Icesave/Kaupthing - is Martin to blame?

lix_2

MacPherson wrote: »

I watched Jon Snow interview Martin about Ice Save last night.

I felt Snow made a nasty, personal and unnecessary attack on Martin. I did take a cash ISA on the back of Martin's tips but I accept that it was completely my decision. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Maybe that's the real reason behind the credit crunch - everyone seems to have forgotten what it is.....

Personally I thought Jon was doing his job as a journalist. He was putting forward the opinion voiced by a fair number of people on these very forums and he offered Martin a right to reply.

Unfortunately, you must consider that whilst many of us do our own research before taking out recommended products and continue to monitor the financial news to find the best place for our money, some people may not have heeded that advise. They need to be told how to do everything and when to do it. You probably work or have worked with someone who behaves like this.

I think Martin's positioning of himself as a 'trusted consumer champion' makes him vulnerable to this sort of criticism; some people view him as more of an IFA than a helpful bloke who can show you how to save a few quid. Perhaps a reminder to D.Y.O.R. should be displayed more prominently on the site when articles are discussing financial products, maybe as a mandatory click-through page complete with a disclaimer which is displayed when a user clicks on a referral link?

Sledgehead

I'd like to broaden out the topic here. There are many inter-related and inter-locked issues that have com eto a head to produce the "real-world" effects of Icesave. If we are talking culpability we really must examine the wider issues.

The OP uses the provocative title "Icesave/Kaupthing - is Martin to blame?". Well, insofar as he wasn't a bank ceo / regulator / politician, clearly not. But I'd like to take a more holistic approach, if you'll bear with me. You see, whilst you lot were learning how to flog your old mobile phones (I still have the one I bought 5 years ago), some of us were worried about real money. And one day, who should show up to tell us how to "save" money?

From 2005, HousePriceCrash.co.uk - Martin's Promo:

Need To Save, But Don't Know How? Itv1 Needs You!, Financial Help from a top expert.

Do you always try to provide the best for your family, but your finances sometimes stand in the way?

MAKE ME RICH is a brand new series for ITV1. Financial guru Martin Lewis is offering a once in a lifetime opportunity. With a little savvy shopping, he will uncover thousands of pounds of savings, that would otherwise have gone into the coffers of your bank or been swallowed up by your mobile phone supplier or water company.

We have filmed a pilot show where Martin managed to save the Potts family over £8000 !!

We are looking for couples who fulfil the following criteria to take part:

• Do you dream of seeing your family that have emigrated?
• Would you like to have the money saved to build that much needed extension/conversion/kitchen?
• Do you want to get on the property ladder and buy your first house?
• Would you like to start your own business? But don’t have the cash saved to get it off the ground!
• Are you keen to have either a first baby or another baby but feel that at the moment just can't afford to go for it?
• Do you dream of taking your family on a holiday abroad but can't find the cash?
• Are you engaged to be married but can't afford to have the big wedding of your dreams?
• Have you wracked up credit card bills over the years and are now worried about how you are going to afford the expensive Christmas presents the kids are expecting?
• Are you freelance and spend money when you have it but also when you don’t?

If you fulfil any of these criteria or have another dream you would like to fulfil with Martin's help, please contact Jacqueline Mellor on either [EMAIL="jacquelinem@uniquecomms.com"]jacquelinem@uniquecomms.com[/EMAIL] or 0161 8745721

Here's what we said in reply:

Bear Goggles Replies:

You've obviously not spent any time reading any of the posts on this forum!! WE ARE THE SAVERS

Try the "I'm in debt and financially iliterate" forums.

Andrew McP replies:

many out there in ITV-land won't be aware that in order to save money you have to... and I'll type this slowly just in case I lose anyone in the complex explanation... s p e n d l e s s t h a n y o u e a r n.

Van replies

What a crock. In the end it comes down to NOT SPENDING WHAT YOU HAVEN'T GOT! That means cutting a few corners and making do without every once in a while. Shop around, be creative. In the end, YOU know best what you can and can't do without, and don't need Mr Lewis or any other !!!! telling you what and what not to spend you money on -that's if you REALLY want to make the change.

People who need other people to show them how to save money deserve to continue losing it.

Martin retorts:

Dear House Price Crash Forum Members Above,

I have to be honest I'm more than a little surprised at the vehemence shown above. ..

What shocked me is the complete closed mindedness and generalisation. ..

The idea that I do 'stop spending' as a solution to saving money is laughable, and i assumed HPCers were more savvy than that.

MoneySaving is all about taking on big companies and not letting them rip cash out of your pockets, ... free mortgage brokers, ..., stoozing (if you're up to it) etc.

.. my own site has roughly 30 times the traffic of HPC anyway, ..

Martin (preparing to be flamed!)

Sledgehead replies :

Martin,

forgive me for speaking plainly. You claim to be the "Uk's ONLY money saving expert."

I see that you intend to show no features on investment. I find this perplexing. Investing is the inflation proofed side of saving, yet as the UK's only money saving expert you ignore it. Indeed, it would appear that your definition of saving revolves entirely around consuming, even when facilitated by debt. Isn't this so obviously the antithesis of saving?

To me this is just so much more of the 1984 speak we have all become so used to. War is peace, occupation is freedom, bubbles & crashes are "no more boom & bust", costs are investmets and now, consuming (all be it more responsibly) is saving.

I forsee a future of finacially illiterate debtors, who when surveyed as to whether they are regular savers reply in the vein of : "Yes, I save 10% everytime I buy with this clubcard."

Surely Martin, if you are the UK's expert on anything it has to be borrowing & spending. C'mon, come clean. The savers here will respect you all the more for it!

To which Martin replied:

OK last reply.... but after this if you want to ask a question, then please come to my site.

I don't know where you're coming from to be honest. "Money Saving" not Savings Expert. My speciality is 'how to save money" not "how to save". To be honest the term Money Saving is now a copyrighted one, and with 1,000,000 people using the site a month a recognised term.

I define it as "how to cut your bills without cutting back". As for investing of course its worthwhile, but you'll find countless times on my site and when asked i say "im not an expert in it" and i never claim to be.

An expert in borrowing and spending yes, plus budgetting, saving (but not investing) and system playing. MoneySaving has become a term in its own right. I think you may have thought i was on about perhaps Savings not saving money.

martin

So, what can we draw from all this?

1 ) Martin says he's a money saving expert;
2 ) Martin says he's no expert when it comes to saving;
3 ) Martin is happy to perpetuate the commonly held myth that you can save by spending.
4 ) Martin says he's an expert in debt;

And therin lies his real culpability. People like Martin and his peers have been responsible for pushing the message that we could have it all: take advantage of bog-offs (or as he would put it "save") not so that you could save the money not spent, but so that you could spend the discount on other tat. Get a 0% credit card, not for the purposes of saving the interest, but as a means to buy even more tat. Get the best interest rate AT ALL COSTS so as to be able to buy even more tat again. None of his "money saving" excercises amounted to saving. They amounted having a higher standard of living. Sounds like semantics? Well, just look at the household debt figures : £1.4Tn before the 0.4Tn bailout we just forked out for today. People have forgotten what saving really is. Is there any surprise when the country's "Only money saving expert" is no expert on saving but is an expert when it comes to debt?

This all matters hugely. Our casual acceptance of debt and consumerism over saving fro teh future is THE REASON why we, as tax payers, have been asked to inject £20,000 per household into UK banks. It is THE reason why bank after bank has found itself in deep trouble . It is THE REASON why Icesave has found itself unable to stand behind its commitments to UK savers. And it is THE REASON why we now face a decade of slump.


So Martin was no expert on savings. He wasn't to know the internal machinations of the banks. But here is something he did know:

What Martin also said :

I have many times cautioned about house prices on air. In fact if you search this very forum you will see discussions about it.

You can read in the archive of my blog my frustration about the assumption that "house prices will always rise"

I never predict house prices, I'm a specialist in best product and playing the system, not futurology. Yet i do believe we are close to the 'greater fool theory' where many have bought houses at unrealistic prices saying "i think a 'greater fool' than i will pay even more for it'.

These are things i have said many times on my regular current outlets, ITV news, Tonight with Trevor and Radio 2. I know you think there is some conspiracy out there - well there isn't. As for whether it will be in the programme I'm doing - who knows, i doubt it will come up that often as its not this particular subject, and i don't touch investment.

What there is, is production companies desperate to flog programmes about property. They search for propety experts who in almost every case work in the property industry and whose income is derived from the increase in house prices - this is why you get the unanimity.

Someone talks about financial !!!!!! replacing this. I've seen the trends on TV myself. One of the great problems is again TV progs look at financial advisers, who have their vested interest in perpetuating the financial serives industry. In my case i'm an ultra-specialised journalist.

Yes I have an agenda too but mine is 'consumer revenge', the motto for my work is "we spend our lives being screwed by companies for profit, i want to show you how to screw them back'. This very naturally means a lot of what i say puts me at odds with established finanacial services and property wisdom - yet i get more coverage than most.

TV doesn't really care it just wants interesting programmes. To be honest i've turned some down which i believed were unethical (alternatively you could argue i turned some down which went against what i normally say and i didn't want to impact my brand). I remember once being told "while we know you're the number one expert on this subject, we need an older woman to do it" and then brought in someone who really didn't have a clue.

So is there an agenda on the TV! Absolutely, but its nothing to do with property prices and trying to keep them up, it's more to do with where they recruit the presenters from.

What a shame he didn't use his profile to push that message instead of encouraging us to concentrate on making a couple of lousy bucks on free mortgage broking, eh? How different things might have been....

scompeti

pumpndump wrote: »

Or by putting it in a two-bit operation that promises the earth owned by a few amateurs in a pokey little country that makes its money out of selling fish?
."

No need for racism. No doubt icelanders have similar views on the UK.

Cloudane

Dan29 wrote: »

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1529573111/bclid1838545851/bctid1842740999

3'21" in.

Thanks.. quite interesting. Jon was quite ruthless! But Martin gave perfectly reasonable responses, I thought.

What keeps baffling me is how angry people are getting at him when they didn't even pay a penny for the 'advice'. What do you want people, a refund?

31May2008

Re: Martin's statement:

"My speciality is 'how to save money' not 'how to save'..."

Then he should describe himself as a 'money-saving expert' not a 'money saving expert'.

Perhaps he was off ill the day they taught compound adjectives at journalism school...

MrsMillar

Clearly Martin is not to blame. Icesave was recommended elsewhere also - the Money section in my Saturday paper certainly wrote articles about it, and no-one could have predicted what has happened. Anyone with more than 35K saved has probably been a little foolish (I know the limit is now 50K, but only since yesterday - were people really depositing 15K on Monday in readiness?!) Martin always recommended not putting more than 35K in any one institution.

I'd like to make one comment about the so-called "warnings" about the passport compensation scheme. Altho I read and understood that the compensation scheme was different, Martin's comments did not come across as a warning to me at all. It came across as a "reasssurance" (i.e.he seemed to be saying that it might look a bit different but really you'd be no worse off than with the standard compensation scheme). I therefore do not agree that we were in any way "warned" that the compensation scheme might be in some way dodgy or inferior. However, obviously Martin could never have known that the Icelandic part of the "guarantee" would not be worth the paper it was written on.

It's been a stressful week, but I will sleep better tonight knowing that the UK government will cover the Icelandic government's obligation.

wes88

For the record :

1. Jon Snow is the journalist.
2. Martin lewis is the businessman making a living from this website
3. His "reassuring advice" (or warning as he now calls it) was in the small print.


How many of you know that Martin Lewis was an affiliate of Icesave and effectively was paid for people signing up there? Not that many I bet ..

I personally think he should admit he has dropped a bollock and stop giving financial advice as he himslef says he is no expert and, as anyone in the City will tell you, bad financial advice is worse than no advice.

He does what he does well .. but that doesnt include any specialised kind of advice .. mainly good for persil offers and such like ... rather than the "whole financial life" expert he comes across as.

Just my 2c.

PS .. Has the Martin Lewis for a Knighthood cringe of a thread stopped for a break?

pumpndump

scompeti wrote: »

No need for racism. No doubt icelanders have similar views on the UK.

Racism is the belief [NOT shared by me] that one race is superior to another. It does not stretch as far as criticising another country's business practices, nor its politics. I have heard plenty of people criticising the heads of American banks lately. I suppose that's racism, too? Get a clue, Scompeti.

Captain_Mainwaring_2

centaurandrew wrote: »

Rubbish.

Martin is 100% not to blame.

That's just the point, "Martin" isn't anything except for a well marketed journalist who uses rather too much McDougals flour on his face when interviewed on crappy breakfast TV programs.

Unfortunatey he isn't qualified as a lawyer/accountant/ or even as a financial advisor - why does everyone put him on such a pedestal?

Caudle

I see that - at long last! - Kaupthing Edge is no longer Martin's top pick for instant access accounts. Better late than never I guess!

Yes we all have to take responsibility for our investment decisions, but the purpose of using a site like this is forn people without financial expertise to get some help from someone who has set himself up as an "expert"... hence the name of the site.

Has Martin said whether he himself put money into the likes of Icesave and/or Kaupthing Edge?