God forbid... Labour have just gone up in my estimations...

[Jeff Maginty]

..

[VectraMan]

I think you're guilty of misselling Ed Milliband as an influential politician, and so should be struck off.

[cojak]

Yeah, the Opposition have the luxury of saying what people think.

Until they get elected.

[Spacecadet]

how about striking off bad unions?
BBC News - Unite chief Len McCluskey in 'civil disobedience' call

[OwlHoot]

Finally, an influential politician having the balls to speak out against the bankers and say what a lot of people have been thinking!

Huh? How does speaking out against bankers take "balls"?

It's simply kicking the cat, and ingratiatingly pandering to the misguided prejudices of socialists like you.

[BlasterBates]

All the errant bankers lost their jobs, and no haven´t been reemployed. Does anyone seriously belive a bank will employ a trader who lost millions...err I don´t think so. The finance industry is pretty brutal, make a mistake and you´re out the industry. Sounds like "populism". Perhaps they should suggest that errant bankers are put in stocks so we can throw rotten tomatoes at them, that would make sense.

[AtW]

They usually get bonus so big that they don't have to do any work for the rest of their life.

[scooterscot]

Perhaps he might like to consider the same principle applying to those in positions of responsibility whose economic policy amassed a multi billion pound public sector deficit, on which we're currently paying £120m in daily interest.

[realityhack]

Yeah, the Opposition have the luxury of saying what people think.

Until they get elected.

WCJS

[wim121]

"Bankers say the era of remorse is over, but that's not good enough. I just don't think anything has really changed. Nobody has paid a price for what happened - that is what really angers people."

"There is a sense that they just don't get it. This is nothing to do with politics or envy. It is to do with the real destruction caused by bankers, for which other people paid the price."

What a load of utter tripe.

Anyone angered by risk taking in banking, is quite simply mentally retarded and don’t understand how economics work. No personal offense by the way.

Ever since the private sector was encouraged by Thatcher and financial services and trading took off ever more than before, first world countries have enjoyed prosperity of wealth created by banks trading. We needed financial services to plug the gap in our GDP that manufacturing was losing. Such progress is just evolution. We are now an exporter of finance and knowledge. One such example to cite here is ARM processors, who make chips for nearly all cellphones and mobile devices. They are designed here in the UK, but manufactured at a cheaper cost in the far east. The business has grown to such an extent by us retaining work that is more profitable, such as exporting knowledge, while losing less profitable GDP contributors.

Nobody complained about the trillions over the decades that banks made and pumped in to our country. Even look at densely packed small nations like Bahrain, where financial services, amounts to 30% of the GDP. The sheer amount of money made in the past few decades is due to gambles or what we call trading.

Sometimes when you trade, you do better than other times, it is all about quantifying risk. The unfortunate truth is in nearly all circumstances, the risk reward ratio is far in favour of reward than risk in trading. Trading is what made homo sapiens a surviving race, where as neandathrals, with a lacking social mind, died out in the harsh European climate of the time simply because they didnt trade. Trading has made the past century wealthier than anyone ever imagined. Although we have had a constant boom and bust cycle, using median or even mean ranges, living conditions and economics of nearly all nations, is far more advanced today. Anyone above the age of 10 can relate when we even compare long standing lifestyle home inventions, such as white goods, when we rule out mass consumerism driving prices down and just compare living conditions. I have a far better lifestyle than my grandparents did at my age, despite not being as successful as they were. Be glad, we can all send our children to school, rather than to work at a mill. Consider yourselves, truly enriched.

As proved by the collapse of Bearings, the real danger isn’t bad trades that lose millions, but people covering up mistakes, enabling further ones to be made. In their predicament, it wasn’t just one trade gone wrong, but a trader, who made a mistake and felt there was no way out, but to take further risks, to recoup the losses and ended up incurring more. The problem with the credit crunch/recession, wasn’t bad risks, but humans covering up mistakes and bad trades yet again, pandering to human greed to keep up with the Jones’s by purchasing things such as property they could ill afford.


The only people to blame for any problems with the world economy are ALL OF YOU! Not bankers, YOU! It is your greed living on interest only mortgages, it is your greed in not rationalising your spending. Be thankful if you are in the small minority, which did not contribute to the recession, but the sad fact is, many of us did. Just because a bank gives you credit card after card, does that mean you have to max each one out?

If I stand on a street corner, handing out loaded guns and someone who takes one, doesn’t just kill one person, but goes on a rampage, am I a mass murderer? NO, all I am, at the most, is an accessory to the crime. Banks enabled stupid members of the public to live beyond their means, but they didn’t force us to live beyond our means. That is something, as a society, we should grow up and accept instead of grumbling and insulting a sector that has made us globally stinking rich and been a main contributor to the GDP as other sectors have died down.

Now I agree, financial institutions should quantify risk better and most importantly, have a system that allows humans to spot and report mistakes, rather than covering things up and passing on the buck but overall, they aren’t fully to blame for all economic woes.