Amendment

[kingandy]

To correct an earlier post:

August 3rd, 2009: OMG TEH BANKS ARE MAKING MONEY THOSE GREEDY CUNTS nasty, shamey greedymen.
August 5th, 2009: OMG TEH BANKS ARE LOSING MONEY THE ECONOMY IS IN CRISIS.

Comments

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

I thought the point was both HSBC and Barclays didn't take any bailout money because they didn't want the government to have a say in how they ran things. Although I suspect they have probably benefited from all the other guarantee schemes that where launched before the uber-buyout.

[anne-l-davies.livejournal.com]

Apparently Northern Rock (my mortgage lender!) has had three highly different business plans imposed on it in the last 16 months - the staff that are left are literally running around like headless chickens trying to keep up and comply with all the different dictats!

[areteus.livejournal.com]

HSBC and Barclays were not in serious trouble - they are international corporations with many different revenue streams. When one (the mortgage thing) got dodgy, they moved effort more into the others to cover their expenses. They still made losses last year but not enough to cripple them.

The UK only building societies (Northern Rock) had mortgages as their main income and so were very badly crippled by the crash. Lloyds had the same problem - they were basically not big enough to survive.

Now, personally, in my opinion, the economy is based on confidence. if you lose confidence in a company, especially one which deals in something so ephemeral as finance, then you stop using it. For most of last year, we had the government and the media shouting 'Oh my god there's a financial crisis! Aieeeeee!!!!' and then naming particular companies as being 'susceptible. The result? Panic and everyone moving their money around leading to a lot of stress on the market. I am not sure that the 'crisis' would have been as bad for the average person without this panic...

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

For all the talk about the worst recession since the 30's people seem to loose perspective. Certainly in the developed world there haven't been mass migrations of families searching for work and struggling to eat like the Great Depression. Sure industry has had a fairly savage shock and there have been a lot of layoffs (which I got caught in as well) but un-economic companies restructuring or going to the wall is all part of the capitalist system. The ones that survive will be stronger for it.

Of course that might be my free market capitalist provided rose tinted glasses.