s and '30s.

Wasn't overly-loose monetary policy and a crazy real estate and stock-market bubble partially to blame then, too?

cours informatique said...
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Gordon Brown said...

You know, this report kind of blames me for appointing my friends to conflict interest jobs. And , making sure they were never prosecuted as they were doing what I told them to do.

Happily all of us have escaped prosecution.

Anonymous said...

"and now helps play a key role in crippling Lloyds .."

Well in addition to the Chief executives of HBOS, let's have Broon the loon and his side kick Blinky Balls on the stand too.

Anonymous said...

"Moreover, the UK Government was blinded by its tax receipts and was inclined to watch on" the trouble with HMG they usually try, often with little success, to try to repair damage of their own making, and so lurch from crisis to crisis. I think what Margaret Thatcher meant by the government handling its finances comes into effect here, although I would be the first one to say a lot of households do not seem able to manage their finances, the idea is that the family lives within its income, saves any income unspent over a period a holds it over for any unexpected bills or for some larger than average purchase. The governments have been living the catch a rabbit kill it and eat it mentality since the last world war. I do not have a very high income so I have to verge on the careful side, I have never had HP, Personal loans, ok I did have interest free credit a couple of times, if I can afford it I buy it, if I can not afford it, I save up for it and then often I might decide I do not want it, but then I have the money.
As regards to Brown and Osborne both did modern history degrees, I do not know who is advising Gideon but Balls was advising Brown so we are told (who supposedly did have economics degrees" neither Brown or Gideon actually seem to have any academic training in economics, in Brown's case things seem to have been slight of hand and a great lack of common sense and what Brown called "prudence".
I am sorry if my post seems a bit garbled, it's my age you know.

Denis Day said...

Quote right anon. The Blair brown era not only presided over the debt surge , but encouraged it. House prices rocketed. But each £100k earned by the homeowner had £10k going to the chancellor on stamp duty.

The banks were paying almost the entire schools and education budgets just from their own taxes.

The merry go round madness was actively encouraged. In fact, no attempt was made to control it until 2007, when the overheating cracks had become too large to not notice anymore. UK interest rates were up to 7% in the months before northern rock. That was actually starting its own crash and many many homeowners were only saved by a bigger crisis wiping out interest rates.

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Assurance KM said...

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Cours excel said...

Chaque pas son propre rôle dans la vie de chaque humain il ne faut sans laisser aller et faire un pas n arrière il faut toujours faire l'initial et surtout ne pas tomber dans le piège.

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site web maroc said...

il ne faut laisser tomber des commissions aussi importante comme celle de HBOS, c'est au départ il lance des arguments et Sous leur surveillance d'une banque stable, non-investissement a été transformé en un monstre de levier qui a explosé à un coût de quelque 25 milliards de livres sterling aux contribuables britanniques et contribue désormais jouer un rôle clé dans paralysant Lloyds et freine notre croissance économique.