www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_new...-standard-2013_11_23

The same RBS that the tax paying public were forced to bail out ....

Ever heard of the tale of The Scorpion and the Frog?

I'd be shocked and aghast if tweren't for the fact that i already knew they are total wankers. After all they're a bank.

It's not just the RBS, that's been cherry picked for the obvious reasons stated above.
I am willing to bet that some other high street banks are far worse...but the 'corporation' needs to protect them from 'public hostilities' by making the RBS the main 'fall guy' to protect their interests.......Barclays anyone?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclays#Qatari_ca...atory_investigations

Barclays indeed

This isn't really news though, eh? Just what banks have always and will always do, imo.

Ab Origine wrote: You're right it isn't news, it's just another one to throw on the pile. I just like to keep a record of all these things just so that I can reel them off as a list the next time I'm having an argument with someone (probably the next time I have a conversation with someone).

wake_up_bomb wrote:


Wasn't having a dig by the way. I find all the things you post very interesting. In fact, most of what you post about I've already heard about from the mainstream pov on the radio, and what I actually type is probably what I've been screaming at the radio all day.

It's just nice to have someone to vent with. Like naked cuddles. This whole forum is like one, big, lovely naked cuddle for me...

Ab Origine wrote:

Ab Origine wrote: No, I know, what you said was entirely accurate. It’s interesting to make a note of all these things because it succinctly displays the real reasons that economists exist.

Economists exist simply to defend the status quo. There cannot be any other academic discipline like it, where nothing you say ever has to be correct, it just has to support the existing economic structure.

So if you went to someone from LSE six years ago and said “major retails banks are going to collapse all over Europe, the housing market is going to bomb completely, the US is going to close down its government because it won’t be able to function any more, major businesses like General Motors are going to have to be given billions of dollars by taxpayers, HSBC are going to be caught laundering billions of dollars of drug money, numerous banks, including the Bank of England, are going to be caught fixing the LIBOR rates, trillions of dollars are going to be given to financial institutions in bailouts, both the UK and US are going to have effectively negative interest rates for years, 50 million Americans will be on food stamps...” and so on, they would have laughed in your face and dismissed what you were saying. Because it wasn’t the status quo.

Of course, now it’s all happened, so it is the status quo. So now their job is to defend that, and to try to give some sort of completely absurd rational justification for it, and imply that they expected that it was going to happen all along. But if you go to them now and make predictions about what is going to happen in the future, which if you’re remotely rational will involve all of these trends getting worse, then they will dismiss that.

Until it happens. Then it becomes the status quo, so they’ll have to defend it and pretend that they always knew it was going to happen. That is what economics is. You have to study for seven years to get a PhD to be able to go on TV and do that.

And the post of the day award goes to...
Mr wub.

Ab Origine wrote:

knobmeup wrote:
As so often is the case.

The banks here have a lovely dilemma to use.

On the one hand they don't loan enough to SME's on the other hand they get accused of usury if/when SME's go bust due to said loans.

Great innit

The following article shows fundamentally why we have a massive problem. Just one little sentence. Let me just point out the background to this guy first:

www.ianfraser.org/max-keiser-on-the-fina...al-bank-of-scotland/
They don't give a fucking shit, Mr. Fraser, that's why!

Now there are two possibilities here. Either (a) he engages in a little criticism of politicians, but knows how far to go to retain his position as a mainstream journalist. Which would be understandable, but should obviously also be a genuine concern. Or (b) he genuinely doesn't yet understand that MPs don't appropriately regulate banks, they fucking work for them.

Either of those scenarios are equally likely and equally possible, it’s really quite impossible to say which is the case. Seeing as he’s written a book on RBS, you’d hope that it was (a), and then at least you could say that he’s guilty of cowardice and self-interest, rather than immense stupidity. It is, of course, equally possible that he’s guilty of immense stupidity, we just don’t know.

But when you have a press that is either that cowardly or that stupid, and even the level of media discourse that we have now is strongly discouraged and is also being staunchly regulated, you’re in big trouble as a society.

Our entire economic system is based on borrowing money hence we ultimately end up in a fucked if you do and fucked if you don't situation.

It really is childishly simple at the end of the day, fiat money is fine but it should only be issued by gov treasury at 0% and inflation controlled via taxation and even then most heavily taxed at the top with no loopholes rather than at the bottom

Banks should not be used for loans at all by the majority population and houses etc should be paid for with cash sums.

It used to be like that at some point in history but it is now no longer achievable without radical global change , a single country can no longer do it without total self sufficiency which IMHO no longer exists , even Iceland needs trade and a country cannot go alone in such a matter and expect other states to then accept their non-FR money.

There will be no sudden collapse and SHTF scenario that the likes of Alex Jones harp on about, just ongoing utter misery and decline bit by bit, we are the proverbial frog slowly boiling in the pan