Banks 'should be servants, not masters'

Banks

www.news.com.au

BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown said banks must be reformed so that they are the servants of economies and societies, not the masters, in an article published on Sunday.

He also signalled new limits on mortgages over 100 per cent - which enable people to buy a house without a deposit - and urged more responsibility in Britain's housing market, where prices have fallen since the credit crunch.

"We want to ensure that the new banking system that emerges over the coming years becomes the servant of the economy and society, never its master," Mr Brown wrote in the Observer newspaper.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 22-2-2009 by dingleberry77]

Sorry if this has been posted. I couldn't find it.

Big words coming from Gordon. He better be careful.

As far as I know this is the first time a pollie has come out and said anything like this. In the mainstream media anyway.

Is this the beginning of a new way of thinking, or pure spin?

Maybe he is under a huge amount of pressure and he's trying to save his tush in the public eye.


www.news.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 22-2-2009 by dingleberry77]

He will either be removed or "removed". You are right to raise these fears. The banking system IS the master to our gov't's. Because our politicians couldn't keep thier pants on while the bankers were sticking cash in thier garters.

reply to post by djvexd


Lol. THAT was an unpleasant visual. Thanks.

But you are right. Politicians are the ones who have allowed them to get to this position. We can only hope they did so in ignorance rather than knowing what would come of it. (Which is what I suspect) Now that they realize the danger, perhaps they will actually make the kind of moves Brown is hinting at.

Of course since the feeble minds that put us in this position are the same feeble minds trying to come up with a solution, it may well be we end up trading one evil for another. What we really need are some decent, and highly ethical, minds in politics.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


Do you every think we will ever get some decent minds running things? It's the trillion dollar question.

I does seem like the politicians are starting to see the writing on the wall. They have gotten all the kick backs over the years and turned a blind eye, but now see the true evil.

Will they be able to turn things around though. Who do you trust?

What's Brown got to lose saying this anyway? The entire financial system will crash soon anyway, and it will appear the bankers have lost their power.

Brown is just trying to appear to represent the people to gain popularity. Then when everything collapses, people will be more easily fooled into accepting his solutions.

No, I dont have much hope that we will ever have decent people running things.

But as I see it, the problem is not with the people running things, but with us. The average people.

We are every bit as unethical as those we elect. We dont mind a little force being used, we dont mind exploitation, and greed, and unfair labor practices. As long as they are being perpetrated on others and not us. We ourselves dont stand on high moral or ethical ground. As long as we were/have been benefiting from the unethical practices, we tacitly condoned it. Now that the consequences of our tolerance for shady dealing has come home to us, all of a sudden we are collectively horrified that anyone one could do that. To us.

As long as we are individually selfish, short sighted, and unethical, we have no chance of having better leadership. Perhaps one day, when we mess things up so badly that we are desperately clinging to survival as a species, we will learn. But this "catastrophe" isnt enough. And as soon as we get things working again, we will go right back to doing what we have been doing. Having learned not a thing.

reply to post by NuclearPaul


You may be right, but it's pretty full on that he's lifting the lid. Nobody says things like this. The banks have been untouchable for so long.

There must be something huge on the horizon for Brown to say this IMO. The banks have always been the golden children, and the centre of the universe. For Brown to say this is big.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


You are 100% right. The thing is, we've been living this selfish, thankless and insular life for so long. Changing will not be easy.

Change will come, and only come, when we are at the end of the road. Just look at the politicians, bankers, traders, businessmen and women, and the general public. They are holding on to this life with everything they've got. They don't know any better. We don't know any better.

Well, we need to start looking to those people who can show us a different vision then. We have had them at least since the time of Plato. We just choose to ignore them.

Not to get all crazy religious, but we live in a world where huge numbers of the population claim they are Christian, know what Jesus said about how to treat others, and how he felt about the pursuit of wealth at the expense of other people, and still we do what we do.

The Buddha also had things to say about how we should behave, compassion and overcoming desire for stuff. I am not selling one version over another, only pointing out that it is not completely honest when we claim we have no other vision. No other idea, no other plan.

There have been religious voices, philosophical voices, scientific voices, all telling us that we cant keep doing this, and yet we rationalize to ourselves both individually and collectively why we can and should keep doing what we are doing. We keep getting the same message phrased in many ways from the best minds humanity has to offer, and we choose to listen to the worst humanity has to offer, time and again.

We are ignorant, but it is a willful ignorance.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


True, very true. We have chosen (very easily) to ignore these things. We chose to go down the easier, self indulgent route. The devils work maybe.

I'm not religious at all, but there are certain elements that should be taken into account. We as a race are lost and have gone down a path that is broken.

Brown realises this and is now trying to beat a new path.

I just hope it truly is a new path, and not just a new and improved version of the old path.

I am not religious either. But I am philosophical. If what we are seeking is only a more "safe" way to keep having more at the expense of others, without modifying our own insatiable desire for MORE, we will end up in exactly the same place we are now even if we figure out a way to keep the game going for another hundred years or so.

There is enough on this Earth for all of us. If we learn to moderate our desire for MORE. Be it more money, more things, or more people. What we need to do isnt really difficult, strategically. But it requires a shift from a very selfish and self indulgent view to a broader view that includes every one and everything.

The Earth is a closed system. You cannot have infinite expansion the way we are pursuing it in a closed system with finite resources. It isnt logical at all. We need to apply very simple and basic logic to ourselves. We have this logic, and we apply it to other species and things. What we need to do is stop fabricating an exemption for us.

I know that this is the British Prime Minister here..But I have a problem with his statement for a few reasons..

First of all, The economic system we are attempting to stabilize right now is not about to get better. It will take a very long time for our economy to recover from this downturn. But whose fault is it? Who is at fault for making this situation the cluster**** it really is? The answer to that question is dependant on how deep you want to go. It depends on how far you want to follow that money and attribute financial responsibility to people, companies, and organisations.

The mortgage meltdown is a great example. Are the financial institutions and mortgage companies at fault for giving people homes that they couldn't afford? Is it the president's fault? Is it our fault for not insisting on more out of our government and financial institutions before this mess turned into a cluster****?

It depends on how complex you want it to be.. And it depends on how far up or down you want to attribute blame.

The problem I see is this...
When politicians and leaders talk about the current financial situation they fail to see their own flaws..

1 - They act like they, themselves, are completely innocent. It's so much easier to attribute blame to others than facing the biting truth and paying the consequencies for such a lapse of preemptive action in the first place. Politicians don't exactly like losing their power and they don't like to admit when they are wrong either. I would expect that.. But, let's face it, that's what makes it so sickening in the first place.

2 - They all like making public PR statements they think make them look smart. All politicians like to come off as informed, intelligent, smart, and positive.. There are very few who actually are. The rest of them just play the hand they are dealt and use public statements to make a name for themselves by trying to look as smart and analytical as possible without introducing any meaningful dialogue. This is exactly the kind of vague nonsense I'm talking about. Politicians like to do everything in their power to portray their image as positive and hopeful. Anything that is negative falls back on themselves in a negative way. It's called "being able to B.S. the public". And I think everyone here already knows that politicians are the best when it comes to B.S.'ing people. By introducing vague non-descriptive dialogue, such as this, with as few details as possible, politicians provide themselves elbow room to work with if they are eventually asked more specific questions in the future.

3 - They act like the path out of this mess is so black and white. It isn't.. The path out of this is extremely complicated and not pretty.
Sure, this statement by the prime minister would normally be seen as positive and hopeful. But what people may not think of is that it is almost impossible to revamp an economic system, as he is talking about, without keeping some level of inherent risk associated with financial transactions. Otherwise it would not be a free market system at all. It would be "something else". Without this inherent risk, there is no investment capitol that evens the playing field. The statment by the prime minister included this line..

"We want to ensure that the new banking system that emerges over the coming years becomes the servant of the economy and society, never its master,"

For starters, this sounds alot more like what we already have in the form of the central banking system. The only risk associated with any part of our economy is the risk we as individuals take either in our own personal finance or in a corporate/professional setting for the companies we work for. The central banking system is already the servant of our economy. This is the entire reason we have a looming consumer credit crisis that is quickly becoming the elephant in the closet. And this brings us all back to why we are in this situation. THE ENTIRE REASON WE HAVE SUCH A HORRIFIC CONSUMER CREDIT CRISIS IS BECAUSE THIS WHOLE TIME OUR BANKING SYSTEM HAS LIVED TO SERVE CONSUMER SPENDING AND THE ECONOMY.

It sounds really good on paper to make this distinction as the British Prime Minister did in his statement. It almost sounds inspiring if you read it right. But it is not exactly that black and white. And this is why we all need to wake up and smell the cabbage. Politicians can make this kind of distinction if they wish. After all, making such a positive statement should be good PR right? Not if people actually knew how our economy already operates and how these same politicians are part of the underlying cause. politicians suddenly "KNOW" what is good and bad for our economy and project this vaguely positive undertone of hope and change without ever really addressing the problems we are facing as individuals already knee-deep in this mess. Get real. It's easy to avert any kind of real accountability since you can always attribute blame to the economy as a whole. And when you blame something as amorphous as the economy, individuals can escape any real accountability..

It's a little more complicated than forming a new banking system that is the servant of the economy and the people(which is one of the reasons we got in this mess in the first place). And making vague opinion-based statements like this doesn't solve anything. It only goes to make the politician look good or bad just depending on how you view the economic crisis. And alot of people are just absolutely oblivious to what is unfolding right now anyway. It's probably very easy for most people to see this statement as hopeful and positive. But its a little more complicated than the British Prime Minister makes it out to be.

-ChriS