³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

What a hoot!

Ain't blame grand?

Without effective accountability in almost any area involved (the banks, regulators and those who told all to 'carry on' until they couldn't any more), I am a tad unsure as to the value of this exercise except to fill a programme hour... oh, ok.

From what I am reading there are a few who may have fallen on some swords, but they already seem rather comfy, ermine coated ones to be of much deterrent effect.

Equally, having hoovered up a few trillion of your and my £s to keep on doing what they do naturally, I remain unsure that a one year hiatus on bonuses will really bite too hard, especially as it seems it is not my government's job to get too intrusive in how it's all 'handled' once the dust settles.

However, at least we have bought a few % better ratings and global status points for some, which is nice.

As to good value... not so sure.

If you do get a talking head on, do try and get at least a few pertinent questions answered, and preferably without defaulting to 'it only just happened, it's a global problem.. and the last decade doesn't count'.

This situation has been engineered by the Bilderberg/NWO mob to have an excuse to set up a global financial system, create a socialised banking system in the UK and elsewhere, attack private property and destroy the middle class. The only people to benefit from this will be the extremely wealthy. This is an outrageous act of corruption, fraud and deceit.

PREDICTION

Enquiry will stay firmly 'within the lie'. No one will inspect the wider perspective, of which the Money Mess is only a symptom. Nothing of real substance will be uncovered.
The show will go on.

RADICAL QUESTIONS

"How far do we need to understand the causes of the financial crisis in order to get out of it and prevent it from happening again?"

You'd have to begin by turning the tables on those who've been surreptitiously peddling political correctness (the handmaiden to the double-act and the Chicago School. Only then will electorates start to see what's fundamentally wrong with what they've been sold as freedom and Human Rights .

But I bet you won't.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

....and prevent it from happening again..

here is some expert advice .

Hope you don't lose sight of the two other huge stories today: loss of the Government's bill
on 42 days detention without
charge [devastating on any
other day!] and revelations
[on C4] that the Atomic Weapons Establishment
at Burghfield came within
hours of being flooded ....

Of course we need to understand the root causes of the crisis. It's the same with any crisis, terrorism for example. There's no hope of solving the problem otherwise.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the root causes of terrorism.

It will be easier to get to the root causes of the financial crisis.

Having spent the last few weeks trying to do exactly that I'm looking forward to this programme.

I believe it's all to do with securitization of debt, particularly mortgage debt, and the selling on of bonds and the selling of insurance of those bonds. The insurance is known as Credit Default Swaps. All these things have been traded on the financial markets. Hedge funds in particular have traded in these, as have banks themselves.

A lot of this activity was done by so-called investment vehicles specially set up by banks. Like separate companies, offshore. Granite was one - most people have heard of that, because it was set up by Northern Rock and has been in the news a fair bit.

The reason the special investment vehicles were set up was to get around regulation put in place by the UK government.

However, the UK government must take some blame for allowing, nay encouraging, the banks and various lenders to loan ridiculous large percentages of house value regardless in many cases of the income of the borrower; in the process setting up a house price bubble in order to boost the economy.

I do hope that the programme addresses these issues and sheds more light upon them.

Who will in the end benefit most from all the financial and economic turmoil?

The guys with all the cash, of course; namely the super-rich and the CHINESE.

We need a complete overhaul of the financial system, NOT just the banks.

We need an economy based on REAL money not VIRTUAL money (which only exists as numbers on a computer screen). A world where there is no such thing as "credit", only real money, borrowing and DEBT.

We need stability: steady growth not unfettered growth.

We also need JUSTIFIABLE valuations of assets such as houses, share prices and bonuses - not "guesswork".

The key is: keep things as SIMPLE as possible.

It is only too easy to blame the bankers although they must take their fair share for forgetting what they were doing and "lending" money to things that were too risky. One does, however, have to look a bit further and consider the credit rating agencies who seemed only too willing to grant fantastic ratings to a pile of junk. Add the accountants (and I speak as one) to the queue who dreamt up ever more fantastic "rules" which meant that accounts lost all meaning.

Barrie (#3) Sadly, yes.

There is no such thing as an expert panel, please explain how the panel can be expert?

There is no such thing as an expert panel, please explain how members can be qualified as experts on your panel?

Several questions/concerns that don't seem to be answered fully by the media:

1) Why can't we let the banks fail? All other profit-run businesses take this risk. We could then create a nationalised banking system that is driven by profit but by the needs of the citizen.

2) The government is going to "borrow" this money. Surely this can't be funded by the money markets. Will money not just end up being printed to service this expenditure?

3) If the banks have any money they lend guaranteed by the government, surely they will make even more risky investments in order to make more profit.

4) Why aren't our fundamental concerns nationalised aynway? It seems ludicrous to have energy, transport, banking, etcetera all in the hands of people who want to make as much profit as possible, especially in cartel-like industries.

Thanks.

I thought that we had "Experts" running the country, now we've got "Experts" asking how the "Experts" got it wrong???

There is a good case for the taxpayers money going into buying back our prime needs.
Housing
Energy
Transport
Agriculture.
Industry

Are we not an Island race?

Are we not a green and pleasant land?

There is a good case for letting the bankers go Bankrupt

For more on the Gordon Brown/Alan Greenspan
love-in, see:

Unfortunately I smashed up my TV after just thinking about the programme ...

but I'll vote anyway

... preview excerpt from tonight's programme (substitute what you like for "Shrek")

Messrs Broon and Darling kick the banks around to get headlines on day they know they will lose 42 day vote.

Where is my Tinfoil hat I think I lost it! :o)

Are Robert Peston and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ being deliberately misleading or do they merely not understand what is happening? The UK government has not yet acquired control of RBS nor has it yet spent £37 billion. Ii is underwriting issues of ordinary shares in RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS and it will end up with something between 0% and 60% of RBS. At the low price at which the new shares are being offered the result should be closer to the 0% and the total investment considerably less than £37 billion. The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's has a responsibility to present the facts clearly, simply and correctly.

The root cause of our economic crisis could possibly be our own egoism. Our own inner selves. Its easy to try to blame,point the finger and mention the miscues on someone else as we all do and the leaders have no problem doing as well. And of course our "leaders" are some of the biggest egoists (only do things for their own sake) in the world. All financial agreements are calculated only with what "can I get out of this." "For my own sake"(selfishness) in other words.

Really with the banks and more importantly the government anticipating a solution is very far-fetched. Maybe some cover ups on the truth for a while (whats new?) through the media (which they control too) then it will get to be too much and they wont be able to hide it. US and worldwide economy has been messed up for a while, now that its effecting the rich and the "leaders of the country's "trade, dealings, interests and investments" now they give a damn about it. They don't give a damn about the people in their country. Taxpayers, workers, middle and low class, etc.

Countries may work together in few plans as many already recognize this is a connected or global issue, that can only be fixed if we work together (the whole world). So the "leaders" probably carry out these plans just enough to they feel have some comfortableness and personal gain. As soon as the papers are signed and they feel they are set, they can pull the knife from behind their back and will reveal their true intentions. I hope this doesn't happen, yet, "Our leaders" isolating their countries is a likely next step." This I don't wish for yet there are many signs of it.

We are interdependent and this is revealed more and more each day. This looks to be the beginning of very turbulent and turmoil time for all of humanity in general. Sad to say until people start looking for a way to work with others in giving and working to benefit the other (persons ,countries) things will continue to go downhill in a way we never witnessed.

how can we accept the opinion of the deputy editor of the financial times, gillian tett, who says 'swelled' when she meant 'swollen'.

the devil is in the detail!

The Government would like us to believe this problem has been caused by greedy bankers and speculators. It's simply not true. Government regulation is to blame. The government excluded housing costs from monthly inflation costs, whilst house prices roared ahead at 10-20% pa. They were very happy to reap the stamp duty on an overheating market. If they had included house price inflation in the RPI/CPI figures, the Bank of England would have had to increase interest rates years ago in order to cool the housing market. Because the remit of the BofE was narrowly based it could not increase rates. Everyone could see that house prices at 8 times average earnings was unsustainable. Why couldn't the Government see what was obvious to the man in the streeet?

Mr Stephen petty.

Well that took a long time. Two points you have missed. Is there a coincidence that this Final Crash (as it has been called) occurred on the implementation of the counter cyclical Basel II requirement for capital adequacy? Combined with new accountancy rules which mark to market. Regulators have been outstandingly complacent at the rise of global debt now at levels twice that of the World's entire GDP from some 20% in the 1970s and the rise of credit derivatives a financial instrument that is new this century. The FSA never examined the credit books of large Banks to test the quality of credit. The language became more obfuscatory as the greed of teh bank's increased. Regulators fell down the path of mathematical delusion and reliance on 'black boxes' rather than common sense. Now their own models displayed the effect in global economics of such shocks to the risk assessment system - they show how risk is flattened to their edges. When these extremes are reached they show a collapse of the system. We are now in history's first primary banking crisis. Regulation has been centrally causative to this crisis. No more idiot regulators please.

Their are millions out their with debt in a lifetime they cannot repay. Banks are in teh business of lending long and borrowing short. With the sword of Damacles of global warming flooding, high fuel costs, resources dwindling the very nature of a bank's business is being challenged.

I beleive that during the last couple of years when the Primeminster was the Chancellor, he took his eyes off the job as Chancellor and instead concentrated on his prospects of becoming the Primeminister and, by so doing he forgot about his so called 'Boom & Bust' and left us in the 'Bust' Position that we now find ourselves in.
With the Four Ceo's and Executives who have lost their jobs. I beleive thet Mr Brown the Chancellor/Primeminister should also lose his job. Charles Brigden

THE FAULT LIES IN OURSELVES

The Money Mess is not about money and will not be cured by blame; it is a symptom.
We have abandoned the Feminine, such that male volition runs rampant in all spheres, and we have allowed Wisdom to atrophy, to the point where we cannot see the truth of that assertion.

This is week 2 without Jeremy. How come Jon Sopel is doing Newsnight tomorrow? Where is Jeremy?

Unfettered greed is cited as a cause of the current financial crisis. Some years ago a detective investigating a London fraud case, told a friend of mine (a financial adviser, acting as witness); whilst looking out over "The City"; that: "it stinks out there and you can't touch them". How true is this and if so, are we just going to patch up this system and carry on?

The retail and investment banks should be able to be robust enough to survive the bubbles and busts caused by human greed which results in large numbers of people overcommitting themselves. The regulators should ensure the banks can cope with the busts which always follow bubbles.

But at the end of the day, this problem is a perfect case of the Emperor's New Clothes. Nobody in banks or regulators dared shout that credit derivatives were very high risk instruments with very high impact if they went sour. Banks pointed to the rating agencies AAA ratings for these, and the fact that potential liabilities were partially insured. No one in banks or regulators dared challenge this because they feared looking foolish.

At the end of the day, the boards of banks are responsible for failing to adequately challenge either their quants' assumptions or their dealers in exotic instruments.

Basic lessons to be learned:

1. If it's too complicated to explain in a couple of simple sentences, don't invest in it.

2. If you don't understand something, and you're in a position of responsibility for the activity, it is your duty to challenge regardless of whether you might ultimately look foolish.

3. Never rely on the apparent professionalism or independence of a salesman, broker or anyone who is on commission or bonus if they want you to buy something.

4. Relying on third parties such as rating's agencies is only any good if a) you understand the limitations of the rating b) you can sue them if they're wrong, and c) they're good for the money if you do have to sue them.

It is so so clear to me that the panel of judges and the "defendants" are completely out of touch with what actually went down here. You're talking about Banks, Regulators, Speculators, etc. The man on the street does not have the slightest clue about all that. And that is exactly the point that you all fail to see. You are looking at this problem from an academic point of view. I'm sure most of the guests on tonights' show have never been out of work for a week let alone a year, to understand why people take out subprime loans presented on a platter, by FRAUDULENT BANKERS. What went down here was the SCAM of the century, and the loosers are the people on main street. I'm not sure you've investigated this properly but the sort of questions you need to be asking is why a bank like HBOS would have standard high street loan and mortgage products for their "prime" customers and on the other hand they now float or buy a company (like Birmingham Midshires) that will offer high interest loans and mortgages to subprime customers that can barely afford to pay back those loans. Meanwhile these loans have been packaged as death sentences, YOU CANNOT GET OUT OF THEM. Companies like Birmingham Midshires, CAPSTONE MORTGAGES (A Lehman Brothers Company) will make sure that you do not leave them as a customer. To put it simply, they will make sure that you never have a good credit file, I challenge you to investigate it. This thing is bigger than CDO's, CDS's, et al. IT IS THE GREATEST SCAM EVER CRAFTED OUT OF AMERICA and you all fail to see it. But I'm sure if it came out of some banana republic you'll be quick to pass judgement.

C'mon, how do you justify a CEO of a bank getting paid upwards of $200million a year on loans that have not finished their terms.

This is not rocket science, is it? This is ECONOMICS 101

ONE IN THE EYE (Pratting about in a pod.)

Paul Mason in the London Eye. Wow! Innovation or what? And studio effects by Mr Blobby with additional psychedelia from 'Turbulence R Us' - global purveyors of bonanza banality.

Hey ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, file this email under 'Licence Increase - sub section shear gall'. you could almost be ex-bankers!

Given that Scottish viewers were neither allowed to vote - or hear
the evidence after 11pm, this is
a clear case of a British mistrial.

Why does Newsnight not include a category for everyone who took out a mortgage on a loan-to-value above 80%, who bought to let, who re-mortgaged in the glorified name of "equity withdrawal", who stretched themselves not to buy a home but to climb onto a property ladder, who collaborated with property developers in falsifying the true value of the property as opposed to the plasma TV thrown in as a sweetener, who signed up for a discounted 2 year mortgage rate whilst knowing that they could not even afford the standard variable rate as it stood then, and who did any or all of the above entirely of their own free will?

"Dud, you'll never guess what I heard on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News this morning"

"What was that Pete?"

"Well it seems Russia has just tested long range nuclear missles over 1000's of kilometres and they all hit their targets.
Funny, I thought, Funny, for a nice autumnal day in October."

It got me thinking Dud, about last week when I heard on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News about Russia offering Iceland Billions of Roubles, as a friendly loan, positively received,about the 7th October it was, Funny I thought, Funny?"

"Why did you think it was funny Pete?"

"Well Dud, I went to put the kettle on and there was no bleeding gas Dud.! I thought that was very funny."

The media has blamed the banks, so not surprisingly the public blame the banks. This problem has been in the market for a number of months.. Notably coming to light with Bear. Everyone close to the business has known the problem needed solving, but individually were unable to fix it. The govts have left it far too late to step in and provide the type of support announced in recent days. Letting LEH go was a huge mistake. The manner in which it was allowed to collapse was ultimately the catalyst for this whole fiasco.

On renumeration, most employees are compensated with a mixture of cash and stock/options tied to their company. However, this crisis was caused by a small number of employees and managers. All of which have long since left the banks on large redundancy packages and parachutes. The ones that are left to pick up the pieces have lost most or all of these incentive packages... Yet they are not to blame for the situation we're in.. In fact many have conducted their business well and continued to create significant profits despite market conditions. Banks undertake many businesses and investments, not all of them are bad...

Worth considering the people that borrowed money they were unable to pay it back, plus the lax regulation in the mortgage market that allowed it to happen. Rating agencies place AAA ratings on junk?

Ultimately in my view everyone carries some responsibility;
The Banks; For lending too much and betting too much on sub prime assets.
The Govts; For not stepping in on a timely basis to resolve matters when this crisis could have been subdued/avoided.
The Media; For creating fear and panic on a global scale.
The Regulators; For doing little or nothing
The Rating agencies; For getting it wrong and being incentivised by the industry they support.

More importantly, though the situation has been stabilised to some extent. The fallout from this mess with stay with us for many years to come. UK Plc is about to feel the after effects of the banking collapse. That is going to effect every single person in this country. Love them or hate them the financiers in the City like to spend their money. Many have either lost there jobs, are about to lose their jobs or have just taken a significant pay cut. The fallout from this crisis hasn't even started to bite...

Obviously the flaw in this trial is caricaturing the causes so we are left with only one who is 'to blame', as we have seen in the evidence, the blame at the intersection of government, regulators and banks and how they all interact, cajole, create incentives and make assumptions on flawed or incomplete information.

I get the impression Labour failed to tighten regulation or act on bonuses so as to prevent the flight of capital out of the country, which has affected previous Labour administrations. Government regulatory regimes were competing with each other, as much as banks, to be light touch and leave it to the market to regulated itself. New Labour was also the product of political competition, which forced it (after successive election defeats) to accept and embrace the markets as part of the 'third way'.
There was also a major incentive for the money to not end up somewhere else in order to attempt their social programmes (as it was said, the UK has no industry any more). Obviously, this isn't democratic, but what then do markets have to do with democracy?

Perhaps this event had to happen in order for any change (however modest) to be possible, not just locally on a country wide basis, but globally. Perhaps now governments and regulators will be a bit bolder but also more forward thinking about the consequences of the practices out there, without the distorting lens of some whooping cheer-leading ideology.

I have spent the last 18 months investigating the irregular activities of a major bank. I won't go into the reasons or even give the name of the bank (because then this post won't go up) but, having watched tonights programme, I would just like to say that in my opinion this situation really does come down to four culprits:
1) Individual bankers - if you're paid millions of pounds to do your job well, then you should do it. If you get it so horrendously wrong, then you pay the price - and that's not walking away with a half a million pound a year pension. In many cases these CEO's have have behaved more like robber barons than anything else - to the point that some of them have become delusional in the belief of their own power.
2) the regulators who are nothing more than chocolate teapots and have absolutely no alliance with the public they are meant to protect.
3) The press - noticeable only by their absence in this trial. Countless times people, including a Judge have told me I should take the scandal uncovered to the press - I have - others have - I'm yet to find the newspaper journalist brave enough to really expose what has been going on in the financial sector - or should I say editor.
4. The Government - they formed the old boys club that let this happen and they are premier members.
But, as the Italians say, all the knots do eventually go to the comb - so I'm ever hopeful.
As for blaming the public - well, if you need a place for your family to live and house prices are so astronomical you can't even afford a broom cupboard and there are no council houses available or housing association houses available and some nice guy tells you he can get you a mortgage really easily - what do you do? Tell him no, it's OK I'll just live with my family in a bus shelter? Because that's where we've got to in this country.

Where in the accused are "The Media"? Rather than investigative journalism, most of the media supported the various vested interests (including their own) and talked up "Boom Britain" thus providing us with the catalyst that was Property TV.

One of the key requirements of a free democratic society is a free media, a counterbalence to the political agenda of any government. The media have failed to be this force because the media, like the banks, the regulators, the government and
the (so called) speculators, followed the fast going bankrupt theory of unregulated greed.

I really enjoyed tonight's program - at last people are asking the right questions and, often giving sensible answers. However you, the media have failed by letting us get away with this blatant stupidity, worrying more about your careers and personal gain than the world you were supporting.

Why not now serve your purpose by carrying on with shows like this to get to the bottom of what's wrong with our system so we might use this worrying time to build a better one.

Don't leave yourself out of the next show though.

#23 # 26 I agree ! The Bank of England could have stopped this housing Boom and the now Bust(Super Bust), as it had done before, but someone (Mr Brown) changed the inflation index the Bank of England was allowed to act upon to raise Interest rates. Mr Brown chose to follow EU harmonization by instructing the BofE to switch from the RPI to the CPI index (or HICP) in Dec 2003. The CPI inflation index takes No notice of house(Asset) price inflation , unlike the one it replaced (RPI). Read what the Governor of the Bank of England said in a interview back in July 2007. Given our past housing booms and bust I would of presumed Mr Brown and his Treasury experts would have thought about this ? As Irwin Stelzer hinted at , the banks, regulators and hedge funds operate within the law and it's regulations, therefore the rules were wrong. Mr Brown made the rules in 1998 and again in 2003 ! Now the tax payer has to pick up the bill and if we are really unlucky we will be hit with stagflation too. To see the size of the housing boom that brought banks to their knees , look here [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

I watched last night’s Newsnight special about the root causes of the financial crisis with great interest and this is what I got out of it:

The bankers are traders were doing something wrong but the regulators should have stopped them.
The regulators didn’t have the necessary powers or focus so the government should have given them it.
The government answers to the electorate so ultimately it is our fault.

Except that we don’t have necessary knowledge and expertise to assess the situation - we rely on financial journalists to inform us.

So the ultimate root cause for this financial crisis was a failure of financial journalism and journalists who didn’t adequately investigate the weaknesses in the system and report on it.

Finally, someone is leading the way to establish who is to blame for this mess. Though I remain frustrated at the fact that those Bank Chief Excecutives, Political Leaders, and FSA Chairman who were in their post during this period of collapse, I do hope that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ will have a part 2 to this 'trial' holding the relative individuals to account in the very near future.

I remain perplexed at the poor standard of media questioning/reporting of these extraordinary FAILINGS! Yes, Gordon Brown and the FSA took their 'eye off the ball'. When are these individuals, and those Bank Execs, going to be questioned thoroughly and intelligently in front of teh cameras as we saw last night? Let's hope this will be soon.

GROUP POLITICS: IT ISN'T VENAL, IT'S LEGAL

4everfair (#42) " When are these individuals, and those Bank Execs, going to be questioned thoroughly and intelligently in front of the cameras as we saw last night?"

They have been, that's what's so depressing/frustrating about it all. The regulations are lifted and then one is told that what's being done isn't venal, it's legal. Good legislation regulates behaviour, bad or fudged legislation does the opposite. We have had lots of fudged legislation under New Labour which has worked to weaken the control of the state or to legislate against 'terrorists' who rather ironically threaten free-market Liberal-Democratic anarchism. Whether this anarchistic legislation is part of the Lisbon programme to break up the UK or just Austrian School anarcho-capitalism or Chicago School economics at work doesn't make much difference. One should, however, ask why there so few British Chinese legislators also comprises 0.5% of the population and does best in our schools? This is democracy?

Incidentally, one way to reduce the crime rate is to deregulate. If no offence has been committed it can't be recorded as a crime.

the political class are the guardian class. So our guardians do not guard and do not know they have to guard and do not not how to guard.

the british model of society is the game model ie a set of rules with a ref. its a model that has been exported around the world through football, cricket, rugby etc.

this game had no rules and no ref. The only other two things that have no rules are love and war?

ACCOUNTANTS TO BLAME
FOR BANKING PROBLEMS

Where were the accountantswho sanctioned the audits of all these troubled banks? Aren't they also to blame?

I thought Will Hutton was going to strangle on of the 'defendents' so much was his exasperation, I am resigned to never getting a straight answer from a banker, a financial adviser, a speculator but where I did expect some satisfaction was the regulator but all last nights excercise demonstrated was the dark art of evading the question...

FLUSH WITH DEPOSITS

How much liquidity did the stock-market scare flush into the banks' deposits as shares were sold? That money may have been wiped off the FSTE and DOW, but how much of it went directly into bank accounts as deposits?.....

47

the money is in govt bonds where the price was driven so high that it created negative interest so people were actually paying the govt to hold it.

that is why the bond market will signal first if panic is over.

i thought the trial was good enough. much more rational to have a trial than last weeks attempt by a demo of the usual suspects to storm the royal exchange?

Dear #46 - there are no "straight answers" and Will Hutton was being disingenuous in some of his lines of questioning last night. Indeed, having seen him so much on Channel 4 news etc recently, I am not sure where his motives really lie? If the electorate really wants a straight answer to what afflicts our society today (not just financially, but socially and politically - let alone spiritually) then I suggest we all look in the mirror for our "straight answers" before we look to throw the first stone at whichever banker, politician, regulator etc we want to blame. In this respect, whilst we are at it, we might as well add the media and the accountants to the stoning list!
I thought the programme last night was awful and yet another attempt by the programme makers at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ (especially the supposedly news channels) to fill time with opinion rather than fact. As the American panelist said last night "it is not a crime to be stupid" - but our news programme makers continue to push this to its limits. Sorry Gavin. Nothing personal.

Stelzer should have been in the dock, rather than sitting in judgement. His thinking is the basis of the problem, and the prosecution did not address the Friedmanite analysis at the source of this crisis. Naomi Klein already had an encounter on Newsnight with Stelzer and Paxman, during which Stelzer refused to allow Paxman to use the word "concede", and dismissed the problem as one of regulation. Similarly last night he would not concede any defect, referring only to incentives as the correction for stupid humans, a quality he does not consider himself as exhibiting. Why do you have this man presenting himself, because of his connections to the power elite, or because of his perspective which now is an unmitigated disaster for the public, yet you continue to provide him with respectability. Enough is enough, try Paul Krugman, of stay with Stiglitz.

By regular reference to Stelzer, your programme has misled the public, yet you continue to employ him. Who is in charge there, what are they imagining, what do they know that this man was permitted to use a flagship programme to promulgate his false analysis. Is he now overboard, using his own terminology, or is he hovering in some Olympian realm, far beyond the misery of the masses?

gadfly55 (#50) Paxman got him to show some of his true colours, but Stelzer's very urbane. For who's interested: it pays to be sceptical as well as urbane.