UK tax payers, paying for a banking disaster

[Martin Red]

Why the hell the taxpaper is paying for a private company f*** up's

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7250023.stm

Northern Rock is to be nationalised as a temporary measure, Chancellor Alistair Darling has said

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7249575.stm

[2121]

so stop paying taxes. it works in my so-called 'second world' country (Greece), so maybe all you "first" class Europeans could learn something about freedom from us.

[dj-chefron]

We taxpayers do it all the time in the U.S. the Saving and Loan debacleof the 80'S Citicorp in Mexico in the 90's and just wait when the bill comes from the subprime fiasco.The ruling elite have brainwashed the people in grumbling about paying taxes to fix our infrastructure but when thru bad policies or outright theivery always have their tin cups out for our taxdollars.

[Martin Red]

so stop paying taxes. it works in my so-called 'second world' country (Greece), so maybe all you "first" class Europeans could learn something about freedom from us.

Greece is part of EU (Year of EU entry: 1981) so I don't know why you're calling youself second world, ?

UK, If you work, you have to pay tax i'm affraid.

Then, when you purchase goods, you pay a second tax (VAT: 17.5%)

No way around it.

[Martin Red]

We taxpayers do it all the time in the U.S. the Saving and Loan debacleof the 80'S Citicorp in Mexico in the 90's and just wait when the bill comes from the subprime fiasco.

Interesting


The ruling elite have brainwashed the people in grumbling about paying taxes to fix our infrastructure but when thru bad policies or outright theivery always have their tin cups out for our taxdollars.

Truth

[Martin Red]

Timeline: Northern Rock bank crisis

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7007076.stm

[E-Phi]

It wasn't that long ago when Northern Rock had to deal with a bank run. The lines of people waiting to get their money out of there was insane.
The FOMC here in the US is doing all they can to prevent the same thing from happening here. It still may be too little too late.

[2121]

Greece is part of EU (Year of EU entry: 1981) so I don't know why you're calling youself second world, ?

UK, If you work, you have to pay tax i'm affraid.

Then, when you purchase goods, you pay a second tax (VAT: 17.5%)

No way around it.

Greece is only part of the EU because of its geopolitical position at the cross roads of asia, the middle east and africa. its been called 'second-world' by some because of our rampant black market, so huge that they were considering including it in the GDP at one point. tax evasion is rampant, everyone does it, and it feels pretty damn good. sorry for hijacking your thread btw...

[Martin Red]

Greece is only part of the EU because of its geopolitical position at the cross roads of asia, the middle east and africa. its been called 'second-world' by some because of our rampant black market, so huge that they were considering including it in the GDP at one point. tax evasion is rampant, everyone does it, and it feels pretty damn good. sorry for hijacking your thread btw...


No prob, out of interest, Did Italy have a similiar problem also ?

[Martin Red]

It wasn't that long ago when Northern Rock had to deal with a bank run. The lines of people waiting to get their money out of there was insane.
The FOMC here in the US is doing all they can to prevent the same thing from happening here. It still may be too little too late.

Yes , That was as close as we got to revolution here in recent times, over 60's Calmly waiting in a queue :) LOL

[Martin Red]

just wait when the bill comes from the subprime fiasco.The ruling elite have brainwashed the people in grumbling about paying taxes to fix our infrastructure but when thru bad policies or outright theivery always have their tin cups out for our taxdollars.

Program on uk tv last night, called "Dispatches"........

"America has been hit hard by the sub-prime crisis. The social cost of financial failure has been enormous. An epidemic of home repossessions has left thousands of houses abandoned and boarded-up: whole suburbs are falling into disrepair and dereliction.

Financial institutions in America and in Britain had poured billions into investments backed by these mortgages. As more and more people have defaulted on their mortgage repayments, financial markets have collapsed, causing a crisis that has rippled across the Atlantic, sending the City of London into turmoil and pulling the plug on one now infamous British bank.

The question is: will it stop there? This is a story about the destructive power of finance: what happens when banks are driven by short-termism; when bankers are rewarded with vast bonuses, free to operate under inadequate regulatory supervision, and with the complicity of a government too in awe of big business to step in."

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/how+the+banks+bet+your+money/1563152

[dj-chefron]

We in the US are getting hose,my english brethren get your vaseline ready.
Global credit squeeze
US banks borrow $50bn via new Fed facility
By Gillian Tett in London

Published: February 18 2008 20:34 | Last updated: February 18 2008 20:34

US banks have been quietly borrowing massive amounts of money from the Federal Reserve in recent weeks by using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch.

The use of the Fed’s Term Auction Facility, which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wider range of their assets than previously permitted, saw borrowing of nearly $50bn of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
Equities lure US pension guarantor - Feb-18Lax banks blamed for defaults - Feb-18US consumer confidence drops sharply - Feb-15Full coverage: Credit crisis - Jan-18The $280bn question: where are the rest of the subprime bodies? - Feb-11Fed chief ready to cut rates further - Feb-15US officials say the trend shows that financial authorities have become far more adept at channelling liquidity into the banking system to alleviate financial stress, after failing to calm money markets last year.

However, the move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the US banking system and the banks’ growing reliance on indirect forms of government support.

“The TAF ... allows the banks to borrow money against all sort of dodgy collateral,” says Christopher Wood, analyst at CLSA. “The banks are increasingly giving the Fed the garbage collateral nobody else wants to take ... [this] suggests a perilous condition for America’s banking system.”

The Fed announced the TAF tool on December 12 as part of a co-ordinated package of measures unveiled by leading western central banks to calm money markets.

The measure marks a distinct break from past US policy. Before its introduction, banks either had to raise money in the open market or use the so-called “discount window” for emergencies. However, last year many banks refused to use the discount window, even though they found it hard to raise funds in the market, because it was associated with the stigma of bank failure.

The Fed has not yet indicated how long the TAF will remain in place.

But the popularity of the scheme is prompting speculation the reform will stay in place as long as the financial stresses last.

“Some Fed officials have expressed an interest in keeping and possibly expanding the TAF,” says Michael Feroli, economist at JPMorgan.

Nevertheless, Mr Feroli said banks now appeared to be using the TAF instead of other funding routes, meaning that the overall level of reserves in the system was remaining constant. “The banking system certainly has its problems, however the notion that ... banks have trouble maintaining reserves stems from a superficial reading of the Fed’s statistical reports,” he said.

[E-Phi]

We in the US are getting hose,my english brethren get your vaseline ready.
The banks have been doing this ever since the FOMC set up the TAF. I think last week the FOMC lowered the auction amount to 5 million so smaller banks can participate.

[Martin Red]

I was going to post this on it's own, but feels though it should belong here, the state of things today is a joke.....


We're madder than Mohamed al Fayed
Brian Reade21/02/2008
Mohamed al Fayed's claim that the royals are a family of Draculas seems to have finally convinced us that he's madder than a box of syphilitic toads.

But is he? Whenever I look at the extended Windsor clan I see bats, zombies, and blood-suckers from strange parts of old Europe, and stakes and hearts spring to mind.

And if he is away with the fuggin' fairies, are we the right people to stand in judgment?

Take nationalisation. Ever since British Rail was privatised trainusers have been treated like maggots in a student's kitchen bin.

Dangerously festering in filth and apathy.

When we demanded they be taken back into public hands, we were ignored on the grounds that nationalisation would be a disastrous retreat to the bad old days of state socialism.

Yet when a shower of gung-ho wide boys bring a private bank to its knees through sheer greed, a Labour government nationalises it and re-assures all the poor little shareholders that we'll pay up for their lost bets.

Even more baffling, we pay hatchet-man Ron Sandler £90,000-a-month to run the workforce down. A hatchetman who has lived here for 20 years but because he is a "nondom" pays no tax on most of his earnings. Just like the other foreign tycoons who choose to call Britain their home because it allows them to pay less tax than their cleaners.

But it's al Fayed, not us, who is mad.

We allow the men who make our laws to screw us with expense fiddles, handing us the taxi and plane bills for their wives and kids.

Our forefathers invent the most popular game known to man, football, and we allow it to be stolen from us by sharp-suited sharks and foreign speculators.

We fiddle unemployment and sickness figures to create a crippling dependency culture, allow kids barely out of puberty to stagger round the streets with knives, smashed off their heads, and look away in fear.

Yet al Fayed is insane to talk about Dracula families?

This week Nicky Clarke receives an OBE for services to hairdressing while politicians, mandarins and businessmen sneak in the back door for their knighthoods and lordships. But al Fayed is mad to attack our corrupt Establishment?

Footballers' girlfriends negotiate multi-million pound deals to have their ludicrous castle weddings splashed across 32 pages of glossy magazines.

We sell our gas, electricity and water industries to smiling piranhas then wonder why, a few years later, they ratchet prices up 15 per cent while their profits rise 600 per cent.

Nobody who owns their own teeth can afford to buy a house, civil servants put our private details in bins, our soldiers fight other country's wars with faulty equipment and the entire town of Berwick wants to join Scotland because being in the English part of our country means paying through the nose for basic rights we used to get for free.

And the clincher? We splurge millions on an inquest into a 10-year-old road accident so that an Egyptian shop-owner can have his day in court spitting bile at our rulers, simple because they refuse to give him a passport.

But it's al Fayed, not us, who is mad.

Are we sure?

Even our rail firms treat us all like maggots


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/reade/

[Monny JcIntosh]

Did you think the same thing about Rover etc.?

[Martin Red]

Did you think the same thing about Rover etc.?

I did yes, although that was a little closer to home, why should we pay for bad management, foresight, planning, besides that, badly made cars.

I also think that if BT mess up on pensions it shouldn't be governement responsability to place guarantees, it's a private company ever since Thatcher sold it.

Perhaps step in and stop the utitilty companies taking the piss with price hikes, whilst the c***s in suits walk away with millions in bonuses. The restaurant at the top of the BT tower was opened by Tony Benn, for the public, since BT was privatised, the public can't use it, yet the public are expected to help pay pension shortfalls, it aint right.

We being f***ed more and more, slowly slowly we are loosing a little more ground to c**ts in suits