When Bankers Were Good: BBC2 Tues 9pm

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

There we go, any criticism of Bankers and Bendix is in like a shot .

Come on, play the ball not the man old chap.

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

Come on, play the ball not the man old chap.

Just an observation.

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

Just an observation.

If you post it once it's an observation IMHO. You seem to bang on that drum quite a lot.

Perhaps Bendix is simply tired of the lazy banker bashing that often passes for economic debate. I find it pretty annoying myself.

purch

It would be nice if there could be a generally agreed definition of what a "Banker" is, before they are bashed !!

Does the term encompass every employee of a Bank ??

I am perfectly happy to "bash" anyone, Banker or not of whom it can be shown they were reckless, or greedy, or both and directly culpable for causing harm to the system.

But the continuing use of the generic term Banker is ridiculous :eek:

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

If you post it once it's an observation IMHO. You seem to bang on that drum quite a lot.

Perhaps Bendix is simply tired of the lazy banker bashing that often passes for economic debate. I find it pretty annoying myself.

So you have noticed as well I may be able to accept the 'tired of the lazy banker bashing' if he hadn't been at it since day one

John_Pierpoint

When I were a lad, there were two sorts of banks in London.
Clearing banks, boring banks, run by "Mannering" types, who thought issuing post dated cheques, was akin to advocating incest.
Merchant banks, buccaneering banks, able to make fortunes by taking positions and engineering changes in the economy, here and round the world.
Most people had no idea what the latter type of banker did for a living and I only knew one person whose dad was on the periphery of that world.

Somewhere (big bang?) it became possible for clearing banks to intermingle depositors money with the high risk funds and there was a massive increase in money, able to slosh about globally.
This money was created by central banks on behalf of deficit funding politicians and eagerly multiplied up by the commission chasing banking system.

So we have ended up with a world where in the (say) foreign exchange market, there is far more money moving about than the volume of underlying real physical world trade.

This money is looking for perceived imbalances in the world economy and, driven by greed and competition, descends on weakened, possibly bloated societies, rips them to pieces ready for reconstruction.

It is like watching a packs of wolves attacking a flock of fat or sick sheep.

Perhaps we have a world economy with rather too many packs of wolves but I am sure we also have too many fat sheep, who have been over grazing the pastures.
Eventually we will get to a situation where the still fat wolves run out of sheep and we then have dog eat dog.

In the meantime I think it makes sense to be in a healthy well horned flock of sheep in the land of the wolves, rather than drive out all the wolves to other lands, from where they will return to attack the unsuspecting flock.

Has anyone got a better system for organising the balance between wolves and sheep?

Is there a way of setting standards for wolf behaviour.

What about sheep behaviour is that more heinous?

bendix

Generali wrote: »

If you post it once it's an observation IMHO. You seem to bang on that drum quite a lot.

Perhaps Bendix is simply tired of the lazy banker bashing that often passes for economic debate. I find it pretty annoying myself.

I don't defend bankers. I attack those who jump onto an intellectually lazy bandwagon that stipulates that all bankers (whatever that phrase means) are evil - for christsakes, my post on this thread was prompted by a childish claim that bankers don't believe in heaven! Pointing out the absurdity and intellectualy vacuity of such a claim actually damages the anti-bank lobby, not helps it.

It's childish and pathetic.

If I bang on about this point a lot, it's simply an attempt to raise the level of debate away from the gutter. It's a tired mechanism to appear cool and right-on. Yeah, man, hate the bankers. Go for it.

As someone else on this thread says, how about we start defining what we mean by bankers first, and then when we've done that how about we accept that there are some !!!!!! in that group, and that some are decent people too?

Rather like priests, politicians, policemen, fireman, council workers, students and every other form of human life, irrespective of race, creed, nationality and, yes, occupation etc etc etc

bendix

purch wrote: »

I am perfectly happy to "bash" anyone, Banker or not of whom it can be shown they were reckless, or greedy, or both and directly culpable for causing harm to the system.

Reckless, greedy or both could be accusations aimed at just about every portion of society over the last two decades, including consumers, lenders, politicians, the welfare state, unions and even the right.

So why single out one occupation to bash?

vivatifosi

purch wrote: »

I am perfectly happy to "bash" anyone, Banker or not of whom it can be shown they were reckless, or greedy, or both and directly culpable for causing harm to the system.

I don't think the use of the generic term banker is bad when used to talk about a profession, but I do agree that any argument that suggests all bankers are bad is as crazy as the arguments that pop up from time to time that all baby boomers are bad, or all BTL'rs are bad.

Personally I am looking forward to the programme a) because I've heard good things about Hislop's WW1 outing and have high hopes for this, and b) because it will be a nice change to see the Rothschild family being portrayed as something other than shape-shifting lizards (and yes, I am well aware that they are known philanthropists even today, a point that sadly is not widely taken on round here).

Kennyboy66

bendix wrote: »

Reckless, greedy or both could be accusations aimed at just about every portion of society over the last two decades, including consumers, lenders, politicians, the welfare state, unions and even the right.

So why single out one occupation to bash?

"Even the right" - heaven forbid.

Surely even the most rapid right winger would struggle to blame the unions for the mess we are in.

Why single out the bankers ?

Well all the other groups have been dealt some form of punishment, Labour voted out of office and Browns historic legacy will be an almighty mess.
Plenty of consumers have been punished, particulalrly those who have lost their jobs or homes.
Bank shareholders have taken plenty of punishment.

Where exactly is the punishment for the likes of Fred Goodwin or Andy Hornby ?

Massive payoffs or further chief executive roles follow, with an attidute of "I'm just a victim of circumstance" rather than any responsibility or culpability.

I don't want any ludicrous transaction taxes but would like to see proper competition in the banking sector as well as a long term end to subsidies to them.

The only way to achieve this is splitting retail from investment banking and the break up of the largest retail banks (starting with Lloyds).

As the banks continue to lobby against this (aided by their lickspittle friends, whose default position is 'nothing to do with them guv'), I struggle to see why they shouldn't take their share of flak.