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baypond

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Everything posted by baypond

  1. Has anyone mentioned that on your laptop mouse pad, you can use the same finger and thumb motion you use on and i-phone to enlarge or reduce font size while using a browser. Index finger and thumb pinched together, placed on the mouse pad and then opened while still touching the pad will make text larger and vice versa. This works on MACs and my Dell laptop.
  2. My attempt: Because you left us with Gordon Brown, a man you clearly couldn't bear to stand in the same room as.
  3. This christmas it has to be Oleta Adams, Get here if you can.
  4. This christmas it has to be Oleta Adams, Get here id you can.
  5. Happy Christmas all. I guess we all have a drink that we over indulged in as youngsters, and never want to drink again. Mine would have been tequillla, except that the one drink I never ever want to taste again is Suze. Completely, utterly, bitterly putridly, disgusting. What is the drink you will not be drinking this christmas?
  6. cmon Mickie, av you lost your norf n sarf?
  7. I woke up at all hours, and finally left my very warm bed for a very cool sitting room. Having stoked up the wood burner and made a cup of tea, I have spent an hour or two trying to answer Mickie Hill on another thread. I am now fully awake while my wife and children sleep without my intrusions. Onset of cold means snoring, and snoring means my wife prods, shouts and kicks me until I leave the room! Fair enough I think.
  8. [quote user="buelligan"]  They do not put forward reasons why they disagree with the conclusions drawn (other than to say that it is all the Government's fault).  If they really believe it is "all the Government's fault",  I would ask;  how, then do they justify paying bankers as we do?   If bankers are truly just putty in the hands of politicians why are we paying them at all?  Why not get rid of these middle-men and simply pay the politicians to feck it up? [/quote] OK I have read a fair proportion of the report, and the fact is that not everyone wants to be a cleaner or nurse, or work in a job that this foundation rates as being highly socially acceptable. I do not denigrate those professions, I admire nurses and carers for all that they do, but for me, I don't think a society that strips people of all ambition would ever work. Why do we pay bankers what we do? Why do we pay anyone what they get paid? Supply and demand is the only answer. The report says that higher paid people pay less tax on a relative basis. That is absolute rubbish as far as I can see, since we are on PAYE and the government strips away up to 77% at source for this year.
  9. "Surely no one held a gun to the banks heads and insisted they lend silly amounts on mortgages did they?" - Mickie Actually in a way they did. In the U.S, the Clinton administration started taking banks to court (1998) for refusing to lend to poor credit. His mantra was that every person in the U.S had a right to home ownership. In response he forced the two main mortgage lending intermediaries in the US (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to lower their lending criteria and buy sub prime mortgages from banks. Gordon Brown was not quite so explicit, but made a similar speech.
  10. Mickie, Where did you get 45 grand a head from? That seems a smidge high when the actual cost of bank bailouts will be about £10 billion. The headline I often hear is that banks have cost £850 billion, but this number is the amount government will be borrowing over the next 5 years to cover the hole in their tax receipts due to the recession and the fact that they didn't save in the good times. Other numbers that are thrown around that amount to hundreds of billions are usually the amount lent to banks, this is very very different to what will be lost to banks.
  11. Mickie, I can't remember the exact number, but about 70% of all start up hedge funds close after a year. They do so for a number of reasons, but mostly due to under performance at which point investors withdraw their cash.
  12. Micky, I have only just had an opportunity to sign in, so I have not been ignoring your posts. Typing out posts is not an ideal way of communicating as it is often difficult to get a point of view across in a way that people will view as it was intended, you lose intonation etc. So I will start by saying that if you would like to PM me I will give you my phone number and we can talk on the telephone next week, and then you can vent your spleen at a real life nasty banker! All my post was really trying to say is that banks are to blame, but so is government. However, a real frustration is that the government is throwing the kitchen sink at the banks by saying the whole problem is their fault when it is not, as you say in the post we are equally bad, and that is exactly what I was saying. I think you also mistake me for an investment manager which I am not. I am a foreign exchange trader, and I have the same issues as you with my pension. The left leaning quote was in relation to radio 5Live's interpretation of them. I heard enough in the first minute to understand that it was another argument to kick the financial sector, yet make no reference to politics and what that is worth? I haven't read the report itself, so I would be delighted if you could tell me what economic value they have. To me it sounded like the usual sensationalism. I am sorry that an entrepreneur and company owner? such as yourself has had difficulty borrowing, my point was a general one that banks have lost the majority of their money on mortgages, credit cards and commercial lending (true a significant portion of this was cross border ie abroad). Because of their losses, their capital gets reduced, and they tighten their lending criteria to protect against further losses. My point here was that politicians criticize banks for poor lending (including trading derivatives) but when they correct the problem, politicians then say that banks should lend more. You can't have both, tell the banks implicitly to lend less and at the same time explicitly tell them to lend more. I think it is a shame that you seem to regard me as a someone who is some sort of educational snob. I really don't understand why you have to qualify your argument by saying that you are an engineer, and therefore not as thick as I might think. That is an unfair assumption that I (or any banker) look down on the rest of the universe with some sort of disdain. For what it is worth (and Mickie you might take this as some kind of verification that we are in fact all stupid) I went to a secondary modern school that was closed down after I left because it was so bad. I have 2 A levels and I didn't go to university because at 19 because I wanted to get out and work. Why did I choose banking? Because I had this silly idea that I wanted to be a trader, it seemed glamourous, and well paid. My parents never owned a house during my childhood, and I moved 5 times in the first 8 years of my life. All my ambition has been about securing some sort of financial security, I didn't want bailiffs and tax men knocking on my door to make me bankrupt as they did with my father. So that is my driver in life, and has carried me through 29 years in the city, 26 as a trader. Why do I mention all this? It is because generalisations about bankers, builders, engineers are not always fair. So when you answer this post, you are now addressing me as an individual, not as an industry. I haven't reviewed each of your points but I can go over each one if you like? Many of them are about a part of the industry that I have no connection to, and so am unqualified to give a fair assessment of. By the way, my name is Giles, which fits in quite nicely with the baking stereotype don't you think!
  13. Hi Mickie, I'm not a rocket scientist either, nor am I an investment manager. I don't know why the returns on my retirement investments are also so low either, except that the Labour party have taxed dividends which has dramatically eroded long term performance potential for funds invested. I can't make a defence for bankers pay and bonuses. The one honest statement made by politicians is that if they hadn't bailed out the banks, we wouldn't have jobs, and for that we should be grateful. I certainly am. The issue is that banks are still public, and like all companies operate in a competetive environment. Employees are paid on supply and demand. If you are a trader that has a strong track record then that trader has a value to the bank in which it works, and others in the market. However, not all you read in the press is truly representative of what happened. So here are a few things that I get frustrated about. Government decides what is legal and what is not. Government sets out a regulatory framework under which all companies must operate. These include things like health and safety, minimumm wage and things like banking law. Governments want economies to grow so that everyone can have a job, earn some cash, and afford more than just eat. Government loves the good times, because good times means they stay in Government for longer. However, to perpetuate the good times, they encourage/allow poor practice to continue long after it should because to stop them would harm the economy. The sort of things I am talking about are equity withdrawls, self certification, multiples of earnings for mortgages far higher than the 4X allowed when I first got a mortgage. Why did they allow banks to do all this? Because it helped the economy grow. Both the Clinton administration inthe USA and Labour government here encouraged lending on less robust criteria because they felt it was important for everyone to be able to own their own home. So, in a competetive environment, banks looked at more and more complex ways of trying to compete and make money out of lending to less and less creditworthy people. The regulatory environment allowed it, and the banks made a huge mistake in compromising their lending standards. Of the total losses in banks, only about 10% was due to complex derivatives, the vast majority of losses were on mortgages, credit cards, and comercial lending ie the traditional sort of banking far removed from gizzilionaire traders. The number of traders caught up in these complex derivatives (CDOs) was probably about 2% of the trading population. The vast amount of other types of traders continue to contribute to banks repair and profitability. Politicians are really covering up their own failings by pointing the finger solely at bankers.It is great spin. It is Labour policy of spending in the good times, and now having to spend in the bad times that is causing the pain. They complain that bankers are not lending, but complain that it was banks making bad lending decisions that caused the crisis. They complain that Sarkosy is trying to ruin UK banking, but then tell everyone that they are going to make the UK less reliant on the finance sector. Gordon Brown said no more boom and bust, and yet set in place policies that have brought about just that. You know that of the £80 billion or so that UK banks lost in 2009, and that cost UK tax payers so much money, that more than half the loss was on RBS buying ABN (a dutch bank). No traders involved, just one RBSchairman. Politician will have you belive that it was 20,000 greedy bankers that lost this money. What about their mess in dealing with Northern Rock. Regulatory failing again, no greedy bankers, just regulation that allowed a building society to lend 20 year money, and fund it buy borring frombanks on a 1 day at a time basis. Bankers deserve to take their medicine, but I just wish someone would recognise that it is politics that is corrupting the UK, not banks.
  14. "For me Nurses are worth millions of times more than anybody in the Financial sector." I agree, but then I agree that most nurses are worth more than just about any other profession. A friend and banker colleague, who has just found out he has Acute lymphoblastic leukemia understands this better than you and me!
  15. Who funds this 'left leaning' - according to 5LIVE- think tank? I would love to know. I am a banker so maybe I am biased, but please god tell me what politician are worth compared with bankers? How biased is it... It is government that spent during the good times, and have no money for the bad times. The banks have cost a massive £10 billion, but Labour are borrowing an extremely enormous £800+ billion to cover the economic problems. Government of course blames the bankers as they are an easy target (of our own making), but that report is utter tosh.
  16. I don't remember many of the home nations complaining about the 'hand of god' episode. In fact I think most people outside England probably thought it quite amusing. If Fifa didn't change 20 years ago, i'm not sure why it would change for this Henry episode. Re the Irish rugby game, yes it was great to see the Irish win, but the lack of tries this autumn and constant kicking makes for long periods of dull ping pong. The break down is a complete disaster, what happened to the concept of going over the top not being legal. It is a complete joke. Oh and one last thing, I havn't seen a kick off in recent times where players didn't cross the line before the fly half had kicked. Sometimes they can be 3 or 4 yards offside. Lastly, you have to be concerned about Johnson's game plans. Too many times we are hearing the England coaches appologising for wrong tactics, and characters like Care saying it's good to be back at club rugby where he can feel free to express himself and play freely. I can't imagine comments like that coming from tri-nation teams Moan over.
  17. For what it is worth, my take is that: 1. Button, realising that people don't genuinly regard him as a 'great' world champion, wants to front up to hamilton in equal machinery in a vain hope of matching him and therby gaining credibility. This in my humble opinion is a big mistake since the car set up is around Hamilton (bags of corrective oversteer) instead of Button (balance verging on understeer bias), so ther y are not in equal machinery at all. Hamiliton will be licking his lips. 2. Schumacher said last autumn that he couldn't return because his neck is knackered, so I am more inclined to think this is just fantasy press.
  18. [quote user="woody234"]when the uk join the euro will the house prices in france go up or down [/quote] only two things matter: 1. what will be the exchange rate? 1.40 and Brits would be buyers.  1.00 and Brits would tend to be sellers. 2. what are comparative interest rates between UK and Europe. If rates higher in Europe then Brits will not be buyers. If rates lower then Brits will be buyers in UK and Europe. So if the exchange rate is at 1.40 and interest rates in Europe are lower, expect Brits to be big buyers, if it is at 1.00 and rates are higher in Europe then Brits will be sellers.
  19. Italy and the UK were the only two countries left in reccession. So much for Brown saying that the UK was better placed than most countries to weather the storm. The elections can't come soon enough, only I hope Osbourne is carted off to the Sun newspaper before then in respect of his awful atempts at populism.
  20. I know my darling wife should not have pulled up, indicator on, engine running in a disabled parking space, while her friend grabbed some Euros from the cashpoint . BUT..... It does seem a smidge jobsworth-ish of a local policeman who pulled up in front of her as ahe parked and then fined her EUR 135 for her misdemeanour. She did have a laugh though. A local frenchman turned round to my wife, as the police handed her a tcket, and said "That policeman is a &****.ing   %*!!%t in perfect English. He msut have learnt the expression dealing with english traffic wardens.    
  21. English car, still on English plates, with a contole technique, and french insurance. Car resident in France for three years. Friend crashes car, ambulance, gendarmes, pompiers attend (driver is fine by the way). Loss adjustor assesses car and deems it a write off. Insurance company sets payout which friend accepts. Some formalities to complete but everything seems to be going through smoothly. So, what can we conclude from this? I am at a loss because I have always thought that these friends were not legally on the road and probably won't be insured! Is this just another example that the law in France never 'does what it says on the tin'
  22. I use the internet to send sameday (sometimes next day arrival depending on where the recipient account is) funds from RBS to 'World First' (similar to HIFX etc) They then send the funds to my french bank account. It usually takes 2 days, with no transfer costs if you negociate.
  23. Quillan wrote: "So, having read it twice now, and hope I have understood, you are saying that China has shed loads of dollars because thats what its buying (and selling probably) goods in on a day to day basis. But, they also see the Dollar as a bad investment long term so they keep exchanging their Dollars to Euros because its more stable and probably get a better interest rate on their savings?" Think of it as more that China is hedging it's bets, diversifying it's reserves away from just dollars means it has less exchange rate fluctiation in the value of it's reserves because as one currency goes down, the other may compensate by rising.
  24. [quote user="Quillan"]Still it nice to see the financial chaps are keeping their bonuses and those that bailed them out (the UK tax payer) won't even be able to borrow the money back under the new regulations proposed. It seems to me that the banks are making shed loads of money out of all this (as reported on TV and in the press) but unfortunately it seems to be at the expense of 'joe public' yet again. I don't think they give a hoot about us they just want to line their own pockets but then nothing has really changed there I suppose. I still don't understand how they are able to make so much money yet my pension pot shrinks year by year. Somebody somewhere is making a bomb and it ain't me nor anyone I know unless I am simply unlucky [:(] . [/quote] Strange isn't it that the politicians want banks to lend, when all they have said is that banks lending criteria was wrong and caused the credit crunch in the first place. Strange also that if you look at banks profitability right now, they are still losing massively on loans (my bank lost $8bn last quarter on their loan and credit card portfolios). The banks are making huge returns on marking up all those assets that the authorities forced them to mark down last year, and also in M/A, cash management and trading. The Federal reserve stands to make many billions for selling their stakes in the banks they semi-nationalised so what is happening? Politicians will not recognise that they created unsustainable growth (bubble) by refusing to legislate against banks and the parameters under which they operate. Gordon Brown spent spent spent while times were good, and has nothing left when the economy reverts to long term trend. Now it is easy to blame greedy bankers rather than take responsibility for his own mess. People forget Northern Rock, was that greedy banking? No, it was poor regulatory framework. Funny no one mentions them any more.
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