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@Victor-Meldrew said in Brexit:
I could also add that the regulation put in place post '97 moved the management and control of risk away from shareholders and the folks at the workface actually doing the lending face-face, to bureaucrats.
Those bureaucrats seemed to have little knowledge of what was actually going on and thought if you policed checklists and conformance to capital adequacy figures, all would be good. Add to that, political & FSA directives to force banks to lend to riskier demographics and it was a recipe for disaster.
The shareholders and taxpayers took the hit - the politicians blamed the bankers. The bureaucrats hid.
Bureaucrats who nowadays don't have to have ever worked in a real market. Like me regulating surfing!
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@MajorRage said in Brexit:
Travel rejected. It was deemed that I should be able to give the pitch to the local sales guys, and they could deliver it. The local sales guys were proper chocolate teapots and all knew it. Upshot was I didn't go, they tried to pitch it and the client walked away.
Cost of ticket for me to go - 95 EUR + admin expenses DECLINED.I have a great example of corporate stupidity which I often related to MBD's who thought counting the pennies and not the millions was essential
Major US bank had its international networks operations run out of London. Early days of TCP/IP and there 2-3 network engineers who were seriously essential to the network. Often worked 6-7 days a week all over the world and were head-hunted regularly.
Claiming of expenses was petty and rankled. Two of them billed for UK newspapers when they were working in Germany over the weekend and the expenses were rejected. They said "Right, fuck off then", resigned and were escorted out of the building.
That week the LoveBug worm struck....
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At least two of the big three UK banks were insolvent. Government had to put them on life support for several years.
They should have let them go down the pan, while protecting depositors. Gordon Brown's arm-twisting to get (very) solvent Lloyds to takeover the basket-case that was HBOS just magnified the problem.
Arguably the worst thing The Great Moron ever did - which is saying something.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Brexit:
At least two of the big three UK banks were insolvent. Government had to put them on life support for several years.
They should have let them go down the pan, while protecting depositors. Gordon Brown's arm-twisting to get (very) solvent Lloyds to takeover the basket-case that was HBOS just magnified the problem.
Arguably the worst thing The Great Moron ever did - which is saying something.
Worst Chancellor ever.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Brexit:
At least two of the big three UK banks were insolvent. Government had to put them on life support for several years.
They should have let them go down the pan, while protecting depositors. Gordon Brown's arm-twisting to get (very) solvent Lloyds to takeover the basket-case that was HBOS just magnified the problem.
Arguably the worst thing The Great Moron ever did - which is saying something.
Sir Victor Blank, chairman of Lloyds, said to have been promised a peerage.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Brexit:
At least two of the big three UK banks were insolvent. Government had to put them on life support for several years.
They should have let them go down the pan, while protecting depositors. Gordon Brown's arm-twisting to get (very) solvent Lloyds to takeover the basket-case that was HBOS just magnified the problem.
Arguably the worst thing The Great Moron ever did - which is saying something.
Worst Chancellor ever.
Surely you mean "most prudent"? After all he told us that often enough. No doubt selling half out=r gold at a low valuations after announcing the sale beforehand was also prudent.
One eyed scotch fluffybunny.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Brexit:
At least two of the big three UK banks were insolvent. Government had to put them on life support for several years.
They should have let them go down the pan, while protecting depositors. Gordon Brown's arm-twisting to get (very) solvent Lloyds to takeover the basket-case that was HBOS just magnified the problem.
Arguably the worst thing The Great Moron ever did - which is saying something.
Worst Chancellor ever.
In a position with 800 years history (there are audit records from the Exchequer/revenue department dating back to 1129, and those records are clearly continuous with previous records, and the first recorded Chancellor was appointed in 1221), I doubt Brown is the worst ever, although he might be the worst modern Chancellor, which for a position with that history is probably either Neville Chamberlain in 1923 as the first Chancellor who wasn't also the PM, or Sir Robert Peel as the new Chancellor (and also PM) following the first election after the Great Reform Act of 1832 expanded the voting franchise significantly.
This pointless tangent was brought to you by me, some moron in NZ.
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@Catogrande said in Brexit:
One eyed scotch fluffybunny.
Oh, I don't know. He certainly had his finger on the pulse of global affairs....
"Our ability to connect as a nation with other nations around the world is enhanced dramatically by the Internet." Gordon Brown, 2005.
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@Victor-Meldrew He’s a godamn genius
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@Victor-Meldrew better than a series of tubes at least...
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Jesus H Christ
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@MiketheSnow said in Brexit:
Jesus H Christ
Meanwhile EU Parliament is debating whether to aprove the bill OR NOT.
Isn't the pantomine season finished?
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Brexit:
That is certainly trade orthodoxy. But if such agreements lead to substantial job losses as e.g. Chinese imports replace Northern jobs, the net is more of the population reliant on social welfare.
It's going to happen anyway, so be prepared to compete . No point in protecting all those highly paid jobs producing those shiny BMW's when your export markets slap quotas on your goods in retaliation.
At the risk of offending the purists, I see no point in facilitating the migration of manufacturing offshore when the crucial overseas competitive advantage is lower/no environmental/labour conditions/social welfare standards. So if the UK has sensible standards in these areas, and its cost of power is competitive, then the labour content of manufacture is going to have to be very high to outweigh appropriate tariffs and the cost of transport from, say, the Far East.
WTO tariffs are inadequate to compensate, so China being admitted was a massive con job. Carbon border tax would be a way of rasing tariffs towards reasonable levels.
A key question becomes the cost of labour. Here things become quite distorted by the minimum wage question. UK has made a big thing of the virtue of setting level for these ever higher, but if that prices manufacture out IMO such minima do more harm than good. Even then, EU and UK cheat by allowing Eastern Europeans in and allowing practices which usurp the regulation, albeit in quite limited areas. Which to me is just a tacit admission the the levels are wrong, even if the concept itself has merit.
Trivial example, maybe, by it seems wholly incoherent to pursue policies which result in chocolate good manufacture in UK to be unable to compete viably with mass production in China and shipping across to the other side of the world. To me bonkers.
As a consequence, I'm not opposed to tariffs being set at a level which protects economies with decent social welfare, environmental and labour laws. WTO levels too low. I'm all for carbon border taxes.
Needs to be managed carefully, for sure. A short-term measure while you address the need to become competitive.
I think it's more fundamental. For now China relies on coal power to produce a huge amount of its energy. The alternatives are more expensive. CBT ought to be retained until and unless China moves to greener energy sources. BTW no idea how anyone can ever verify compliance.
There's very, very few leading edge industries in the EU compared to the US, China or Japan.
Absolutely right.
Now you're taking!
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@majorrage said in Brexit:
Confusing article this one.
I can't see how this can be anything but a good thing for the UK? Reading through it, it's almost like the author is desepreatly trying to figure out how this is bad for GB, but can't ....
Very tough on Welsh ports
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@mikethesnow How man people can truck rollon/rolloff employ?
And doesn't the extra paperwork offset the reduced physical workload?
Not arguments to your point, more questions.
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Oh the delicious irony
Brexit