h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I notice that FG's post is still unmodded. Perhaps there is no problem using the word when you are describing people with a legitimate mental disability?

FG, thanks for the link to The Nation site. It's refreshing to see a site which wants only a name and a password, rather than your life history and your income level and your...NYTimes be d*mned!

Part of what's so horribly wrong, these days..."All Ur data is belong to us!"

Perhaps it's a reflection of the simmering worldwide anger over the financial meltdown. "She used the word 'morons'? Don't moderate her--they are morons!"

And the opposite end of the spectrum? I just watched the press conference and am so in love with a prez who gives cogent, well-thought-out seven minute answers to difficult questions.

I find the financial melt down hard to grasp, because it's so all-effecting and widely spread. It's easier to take in the small details and like Strangely, I find it apalling that companies that have been around 'forever' might face bankruptcy.

Volvo, for example - I've grown up surrounded by Volvos, my parents' first car was a Volvo, the most common car in Sweden is a Volvo (especially the combi models) - I can't imagine a world without Volvos!

http://home.swipnet.se/~w-47068/svartfra.gif

And Märklin! Also one of those companies that have been around 'forever' (or at least 150 years). My brother used to collect their model trains, tracks, switches, buildings etc.

Volvo? Seriously???

If I remember rightly Thatcher de-regulated the city in what was called the 'Big Bang' . Reagan did much the same thing in the US at about the same time I believe . This initialy worked well , unfortunately it fails to take into account basic human nature . People are greedy ,if left to there own devices they will take and take , until there is nothing more to take . Humans are not renown for thier self control . If you think 'I'm not like that' you will be one of the ones they are taking it from !
OK rant over my socialism does not live in a closet .

Tod, I don't know much about Thatcher, but I suspect Reagan *was* taking into account human nature. It's the more successfully greedy humans whose money was financing his campaign.

Volvo, yes. Ford (current owner) has been wanting to sell off Volvo for a long time now, but no buyers have shown any interest. The only other option would be bankruptcy.

Recent rumours in German and British press, however, hint that a government-owned Chinese company might be interested.

In which case I suspect that the production will be moved to China to lower the costs, and I don't have much confidence in products marked 'Made in China' - poor quality, poisonous materials and built-in virus programmes come to mind.

I guess the Chinese government has sensed this, since lately I've seen more and more products that have instead been marked 'Made in PRC' (Peoples' Republic of China).

Well this is fun, they had a few of the Merchant Bankers in charge of the failing UK banks up infront of some MPs at Parliament yesterday to explain why they screwd up so badly.

They also had the ex Risk Manager from one of the failing banks with one of the letters he sent to a bank boss warning him that the dodgy deals, loans and borrowing were putting the bank at risk. The man who sacked him in 2005 for keeping warning about this risk of bank's collapse was, and you will like this, put incharge of Regulatory Authoritory in 'control'( I use the word loosely) of banking lending, borrowing, etc of all UK banks!
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You couldn't make it up,lol.......

Well there you go, the man who sacked the man who gave warnings to bank about risk has now resigned from authority who oversees banks, that is at least one Merchant Banker gone!

Strangely, there's a difference between Merchant Bankers and High Street Bankers. The guys up before the MPs on the Treasury Select Committee were Retail or High Street Bankers.

Still a wunch, I agree.

B

Ben, could you explain the difference? I was just wondering what the analogy was to our system, or at least what we call them over here (besides 'pirates', 'morans' or worse...).

Ben, I was being perhaps a little subtle, it is ryming slang, Merchant Bankers rymes with......

Surely in times like these we can say "wankers", right?

people winging and whining about money... if you have your health and your family is in tact than you are rich beyond belief ask anyone who lost someone in the bushfires in Victoria this past week nearly 300 dead and those that are here still don't care about the plasma tv or their stock portfolio...and those who donating goods, money, time etc know what really counts....maybe catastophes like this are to help us realise what really matters every day families giving up what ever they have to help someone else

Well yes and no, if you were sold a dodgy mortgage that was unrepayable and you aren't rich then your family could become homeless due to this. Also people are losing jobs in uk due to even small firms going bust as can't get loans as banks won't lend, employees lose jobs, hence again their home.

Hi Hayfayi, and welcome.

If you look at Ask, the Australian and New Zealand Researchers' page and at Ivan's journal thread you'll see that some of us posting here have been posting there as well.



Good joke, Strangely. The thing is, they actually are Bankers, as well as being frequently described as wankers. It's just the "merchant" bit that I felt wasn't entirely accurate.



Lil - I'm not entirely sure what a Merchant Banker does, which is a tad embarrassing.

The guys up in front of the MPs all run high street banks - these are banks which sell products to the public via retail outlets in towns and cities up and down the country and also via the internet and via postal and telephone services. Typical products are traditional banking products like current accounts, savings accounts and loans. But they've also veered off sideways in the direction of mortgages, credit cards, insurance and personal investment products and personal pensions. The key thing here is that the customer is an individual or a couple.

Retail banks also offer corporate or "wholesale" banking services, which are basically the same kinds of products, but the customer is a business. Bare in mind "a business" may be Jo who comes around and cuts my hair or - I dunno - the Mighty Walmart. The products though are basically the same, current accounts, savings accounts and loans and insurance. And of course there are other services like cash- and payment-handling, and maybe some services relating to currency, like running Euro accounts and so on.

Merchant Banks operate at the chunky end of this scale - Walmart rather than Jo the Hairdresser. So RBS, HBOS, Barclays and Lloyds all have divisions that compete with the Merchant Banks and may even employ individuals who might be called Merchant Bankers, but they are not actually Merchant Banks, because they also deal with the public and small businesses.

Finally, there are the Investment Bankers. These guys ONLY deal with great big institutions. Some are also Merchant Banks who provide an Investment Banking service, and others are pure Investment Banks don't handle current or savings accounts. Wikipedia says they handle "raising capital, trading in securities and managing corporate mergers and acquisitions". For example, when HBOS raised a load of capital last year by issuing a load of shares, the process was managed by an Investment Bank, who also undertook to buy any that were not sold on the day. In the end the HBOS share price had tanked so badly that the Investment Bank bought the lot.

I've put that in the present tense, but the buy-outs, rescues and failures of the second half of 2008 have restructured the sector in the US.

The people in front of the MPs were the former CEOs and Chairmen of two failing retail banks (yesterday) and the currrent CEOs and Chairmen of two not-yet-failing retail banks (today).

Hope that helps.

B

Mmm, yes.


I've been following the misfortunes in Australia closely, and have been amazed (self-igniting telephone poles!) and horror-struck by what I've heard and seen. I don't watch the general news channels because of their if-it-bleeds-it-leads policy, but I read the internet. It looks as if your government is trying to respond and help the population a lot better than ours did during and after Katrina.

That said, when it comes to catalogues of misfortunes, one hardly knows where to turn. Darfur? Gaza? Homeless people anywhere, including my own country? We do what we can.

You're not the first person to burst into an unrelated thread with outrage over people's apparent lack of concern for new horrors. I have to point out, you don't know that we're unconcerned. You don't know that I nearly wept over the pictures of distressed koalas. The thing is, this thread is about American politics and what relates to that.

Anyway, I didn't think we were whining about money: I thought we were brandishing our torches and pitchforks about irresponsible robber barons. The robber barons are the ones whining about money, not enough of to live in style, accustomed to.

And by the way, welcome to the thread.

I think it's important to talk single-mindedly about something going wrong even if there are worse things happening in the world. There's an epigram by the Roman poet Martial that comes to mind. He says he was criticised when he beat his cook for ruining some soup. His answer was that the man was a cook, that ruining soup was as big a crime as one could expect from someone in a job like that.

Our bankers have done their jobs about as badly as it was possible to do them, with the backing of our politicians (I'm British). There were plenty of people pointing out the dangers (Ron Paul in America for instance) but the weight of the establishment was behind the madness. I remember talking to a friend who was being mis-sold a mortgage. His attitude was that what I was saying made sense, but the people providing the mortgage were professionals working under government scrutiny and I was just a bloke he knew at the office.

He gave me a sort of apology a few days ago, which wasn't what I wanted and was no comfort to either of us.