Our leaders will save the world

[Tonker]

quote:
"our fearless leaders at the G20 meeting are going to put together a resolution to solve the world banking crisis".



Mine won't !
Rudd's a dud

[itma]

Even non existant money goes around as credit till some sucker ends up holding the dud cheque. [us]
Its my belief that this credit is used to subsidise the armoury and propaganda activities we see from a small country with one of the worlds most well armed military.
It is non PC these days to point this out.

Which is why I don't shop in Tesco, or Marks and Sparks.

[rex.webb]

I am off to Sainsburys soon.They love my MONEY and spending it wisely???
Soon they are going to have a revamp of the store just what is wanted ???
Also off to Iper for three day roud the Battle Fields.Got my Euros 100 = £100.22p !!!!

[thomthom]

The root of our problems is the banks allowing free access to money, advertising and modern "I want it now" culture. For years one could only borrow approx. 3 times your annual earnings against a mortgage. And for years the average price of a property remained almost stable within the bounds of the odd boom and bust. By the way you need a good frost to get rid of the weeds and trying to keep the economy in continual boom allowed some of the weed to get too big. Back to the plot. The banks then thought it would be a jolly wheeze to lend at multiples greater than three times annual salary and guess what, house prices went up accordingly as people could get the money to buy at higher prices. There was also the other jape of legitimately lending more to the borrower that the house was worth. This was either directly via the lender with them offering 110/120 percent mortgages or via builders (and in my view this is almost fraudulent) giving "cash back" on the purchase of a house. This "cash back" skews the income of the builder and the lender to help them look falsely better than they really are and in turn inflate the share price, which in turn increases the bonuses to those in charge. Finally there was the excellent rouse of equity release whereby you took real cash from the notional value of your property. Probably a good idea for a few people who owe nothing on their house and don't wish to move but nonsense for someone already with a whacking mortgage. All of the foregoing together with lax controls of credit card debt allowed people to spend money of imported goods from China and elsewhere.

And that's the nub of it. Want to know where all the money has gone. Well it's in Chinese bank foreign reserves.

I'm not a Muslim but how many Muslim "banks" are in trouble.

We just need common sense and some ethics to control banks and rid ourselves of "greed and want"

[thomthom]

and another thing...........

If a few more of us had bought British in the first instance or European as a second choice, we would be far better off as a nation. 80 percent of cars bought in France are built in France. In the UK only 20 percent of cars bought here are made here. Most of the other EU countries seem to be this way. There is a lot to be said for chauvinism.

How often have you seen that sticker "Buy British Beef" on the back of a Japo 4X4. I'm not having a dig at farmers but it is a good example of getting things a bit mixed up.

[itma]

don't get me started on that thomthom.
I once pointed that out to one of our stout yeoman farmers...he had the rest;UKIP..Save the pound, St Georges Flag...he didn't get any merrier. ooh he was rude.
All buying foreign made tractors too.
I see farmers incomes were up by 46% last year, around 50k per acre around here for prime farmland.
Be nice if they could put a bit back.

[Stan Palmer]

And another thing.....but it isn't so simple. cars are an example, prior to the demise of major British manufacturers they were producing such cr*p. BMC gave us the Allegro, Princess, Marina etc. How could anybody be expected to buy those. Granted some people bought from abroad things like the Renault Dauphine, but I presumed they were mad anyway. I think it does come down to management (government) and investment and not just the consumer. I worked in the motor industry 1972/73 designing big washers and deburrers etc. For this we got the detailed multi-handling block drawings for a good range of cars, V12 jag, Fiesta, Maxi, Perkins diesel etc. The difference in class between German production methods and Leyland was startling, and not in the good direction. And yet of all the engineers we met at the time the Brits were the best. They nearly cried at what the Maxi became against how it was conceived in the design.... double overhead cam all alloy engine versus a jumble of bits borrowed from 30 year old designs.

[Don Madden]

And the US car industry is following the same path. "Do business as usual & these pesky problems will vanish." The problems will vanish, along with the industry.

Cheers, Don.

[orbinrangle]

I find it mildly embarrassing that it took foreign car companies, notably the Japanese, to show us how to make cars properly. This is a positive thing. Pity there's now no car industry left to apply it to, excepting those Japanese companies.
I have a Maxi and a late model Rover 75. The Maxi is what it is but the Rover is a very well made car. Thanks to BMW, largely.

[Stan Palmer]

The Maxi was a potentially world-beating design at the time and very sad that it was watered down when the penpushers slaughtered the tooling budget. Many of the changes were made late and without proper testing so it had inherent cooling problems, valves at wrong angles and various others that I remember the leyland people talked about. One thing I remember was that the gearbox casing was designed without any production forethought and was the only casting ever we couldn't safely pick up and clamp. I think the solution was special baskets (quills) had to be made for them.
To show I am (slightly) even handed the unions were far from blameless in the demise of this and other industries.

Stan