Brown Promises Banking Clear Up

JP45

leveller2911 wrote: »

Its normal and proper for people to admit failings, its what makes us human, I agree it doesn't cure the problem but Brown just stinks of "its not my fault".

It has been known that even American presidents say sorry, but I guess they are bigger than that,or is it lower??...


This is one of the reasons that I have become so disenchanted with Brown.

As you point out, even American presidents have been known to say sorry. Indeed, Obama has only been in office a couple of months and has already gone on air to acknowledge that he 'screwed up' over the appointment of Tom Daschle as Health Secretary.

Contrast that with Brown. He has been in office for over 11 years and I have yet to hear him apologise or accept responsibility for anything that's gone wrong during that whole period.

As a former Cabinet Secretary pointed out, he has a Macavity-like tendency to disappear from the scene of any crime. During his many years as Chancellor, there were frequent complaints aired in the Press from Cabinet colleagues who were clearly frustrated that they were having to take the flack for an initiative that had effectively been imposed on them by the Treasury.

I also recall a very illuminating account from the MP Frank Field of a meeting at which Field had dared to disagree with Brown. After the meeting, Brown had apparently cold-shouldered Field. So Field asked Brown what was wrong, to which Brown allegedly responded along the lines of if you disagree with me then you're no friend of mine. Not exactly the response of a mature, healthy, well-balanced personality.

Conrad

Ministers will remain ineffectual - just look at thier oversight of Freds severance package.

They are always behind the curve.
I bet the Banks will simply set up shell companies abroad to carry on the party.

matthewcb

As we've become accustomed to with New Labour, we should measure them by their actions, not empty words.

It would do Brown a lot of credit if he just admitted mistakes, apologised and concentrated on improving things rather than desperately looking for a short term fix that will save his political skin.

However, Brown seems pathologically incapable of admitting he's ever made a mistake. I heard Boris Johnson this morning apologising for the snow fiasco, and while I'm no apologist for him, it was refreshing to hear someone acknowledge their responsibility and accept blame.

Jennifer_Jane

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Fun though partisan bickering can be, it does get a little tired when vomited out at every possible occasion. Regardless of who wins the next election or who you support (and frankly I couldn't give a toss right now - in the current climate 15 months is an eon away), we still have to fix this thing, and this is where some of you seem disconnected with reality.

Even setting aside the discussions about how much debt we have and hat is sustainable, we are still faced with a global recession and a global banking crash which only a global solution can truly fix. Yes local level policy is important, but unless the global economy comes back to life its just tinkering around the edges.

So the reality is that things have to be done internationally. We are lucky in that Gordon Brown - whether you like him or not - is a global player that others talk to. He's in Brussels right now at the emergency conference dealing with Eastern Europe's Eur180bn (or somewhere in that region) aid request to rescue not a banking crisis but their whole economies that have collapsed.

Then he's off to Washington. Never mind who is first in to see Obama, they've asked him to address a joint session of Congress. Not the usual treatment for a visiting head of state. So Brown is in play to work on the global restructure of capitalism that is to play out this summer. Whatever you think of him, you all want him to deliver (unless you truly want the economy here to crash....?), so as the OP raised the question, what do you want this to look like?

There seems to be a disconnect with many of you between your partisan rhetoric (and as someone who spouts his own, some of it is truly first rate!) and the reality on the ground. You may not like the fact that this is a global event, but it is. You may not like the fact that banking regulation has failed almost universally at pretty much the same time, but it has. You may be unhappy to concede that our banks like most countries banks have entangled themselves in a global web of debt way outside the reach of UK regulation, but they have.

So here we are. Put aside the "Brown this" and "Brown that" and look at the reality. Did not having Brown save any of the other countries in this mess? Did not having a Labour government and ideology save the right-wing governments? Brown may well be all the names under the sun, but one man cannot create a global catastrophe in capitalism. So, do you want him to fix it or don't you? because the reality is like him or loath him he remains PM until next June, and is a global player with influence. Do we use that or lose that?

Rochdale Pioneer, it really is time for you to realise that the US and the UK have exported this banking crisis/recession to the rest of the world, and that the world didn't magically just go into recession all at one time. The impact on the poor people of the world cannot be exaggerated.

I've posted this before, and it is, in fact, a bit of a hobby-horse, but here is the South African 2009 Budget speech, where the South African Finance Minister clearly says that recession has been brought into developing countries by developed countries:

A global economic crisis
The global economy is experiencing a sharp downturn, spreading from developed to
developing countries. Its origins lie in macroeconomic imbalances of an unprecedented
scale. An accumulation of debt by firms and households in some countries has been
matched by an extraordinary rise in export earnings and savings in other regions.
Behind these flows are millions of savers and lenders, linked through a financial
architecture of such complexity that neither accounting standards nor regulatory
oversight have served their intended purposes: prudential banking rules have been
overwhelmed by folly and fraud, masquerading as financial innovation.
This is a cycle that has played itself out periodically – economic historian Karl Polanyi,
sixty-five years ago, provided a classic account of how a utopian faith in self-regulation
has led repeatedly to exuberances of this kind in the rise and fall of market economies.
The consequences are felt everywhere. If the balance sheet of a bank shrinks, its
capacity to lend is eroded. If its lending is curtailed, businesses and households have
to reduce their spending. If demand falls in Birmingham, factories close in Beijing. If
production lines in China slow, demand for commodities from Africa dries up. The
vegetable shop next to the mine closes, and the drivers of the delivery vehicles are
asked to work short time, on half pay, and if the driver cannot pay his mortgage, the
bank forecloses on his bond, and the bank writes down its balance sheet again...
When a global motor company cuts back on making cars, it cancels its orders for
catalytic converters. Madam Speaker, this firm making catalytic converters is not in
Detroit or in Shanghai, it is here in the Eastern Cape. The mine producing the platinum
that goes into that converter is near Rustenburg. The worker in the factory in Uitenhage
and the mineworker in Rustenburg are now without work. And the woman who runs the
little stall selling vegetables outside the mine is making less money each passing week.
And their families, all of them, face a future made more precarious by the vagaries of
global finance.
http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents...ech/speech.pdf

These fat-cat greedy bankers and the Bush/Brown Governments are going to be responsible for enormous hardship around the World. And to have to watch your defending Labour and ignoring the wider picture is making me sad and angry.

Jen

Oblivion

matthewcb wrote: »

As we've become accustomed to with New Labour, we should measure them by their actions, not empty words.

It would do Brown a lot of credit if he just admitted mistakes, apologised and concentrated on improving things rather than desperately looking for a short term fix that will save his political skin.

However, Brown seems pathologically incapable of admitting he's ever made a mistake. I heard Boris Johnson this morning apologising for the snow fiasco, and while I'm no apologist for him, it was refreshing to hear someone acknowledge their responsibility and accept blame.

I don't disagree with the sentiment Matthew, but in the real harsh world we all now face, those three words "I am Sorry" come very cheap and are now debased in the light of the so-called bankers' 'apologies'. If Clown said it tomorrow it would carry no credulity.

This cretin is totally discredited at every level of human thinking. The only way forward is for Clown and his worthless government to resign.

Dave.