The major Irish banks were dangerously exposed. And one in particular: Anglo-Irish Bank ... Anglo had made the fatal mistake of believing that property prices would keep rising. ibid.
By the end of 2008 Anglo and the other banks were facing collapse. The Irish government made a fateful decision. It would bail out the banks to the tune of billions. ibid.
The cost of the guarantee threatened to bankrupt the Irish economy. The government was forced to seek international rescue. The IMF & EU stepped up loans worth eighty-five billion Euros. ibid.
There is real public anger at the idea of Ireland being forced to seek an international bailout. ibid.
In September 2008 the bankruptcy of US Investment Bank Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the world’s largest insurance company AIG triggered a global financial crisis. The result was a global recession. Charles H Ferguson, Inside Job, 2010
This crisis was not an accident. It was caused by an out-of-control industry. ibid.
In the 1980s the financial industry exploded; the investment banks went public giving them huge amounts of stockholder money. People on Wall Street started getting rich. ibid.
By the end of the decade hundreds of savings and loans companies had failed ... Thousands of Savings & Loans executives went to jail for looting their companies. One of the most extreme cases was Charles Keating. ibid.
By the late 1990s the financial sector had consolidated into a few gigantic firms; each of them so large their failure could threaten the whole financial sector. ibid.
In December 2002 ten investment banks settled the case for a total of $1.4 billion and promised to mend their ways. ibid.
Since deregulation began the world’s biggest financial firms have been caught laundering money, defrauding customers and cooking their books again and again and again. ibid.
Using derivatives, Bankers could bet on virtually anything ... A fifty trillion unregulated market. ibid.
In the early 2000s there was a huge increase in the riskiest loans called subprimes. ibid.
The investment banks actually preferred subprime loans because they carried higher interest rates. ibid.
Lehman Brothers was the top underwriter of subprime lending. ibid.
The Securities and Exchange Commission conducted no major investigations of the investment banks during the bubble. ibid.
Credit Default Swaps worked like an insurance policy ... Speculators could also buy Credit Default Swaps from AIG in order to bet against CDOs they didn’t own. ibid.
According to a Bloomberg article business entertainment represents 5% of revenue for New York derivatives traders and often includes strip clubs, prostitutes and drugs. ibid.
Goldman Sachs sold at least $3.1 billion of these toxic CDOs in the first half of 2006. ibid.
By late 2006 Goldman had taken things a step further: it didn’t just sell toxic CDOs it started actively betting against them at the same time. ibid.
The three ratings agencies – Moody’s, S&P [Standard & Poor] & Fitch made billions of dollars giving high ratings to risky securities. ibid.
As early as 2004 the FBI was already warning of an epidemic of mortgage fraud. ibid.
The market for CDOs collapsed. ibid.
In March 2008 the investment bank Bear Stearns ran out of cash and was acquired for $2 a share by J P Morgan Chase. The deal was backed by $30 billion in emergency guarantees from the Federal Reserve. ibid.
Neither Lehman nor the federal government had done any planning for bankruptcy. ibid.
The AIG bailout cost taxpayers over $150 billion. ibid.
The men who destroyed their own companies and plunged the world into crisis walked away from the wreckage with their fortunes intact. ibid.
It has corrupted the study of economics itself. ibid.
Even after the crisis many of them opposed reform. ibid.
Mid 2010 not a senior financial executive had been criminally prosecuted or even arrested. ibid.
The financial system turned its back on society, corrupted our political system and plunged the world economy into crisis. ibid.
It’s these bonus-driven gambles that helped create the credit crunch. Dispatches: How the Banks Never Lose, Channel 4 2008
This is the story of the biggest financial catastrophe in living memory. An unprecedented boom has morphed into bust. It’s the story of how a desperate government fought to prevent a banking meltdown. Will Hutton, Dispatches: Crash: How Long Will It Last? Channel 4 2011
It turned banks into branches of a gigantic global betting shop. ibid.
The bankers sold trillions of dollars of complex new financial products. But their values depended on real things like US house prices. ibid.
Summer 2007 saw the first financial earth tremors. ibid.
Northern Rock had been a dramatic example of how banks ran out of cash when the money markets froze on them. It was not heeded. ibid.
By 2008 RBS had leant more than Britain’s annual gross domestic product, but its balance sheet was a high risk mess of subprime mortgages and bad loans. ibid.
Brown’s faith in the city had betrayed him. ibid.
Brown had combined decisiveness with weakness. He’d shyed away from taking a stake in all of the banks, and for the £37 billion he’d handed over, he demanded no direct control or restructuring. Even bonuses were not directly capped. ibid.
Britain’s lead was now being followed in Washington. ibid.
It came at an awesome price. Worse, the banks were now the walking dead. ibid.
Around a quarter of all bank loans are so dodgy they have had to be insured: an astonishing indictment of the banks’ lending practices. ibid.
£1.3 trillion in guarantees, loans and investments to the banks. ibid.
What bankers do with our money is of vital public interest. ibid.
42,140. Finance picks up the profits, the taxpayer picks up the risks. (Banks & Money & Economics & Business & Finance & Credit) ibid.
Today in Britain the government spends more than all private individuals and companies put together. Martin Durkin, Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story, Channel 4 2010
Today in Britain the public sector is bigger than the private sector. ibid.
In the next five years annual government spending will climb from £697 billion to £757 billion. ibid.
We now have a national debt of £4.8 trillion. ibid.
Counted out in £50 notes our national debt would form a stack no less than 6,561 miles. Or to put it another way, if we sold off all the houses and flats in the whole of the UK, we would still be the best part of a trillion pounds short of paying our debt. ibid.
British governments have been steadily debasing the currency or printing money for decades through the deliberate expansion of credit. ibid.
It’s very much in the interests of politicians to spend money. ibid.
The idea that public spending will stimulate growth is the biggest myth of the twentieth century and is the cause of Britain’s economic decline. ibid.
What do they all do? ibid.
The idea that we need state monopolies in order to look after the poor is obviously untrue. ibid.
Credit provided an answer to all of capitalism’s woes. But only for a while. Remember, Marx thought the system was fundamentally flawed. Masters of Money III: Marx, BBC 2012
The most important thing for a young man is to establish credit – a reputation and character. John D Rockefeller
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit. Anatole France
Remember that credit is money. Benjamin Franklin
The rich are different from you and me because they have more credit. John Leonard
People may live as much retired from the world as they like, but sooner or later they find themselves debtor or creditor to someone. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Credit is a system whereby a person who can’t pay gets another who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Charles Dickens
Blest paper credit! Last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly! Alexander Pope, Moral Essays