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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2017 6:36:40 GMT -5
Is it over yet?  |
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Post by ahinton on Sept 6, 2017 6:46:12 GMT -5
Whilst I recognise that some might consider it rude to answer a question with another question, I would counter that it's barely even started yet. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 1:07:23 GMT -5
If I may address your final point directly, Alistair: Whilst I recognise that some might consider it rude to answer a question with another question, I would counter that it's barely even started yet. When did the global financial crisis really begin, Alistair? Reporting for BBC Radio 4's ' Today' programme, Slightly Optimistic, Dominic O'Connell looks back at the collapse of Northern Rock: ten years on. My parents were both customers of Northern Rock, which was a star banking stock in the FTSE 100, and then, quite suddenly, it ran out of money. Northern Rock's empire was in ruins. The fuel it had used to grow so quickly turned out to be toxic. Rather than using customer deposits as the source of funds to lend out to homeowners, it borrowed in the international money markets. When the sub-prime crisis hit America, those markets took fright, and stopped lending to anything that looked like it might be over-exposed to the housing market. Northern Rock was an obvious first casualty. The BBC broke the news that it needed Bank of England support 10 years ago tomorrow, and the day after there were queues outside branches, the first run on a British bank in 150 years. After limping on for a few more months, Northern Rock was nationalised in February 2008. Dominic concludes thus: So it could happen all over again, Alistair. But where did all the money actually end up? Well, because the UK Government intervened, my parents' savings were actually left pretty intact, even if interest rates subsequently collapsed in the United Kingdom (UK). And Gordon Brown really did save the world, Uncle Henry? |
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Post by ahinton on Sept 13, 2017 2:18:12 GMT -5
If I may address your final point directly, Alistair: Whilst I recognise that some might consider it rude to answer a question with another question, I would counter that it's barely even started yet. When did the global financial crisis really begin, Alistair? Reporting for BBC Radio 4's ' Today' programme, Slightly Optimistic, Dominic O'Connell looks back at the collapse of Northern Rock: ten years on. In the latter part of 2007 as implied by Mr O'Connell although, as I stated, it's barely even begun yet... |
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Post by Uncle Henry on Sept 13, 2017 2:26:51 GMT -5
My parents were both customers of Northern Rock, which was a star banking stock in the FTSE 100, and then, quite suddenly, it ran out of money. Northern Rock's empire was in ruins. The fuel it had used to grow so quickly turned out to be toxic. Rather than using customer deposits as the source of funds to lend out to homeowners, it borrowed in the international money markets. When the sub-prime crisis hit America, those markets took fright, and stopped lending to anything that looked like it might be over-exposed to the housing market. Northern Rock was an obvious first casualty. The BBC broke the news that it needed Bank of England support 10 years ago tomorrow, and the day after there were queues outside branches, the first run on a British bank in 150 years. After limping on for a few more months, Northern Rock was nationalised in February 2008. Much the same happened to me in the late eighties of the last century as regards the Pyramid Building Society. It is always interesting when the imaginary worlds of the bankers and financiers collide at last with reality is it not? Footleball was at the root of it all in that case. Run a mile from it kc! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 2:28:45 GMT -5
The credit crunch probably started in America at the end of 2006. This then spread across other global financial markets like wildfire. It became impossible to borrow money from banks and financial institutions, particularly if your credit history was poor, Alistair. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Uncle Henry!
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Post by ahinton on Sept 13, 2017 6:00:34 GMT -5
The credit crunch probably started in America at the end of 2006. This then spread across other global financial markets like wildfire. It became impossible to borrow money from banks and financial institutions, particularly if your credit history was poor, Alistair. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Uncle Henry! The trouble with that homily is that it is impossible to subscribe to the former part of it, since every nation is indebted to others and some employers are in debt to their lenders, so whether or not an individual borrows directly, he/she is a citizen of a borrowing nation and his/her employer might likewise be in debt. It's hard to say exactly when the global financial crisis that reared itelf during the last decade actually arose - and, of course, it didn't happen overnight - but you might well be correct in presuming that it commenced several months earlier than is generally assumed. What's perhaps so remarkable is how very few journalists predicted it; Gillian Tett, one of today's finest financial journalists, seems to have been pretty much out on a limb when she warned of it in UK's Financial Times. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2017 20:15:57 GMT -5
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Post by Uncle Henry on Sept 16, 2017 21:11:00 GMT -5
>> "the long hangover from the financial crisis of 2007-9."
Many members have not yet realised that the age in which we live is just the beginning of the end for "money". In fifty years' time or so it (money) will at last have gone and all males will have become as far as possible equal.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2017 21:47:43 GMT -5
If I may address your point about the end of money directly, Uncle Henry: >> "the long hangover from the financial crisis of 2007-9." Many members have not yet realised that the age in which we live is just the beginning of the end for "money". In fifty years' time or so it (money) will at last have gone and all males will have become as far as possible equal. You are probably right, Uncle Henry, but probably not for the reason you imagine. A credit card is not money, Alistair. It is a means by which an individual can obtain validation of his promise to pay. So that what the bank is doing is in a way helping the person who wants to sell something to the individual whose credit card that is, to validate that the person actually has the resources to meet the obligation to pay. So if you like it’s more like an I owe you, but where the ‘I’ is backed up by the word of the commercial bank that tells the ‘you’ that you can take the credit card because the person has resources to pay and will in fact do so. This is one way in which using technology you can speed up the time in which when someone says, ‘Well I promise to pay you in the future’, you can somehow ensure that that will actually happen by using electronic payments. And it does mean that, in terms of the future, if everyone were able to make every transaction through a credit card, then would you actually need money in the conventional sense at all? I think the ways in which the card is constructed is very much between the bank and the customer. And clearly the banks that have issued such cards have seen an advantage in setting up the transactions in a way that their customers will be more likely to accept. And of course the importance of this is that, as in all types of money or cards used to finance transactions, the acceptability, the trust which the other side of the transaction puts in it is paramount. If I could give a different example which I think illustrates the importance of trust here. When Argentina had its financial collapse, and reneged on its national debt, in the 1990s, the currency became worthless. And in some of the villages of Argentina the use of IOUs as a substitute for paper currency started to grow up. But, the problem with the IOU is that the U has to trust the I. And that may not always be the case. So what happened was that in the villages some of them would take the IOU to the local priest and ask him to endorse it. And the priest, where he felt that he could judge the character of the person who was owing the money, making the promise, would do so, and the person receiving it would be confident that the person making that promise would certainly not want to renege on a promise that he had made to the local priest. Now here we have an example in terms of the use of religion which was not fundamentally about religion as such, but which was about enhancing the trust that people had in the instrument that was being used. So what are you going to replace money with, Uncle Henry? Well, you could try a credit card instead. It is just as acceptable in London as it is in Tasmania. And you don't need to pay in any particular currency as your bank will automatically convert it for you. So do you have a credit card, Uncle Henry? A mobile phone would probably also do for most transactions these days as well. Do you pay your bills using your smart phone, Alistair?  BBC - Radio 4 - A History of the World in 100 objects - A credit card |
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