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Banking Crisis, What would you have done?

1654 Views 22 Replies 16 Participants Last post by  Paul Evans, 
P
Back to the point Nothern Rock is in trouble, from that point on, what would you have done if you had been PM?:popcorn:
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let them burn. I would of let Rock go to the wall as a warning to others and the banking industry.

hive off the retail banks and let the investment banks live on their own means.
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NotDeadYet
Blocked the Lloyds/HBOS merger. Made the overdue cuts to the public sector now rather than waiting to give that poison chalice to whoever wins the election (who more than likely wouldn't be me). Force through laws that would enable me to default on ridiculous public sector (and former nationalised industry) pension agreements without any comeback. Do something for the construction industry. Construction is the biggest employer in this country and has been left to die (though a lot of projects desrved to die). Open the way for legalised drugs to raise new tax on sales, the pharma companies would have new R&D potential for safe, synthetic recreational drugs and a replacement for all their products about to go off patent and create a massive corporation tax stream, reduce resources wasted by the police on minor drug offences and possibly reduce NHS spend on treating the effects of alcohol & tobacco as successive generations move away from them and on to tested and quality controlled synthetics, all the associated building work required in new plants, distribution facilities, etc. Don't promise a raft of money to colleges then say we've made a mistake and you're not having it after they'd signed contracts on some major building work. Build more nuclear power stations. Scrap Trident. Pull out of Afghanistan and go to war with someone in a conventional shooting war. Wars are very good stimulus programmes, especially if you lose. Prosecuted those whose behaviour undermined the stability of this country, Kim Philby did less damage than Fred Goodwin.
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chrisch
Paul Evans said:
Back to the point Nothern Rock is in trouble, from that point on, what would you have done if you had been PM?:popcorn:
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Got my money out the UK quickly. Made up some shit about not being very well and wanting to spend more time with my family. Then legged it.
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foxe
NotDeadYet said:
Open the way for legalised drugs to raise new tax on sales, the pharma companies would have new R&D potential for safe, synthetic recreational drugs and a replacement for all their products about to go off patent and create a massive corporation tax stream, reduce resources wasted by the police on minor drug offences and possibly reduce NHS spend on treating the effects of alcohol & tobacco as successive generations move away from them and on to tested and quality controlled synthetics, all the associated building work required in new plants, distribution facilities, etc.
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I must say I like the idea of pharmas making their money from recreational drugs rather than therapeutics -- if you want to go out and get safely stoned, you pay for the privilege; if you need life-saving treatment, it should be free or at least cost-price (actual cost, not theoretical "only one in 10 drugs succeeds" ramped-up R&D plus hefty marketing costs). Wonder if it would actually work?
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ratcliffe
I'd have shot them all, then transferred any remaining assets into my name, and buggered off to some remote place to enjoy it :)
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P
If I was Gordon Brown I would have locked myself in a cupboard,stuck a 12 gauge in mouth and pulled the trigger. Or is that what I wished he had done? :D

J.
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J
Paul Evans said:
Back to the point Nothern Rock is in trouble, from that point on, what would you have done if you had been PM?:popcorn:
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You imply that its no longer in trouble?
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jamesp said:
You imply that its no longer in trouble?
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Not at all, its just a good start point;)
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Pubbloke
Nationalised the banks and fired the boards for negligence with no payouts.

Merged all the nationalised banks into one and then reduce interest on mortgage and loans from these banks to bank of england base rates + 2% (or whatever is required to cover the costs of administration without a profit) so that people could find them affordable and been able to carry on paying.

It has been proven that the free market does not work as a control on lending so i would Introduced laws stopping all loans to private individuals and businesses unless it could be shown that there total debt was less than 4 times salary/yearly profit and that monthly debt repayment was less than 50% of monthly income.

Make banks have to hold assets to cover lending, non of this variable (Basel II regs) stuff depending on security and asset type.
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Chris_M
Nationalised Northern Rock, while passing laws to allow rescued businesses to sevre employment contracts without paying out huge sums.
Nationalised HBOS rather than making it merge. Rather than one dodgy and one good bank, we ended up with a really big screwed bank. Nationalised banks targets would be to break evan with a 10% reserve of total money in 5 years from start of take over.
Introduce laws to stop banks sharing the burden of loans around, thus stopping them from being able to get round debt gaurentee statutes.
Introduce work for benifits scheme. I think at the moment, having them fill in potholes would be useful. Even if they dont actually find a job, they can continue to do public works, for less than the normal employees are paid. Or if they dont like that, I would give them a choice of which armed force they could join.
Have the state owned banks offer morgages, to take the slack while the private banks cut back.
Introduce a system of trying to claim back money from drunks for wasting NHS time.
Reduced the size of the civil service.
Raise taxes on the Oil companies and banks
Raise money on booze and cider.
Any legalisation of drugs would come after the development of "harmless synthetic alternatives". (I see too many drunks and addicts to just want to be able to take the money from taxes first)
Give forces personel tax breaks for every day they are on ops.
Have the Strategic defence review before the election. (personally I would like to keep the 4 SSBN's and the amphibious strike capability which the QE class will increase.)
Id also have said thank you very much when offered the Blackhawk helicopters by Sikorsky. Which would have given us more helicopters at a fraction of the price than the bungled Augusta Westland Wildcat program.
Disbanded the department in the Ministry of defence that provides arms manufactureers with personel for demonstrations at cost to the tax payer. If they want to use personel for stuff. They can pay the going rate. If Top Gear pays for it, why cant they.
Made Voluntary work for the under 18's compulsary.

Sorted out the Ash situation rather than sitting on my hands. Just because the Met plane was undergoing refits, what happened to the C130 that was used to do meterological stuff?
Wouldnt have allowed the Scottish Government to remove all tax pay suplemented "lifeline" ferry services to islands, when they were removed for PR reasons.
Cut MP's salaries, pensions and benifits.
Stopped the raiding on Private pensions pots. They are mostly empty and have nothing left to give.

Im sure Id have done other things as well.

On the other hand Id have made Jeremy Clarkson a Lord and put him in the Cabinet as special advisor.
Sacked Harriet Harman
Added a couple of bank holidays into the year.
Made Scuba Diving a part of the national curriculum.
Made all MP's learn where the mute buttons on microphones are.
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Richie
Pubbloke said:
Nationalised the banks and fired the boards for negligence with no payouts.

Merged all the nationalised banks into one and then reduce interest on mortgage and loans from these banks to bank of england base rates + 2% (or whatever is required to cover the costs of administration without a profit) so that people could find them affordable and been able to carry on paying.

It has been proven that the free market does not work as a control on lending so i would Introduced laws stopping all loans to private individuals and businesses unless it could be shown that there total debt was less than 4 times salary/yearly profit and that monthly debt repayment was less than 50% of monthly income.

Make banks have to hold assets to cover lending, non of this variable (Basel II regs) stuff depending on security and asset type.
Click to expand...
Sadly if you go from the Basel II basis for determining regulatory capital, which is min 8% Risk Weighted Assets , to 100% coverage then the banks would not be able to function and the whole shebang would grind to a halt.

This is a departure from diving but I do ponder such things during long deco :)
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T
Chris_M said:
Introduce work for benifits scheme. I think at the moment, having them fill in potholes would be useful. Even if they dont actually find a job, they can continue to do public works, for less than the normal employees are paid. Or if they dont like that, I would give them a choice of which armed force they could join.

Introduce a system of trying to claim back money from drunks for wasting NHS time.
Click to expand...
I've selectively quoted a couple of those points (I agree with a lot of the others as well).

The 2 above are 2 which I have always thought. There is currently no incentive for a certain amount of the unemployed to bother even looking for a job. I do realise that there are a lot who are actively looking for work as well.

And hospitals send out bills for hospital treatment in traffic accidents, why not send bills out to drunks as well, for cleaning up the ambulance after projectile vomitting all over it, and then abusing the doctors and nurses who are trying to patch them up.

It seems we have progressed from the original question a bit:)

On the wish list, I think all prisoners should be made to work, to pay for their upkeep. Chain gangs would be a great idea, we would have perfect hedgerows and ditches.
None of this getting a Playstation and TV nonsense. Make them work to cover the costs of keeping them in Prison.
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bluewolf
Whilst we have the unemployed and the incarcerated doing these jobs, what happens to the (admittedly less) people who are currently paid to do them?
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NotDeadYet
The problem with work for benefits is that the cost of labour for the jobs that need doing is minimal. It's all the other costs of plant, materials and supervision which really mount up. If you set up such schemes you are a. creating a big bill for everything else that you need to put in place to make it work, b. creating a career for waste of money NGO's to co-ordinate it and c. doing someone else out of a job (construction work is hard enough to find without free labour coming on stream as well). For every pothole on the road there is an engineer somewhere getting £60/hr to look at a picture of it and write a spec for the repair and £30hr for a draughtsman to draw it, factor in their overhead, factor in the plant required, factor in the cost of a road closure, factor in the preparation of a traffic management plan for the repair work...

Sure there are tons of jobs that could be done but don't look on work for benefits as free labour. Take the hedgerows example, no-one does it now, it's a job that's way down on the council budget spend and more than likely won't happen. Suddenly it's raised as a work for benefits scheme and now someone has to pay for all the overhead and people are asking why the council are paying £100 a metre to do something that they wouldn't normally do and isn't particularly important, why there's suddenly a Department of Hedge Maintenance and why some twat is on £60k a year and a final salary pension to manage it.
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P
Chris_M said:
Nationalised Northern Rock, while passing laws to allow rescued businesses to sevre employment contracts without paying out huge sums.
Nationalised HBOS rather than making it merge. Rather than one dodgy and one good bank, we ended up with a really big screwed bank. Nationalised banks targets would be to break evan with a 10% reserve of total money in 5 years from start of take over.
Introduce laws to stop banks sharing the burden of loans around, thus stopping them from being able to get round debt gaurentee statutes.
Introduce work for benifits scheme. I think at the moment, having them fill in potholes would be useful. Even if they dont actually find a job, they can continue to do public works, for less than the normal employees are paid. Or if they dont like that, I would give them a choice of which armed force they could join.
Have the state owned banks offer morgages, to take the slack while the private banks cut back.
Introduce a system of trying to claim back money from drunks for wasting NHS time.
Reduced the size of the civil service.
Raise taxes on the Oil companies and banks
Raise money on booze and cider.
Any legalisation of drugs would come after the development of "harmless synthetic alternatives". (I see too many drunks and addicts to just want to be able to take the money from taxes first)
Give forces personel tax breaks for every day they are on ops.
Have the Strategic defence review before the election. (personally I would like to keep the 4 SSBN's and the amphibious strike capability which the QE class will increase.)
Id also have said thank you very much when offered the Blackhawk helicopters by Sikorsky. Which would have given us more helicopters at a fraction of the price than the bungled Augusta Westland Wildcat program.
Disbanded the department in the Ministry of defence that provides arms manufactureers with personel for demonstrations at cost to the tax payer. If they want to use personel for stuff. They can pay the going rate. If Top Gear pays for it, why cant they.
Made Voluntary work for the under 18's compulsary.

Sorted out the Ash situation rather than sitting on my hands. Just because the Met plane was undergoing refits, what happened to the C130 that was used to do meterological stuff?
Wouldnt have allowed the Scottish Government to remove all tax pay suplemented "lifeline" ferry services to islands, when they were removed for PR reasons.
Cut MP's salaries, pensions and benifits.
Stopped the raiding on Private pensions pots. They are mostly empty and have nothing left to give.

Im sure Id have done other things as well.

On the other hand Id have made Jeremy Clarkson a Lord and put him in the Cabinet as special advisor.
Sacked Harriet Harman
Added a couple of bank holidays into the year.
Made Scuba Diving a part of the national curriculum.
Made all MP's learn where the mute buttons on microphones are.
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Chris M for PM:tongue:

You've seem to have given all this more thought than Brown, Cameron, Clegg et al:D
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J
Paul Evans said:
Chris M for PM:tongue:

You've seem to have given all this more thought than Brown, Cameron, Clegg et al:D
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They have probably all thought of some or most of it. The problem is, if they actually say any of it, nobody will vote for them!
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P
I would have nationalised NR, split it into a good bank and a bad bank (Just as has been done) Then I would have merged the good bank with the post office. Sat on the bad bank and waited for the dust to settle. The Post Office Bank would be floated off at a later date.

Stress testing of the other Banks would have started as soon as NR was in trouble.
Act off parliment making it law for remaining banks to hold enough colateral to cover themselves.


RBS HBOS would have been left to the markets, Lehman Brothers style.......
No bail out. The others could then go in and devour the carcass's.

Dealing with the credit crunch is a little harder:sad:
Post office bank would be undercutting the other with buisness loans.
I would not have printed money:cry: that will really hurt in the coming years.
Your going to love this!!! I would have given every tax payer in the country a rebate Max £1000.
Reinstate the tax breaks for Pensions.


Later.............. about 3 months ago.

Act of parliment forcing the 3 remaining major banks Lloyds, Barc and HSBC to reduce their UK share of the market to a Max 20%, opening the door for Branson and Reid to open up in competition. (You didn't think I was going to let them get away with it did you:p)

Now

Raise state retirement age from 65 to 67 starting in 2012. (Sorry, but someone has to do it!:sad:)

Soon 1 to 5 years.

Pull out of Afganistan.
Scrap Trident.
Cancel all further orders for eurofighter.
Invest in SLAM-ER (Nuclear capable for attack aircraft) and contiune with the purchase TLAM-D and Tac tom in the future. (Conventional warheads) and Nuclear capable Criuse, sub launched.
Purcahse Lockhead F-35 jump jets for our carrier's.
Lynx program to continue.
Challanger program to continue.
Unifiy the armed forces into one force, their mission to defend the UK. and assist in Peacekeeping for the united nations.

Instantly deport anybody entering the country illegally back to country of origin.

Reduce Seats at parliment to 400.
Elected House of Lords. Right to vote stripped from all hereditary peers. Hereditary peers to end on death. Reduce seats in Lords to 400.

thats a start................
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Emigrated

:D
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Richard Mason
Pubbloke said:
Nationalised the banks and fired the boards for negligence with no payouts.

Merged all the nationalised banks into one and then reduce interest on mortgage and loans from these banks to bank of england base rates + 2% (or whatever is required to cover the costs of administration without a profit) so that people could find them affordable and been able to carry on paying.

It has been proven that the free market does not work as a control on lending so i would Introduced laws stopping all loans to private individuals and businesses unless it could be shown that there total debt was less than 4 times salary/yearly profit and that monthly debt repayment was less than 50% of monthly income.

Make banks have to hold assets to cover lending, non of this variable (Basel II regs) stuff depending on security and asset type.
Click to expand...
Banks are OK in Aus, not one of the big 4 in any real trouble, so it's not private banks that are the problem, it's their regulatory environment - you'd be very lucky to borrow more than 90%. I remember when we bought the house we're in now, back in 2002, we had a real struggle finding a lender so we could borrow $145,000 on a collective income of $60,000.

Perhaps the trick would have been not to deregulate the banks to the extent they did back in 97. Now who did that?
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