´óÏó´«Ã½

When Alan Greenspan says that it's hit the fan we should all be worried...he usually says things couldn't be better. He also says we haven't reached bottom so as Bush the master capatalist starts to nationalise even more banks the dirty word socialism has never looked more appealing. He will dress it up in different words like Gordon did over Northern Rock, to do otherwise would give the game away but I do hope that when the Fed throws money at this they remember the poor and their 'housing problem' unlike Gordon who appeased 'middle England' and will watch pensioners freeze this coming winter.

In answer to your question - quite possibly.

We may be starting to acknowledge that we are indeed at the start of a long term cyclical downturn like the 1930's and those ones of earlier centuries.

The first step to fixing the problem is to acknowledge you have the problem so rather perversely this may be an optimistic sign.

Money need to become valuable again and not so inexpensive it is effectively worthless as it has been for the last decade.

Alan Greenspan ex of the Federal Reserve (along with the Bank of England) tried to fix the problem by making money worthless by aggressively lowering interest rates. This was always silly and likely to end in trouble.

Many commentators still see lowering interest rates as a 'solution' but it is not as this is what caused the problem in the first place.

Money supply needs controlling as do the banks and financial institutions. All money movements need to relate to payments for goods.

The gigantic speculative bubble is still bursting and will do so for several years. Investors cannot be bailed out and the perpetrators need to be held to account (bankers and so called financial experts who have profited from this bubble need to be taxed to recover their almost ... (fill in any word you like) 'profits'.

Accounting systems need revision to prevent the illusory 'profits' from appearing in accounts. Stop this and the bonuses will stop immediately. In a sense it is also possible to blame the accounting institutions and partnerships (and governments) for not insisting on proper accounting over the last decade(s). With proper accounting these so called profits that gave rise to the bonuses would not have existed.

The culture that has been so devastating to the World's is the combination of too low interest rates, unwise accounting and, of course, lending to people who cannot repay loans.

If you recall I predicted this on my Newsnight blog a week ago when I wrote that the Bros were hoping that the US Government would step in as they did over the 2 Macs.
Watch the whole pack of cards start to crash as the whole money market is built on the myth that there is some "real" money out there.

The Government has given the City "carte Blanche" over the years where tricksters have manipulated our money and paid themselves huge bonuses without any penalty to themselves. The only people to suffer will be us who will have to make good their mistakes.

At least it will take the heat off Brown for a few days.

banks, brokers, insurance. the trinity. They [but not all] depend upon using borrowed money [rather than deposit backed money] to make money. If it becomes a deposit only backed market which looks likely] then the decline will have to be at least 50%. Currently we have declined 20%.

suppose you borrow money on your credit card to speculate to make money. If you lose you lose twice. You lose the bet and you have to pay back the unsecured loan. If you cannot pay back the credit card they also lose. So debt becomes bigger than the money in the system [because the loans were unsecured]. Which is what has happened. People borrowed money [unsecured against any asset] to make money. They lost now they can't pay back and as there are no assets those who lent lose money. No one can pay back unsecured loans. Its the size of the loans [trillions] that gives rise to these spectacular events.

an ordinary member of the public would never be given an unsecured loan to speculate. But it is the way of operation in the financial markets- till now.

people made money from nothing. it worked for a while.

BROWN HEAT (#3)

Surely, far from taking the heat OFF Brown, it shows yet again, that even the most skilled money-brain on the planet (he tells us) and USAphile, could not see coming an unknown unknown. This highlights his dangerous arrogance.

Barrie, I write as a Labour party member, you know the one who the MP's ignore.
I have never subscribed to the fact that Brown was a Financial wiz-kid. He was lucky that during the time he was Chancellor all market forces and finance was in a "growth" period. Even I, with no financial acumen, could have appeared to be "managing" the economy.

We all subscibed to this myth and now we see the Emperor has no clothes when the market becomes unstable.

The problem voters can see is that there is no other political party/leader has any answer, unless they are the "mouthpieces" who are seeking power for themselves and pretend that when they get in power all will be well.

Don't you believe it!! Brown reminds me of a film I recently saw. Captain Queeg of the Caine Mutiny. The cabinet cowards who are all keeping their heads down, AND THEIR PERKY JOBS, remind me of the Officers who dithered before they got rid of their Captain.

Ah......you Brits never fail to amuse me, sitting here in my cocoon of everlasting U.S. prosperity. The best possible set of circumstances that may result from this latest failure of the U.S. Banking/Lending system is the barely possible end of a widely held belief here in the U.S. that we can promote Socialism without becoming Socialist.

Hopefully, at long last ...today's "Robber Barrons" of yesterday will at last begin to pay the piper when they LOSE in a high stakes game of assuming that the the golden calf will forever pay the bill for so many NON PRODUCING CITIZENS HAPPY TO CONTINUE LIVING ON WELFARE whose sole purpose is apparently to have the poorest of all in the U.S. be more affluent than the poorest in Europe, i.e. own(?)more TV's, high profile Athletic clothing, spend much of their welfare on the state lottery and otherwise piss away their money out of ignorance largely brought about by a long time failing public educational system and big time over population brought about by baby making factories whose mates take it on the lam rather than hang around and support a family.
The U.S. is quite a long time overdue for this financial collapse; unfortunately, it will assuredly have major negative effects throughout the world to one degree or another, just as the Great Depression did.

I hardly got a night's sleep worrying about the poor mites. Will they be OK? Has anyone set up a welfare fund for them?

I am writing this in Washington at 3.33 am GMT. But the story is filed at Mon 15 Sep 08, 02:37 AM. Doctor Who lives!

#9 - Blogpolice

GMT, not BST

Paul,

My anger about this whole situation is now turning to fear.

Now that a major investment bank has been allowed to go bust, the deleveraging of the who CDO/CDS situation is only just beginning.

My biggest concern is that, as you say, 99.999% of people don't even know what a CDS is.....That's a damning indictment on the 'dumbed down' media and press that will have signifiant cnsequences for all us. You, especialy the ´óÏó´«Ã½, have taken your 'eye off the ball'.

We are now all in for a very rough ride.

These people tell us that they deserve high salaries and even higher bonuses because they are doing a really responsible and difficult job!

It seems that all they do is churn churn churn and cream off as much as they can. Nice work if you can get it.

Wow the evils of capitalism, 'man made' global warming and even, do my eyes decieve me, a mention of the 'destruction' of the mining industry (TWO DECADES AGO!) by nasty Thatcher all in one piece!

Where the hell do the ´óÏó´«Ã½ actually find people as left wing as you? I thought most of you had died out.

Thanks for this gem though, I had to laugh; "forced debt down the throats of low income people" Poor cherubs, they didn't WANT the flat screen tvs and shiney new cars, they had it all FORCED upon them eh?!

Inevitably some type of serious inflation will surely follow! It will be interesting to see how central banks will attempt to control the money "supply" from now on and whether they will be forced to institute more stringent regulations for any type of credit...perhaps something they should have done long ago! Inevitably, until a solution is found the easiest way to cut costs all across the board will be job lay-offs. Easy credit money for most investments will be definitely a thing of the past! Good bye dot com bubble etc. !

As much as I admire and like Jeremy Paxman; he was slightly out of his depth on Newsnight tonight - on the financial bit....Newsnight should have had Gavin Esler doing that bit! IMHO

Now wen you close your eyes when Nick Clegg is talking you can hear David Cameron.....and vice-a-versa. No kidding!....try it next time when either is on TV!

Slicker ... I didn't know what a CDS was ... but I read it up now on Wikipedia ... and I still don't know... I guess that's because I'm a sheep.

On Newsnight just now a top hedge fund manager was quoted as saying that he had no idea what exactly were the instruments he was investing in ... or words to that effect.

It was terrible to see those people leaving with possessions in cardboard boxes. I thought if the company went bust they weren't suppose to waltz off with company boxes?

Nobody "forced debt down the throats of low income people". They were eager to make the quick buck making loans they were not able to afford and banks were unable to refuse them.
And check your foie gras please. Something's wrong with it.

It's seems difficult to have a decent conversation on these ´óÏó´«Ã½ blogs when it takes so long for posts to appear ... is it always like this?

random (no13) - the fact is that these job losses are almost on a scale of the biggest industrial layoff in recent history - and you do have to go back 20 years to the miners strike to find a parallel. I think you are reading too much into my piece here - John McCain is now sounding far more left wing than anything on this blog.

I take your point about the "cramming": but the detail of what subprime lenders actually did to accumulate 500bn of bad debt is telling: they gave equity release mortgages to people with credit histories so poor that they should never have been given a mortgage; they ripped up all rules barring them from aggressively selling "pay it all off" loans; they gave 125% mortgages to people self-certifying their incomes...I believe in personal responsibility; but the regulators say its unfair to customers basically to ramp up debt they can't afford, and that's good enough for me.

If you are American you may not be used to this but the UK consensus is "liberal" and I am happy to be slap in the middle of it. On science, on the desirability of avoiding mass unemployment, on the world being older than 3,000 years.

Even if I split the difference between the McCain and Obama position on regulating Wall Street I am going to sound far to the left of Bush. But I am not advocating any solution other than regulating Wall Street better. Everybody wants that - from Paulson thru Obama now - the debate is how to do it and there are no easy answers. Cheers. Thanks for commenting. Paul

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

The foie and the gras were a joke!

ALL THEIR OWN CHOICE/FAULT

greyCheshireCat (#18) "Nobody "forced debt down the throats of low income people". They were eager to make the quick buck making loans they were not able to afford and banks were unable to refuse them."

Soem see it as the gift of freedom and afforded by liberal-democracy which is truly next to godliness.

Sadly, ETS has removed its own video, but .

It's been the same 'rich pickings' here for some time it should go without saying (see Leitch and the OECD) but Mr Frattini promises to ensure a steady influx of beneficiaries into the EU and UK in the future (whilst the 'elitist' indigenous population goes the way of ).

BUILT ON SAND

Having just followed a JJ link (like you do) to America's educational 'perfect storm', I have, ringing in my ears, 'education education education, spoken by some worthy American who wants the kids in school at an even more tender age.
But a baby is a little animal, faced with the task of becoming as human as possible. This comprises acquisition of confidence, awareness, social competence, discrimination, quiescence, integrity, altruism and volition - from a zero base.
As things stand, the above attributes take second or third place to 'Mammon-skills' and the 'perfect storm' amounts to reaping the whirlwind.
Britain is going down the same path as America and will end in the same storm-damaged mess. I am writing this a day late and in perfect futility. That says it all really.

Barrie (#24) . I know the feeling.

Collins Stewart (LSE: CLST.L - news) has a buy and 375p target for HBOS (LSE: HBOS.L - news) , believing the liquidity risk has been overstated.

Citigroup (ASFZ.PK - news) retains its sell rating for HBOS, cutting target to 200p from 250p

They can't both be right, why do they get paid for this stuff

JUST THE MAN WE DON'T NEED

Hi JJ. I followed the Lord Leitch link. depression is now absolute. Mammon one, human race zero.

A true optimist is a pessimist who keeps trying.

Hang in there and we can all hang (in there) together.

It would be interesting for Paul Mason to do bit about short selling.

I'm not interested in consequential issues as to whether it stabilises the market or helps uncover fraud blah blah blah. To me that is all irrelevant.

My question is ...

Can somebody explain to me why it is ethically right to sell something that you do not own ...

Worse than that ... to sell something that you've "borrowed" from someone else without their permission.

Even worse ... to sell something that you have not even borrowed !!

It's morally wrong

Ha Ha.

no28 - they do have their permission. I am not sure that changes your moral philosophical question though. They borrow the shares in company A from bank Z. The wierd thing is that sometimes company A is bank Z - and to avoid "conflict of interest" principles... they lend them just the same.

#10 threnodio

I think you will find that BST is 1 hour ahead of GMT, and hence the difference is 2 hours.

The trouble with travelling is time zones.

30 PaulMason

I am not sure you are correct in all cases.

I think that "they" can sell shares in company A today even if they do not borrow them today ... provided that their inventory is cleared/settled by the end of the month or some future date.

I believe it is true that there have been cases where there are more shares held by owners than issued by the company, which can happen in this scenario.

Anyway I object to my broker lending my shares in company A without my permission. I've heard that it is possible to prevent this in practice by requesting the share certificate or by requesting that my shares are not sold short but in practice ...

Naked short selling ...

Wikipedia article,

"Naked short selling, or naked shorting, is the practice of selling a stock short without first borrowing the shares or ensuring that the shares can be borrowed as is done in a conventional short sale."

'If you are American you may not be used to this but the UK consensus is "liberal."'

No it's not. That's the Institutionally Leftist ´óÏó´«Ã½ "consensus." The fact that you would even say that proves the point.

In fact, most people are quite "conservative" in their views.

I'll give you one example. The Death Penalty. Now I could quite confidently assert that the vast majority of those "employed" by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ are against it. Probably 90%.

Maybe you don't know this, but all polls of the BRITISH people, as opposed to the ´óÏó´«Ã½, the consensus was not "liberal" at all.

In fact, even the latest YouGov poll shows the majority favour restotation of capital punishment. (Though I think their polling methods actually UNDERESTIMATE the actual pro-hanging sentiment quite severely)

Whatever -- even when this skewed polling asked the questions:

Should the death penalty for murder be restored or not? Yes, it should: 50%. No, it shouldn’t: 40%. Don’t know: 10%.

You can go down the list to find that far from a "liberal" consensus, there is a very large anger at the way the "liberal" elites (like the ´óÏó´«Ã½) have hijacked and imposed their views on illegal immigration, Islamofascism, Petrol Tax, the Thought Police, et al. The list, as they say, really is endless.

Working for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ means never having to say you're sorry for being wrong.

Paul at 20 says: 'If you are American you may not be used to this but the UK consensus is "liberal" and I am happy to be slap in the middle of it.'

Paul,

As you bring up your politics (nb moderators), the ´óÏó´«Ã½ consensus might be 'liberal' but the British one is far from it. With your political affiliations I doubt you are even in the middle of he ´óÏó´«Ã½ consensus.

We Brits are middle of the road conservatives with a small 'c' who despise extremists be the right or left wing. Please stop presenting us otherwise.

How dare you state this...'If you are American you may not be used to this but the UK consensus is "liberal" and I am happy to be slap in the middle of it. On science, on the desirability of avoiding mass unemployment, on the world being older than 3,000 years.'
The UK consesus is not liberal.It never has been and never will be.Maybe that's the way everybody thinks at the ´óÏó´«Ã½,but for the rest of us the continual ´óÏó´«Ã½ diet of leftist views makes us sick!

Is the current situation in the US akin to 1930? Errr...no. Last quarter the US economy posted an APR of 3.3% growth in GDP which, had it occurred in the UK, would have sent the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Labour Club aka "Newsnight" into paroxysms of ecstasy with Gordon Brown being praised as a miracle worker and calls being made for a snap election. Around 2.5% of US homes are currently in mortgage default. During the Great Depression it was closer to 50%. As one commentator put it, to compare the present situation with the Great Depression is like comparing a sore throat to terminal cancer.

So, a few well-known names in the banking sector go under? Good. It shows there exists a competitive market system where risk-taking has penalties as well as rewards. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is quick to criticise the financial sector for offering large bonuses to its employees. Well, here's the reason behind the high bonuses. The greater the risk the bigger the reward but also the bigger the penalty for failure. I hope the redundant market traders have not spent all their bonuses on cocaine and Porsches but also invested in some US Treasury bills as well for a rainy day since it's just started to pour down. But the competitive marketplace is something the risk-free ´óÏó´«Ã½ will never be able to understand.

Paul, your wrong on your definition of liberal.

'If you are American you may not be used to this but the UK consensus is "liberal" and I am happy to be slap in the middle of it.'

As others have pointed out, what liberal consensus is this?

I see from your wikipedia page that you are Shop Steward (The Father of the Chapel) for the NUJ and that you have spoken on behalf of, and were a member of, the Trotskyist organisation Workers Power.

It all becomes clear, a Trotskyist would indeed be in the middle of the political consensus at the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

simon,you obviously live in hampstead.but don`t worry it`s coming.why do half a million brits emmigrate every year?if your liberal society is so great?lets be honest england sucks!and you`ll all going to be muslim soon.i speak the truth baby!!!!

It may be a prime event in modern history. We may have just seen the demise of the Republican Party in the United States. It will now only survive in small pockets of culturally ignorant conservatives in the interior of the country.

The U.S. hasn't seen the death and later regeneration of one of its two parties in 160 years. If this is a new, prolonged downturn, we may see just that. Roosevelt condemned the Republicans to perminant minority for 40 years. The newcoming American generation is the largest ever, and may kill the GOP even longer and so this may be a banner year in western political history. You in Europe should watch this with great cinematic value, unless it hits you too of course.

If this starts a new depression, at least I'll be able to tell my grandchildren how I had to burn my college degree for heat because we couldn't afford fuel for the global warming induced brutally snowy New England winters during the bad years of the late 00s.

The signs of enjoyment by traditionally left leaning ´óÏó´«Ã½ correspondants of problems on the capital markets is both sad and predictable.

The failure due to greed of the banks was an inevitable consequence of the capitalist system it will happen again when the inevitable hubris develops on the economic upswing that will follow this crisis as surely as day follows night.

Capitalism is a system that is terribly imperfect unfortunately the lefts attempts to banish boom and bust simply lead to the abolition of boom.

labour have made Britains ability to stand up to down turn much reduced by spending money like a drunken sailor on leave. The european central bank has published an estimate that the British government wastes 100 billion a year.

Instead of choosing to continue to pay of the national debt they binged hiding 100 billion in spending on much vaunted school building etc in PFI buy now pay later schemes.They stole another 100 billion from pensions and ran a deficit at the height of a boom.

They replaced competant civil servants with party placemen and doubled their pay and numbers. The left is in total cognitive surrender they have wasted billions and destroyed britains competitiveness whilsy failing to achieve their aims of a more equal society.

The standard of living of the wealthiest have risen far faster under labour than under the Tories. Whilst the prospects of the poor have never been worse.

Labour schemes are helped by the fact that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is institutionally biased recruiting like minded people many of whom are active labour supporters who have failed to hold the government to account.

This has allowed the petty corruption and incompetance of the labour administartion to go unchecked until it has destroyed and discredited what were desireable aims. Only a media prepared to scrutinised error rather than eulogise Blair and mr prudence could have prevented the waste of both money and opportunity.

Even a passing knowledge of economics could have seen the remorseless rise in indirect taxes and direct taxes was bound to hit the vast majority of the population.

Combined with a a public and private debt funded bubble that a blind man could have seen coming this has damaged Britains prospects. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has failed in its duty to inform the public but has instead proved both biased and self serving.

Still since however poor people get they will always pay the compulsory licence fee no matter how stretched their finances so why should aunty beeb care.

I can still remember that the global financial crisis started when the Lehman brother declared their bankruptcy. By then, everything catastrophic follows.Massive lay offs, foreclosure and insolvency are just common fear among large businesses.Even smalls individual suffers too .Some run after with short term loan to finance their financial emergency. If you need a short term loan and do not have the time to go to any payday loan lenders situated in a store, you can get direct deposit payday loans. Direct deposit payday loans sound like what they are, a payday loan deposited directly into your checking account. A similar popular option is faxless payday loans, just present usually just a pay stub, ID, and an active checking account. There are numerous payday loan cognates that describe the same things, so it's good to do some research on where you want to get one from. You can use direct deposit payday loans for temporary .