I don’t think he meant most of us at all.

If there were no rules or regulations in our society , crime, chaos & anarchy would soon be the order of things.

Given cheap & untramelled credit-lot’s of people borrowed sums they couldn’t afford to repay.

Lots of people didn’t.

When the Banks who touted this cheap credit totted up their bad debts-and their fellow bank’s bad debts-they froze in fear, shut up shop & hoped it would all go away.

We have all suffered for this-the imprudent borrower & the prudent saver alike.So I don’t buy the “it’s all of us who are at fault” version of history.

I suspect what Adair Turner meant by “we” is the FSA before he joined it-the FSA who were set up by GB & who manifestly failed to ensure that UK Banks acted within the bounds of -dare I say it-Prudence.

I suspect he meant the “old” FSA before the present one, which under his regime is now imposing the most stringent Capital Reserves on Banks, and dictating their remuneration & lending practices.

is exactly what I was referring to when I said :

“Govt appears to be about to join the boards of the major banks and insist on making it easier to borrow/lend.”

By “we” I think he means all those who did not reccommend credit controls or controls on “rising share prices”

Probably most of us.

http://www.last.fm/music/Queen/+videos/+1-j0ppC3smQ7E

That’s not what Adair Turner-new boss of FSA said today john :-

“What we do not want is a return to some of the extreme lending practices – the very high loan to value ratios, the self certification of your income which applied in the past. We want a more sensible approach.

“We’re trying to make sure, and I think we will undoubtedly make sure, that there is adequate credit for sensible lending, but without going back to some of the extremes that did help us get into this mess in the first place.

Many lessons to be learned over what has gone on in the last ten years. There are many interrelated things that we have got to think about.

” I think at the macro-economic level we probably allowed a boom to go on for too long and with too much rising house prices, rise in share prices etc. There are issues that we need to think about the whole macro-economy.”

I wonder who he means by “we”?

The Taxpayer share purchase deal apparently includes commitments for the relevant Banks to return to” 2007 lending practices “( though I haven’t caught up with the detail yet)

On BBC Radio’s Money Box Prog this afternoon, some small business people were complaining that their Borrowing rates had recently been increased & their facility tightened.

BBC advice on the show was-go back & tell them the rules just changed-they can’t do that!!

Things could get very uncomfortable at Bank Counters as “The People” assert their rights.

Will we see the Tumbrils trundling up to NatWest Branches and recalcitrant managers being dragged away by those who bailed them out?

Peter, what is slightly worrying is that at the same time as wanting to encourage saving, the Govt appears to be about to join the boards of the major banks and insist on making it easier to borrow/lend.

There needs to be a co-operative attitude within the EU, and in the USA in order to effectively create a new banking system that allows a balance of freedom and responsibility within it.

Thinking of “oneself” first before one’s responsibility to one’s neighbour clearly is not as good as thinking of both at the same time.

Goldspans ballon; he warned that the dot com bubble would burst and tried to warn people and talk it down. But when it failed he cut interest rates to slow it’s descent an stop it crashing.

In effect to much speculation and cheap money had lead to speculation and a credit boom based on over hyped stockes, so when the crash came he cut interest rates to make credit even cheaper and allowed people in debt to take on more.

The economy kept going with the thing to buy shifting from technology stocks to property. Like Brown at the time goldspan was seen by most as a safe pair of hands on the economy who could defy boom and bust when what he was actually doing was just keeping the boom booming.

Peter.