The only reason that the banks haven't defaulted (and this insurance collected on) is because they're on state benefits. The bucketloads of cheap money thrown at them enables easy recapitalisation simply by buying treasuries. Anyone holding sterling (or sterling denominated assets) has taken a roughly 25% haircut through the resultant devaluation.

Actually I read a range of papers, but mainly the times, although it pains me to put money in Rupert Murdoch's pocket. I don't class the Daily Mail as a paper.


I'd dispute that; most banks invest in arms companies. Go on, have a guess who profits most from wars? Any ideas?
And the Private sector pension deficits? Anything to say about them?

Er why? the gov doesn't have to bail out the private sector pensions.

Menace, you seen to have a bee in your bonnet about london and bankers

have a read

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...g-Britain.html

sorry I know its the dailywail but its the first link I could find, without the south east, london and your beloved bankers, the north would be totally screwed (even more then it is already), they pay more tax then anyone else, and get less back for it. Whereas the North gets more back then they put in.

and on that note I'm out of this thread

Know when you're beat, huh? I suppose you must be getting desperate when you quote the comic you earlier derided me for supposedly getting my opinions from...

To be honest, you can take your South East, and stick it where the sun don't shine. The only good thing about it is the theater and the museums. Manchester would get along just fine without you. If London was so great, why do so many more people come to University in Manchester?

The only mention of 'bank' in that article is in the word 'bankrolling'. I would argue that financial services has been disadvantageous to the UK, certainly in the long term; they have lobbied for an 'open' economy so that they can continue to earn fees from selling UK industry to foreign companies. All the UK's water, energy and other infrastructure is now owned elsewhere. It would be unimaginable for a country like France or Germany to allow companies/brands like mini, rolls royce, bentley, jaguar, range rover, etc etc to fall into foreign hands. This is because they don't have an overpowerfull banking lobby with their avaricious gaze fixed firmly on M&A fees.

Not only this, but by grabbing all the brightest science graduates from the top universities, they have decimated UK RD&D into actually making things.

Murdoch? Well how you can complain about Conrad Black I'm not sure. 6 of one...

Anyway, I would link to The Times' version of the same story, but you have to pay for that. Here's the search result:

For 2007-08:

London: 197,260
Manchester: 70,515

I'm guessing you are going to want to re-phrase your question... Maybe reversing some of the words?

(PS I wouldn't have gone to either Manchester or London for university even if they had paid me...)

University of Manchester - 37,360
Manchester Metropolitan University - 33,155

King's College London - 21,110
University College London - 20,990

Population of Manchester about 1m

Poulation of London about 6m

Even taking your original figures (care to show your working - I'm guessing you included every two-bit for instance arts college in the greater london area), % wise, you fall down a little.

I wouldn't have been a student at all, even if I could have paid to be

Big Blue -You said you were out of this thread. Are you a compulsive liar?

you do realise that KCL and UCL are just two of the colleges forming part of the university of london?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_London

it would be even bigger had IC not recently split off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_College_London

i have to agree, it was the govt/boe's fault for their loose monetary policy which gave rise to the unsustainable housing boom and the financial instruments generated as part of this boom.

it was also their fault to reward the failing banks at the expense of the taxpayer. i would also have preferred for the govt to let the NRK and other failed banks go bankrupt.

the public sector pensions and other off-balance sheet liabilities are also huge. it's an incredible mess that the previous govt left and it's going to be a painful fix for the new govt and i believe that there will be riots if the govt tries to push through the measures required to get back on an even keel.

i suspect however, that they'll let currency debasement take part of the heavy lifting as i don't think it will be politically possible to enforce the level of austerity required.

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You said there were more students in Manchester than London.

I proved you wrong. I'm sure you can manage a calculator and Ctrl-F using London to find all the numbers I used from that list.

Now you are trying to move the goal posts. Get over it.

And frankly, what relevance this has to the topic under discussion I have no idea!

I had no idea that based primarily in London, England, the University of London is a federal mega university made up of 31 affiliates: 19 separate university institutions, and 12 research institutes. As such, the University of London is the largest university in the UK by number of full-time students, with 135,090 campus-based students and over 45,000 in the University of London External System.

Sounds like it's not even all in London. 19 seperate universities? Please. We have half the number of students in only two. Not impressed at all, sorry. I mean, if I start including every University in a similar geographical or population areas in the North....

Sounds to me like we're in agreement...

Neither have I, to be honest. Bit OTT, innit?

You didn't prove me wrong at all, you just didn't understand my point. Get over it.

Ctrl-F, indeed. Is that supposed to be a geeky way of telling me where to get off?

Don't forget that the bankers to some extent own the politicians. It can be argued that this is evidenced by Tony Blair's £1m p/a payoff job for JPM. People like Gavyn Davies, formally of Goldman Sachs, ensured that the Giant Squid's tentacles extended to the highest reaches of government.

Gordon Brown, despite running the economy for a decade, had no training in economics. He relied heavily on the advice of the bankers (at least the Tories are more clued up to as to what their banking pals are up to, having gone to the same schools, etc). Gordon Brown's banking advisors told him that the way forward was to attract the bankers to the UK through lax regulation and lax taxation through the non-dom scam. New Labour's 'reverse prone' attitude towards the bankers dates as early as 1998 with Mandelson's "we are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" speech in California.

As London attracted the bankers through lax regs & tax, the US had to compete through also letting the bankers do whatever they wanted. This race to the bottom on the restrictions on bankers directly led to the current crisis.

Warren Buffet, the world's most accomplished investor, described derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" in 2003. Despite this, in his 2006 Mansion House speech, Gordon Brown boasted that "40 per cent of over-the-counter derivatives trades" were made in London. If he wasn't listening to the world's greatest investor, who was he listening to? The small London based part of AIG which blew up the US giant through their derivatives trades was not even regulated by the FSA.

So, yes - the politicians were as much to blame as the bankers, but the idiots were so clueless that they chose to allow the bankers to help shape policy.

edit: if anyone wants a better idea of how the bankers sold all their RMBS trash, I highly recommend the book 'Liar's Poker' by Michael Lewis

Anyway, getting back on topic:

UBS makes 2Bn chf profit in Q2, with lowest levels of client withdrawals since 2008.

Still a fair way to go though...

An excellent example of how the banking lobby pwns the politicians:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/96ca4a38-7...44feabdc0.html

Banks win battle for limits to Basel III

Carver,
I think that grapefruit on your head's on too tight!

Maybe you should consider changing your headgear. Ever heard the expression "tinfoil hat?"
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_sQ56RHTN4kI/ST...foil%20hat.jpg

Did you have a contribution WRT any of the points I made?

You mean by joining the debate whether there's a conspiracy between a global banking elite and senior government ministers to control the planet by monopolizing the world's money supply?

No thanks!

Not a great believer in conspiracy theories myself. They rely on an unlikely high number of people keeping the secret which does not happen in real life.