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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Bless you Harpoid.
Why anyone would worry about the Tories, when they are in bed with UKIP and the Commies, is beyond moi.
If we had followed the Toffs advice to ignore Europe and keep in with the Colonies, we would be happily laughing at the Krauts now.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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The United Socialist States of Europe
2012 is 1989. The USSR collapsed just 20 years ahead of the USSE.
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Grant
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| And I thought one of the principles of AE is that what the majority of people believe is usually the truth. |
| When did any of us ever say that? |
Er, I don't think you ever did. What I meant was that AE surely says that the majority view should be respected unless we can prove it's wrong.
Quite often it is wrong, but most of the time the majority position has a lot going for it.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The basic AE position is not whether the majority position is right or wrong but that the majority position is not worth stating since it already has been over and over again. Fortunately for us, the fact that it has been means that eventually it will be wrong since there are few eternal verities in life. It is a fairly simple matter just assuming it is wrong and proceeding from there. If it turns out that it is still an eternal verity ... well, no harm done, just wait for the next bus.
However, you should firmly keep in mind that in AE there is no difference between a majority and a minority position. They are both orthodoxies and both (as you have averred) 'have a lot going for them' for that reason. Once you train yourself to accept that the position you don't hold yourself is almost certainly as rational as the one you do, then you are in an ideal position to arrive at a third (and unique and therefore the AE) position.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Grant wrote: | | Er, I don't think you ever did. What I meant was that AE surely says that the majority view should be respected unless we can prove it's wrong.. |
There's nothing sacrosanct about the majority view. What is important is to look first to what is obvious, for the truth is always obvious -- except when it isn't.
Typically, majorities that include simple folk tend to believe the obvious. Majorities of intelligent, educated folks never do.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Yes, a wise thought. Intelligent people hate holding the same position as stupid people. Even if the latter happens to be the true position.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As usual, AE has a unique position on the Fred Goodwin knighthood imbroglio. First of all we believe he was entitled to the knighthood originally (leaving aside one's views on honours) because he became a legitimate 'world champion' ie taking Royal Bank of Scotland to global eminence. In other words he was brilliant at his job and (as far as we know) used no impropriety to do it. In fact, by the standards of these things, he was entitled to a peerage.
The RBS went bust along with every other similar bank. Goodwin was not at all to blame for this since nobody (repeat, nobody) had the least idea of what was to transpire. He should not have been criticised, never mind demonised.
AE does two things: it stands aside from the orthodoxy in predicting what would transpire (not that any of us did this, did we?) and stands aside from the lynch-mob mentailty that descends when everybody is shown to be wrong but everybody doesn't want to admit this.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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I'm one of the nutjobs that believes in the whole 'fractional reserve banking' conspiracy theory, so to me the Fred Goodwin thing is a bit of a sideshow - a human sacrifice to satisfy the masses and distract from the grand injustice.
What's really amazing is that there's a Republican candidate in the presidential race who wants to abolish the Federal Reserve. I don't suppose he'll get anywhere but it's a sign of the times. He's polling well with young Republicans apparently.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | The RBS went bust along with every other similar bank. . |
Not true.
Barclays has not received tax payers' money. RSB was tipped over by the purchase of ABN AMRO. Of course if RSB had gone down it would then have taken down everyone else.
| Mick Harper wrote: | | Goodwin was not at all to blame for this since nobody (repeat, nobody) had the least idea of what was to transpire. He should not have been criticised, never mind demonised.. |
Freddie should be judged by the rules he played by. He was a gambler who was on a streak. He won big, he lost big. He created nothing, he gained market share, by hostile takeover, he simply buggered his business by buying a bank that was not financially sound. In a normal market RSB would have gone bankrupt, Fred would have no pension (other than a state pension) and thousands of entrepreneurs and workers, and hundreds of thousands of householders, would have lost their businesses, jobs homes.
| Mick Harper wrote: | | and stands aside from the lynch-mob mentality |
This is exactly the mentality that Fred stood for, the mob mentality.... of the financial markets...
In the 60/70s Trade Unions found a way of playing the system, through a different mob mentality... the politicians tried to coopt them give them honours etc someone then finally realised they would have to take a stand.
In the 00's it's the bankers/financiers.
Enough said.
If you want to give Fred an honour, then fine, give it to him for saving the Union. Those canny Scots have realised that they don't want the billions of RSB debt.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Not true. Barclays has not received tax payers' money. RSB was tipped over by the purchase of ABN AMRO. Of course if RSB had gone down it would then have taken down everyone else. |
Barclays was trying to take over Lehman's just a few days before they went bust! It's just the luck of the draw who was holding what baby when the music stopped. I am simply saying that RBS was acting like everytbody else in the entire world. What happened in each case is obviously unique. By the way, Barclays too would have gone bust if the Bank of England liquidity lifeboat had not gone out.
| Freddie should be judged by the rules he played by. He was a gambler who was on a streak. He won big, he lost big. |
This is horse manure. Nobody knew he was gambling at the time, he was simply doing what all capitalistic firms do: take-overs, mergers, acquisitions etc. The usual penalty (ie what had been happening since the year dot) is that if you made a duff takeover, your share price suffered and, quite often, you yourself got taken over. Nobody ever went bust buying a bank before. That's the whole point.
| He created nothing, he gained market share, by hostile takeover, he simply buggered his business by buying a bank that was not financially sound. |
For Chrissake, nobody knew that AMRO was unsound! Don't you remember only a few years earlier that it had rescued (to great acclaim) Barings after Nick Leeson really did bankrupt a bank.
| In a normal market RSB would have gone bankrupt, Fred would have no pension (other than a state pension) and thousands of entrepreneurs and workers, and hundreds of thousands of householders, would have lost their businesses, jobs homes. |
This is all complete rubbish. In a normal market, assuming that the AMRO takeover didn't work out, Fred would have been quietly retired with a pay-off (as befits the normal practice of large firms). This time it was not even an abnormal market, it was a completely unprecedented market (as of course are all 'crashes' otherwise we would be able to forsee them and avoid them).
Please at least try to be more-than-orthodox, Nemo.
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Fred Goodwin if I remember correctly was a banker, he might be expected to be a tad aware about banking conditions.....
The credit crunch had already started......
Sir Fred bought AMRO after ....... the bank run at Northern Rock, that is .....after depositors had withdrawn £1bn in what was the biggest run on a British bank for more than a century. This required the govt to step in as lender of last resort.
So Fred's purchase was after the start of the credit crunch and the markets had frozen.
Fred promised to pay up billions in cash, (and incredibly the deal was promised in virtually all cash), which RBS didn't have, and couldn't get. Err, cos the markets were frozen.....
His defence and that of the board was when they had bought Nat West, Nat West had appeared to undervalue their business and they had assumed AMRO had done likewise. It hadn't and Fred had not made the required checks.....
Caveat Emptor.
Patrick Hosking, Times
15 September 2007
Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland are still scrapping for ABN Amro in a battle that looks increasingly surreal amid the turmoil in financial markets.
Damian Reece, Daily Telegraph
28 July 2007
Of all the deals we've heard about potentially collapsing because of these jittery markets, surely the pursuit of ABN Amro should be at the top
It seems extraordinary that Barclays and RBS are so desperate to buy this second-division bank at such a massive premium when the world's best banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are off 14% and 27% respectively in the past month. Right now they are looking wildly expensive and will need renegotiating, otherwise they both face collapse.
Nils Pratley, Guardian
Within the RBS camp, they are whistling cheerfully about ABN being a deal for the long-term. The rest of us can reflect on the old joke about long-term investments -- they are short-term investments gone wrong.
It seems that Fred poured the manure on his own head....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You're just saying he was incompetent. You are saying it after the event. Were you saying it at the time? Let us assume so, it makes no difference. Everybody in the entire world, except the odd AE-ist and the usual random minority of individuals who happened to have guessed the other way, were equally incompetent. AE says that when everybody is incompetent, nobody is incompetent (it's a quite different mechanism at work).
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Grant
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History tells us that those at the top of the greasy pole - either by ability, birth or luck - will extract as much money from the system as they can. The people who pay are not the poor as the socialists would tell us, but the middle classes.
Bankers and those at the top of various industries have extracted capital way in excess of what they have genuinely earned. And, as Mick says, the banks - and hedge funds - would not even exist if the middle classes hadn't been forced to bail them out. Remember that when Goldman Sachs announce their next bonus pot.
The de-sirring of Goodwin is, I agree, wholly unfair, but it is the beginning of a transformation of the way in which the super-rich are perceived, right across the Western world.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| History tells us that those at the top of the greasy pole - either by ability, birth or luck - will extract as much money from the system as they can. |
You mean unlike everybody else?
| The people who pay are not the poor as the socialists would tell us, but the middle classes. |
It's not the people whose surnames that begin F - M that pay but those whose weight at birth were more than six pounds. Invent your own category and reward or lambast as the mood takes you.
| Bankers and those at the top of various industries have extracted capital way in excess of what they have genuinely earned. |
Not so. The average "banker" earns very large sums of money and gets rewarded accordingly. Whether he has 'genuinely earned' it is, I am afraid, a question of moral philosophy that AE scorns. Do Premiership footballers genuinely earn their wages? Do I?
| And, as Mick says, the banks - and hedge funds - would not even exist if the middle classes hadn't been forced to bail them out. |
I doubt that I would be caught saying such a ridiculous thing. The state bailed them out for reasons which benefited us all. AE does not recognise absurd categories like "the middle class" but how you work out that this class of yours paid the bill is beyond me. Unless you are saying "the middle class" funds Britain in general, in which case it wasn't worth saying.
| Remember that when Goldman Sachs announce their next bonus pot. |
How will anybody benefit if Goldman Sachs (not a public company) doesn't pay out bonuses? Since there are no shareholders, the money will just sit there until some future Goldman Sachs employees/ partners divvy it up. Goldman Sachs did, by the way, have to pay back everything that the state (both US and UK) provided by way of assistance. Many, many billions and yet it hardly made a dent.
You should all remember that "the state" ie us will get most of our money back in time. That is the beauty of an entity that can't go bankrupt. it's just a matter of waiting until normalcy reigns once more. RBS will be hugely profitable to us if only we a) hang on to it and b) pay the movers big bonuses. Its normal profits of five to ten billiuon a year will soon pay off the forty-five billion we had to shell out.
| The de-sirring of Goodwin is, I agree, wholly unfair, but it is the beginning of a transformation of the way in which the super-rich are perceived, right across the Western world. |
Oh right, I'll be on the lookout. But since they have been cordially hated from time immemorial my educated guess is that they will just carry on being cordially hated until time immemorial.
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The more a public figure comes under scrutiny, the more likely it is that either his close mates and your liberal hand wringers will start banging on about lynch mobs....(even though none exist)
So one of your super rich has kept his 300 K pension and lost his "sir".
This was following what in the Lords is due process... ie the great and the good sat round a table and decided he was a very bad egg (ie he valued his wonga rather than protected the honour and good name of the house, etc) and took its honour back.
Get over it guys.
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