Goodwin Vs Darling & Crash

Wookster

Goodwin has taken such a pounding. It seems that his crime was taking too much risk and not recognising that the credit bubble could burst.

Crash Alastair Darling, Mervyn King et. al. seem to have got off scot free, yet they utterly failed to to see see the same risk either (inspite of many many warnings). Furthermore Crash installed the regulatory system that was meant to keep the ship steady, his mantra was "light touch regulation".

Why is it that Goodwin & Alan Hornby (despite only being CEO of Hbos for 2 years) seem to bearing the brunt of government castigation. (James Crosby, who we all know has escaped almost unscathed for despite being CEO of Hbos for 6 years before Alan Hornby iirc).

Convenient scape goats I think.

Will Crash, AD & Mervyn be giving up their pensions as well?

ad9898_3

To be honest, Goodwin is a scapegoat, taking the heat off Brown for a few days, although to anyone with a modicum of intellect, they are one and the same, gamblers, one gambled with a bank, the other is gambling with the country and it's future. Both are a disgrace.

As far as Goodwin is concerned, I bet Nick Leeson is well p*ssed off, he got jailed, Goodwin gets paid 12k+ a week for the rest of his life.

Sir_Humphrey

Goodwin is being used as a diversion, but to claim that the head of RBS is just a scapegoat is ludicrous.

Kez100

There are so many big stories of incompetence, it is easy to find a worthy one to push to the fore, and the others get lost in the ether. He is not a scapegoat, just headline of the day. There is no one person to blame for this but he is one of them.

Of the many to blame, there are also the regulators. The worrying thing is that our regulators appear only to be regulators of the little man, while they can say, "I'm big you're small I'm right you're wrong" Once the party they are regualting is bigger than they are and the Government on their side, there are no regulators.

I just cannot believe how big the numbers are becoming while no one is really investigating properly. Is it all so big that there is no one who would be prepared to investigate? Where does it all end?

purch

The bottom line has to be that Goodwin & Hornsby both took the position, the salary and the bonus so the buck has to stop with them.

Probably in all reality they had very little knowledge of what was actually happening, and also in all reality they were totally underqualified for the positions they held, but that cannot excuse them from taking responsibilty.

The responsibility of the Government, Bank of England and Regulators are all separate matters, and whilst they are also culpable, each should be looked at in isolation, not all lumped together and blamed collectively.

Kez100

Yes, you are right. Individuals are to blame for individual matters. The coinciding of their incompetences have each - to a different degree - caused and/or added to this mess we are in today.

John_Pierpoint

It is not often that I find myself agreeing with "The beast of Bolsover" but his suggestion that Sir Fred's pension fund should be made a self select private pension stuffed with the investments he selected, sounds about right.

He would still be a lot better off than the people his actions will reduce to poverty and he still has (say) 20 years to go out and do a proper job to earn a pension with real money.

mrposhman

Call me a sceptic but am I the only one who thinks this "leak" has come at a good time for the government.

I think it was earlier this week that the head of the regulator claimed that it was not in their mantra to make the checks they should have been making and their model for regulation was wrong. Who sets that mantra and the model?? Why that was uncle gordon wasn't it???

It seems all rather helpful that this has come out shortly after whereby this news is buried in the papers behind the "scandal" of Fred Goodwin.

Kez100

I am still confused why people think this leak is good for the Government? Most of the stuff around at the moment - doesn;t matter what it is - makes the Government look b*****y incompetent.

mrposhman

ah yes but maybe its the story that makes them the least incompetent?

Kez100

I don't think so. I don't think the choice of headline is a Government conspiracy. The choice is that this story is more accessible to the newspaper buying public.

Squealing about someone getting a £700k pension when the man in the street gets little or nothing or is likely to lose his job, will sell far more papers than moaning about the FSA (a lot of newspaper readers probably never even knew who the FSA were before this blew up)

IMO it is all a media ratings and paper sales. The FSA story was boring and a few more banking bailout billions, so what? the number is so big now we have lost interest. (I know we are not bored of it but we are not a normal cross section of society).