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What a brilliant idea: the creation of another 'too big to fail' bank, which can act with reckless abandon knowing full well that the tax payer will bail them out when it all goes wrong.

REMIND ME

Didn't TSB once belong to its members - until it got flogged, along with so much else?
There should be a saying to cover it like: "A stolen bank is worth two in a mess."

THAT QUESTION AGAIN

Who wrote Clegg's speech? I repeat: would it not be polite to announce, before speeches start, not only the author but, in this instance, that the autocue was in the cheap seats (where cheap jokes come from?) and could not be seen on TV during the Daily Politics coverage?
The 'pool of white light' stagecraft, and see-through stand/glass/water ensemble, making The Mighty Clegg sole focus, had 'tacky PR' all over it. At one point, the camera offered us the 'uplifted' face of a woman in the audience bearing a beatific expression, and my mind catapulted back to those faces 'gazing upon' the Fuhrer.
Nick: I bring news. This is not 'a new kind of politics', it is the old sort made even more unpleasant, by a turn of the Spinmeister's screw. And we are the screwed.
Go back to your constituency and eat Crow.

It would appear that the Tories are not prepared to do anything really useful when it comes to regulating the stock market parasites. Perhaps this demonstrates that they as much the puppets of the stock market parasites as " New " Labour.

Brown appears to be " practicing the art of not being seen " yet the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ attempts to portray him as a hero because of today's LTSB / HBOS merger. He can't hide next week and I suspect that the markets will continue their falls.

Perhaps the only true solution to the current financial crisis is to nationalize all the UK banks and start a new financial system from scratch. It wont cost anything if they let themselves bleed to death and owe the government more than their Bank of England bail out loans.

One of the most entertaining programmes in a long time. Well done Jeremy!

The piece on Bosnia was also really moving.

On whether capitalism 'still' works, I think it's more an idea that is at stake - whether markets, when unregulated, tend to some sort of utopian equilibrium. With a right wing government is the US eating Clinton's words about the age of big government being over, effectively nationalizing part of the financial system, perhaps (finally) this idea has been decisively refuted on its own terms.

After a brief second ideological age (unregulated free markets, after the collapse of the Soviet system) perhaps we can return to 'normal' politics were the parties are actually different from each other. Had the world's financial system actually collapsed and governments had not stepped in, the only political alternatives would be on the far right and far left (as with the Weimar republic). Politics needs to diversify move away from this now failed centrist consensus to save us from those political extremes.

PITY BOSNIA

As if the vile works of 'The Ape Confused by Language' were not sufficient to bring us to despair, the apes of Newsnight saw fit to add the banal dimension of 'mood musack'. Heaven forbid that ethnic cleansing ever comes to mixed-race media; the rape and killing will be done to carefully selected music.

Banks And Such -

I was glad to hear Mr Osborne (the Tory dewd) is going to seek a agreement to restrict Fractional Lending, as 35 to 1 is OTT in my humble view.

I also liked his idea to extend Depositors Protection, depositors do need reassurance in todays climate.


Bosnia -

Over the past year or so I have been hearing that the Serbs were responding to provocation ?
In your video a Serb again referred to shooting someone trying to throw a bomb into his cafe ?
Is there any truth to these rumors (allegations) ?

If this is just Serb Nationalistic propaganda, I would like to be able to correct them with the truth.

I still think NATO was right to stop the civil war, as too many noncombatants were being killed for it to be ignored.


PS.
Can I thank the person that posted that cartoon link that explained Fractional Lending (six weeks ago now).It helped me understand what was being talked about.

Vince has made his first serious mistake, clapping his leaders speech a bit too enthusiastically. It is a departure from everything Cable stood for so why the Damascian conversion? It is summed up by the .....'go back to your constituencies and prepare for...oblivion'

Its a pity Jeremy allowed his personal animosity towards George Osborne and Irwin Seltzer to stifle all debate. I can't imagine why you took the trouble to ask them to appear on the programme if the intention was to prevent them expressing their opinions.

nortongriffiths (#9) Paxman was just putting (and Osborne's) neoconservative free-market anarchism in the firing line (as a good interviewer should). Both interviewees failed dismally in my view. Paul Mason did an excellent chiding follow-up remark on Osborne and .

Paxman (and Mason) did their jobs.

THE BOTTOM LINE (Ref #8)

Never lose sight of the fact that Vince Cable has put up with the Westminster ethos for a long time without being moved to denounce its dishonour. How wonderful it would be if he stood up and told that terrible place that 'with a heavy heart' he could no longer tolerate its UNETHICAL DIMENSION.
In short: Vince seems a nice bloke, but not as 'nice' as he should be to represent his constituents with honour.
David Davis also fell short, so the Peoples Champion has yet to arise.

who are the real short sellers? Those doing the selling or those respected institutions like pension funds who are lending them the shares to do it?

It may suit some to direct the lynch mob attention on traders when its the institutions perhaps run by titled names and pillars of the establishment that are facilitating it.

perhaps NN could get a few chairmen of pension funds who own financial shares and ask them why they are lending them out to traders to play with? Is that looking after the long term interests of pensioners? Or their bonuses?


is there point when the greater good kicks in? What's the point of being the richest person if it results in a 'wasteland'?

ethnic cleansing

suppose brown, cameron and blair were patrons and the duke of edinburgh raised money for a well known ethnic cleansing outfit?

would that be a story? or too hot to handle?
Funny how no one investigates it? It would be interesting to listen to the defence they use?

Jeremy could only think of one question to ask Osborne and because he didn't understand the answer he just kept repeating it. If he was a good interviewer he would have found out, on behalf of viewers, something about the Tory response to the current financial crises. He didn't, so he failed.

Irwin Seltzer might have given us some clue to how neo-cons are responding to the crisis had he been allowed to speak unhindered. When Jeremy wasn't interrupting him he encouraged Klein to do so.

Shouldn't a good interviewer act as a conduit between the interviewee and the viewer? Jeremy acts as a block.

SELLING (PEOPLE) SHORT: OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY/RISK

As I understand it, shareholders (in Thatcher's 'the people' sense) don't really fully own their shares anymore as they have to have them electronically registered (usually in a nominee account for which, ironcally, they have to pay a fee). Wherever they're held, there's therefore a very good chance that the electronic holder may have got you, their client, to have given them the right not only to vote in lieu of you the registree (in fact the shres will be held under their name not yours), but to lend your shares on to a short seller for a fee.

Is that not how this egregious game has preyed upon people? Other people's money is other people's risk.

If not, please enlighten/correct me.

nortongriffiths (#14) Fair/good points. I was just pleased to see Paxman a little more critical of his alleged experts for once given the way that Seltzer and his ilk have long promoted neocon economic anarchism as a pancea. The only people it ever really seemed to benefit in the end were those in on the game who took advantage of lrge numbers of trusting others (cf. sub-prime mortgagees and other borrowers) who, like children, find it hard to believe that other people can be such unethical predators. Personally, I don't think the neocon 'philosophy' is anything other than warmed over, made-over Trotskyism with its promotion of equalities and political correctness to make innocents financial prey. They have nothing to teach anyone other than to be very wary of 'Greeks' bearing gifts (which is just another way of saying 'caveat emptor'). But most of the above victims don't do latin or ancient history. Something these predators know only too well, although they'll to stop people grasping the true (genetic) nature of for quite egregiously predatory/electoral reasons.

LIGHT-TOUCH WHITE-COLLAR PREDATION/CRIME?

Note: 'criticisms' tend to be (Wikipedia has even replaced the much clearer bell curves with their transformations, i.e cumulative percentages instead). The ordinal ethnic differences of cognitive ability (with Black British Caribbeans at the bottom (closely followed by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis), and Birtish Jews, British Chinese and British Indians at the top) show up very clearly at the population level *every* year in the government published SATs where English, Maths and Science are proxies for Verbal, Spatial and Non-Verbal IQ. Note, with population level data inferential statistics are irrelevant. Note where the easiest pickings for sub-prime sales ad oter bling are, who's under enormous pressure as Islamo-fascists to secularise given the anti-usury in their religion, and who does best out of the financial markets (see the investment banks under pressure now that their behaviour has been brought to light, and they have the Chutzpah to hope for tax payer bail-outs) whilst peddling political correctness/equality/immigration so that their markets (cash cows) expand.

THE NATURE/RELEVaNCE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS (AKA )

In case it's not perfectly clear, I've been suggesting that the practice of questioning sex and racial group equality (i.e. challenging naive egalitarianism) has been made into a taboo not because of any desire to promote lofty, humantarian values, but because through doing so, it's easier for those who wish to exploit these well demonstrated cognitive/behavioural differences to do so with impunity.

Promotion of naive egalitarianism, usually negatively through intimidation/deprication of critics who point out the overwhelming contrary empirical evidence as sexist or racist (and since EU equalities legislation by threats of prosecution or sacking using the RRAA) is far from socialist or humanitarian (which recognises each according to his or her native ability) is in fact exploitational i.e. predatory anarcho-capitalist/Trotskyist, which is why NGOs and other Liberal-Democratic activists devote so much time and effort trying to undermining the national socialism of anti-capitalist states like China, N Korea, Uzbekistan, Iran, Burma and Islamic countrie through criticism of their alleged 'Human Rights violations. In fact, examined more closely, one may be surprised to learn that those countries endeavour to put people first.

11. barriesingleton wrote:

Never lose sight of the fact that Vince Cable has put up with the Westminster ethos for a long time without being moved to denounce its dishonour. How wonderful it would be if he stood up and told that terrible place that 'with a heavy heart' he could no longer tolerate its UNETHICAL DIMENSION.
In short: Vince seems a nice bloke, but not as 'nice' as he should be to represent his constituents with honour.


Alas, Cable makes a very good impression on TV, but at the end of the day he is another very imperfect politician. Maybe he could find a new, equally profitable career, as a latter day Arthur Murray (the famous ballroom dance teacher, who had a chain of schools).