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Rules are there to be broken....if it saves your skin
Comments
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The banks have all the money, right?
TruckerT
Pretty much.
There are several measurements of the money supply. There is one known as M0 which is physical notes and coins. Then there is another known as M4 which is all sorts of money including cash held in bank accounts and credit.
The BoE publishes figures for both M0 and M4. The difference between the 2 figures is the money held in the banking system, put simply. If you google it th numbers are pretty readily available.
FWIW, I think insolvent banks should fail.0 -
Of course we can't take the IMF seriously
It can only ever be a consensus seeker, and a mechanism to divert money to areas where they can obtain agreement it must go
The tasks they are expected to undertake have always been beyond their ability and in the current economic environment impossible
Why anyone would expect them to have any answers is beyond me'In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are Consequences.'0 -
chewmylegoff wrote: »What were the IMF supposed to do. It's all very well having a set of rules designed to deal with a future situation, but the rules are written from a hypothetical standpoint. When a country is actually bust, particularly when it is a member of a single currency bloc, you have to deal with the situation at hand, I suppose.
The IMF could surely have forseen such an outcome as a possibility though?
Surely they could have calculated for such a possibility before it happened and written their rules to allow this?
Afterall, many "loons" could foresee such issues. Maybe not the exact details, but they saw issues ahead, so if the loons could see it, why couldn't the highly intellectual architects?0 -
Graham_Devon wrote: »The IMF could surely have forseen such an outcome as a possibility though?
Surely they could have calculated for such a possibility before it happened and written their rules to allow this?
Afterall, many "loons" could foresee such issues. Maybe not the exact details, but they saw issues ahead, so if the loons could see it, why couldn't the highly intellectual architects?
Because they are two busy writing unintelligible missives on why things went wrong and could be done better but seem unable to for cast that these things are highly likley to happen in the future.
They have a big lessons learned filing cabinet.
It is a lot easier to tell you how bad you are than tell you how to be good. It is also alot easier to be bad than good.
That and attending banquets and junkets around the globe strutting their stuff, for the term of office."If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future.".....
"big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas I prefer the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," "Arunachalam Muruganantham0 -
The banks have all the money, right?
TruckerT
Meaningless.
The banks hold a lot of YOUR and OUR and Businesses' money on our behalf. (most people and businesses don't keep their spare cash under the bed).
If banks fail then YOUR money is no longer available to you to pay your bills; similarly businesses will fail as THEIR money is not longer available to them to pay their supplier or their employees... a bit little Cyprus 'haircut' only lot worse.
So letting banks 'fail' in general would mean massive unemployment in the country and people lossing their homes etc.
So on balance, although it does preverse the principle of moral hazard, it would ruin lots of decent people and lots of valuable businesses.
Obviously in practice the government would have to bail out the situation as indeed it has done by keeping the banks afloat.0 -
The IMF is run and financed by politicians who obviously have political objectives.
Just like the EU is run by politician for political objectives.
Rules of the IMF and EU are either operative or non-opertive depending on the political circumstances.
So why are we surprised at them having political objectives?0 -
Meaningless......
The correct response.
The banks have all the money because, we define what the banks have as money. It's a bit like saying that pig farmers have all the pigs.If they didn't have any pigs they wouldn't be a pig farmer.:)...So, yet again, the banks handed over the costs of their business failure to the taxpayer, and walked away....
No, Greece's problem is (or was) Greek sovereign debt. The main 'business failure' that Greek banks encountered was buying Greek government bonds.:)0 -
In their twisted way of talking, the "debt burden" is carried not by the borrower but by the creditor."The prevarication also cost eurozone taxpayers dearly because during the two-year period between May 2010 and the summer of 2012, when a “haircut” was finally agreed, the debt burden had shifted from private banks to EU governments and the IMF"
So, yet again, the banks handed over the costs of their business failure to the taxpayer, and walked away.
The "business failure" of the banks was to lend the Greek government money to run the country, and trust the government to pay it back, or get the EU to pay it back, which everybody thought they would. (Pay back = roll over, so not a huge expectation.)
As for the taxpayer, it was the taxpayer (in Greece) who borrowed the money and spent it in the first place. The Greek haircut was basically the taxpayers being bailed out by the banks - priceless.
But of course the great trick of borrowers everywhere is to turn the lenders into the villains of the piece."It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0 -
Fixed that for youHAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »It also admits that the impact of austerity policies in Greece was badly underestimated as EU institutions and leaders tried to save [STRIKE]their political skins [/STRIKE] the Euro at the expense of the Greek economy.0 -
The Euro is fine. The problem is the Germans' idea of how to run the Eurozone economy.angrypirate wrote: »Fixed that for you"It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0
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