News Banks getting fooked

[Raven]

I think the Daily Mash have done a good job in explaining how best to do things

The Daily Mash - Small firms urged to sell stuff to bankers

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/tories-get-100%25-of-funding-from-people-who-don%27t-like-socialism-201102093525/


Capitalism >>> Socialism

 

[andeh]

All tory right wing twats see my sig

"The Treasury now forecasts total social security payments in 2009/10 to be £186 billion – a quarter of all Government spending and more than is received by Government in income tax and corporation tax combined. At a time of economic crisis, this is not sustainable." - from the telegraph, if you care to look harder i'm sure more concrete statistics will be available.

It is perfectly reasonable to object to the ridiculous amounts paid out to the feckless & lazy. In an economic system dependant on growth, these people are a liability and should be treated as such.

 

[tierk]

Just read this article, which talks about the hidden benefits that banks are getting from the government.

Banks' hidden subsidies worth £32bn a year - Business News, Business - The Independent

The parts that really interested me where:

The first it calls the "too big to fail subsidy". It said because banks are effectively underwritten by the state, they effectively save £30bn annually in borrowing costs that companies without state guarantees have to pay.

This concept of too big fail is, as a Director in an international company with over 400 branches worldwide, a complete nonsense. If you cant keep your company solvent you go bankrupt. GM did and i am sure 100's of thousands of companies are faced with it or have suffered it.

The second hidden subsidy was dubbed the "make the customer pay subsidy" by the NEF, which calculated it to be worth at least £2.5bn a year. This represents the high rates of interest charged to borrowers by the banks in order to rebuild their capital

So in effect, the General public and the rest of the business community at large get the pleasure of paying through their respective arse's twice, once to bail the banks out and then OTT charges to help them make even more for money which they themselves are borrowing from us - indirectly - anyway.

The final subsidy comes from the Bank of England's "quantitative easing" programme, designed to stimulate the economy. The foundation says: "Merely for being passive conduits for this risk-free arrangement, the banks made more money, taking a cut of every trade. Here we find that they enjoyed a significant windfall, simply by being there, but that the failure to disclose sufficient information keeps the likely amount hidden.

Which makes a nonsense of the idea that not all banks received handouts from the government - Barclays for example - as this makes it clearvia indirect means.

Someone ealier in the thread made the point that the banks are entitled to pay out bonuses that people find unpleasant, to put it mildly, because they are private companies. If that is the case they why on earth should the government be bailing the industry out for? You don't see the government jumping in to save Mr Patels Cornershop if he is facing the wall?

They should have left them to the free market just like any other business, the shit ones would have sunk like a stone and the good ones would still be here.

They should also reform the entire Financial Services Industry as well.

Banks should be forced to separate Retail Banking from Investment Banking, you are either one or the other not both.

As for the bonuses, :lol: Talk about taking the piss.

 

[Ormorof]

"The Treasury now forecasts total social security payments in 2009/10 to be £186 billion – a quarter of all Government spending and more than is received by Government in income tax and corporation tax combined. At a time of economic crisis, this is not sustainable." - from the telegraph, if you care to look harder i'm sure more concrete statistics will be available.

It is perfectly reasonable to object to the ridiculous amounts paid out to the feckless & lazy. In an economic system dependant on growth, these people are a liability and should be treated as such.

the "feckless & lazy" (i assume you are talking about people who are unemployed and cant be arsed to work) account for less than 1% of welfare payments... a lot of the stats being thrown around as "fraud" also include mistakes made by government officials and account for a huge amount of the "fraud", so i guess they are the real "feckless & lazy"

the actual amount you get if you are made unemployed is very low (approx £50 a week, which is absolutely nothing)

then you run into problems like "the new deal" crap, meaning you are excluded from alot jobs and/or training until you have been unemployed for 6 months

so you might find the perfect job, and they might think you are the perfect candidate, but they cant hire you until you have been unemployed for 6+ months, such a sensible system!

 

[Nate]

I'm sure this is just misunderstanding on my part as I don't really pay a lot of attention to all this lark but ch3t, the general population had to pay for banks that messed up like northern rock. Why did they all have to pay for something they had nothing to do with? Now it's a big deal that banks are having to do a similar thing? Or am I missing something?

 

[old.Tohtori]

Ormorof don't be silly, everyone who is unemployed is lazy, simply won't get a job(vecause there's 10 for everyone) and the only reason they are unemployed is because they f*Cked up any job they might have had

 

[Nate]

Banks should be forced to separate Retail Banking from Investment Banking, you are either one or the other not both.

That's what the Americans have been doing for a while now, and I'm pretty sure it's in the works for England. We used to have Building Societies which was a similar thing, but they all decided to become banks as there was more money in it.

 

[Bugz]

The government bailed out the banks because without banks you have no economy. The power of politics comes in convincing people that you are doing them a favour, when really you are doing what is necessary.

You can't point the blame solely on the banks for the Great Recession. You will also need to point it at the consumers and the government.

Banks will always feel the brunt of panic in the economy. Why? Because they deal in invisible money. You only have to look at the US during September 2008, where $290bn was withdrawn from money market funds over a weekend amid panic and speculation and how the banks and Fed responsed.

Take a look at some websites on the money multiplier, money-creation and so on. A lot of US banks worked with the smallest fraction of reserves they could get away with amongst growing pressure to 'mutliply' the growth they [the country] were enjoying. It is no doubt a housing boom developed there (and here).

 

[Himse]

Gonna be a joke.

To be honest, the Banks will all just end up moving out of England.

It won't work because the head's of the banks aren't stupid, they'll just find another loophole and they'll probably pay even less tax.

 

[Wij]

the "feckless & lazy" (i assume you are talking about people who are unemployed and cant be arsed to work) account for less than 1% of welfare payments... a lot of the stats being thrown around as "fraud" also include mistakes made by government officials and account for a huge amount of the "fraud", so i guess they are the real "feckless & lazy"

the actual amount you get if you are made unemployed is very low (approx £50 a week, which is absolutely nothing)

then you run into problems like "the new deal" crap, meaning you are excluded from alot jobs and/or training until you have been unemployed for 6 months

so you might find the perfect job, and they might think you are the perfect candidate, but they cant hire you until you have been unemployed for 6+ months, such a sensible system!

Newsnight covering this (ish...)

BBC News - Newsnight - UK needs to adopt tough US stance on earning welfare

Also, not trolling but where did the 1% figure come from ?

 

[Ormorof]

Tax evasion costs Treasury 15 times more than benefit fraud - New Model Adviser® Edition - Citywire

Based predominantly on 2008 data, the National Fraud Authority’s first ever Annual Fraud Indicator found fraud against the public sector accounts for 58% of the total fraud in the UK per year.

Tax evasion is around 3% of total tax liabilities, while benefit fraud accounts for 0.8% of total benefit expenditure.

when you consider that its around £1 billion its still quite alot, but compared to some figures of big business tax evasion being between £30 - 150 billion depending on if you read Telegraph or Guardian

I also did a study on this for an Economics module some years ago, I have switched PC's 3-4 times since then though so cant find my references

but the gist was the government was spending millions reducing benefit fraud as a scapegoat, with little effect, labour did it and now its the conservatives turn to bash the unemployed

 

[Wij]

Tax evasion costs Treasury 15 times more than benefit fraud - New Model Adviser® Edition - Citywire



when you consider that its around £1 billion its still quite alot, but compared to some figures of big business tax evasion being between £30 - 150 billion depending on if you read Telegraph or Guardian

I also did a study on this for an Economics module some years ago, I have switched PC's 3-4 times since then though so cant find my references

but the gist was the government was spending millions reducing benefit fraud as a scapegoat, with little effect, labour did it and now its the conservatives turn to bash the unemployed

That really depends how they measure benefit fraud. Also people in general aren't talking just about fraud. The example of the healthy enough people who never have to work under current rules isn't fraud. People still don't like it though. Apples and Oranges perhaps ?

 

[liloe]

And of course they will not hand down the increased costs to their customers or employees.

 

[ford prefect]

The last three independent reports commissioned by the department of works and pensions puts benefit fraud at between 4 - 6%, and the government will be cutting benefit payments by approximately 25% (disgusting imo, but there we go) in the next three years - but I have been through all that in at least two other threads. It really has very little to do with the subject at hand. Fraudulent benefit payments (or benefit payments as a whole) are nothing compared to the figures we are talking about here.

Back on subject - what with this being a unhealthy gross increase in lending instead of a nice healthy net increase and inflation at the level that it is, and the proposed tax increase to go along with it - the number of small to medium businesses that took up loans in good faith in the past five or ten years or so are going to be the ones to suffer in the long run. Sure some new businesses may get a boost from this proposition, but only at the expense of others going under. Ultimately it can only increase unemployment in the long term.