I was going to make some long winded post about the whole financial crisis but there are just so many things that are just beyond me. So, please find following a few thoughts and pictures so I can get a few things off my chest.

• As much as I hate Gordon Brown could you imagine David Cameron in charge at the moment?
• Why have the government demanded Banks keep loans to homebuyers at 2007 levels? Wasn’t that the reason we are in this problem?
• This bail-out thing - when and how do we get our money back?
• Who the hell would put their life savings in an Icelandic bank for the sake of an extra .25% interest rate?
• How does Gordon Brown think he can stabilise house prices when they are still over-priced by 10-20%?
• Let me get this straight - the Government has given the banks MY money so they can lend it back to me with interest? (fact is stranger than fiction).
• If you are wondering where the money has gone, look no further than BP with profits of £1200 a second. So we privatised BP and nationalised the shitty banks. Thank God for politicians who obviously have brains the size of planets.
• If the Government want to pass on interest rate cuts to the public why are banks (some of which have had OUR money used to rescue them) still charging up to 30% interest on approved overdrafts and horrendous amounts on credit cards.

‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.’
Thomas Jefferson 1802

Lehman Brothers employees staging a protest

Sympathy for Wall Street

The new dollar bill

That was the headline, the other day, when the HSBC reported a fall in half yearly profits. It sounds bad and the usual suspects are on TV and in the papers telling us how the credit crunch is getting worse. Oh my God! This is Europe’s largest bank and even they can’t survive, what will become of us. Images of money men hurling themselves out of windows comes to mind.
Then you read a bit further and realise the bank made £5.2 billion in the first six months of the year. The people in charge must be shitting themselves. How can they survive, what can they do? Over five billion quid in six months and this is a bad thing, yeh right.
They lend money to people who can’t afford the repayments, they make huge losses in North America, they run crappy little branches with queues to the next town and zero customer service (apologies to the people of Bombay) and they still make huge profits.
This is not doom and gloom. The headline should read ‘Crappy business makes huge profits - hope for us ALL’.

Northern Rock is expecting to pay back its loan to the Bank of England by 2010. But they have said that, should the credit squeeze get worse and house prices start to tumble, then the repayments could be in jeopardy and they may struggle to make their commitments.
Do you think they will now be sympathetic to their customers who face the same hardships or will they foreclose on an ever increasing number of struggling people? Hmm! I wonder.
They managed their finances badly and were bailed out by us (the taxpayers). I have managed my finances badly - any chance I could be bailed out - I think not.
The banks caused the credit crunch and are now using this as an excuse to make even larger profits over the next few years.
May they burn in the pit of hades for all time!

Northern Rock had a s**t business plan, they were a poor company with awful managers. This was a firm that deserved to go under. Luckily, for their customers, they were bailed out.

Now we have the situation of other banks who, because of their poor business practices in the past, are refusing to lend to new mortgage customers. This can, and will only lead, to a fall in property prices where no first time buyers can get finance.

The situation we are going to have within the next few months to a year has been caused by the banks and their c**p business models. These are institutions and people who should be dispised, but are being royally rewarded with payouts that you the customer have funded.

I keep seeing the directors of Northern Rock on TV and somehow we should take pity on them, somehow we should feel sorry for them. Well, I’m sorry these people should be on the dole and unemployable. They are crap business people nothing more nothing less.