Are the Bankers & Government the only ones to blame?

kingsenny

Someone made an interesting point in saying that population as a whole was as much to blame for the current state of the country as the bankers and government are.

He cited vast overspending but households (double mortagages), where some had only one earner in a non-professional job.

He cites paying €4 cups of coffees, €10 sandwiches as ludicrous.

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about these sentiments.

How does everyone else feel?

uch

Yep

Anyone

kingsenny wrote: »

How does everyone else feel?

Not too bad for a Monday, thanks for asking.

RikkFlair

10 euro sandwich? Is there cocaine in it?!

davet82

So sandwiches caused the financial crash

Latchy

kingsenny wrote: »

He cites paying €4 cups of coffees, €10 sandwiches as ludicrous.

Warning signs right there, if something is so overpriced then it most likely is and more fool for people paying those prices .

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about these sentiments.

How does everyone else feel

This means nothing to me ...

Chucken

kingsenny wrote: »

How does everyone else feel?

I'm feeling a bit peckish, now that you ask.

Cee-Jay-Cee

More importantly...What filling was in the €10 sandwich???

I would like it noted that I have never bought a cup of coffee ever nor have I ever paid €10 for a sandwich so I cannot be blamed for any of this.

OneArt

RikkFlair wrote: »

10 euro sandwich? Is there cocaine in it?!

Just raisins.

CJC999

CJC999 wrote: »

More importantly...What filling was in the €10 sandwich???

Gold flakes

2 of them

Richard Hillman

Property speculators, developers, the media for creating mass panic to get onto the property market, the keeping up with the Jones', the Jones' themselves etc etc

af_thefragile

Short answer yes.

Long answer is also yes but its the way the whole modern Banking system works rather than just a few "greedy bankers". The "greedy bankers" are only a byproduct of a system that depends on the exploitation of the public to build in wealth and power. People like to think its a conspiracy theory because frankly its much simpler to believe everything is ok and go about living your life as you do. Blame the bankers and the government for the problem and life carries on. And thus nothing changes. Banks and governments continue to function in the same way and the people will remain angry and dissatisfied with everything in the same way. But the bottom line is life goes on and that's the plan after all. As long as people get enough to get by, no matter how much noise they make, life will go on and everything can remain the same.

Many economists for the past decades have been warning us regarding the instability of the modern banking system and how it will go through boom and bust cycles while through all of this the ultimate losers will be the governments and the general public while the only winners will be the banks. But as long as people can get by and there are enough people facing the same problem, there's distribution of responsibility and life will go on.

kingsenny wrote: »

Someone made an interesting point in saying that population as a whole was as much to blame for the current state of the country as the bankers and government are.

He cited vast overspending but households (double mortagages), where some had only one earner in a non-professional job.

He cites paying €4 cups of coffees, €10 sandwiches as ludicrous.

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about these sentiments.

How does everyone else feel?

To give a more specific answer, people will spend what they can afford to spend and vendors will charge as much as the people are willing to spend.
Spending is always healthy for the market. It keeps wealth in circulation allowing businesses and infrastructure to grow and in turn there are more and better services for the people. If people stop spending the market will stagnate, businesses will go bust, people will lose jobs, more people will be forced to resort to social welfare that will put more strain on the government expenditures which will force the government to increase taxes and ultimately it'll be the people who lose out!

If people want to buy a €10 sandwich, let them buy. If people want to buy two houses, let them have it. As long as people can afford such things businesses are supported and can grow, people will have jobs, wealth can be distributed and everyone wins.

When a wealthy person buys a €200K Ferrari, you need to thank him for it. Because his purchase supports the person running the dealership. The dealership supports the people working in the dealership. Without his purchase, the dealership will run out of business and the people working there will lose their job. His €200K also support all the thousands of people working in the Ferrari factory building the car. It supports the companies who ship the cars from the factory to the dealership and it supports the truck driver who drivers the trucks for the company. So this one wealthy person's indulgence is supporting the lives of thousands of people. This is why people like capitalism.

Spending is always a good thing as long as the right price is payed for the product. The problem occurs when the right price is not payed for the product. When you buy a €10 t-shirt, you have ripped off the store where you bought the shirt, you've ripped off the employees at the store who get paid minimum wage to work long hours in the store. You've ripped off the poor Indonesian family who get paid next to nothing and work as slave labour making the shirts. You've ripped off the shipping company which exploits its employees that distributes the shirts from the factory to the stores. Basically because you've decided to save money, you're in turn supporting a whole industry of exploitation of labour. This is why people dislike capitalism!

davet82

kingsenny wrote: »

Someone made an interesting point in saying that population as a whole was as much to blame for the current state of the country as the bankers and government are

someone?

the oldest trick in the book for posting bollix your not to sure about :pac:

Boombastic

I remember those sandwiches from a certain chain...I wonder are they still in business?




'We all partied, sandwiches all round' :pac:

Gott

Depends. My parents are fond of saying they never benefitted from the Celtic Tiger and while their standard of living did increase over the decade or so it wasn't a huge increase.

But on the whole yes, it seemed like every dog and divil had a second home in Poland or was renting property out somewhere.
They were encouraged by the banks to take out mortgages, I suppose, but no one forced them to.

SEPT 23 1989

You cant borrow if they wont lend

i blame them 100%

papajimsmooth

short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but.

Menas

Society was and is to blame. But anyone who got in over their heads should start by blaming themselves and work backwards.
We are too quick not to take responsibility for our own decisions.

kylith

People who knew that they would have trouble meeting repayments should not have taken out loans.

SEPT 23 1989 wrote:

You cant borrow if they wont lend

i blame them 100%

They were hardly coming round and forcing sub-prime borrowers to take out 100% mortgages at gunpoint though.

Prettyblack

I say it goes way beyond the "bankers and politicians". Bankers themselves are Capitalists, that it what they are paid to do, and they will jump on an opportunity to make money. The banks wouldn't be able to lend unless they had people coming to them looking to borrow. So naturally they saw and opportunity and jumped all over it. Who wouldn't?? If you sold bananas and suddenly everyone wanted bananas, you'd make sure you had enough bananas for everyone, and even find new ways of selling them! :-)

Bananas aside, I think the developers messed things up more. I hated seeing all those "instant" suburbs pop up, especially around Baldoyle / Portmarnock, horrible looking crappy badly made "townhouses" selling at ridiculous prices. And then the bottom went out of the market, half of these places were left as unfinished eyesores on the landscape, people actually had to MOVE OUT of under-code apartments, and the banks were left chasing billions of euros.

But then again, you could apply the same logic to the developers as I have the banks - they saw an opportunity, to make money etc. So it just goes on in circles. Its the world we live in.

Problem is, its the angry jealousy of the working / unemployed classes that make the "bankers and politicians" out to be scapegoats for their own issues. And that's what ends up marching the street on a Saturday afternoon.

Rented Mule

I find it laughable that people want to overlook their personal responsibilities in taking out these many of these loans. I'm not only taking about the original mortgages, but the number of people who took the equity money out of their homes to buy the second car, take the three sun holidays per year etc.

Mick ah

Short answer: no.

Long answer: no.

People just like to feel blameless, like there was nothing they could do about a situation. But it says it all about how blameless the Irish people are when in 2002 FG proposed a (relatively) "sensible" economic plan for the country and they got battered in the general election. FF got in with promises of more spending and less tax.

It doesn't take a genius to tell you that economies work in boom bust cycles, that having 20% of the workforce engaged in the construction sector is a bad idea and that taking out a mortgage that you can't repay if anything negative happened to your income is also a bad idea.

But sure, it was all the greedy bankers fault and the elected representatives. Sure they were practically forcing you to take the money.

We're ****ed now, and it's nobody's fault but our own.

frank reynolds

i would agree wholeheartedly that YES, they caused the financial mess.

it was fuelled by a typical, traditional slice of irish begrudgery, greed, and stupidity.

a nation of fools.

srsly78

Those that moan loudest about "de bankers" are usually the ones carrying more than their fair share of the guilt.

Duckjob

Yes. Supposedly ordinary and sane people were like this in the boom years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUeYJKoE3yc

kingsenny

af_thefragile wrote: »

Short answer yes.

To give a more specific answer, people will spend what they can afford to spend and vendors will charge as much as the people are willing to spend.
Spending is always healthy for the market. It keeps wealth in circulation allowing businesses and infrastructure to grow and in turn there are more and better services for the people. If people stop spending the market will stagnate, businesses will go bust, people will lose jobs, more people will be forced to resort to social welfare that will put more strain on the government expenditures which will force the government to increase taxes and ultimately it'll be the people who lose out!

If people want to buy a €10 sandwich, let them buy. If people want to buy two houses, let them have it. As long as people can afford such things businesses are supported and can grow, people will have jobs, wealth can be distributed and everyone wins.

When a wealthy person buys a €200K Ferrari, you need to thank him for it. Because his purchase supports the person running the dealership. The dealership supports the people working in the dealership. Without his purchase, the dealership will run out of business and the people working there will lose their job. His €200K also support all the thousands of people working in the Ferrari factory building the car. It supports the companies who ship the cars from the factory to the dealership and it supports the truck driver who drivers the trucks for the company. So this one wealthy person's indulgence is supporting the lives of thousands of people. This is why people like capitalism.

Spending is always a good thing as long as the right price is payed for the product. The problem occurs when the right price is not payed for the product. When you buy a €10 t-shirt, you have ripped off the store where you bought the shirt, you've ripped off the employees at the store who get paid minimum wage to work long hours in the store. You've ripped off the poor Indonesian family who get paid next to nothing and work as slave labour making the shirts. You've ripped off the shipping company which exploits its employees that distributes the shirts from the factory to the stores. Basically because you've decided to save money, you're in turn supporting a whole industry of exploitation of labour. This is why people dislike capitalism!

But there point is that people couldn't afford it. They were spending beyond their means, hence the double mortgages. I'm not sure if it's fair to say spending is always a good thing.
e.g. I have a mortagage > use money to spend outrageously > lose my job > can't afford to pay back loan

Now multiply that by 1000 people...

Like it was pointed out, no-one was forced to take a loan to fund 3 sun holidays a year. Albeit there was a lovely quote about the banks

"Bank are the type of people that will give you an umbrella when it's sunny but take it back when it rains"

RikkFlair

Remember when Enda gazed reassuringly into our eyes, and said "It's not your fault"

That's good enough for me.

Oh wait, then he said something later about us losing the run of ourselves. Was it the same Enda Kenny? Or was the first one a shape-shifting lizard alien?

af_thefragile

Mick ah wrote: »

It doesn't take a genius to tell you that economies work in boom bust cycles, that having 20% of the workforce engaged in the construction sector is a bad idea and that taking out a mortgage that you can't repay if anything negative happened to your income is also a bad idea.

Its not a bad idea if there is enough market to support the industry. If people can afford to buy a house (which they could back in 2006) then nothing wrong with building houses for people to buy. The construction sector was one of the biggest employment sector in the country supporting thousands of people.

Now who is to blame for giving out risky mortgages like candy pops so that the banks can horde capital and grow bigger??

Again its not the fault of the people. People will buy what they can afford. Most people who bought a house back in the boom years did so because they could afford to buy a house back them. They had stable jobs with stable incomes.

Things went wrong because modern economies are designed to collapse.
During boom banks give out risky loans and investments allowing people to afford to purchase things they wouldn't otherwise be able to purchase. Then when the economy collapses, suddenly people lose their jobs or undergo pay cuts, they can no longer afford to pay their mortgage and lose their "investments". In the end the Banks own all the property, governments are forced to inject money into the banks to keep the system from completely collapsing and people still having enough to go by. Ultimately the Banks gain wealth as the people lose their mortgages or the value of their "investments". After a few years things equalise, people adjust to the market. People with no jobs emigrate, people who have jobs learn to live by on the lower wages and higher taxes. After its all equalised, the banks once again start giving out easy loans allowing people to afford things they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford stimulating markets and thus starting a new boom cycle!

Boombastic

af_thefragile wrote: »

Its not a bad idea if there is enough market to support the industry. If people can afford to buy a house (which they could back in 2006) ...............

Turns out, they couldn't afford it. A mortgage is a long commitment. Just because it may be affordable to make repayments for 1/2 years, doesn't mean it sustainable long term.

donegal_road

kingsenny wrote: »

Someone made an interesting point in saying that population as a whole was as much to blame for the current state of the country as the bankers and government are.

He cited vast overspending but households (double mortagages), where some had only one earner in a non-professional job.

He cites paying €4 cups of coffees, €10 sandwiches as ludicrous.

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about these sentiments.

How does everyone else feel?

whoever this person is you are referring to, failed to mention the media and press. The glossy property section of the Sunday Times... figures were being pulled out of thin air printed in these supplements, no one to question or police them.

BizzyC

af_thefragile wrote: »

Again its not the fault of the people. People will buy what they can afford. Most people who bought a house back in the boom years did so because they could afford to buy a house back them. They had stable jobs with stable incomes.

Yes it is.
The fact is that these people were overreaching their income to buy property.
A lot of people bought under the assumption that the value would continue to grow and they are the ones now left in negative equity.
You're not allowed take risk like that and walk away blame free, the world doesn't work that way.

The banks made deals more attractive because it was a massive business at the time.
They weren't telling people which houses to try buy, they weren't telling people that their personal projection of the economy on the following 10 years was spot on and guaranteed to pay off.

kingsenny

donegal_road wrote: »

whoever this person is you are referring to, failed to mention the media and press. The glossy property section of the Sunday Times... figures were being pulled out of thin air printed in these supplements, no one to question or police them.

Do we really need another over paid government official to pretend like he's interested in the common people?

Some of the salaries in the government are laughable at best

noodler

Nope.

They are most to blame but certainly not the only ones.

Obviously.

af_thefragile

kingsenny wrote: »

But there point is that people couldn't afford it. They were spending beyond their means, hence the double mortgages. I'm not sure if it's fair to say spending is always a good thing.
e.g. I have a mortagage > use money to spend outrageously > lose my job > can't afford to pay back loan

Now multiply that by 1000 people...

Like it was pointed out, no-one was forced to take a loan to fund 3 sun holidays a year. Albeit there was a lovely quote about the banks

"Bank are the type of people that will give you an umbrella when it's sunny but take it back when it rains"

Again, people only spend what they can afford to spend. If I have €10 in my pocket I can afford to spend on anything and feel like treating myself to an expensive sandwich, I will do so. As long as people have disposable income to spend, they will continue to spend it on whatever they feel like spending it on. After all we all dream of a better life.

We all live our lives based on certain assumptions. I bought a mortgage because I have a stable job with a good pay. I bought a mortgage I can afford at the time. Nothing more, nothing less. Or should I say, I bought a mortgage that the banks made me believe I can afford at the time.

I am not an economist to see the economy we are living in goes through boom bust cycles and these good times won't last for long. How was I to know that? I'm just your average Joe living out my life. I watch the news, listen to the analysts and the politicians and they all assured me things are great and will only get better. No one believed the one guy who kept trying to say that everyone's got it wrong and in a couple of years time there will be a big collapse.

So now we have a whole society which has been made to believe things are great and will only get better. There are plenty of jobs, good stable income, plenty of disposable income, everyone wants to live the good life with a nice mortgage, nice car, nice holidays etc.

Then 2008 happens. Turns out the one guy who kept saying the economy is going to collapse was right and everyone else was wrong! Who'ld have thought that?! Suddenly businesses have gone bust and people are losing jobs or facing pay cuts. Now there is mass panic. How are we going to pay the mortgage?! People stop buying houses, the housing industry collapses making thousands of people unemployed. Now no one can pay their mortgages, Banks go bust. People lose thousands on their property which thought they bought as investments. Now they're forced to take out more loans and another mortgage to pay off their debts at high interest rates. Everything goes to ****.

Now whom do you blame here? You average Joe for whom everything was going great and was made to believe by the media, politicians and the Banks that he can afford to live "the good life". Or is it the media who only chase ratings and tell people what they want to hear?
Or is it the politicians who lie to the people telling them everything will be great so that they can get votes? Or is it the Bankers who gave out high risk loans to people making them believe they can afford them and not letting them understand the risks of taking such big loans because after all they need to sell the loans to make a profit and who'ld buy such high risk loans if they knew the risks associated with purchasing them?!

And finally is it the fault of the whole economic and banking system that so many economists have been criticising for years but people keep putting them off calling them looney conspiracy theorists??

Zebra3

A large number of people in this country voted for FF, a party that was up to its neck in corruption.

Scum who couldn't lie straight in a bed.

Then the same people were shocked when everything went tits up and the taxpayer got to foot the bill for the elite.

problemchimp

Why do the media not question the auditors who gave the banks a clean bill of health when really they were fuucked. I'm talking about the big five, KPMG, PWC,Delloitte.... etc.
Then KPMG get to run NAMA, win win for them.

af_thefragile

Boombastic wrote: »

Turns out, they couldn't afford it. A mortgage is a long commitment. Just because it may be affordable to make repayments for 1/2 years, doesn't mean it sustainable long term.

BizzyC wrote: »

Yes it is.
The fact is that these people were overreaching their income to buy property.
A lot of people bought under the assumption that the value would continue to grow and they are the ones now left in negative equity.
You're not allowed take risk like that and walk away blame free, the world doesn't work that way.

The banks made deals more attractive because it was a massive business at the time.
They weren't telling people which houses to try buy, they weren't telling people that their personal projection of the economy on the following 10 years was spot on and guaranteed to pay off.

Again you guys are missing the point. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it couldn't have predicted the collapse.

Now in 2013 we know how wrong people were back in 2006 because we saw them lose their jobs and their income.

Back in 2006 things were very much different. Everyone was forced to believe such a collapse would never happen. People were forced to believe the value of a house can only go up over time as a house is a physical thing and over time demand for houses can only increase as population grows. The media made people believe an economic collapse was only a myth and the economy was doing great and would continue to grow and things could only get better. The politicians all said the same things. While the Bankers forced people to believe they can afford a bigger loan without making the people aware of the risks associated with the high risk loans they were giving out because the banks are in a businesses of selling. One could say what the Banks did in 2006 can be classified as fraud because they sold the public loans that were very high risk without making the public aware of the risks associated with those loans.

People are not economists to have predicted in 2006 what would have happened in 2008. Heck even economists in 2006 were ranting on about how the economy is doing great and people need to spend more.

cson

This would be topical enough amongst my friends. We're late 80s, early 90s kids who don't have the burden of debt but did benefit from the Celtic Tiger years mainly through third level education being fee free (though having entered third level in 2007 we did have the student contribution rise year on year so not exactly free).

I'm constantly hearing through the various media of folks just not paying their mortgage and handing in the keys etc. While I do feel a degree of sympathy for someone who took out a mortgage and will likely end up with nothing; the posting the keys back to the bank mentality grates with me. Firstly because as a renter I know that if I stop paying rent tomorrow, I will be evicted in about 2/3 months following due process. The same doesn't apply to folks who simply stop paying their mortgage. They're living rent free essentially, with the tab being picked up by the Irish taxpayer. Secondly; should folks attempt to go bankrupt/insolvent/run away then the shortfall has to be picked up by the taxpayer. I don't want people to be a prisoner of debt and would agree some sort of solution needs to be worked out but at the same time the lack of personal responsibility from some quarters is sickening. Its a mortgage you bought, not a fucking packet of crisps.

The taxpayer for the next 40+ years are my generation; lots have given up the ghost and taken off to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. Those that remain face punitive taxes and a probable decline in living standards for those 40 years. Presently I don't have anything tying me to this country other than a professional contract for the next 3 years. If things don't change significantly in that time then I'm off tbh.

At the end of the day, its a mess of seismic fucking proportions that the generations above us have landed us in, and quite frankly they're fucked if they think I'm going paying for it.

Zebra3

af_thefragile wrote: »

Back in 2006 things were very much different. Everyone was forced to believe such a collapse would never happen. People were forced to believe the value of a house can only go up over time as a house is a physical thing and over time demand for houses can only increase as population grows.

Nobody was forced into anything. :rolleyes:

srsly78

But but but they held a (metaphorical) gun to my head!

robbiezero

Government mainly. I don't blame the bankers that much. They are what they are. Greedy scum. Like blaming killer whales for being ... killer whales.
We elect Governments to protect us from Bankers and their ilk. They failed miserably. Although to be fair to them they were a clueless bunch of incompetents and we elected them, so maybe they are not so much at fault either.
Higher-ups in the civil service like the regulator should have had the knowledge and expertise though to recognize an unsustainable bubble.

A lot of confused thinking in this thread.

1) The banking collapse was NOTHING to do with defaults on mortgages. Sure, they're coming down the line now, but Anglo and co got into trouble without joe public being involved.

2) Those blaming people for paying large amounts for houses - what are they supposed to do? It's not a crime to want to put a roof over your family's heads. There are a lot of people out there who's only 'crime' is having to pay way over the odds for a house rather than raise a family in rented accommodation (which isn't a particularly attractive proposition in Ireland)

Sure - some people got carried away and can't meet their debts. But the bulk of the debt burden has been caused by a deliberately inflated bubble that transferred wealth from income earners to landowners and developers, with bankers in the middle taking the cut. The average man and woman in the street just wants to live their life and buying sandwiches and houses is part of that. They don't WANT to spend half their salary for the next thirty years on a shoebox in mullingar.

It's also not really on to blame people for voting FF. Well, it is a little, but again the average person in this country is not in a position to make judgements about economic matters and if one of the major political parties in the country lies to them consistently, the fault lies with the party rather than the poor sucker on the end of the bull****.

For the record - own one house that I live in, paying the mortgage, never have and never will vote FF.

Prettyblack

robbiezero wrote: »

I don't blame the bankers that much. They are what they are. Greedy scum.

Why scum? Why greedy? Is the shopkeeper, who suddenly notices that everybody wants to buy bananas (whatever the reason), finds a way to sell even more bananas, as that's what people want, any different?

Why are the men and women who work for these institutions called "scum"? Because they are out to make money? Are you not?

Are you just jealous that you cannot earn the kind of money they do? So its just easy to call them "greedy scum"?

Grayson

af_thefragile wrote: »

Again you guys are missing the point. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it couldn't have predicted the collapse.

Now in 2013 we know how wrong people were back in 2006 because we saw them lose their jobs and their income.

Back in 2006 things were very much different. Everyone was forced to believe such a collapse would never happen. People were forced to believe the value of a house can only go up over time as a house is a physical thing and over time demand for houses can only increase as population grows. The media made people believe an economic collapse was only a myth and the economy was doing great and would continue to grow and things could only get better. The politicians all said the same things. While the Bankers forced people to believe they can afford a bigger loan without making the people aware of the risks associated with the high risk loans they were giving out because the banks are in a businesses of selling. One could say what the Banks did in 2006 can be classified as fraud because they sold the public loans that were very high risk without making the public aware of the risks associated with those loans.

People are not economists to have predicted in 2006 what would have happened in 2008. Heck even economists in 2006 were ranting on about how the economy is doing great and people need to spend more.

There were plenty of people who knew it was coming. Bertie told them to commit suicide and everyone else just ignored them.

robbiezero

Prettyblack wrote: »

Why scum? Why greedy? Is the shopkeeper, who suddenly notices that everybody wants to buy bananas (whatever the reason), finds a way to sell even more bananas, as that's what people want, any different?

Why are the men and women who work for these institutions called "scum"? Because they are out to make money? Are you not?

Are you just jealous that you cannot earn the kind of money they do? So its just easy to call them "greedy scum"?

By bankers, I mean the guys at the very top, not their employees.

FamousSeamus

People should take some responsibility, I mean people took loans for everything and spent it on houses, holidays cars etc!! The Banks should have been regulated but the people kept voted in FF caused they De-regulated banks and promoted this "lets spend, spend, spend" culture that led to the recession. My biggest fear is once we've sorted with this mess people will vote back in FF who go back t "Spend, spend spend" and we'll be back at this point in 20 years :O

Prettyblack

robbiezero wrote: »

By bankers, I mean the guys at the very top, not their employees.

Even the guys at the very top. I'm not talking about the Sean Fitzpatricks and the other dudes who did illegal stuff... that was only a handful of people. And they didn't necessarily single-handedly collapse the economy, as a previous poster stated.

FamousSeamus

robbiezero wrote: »

By bankers, I mean the guys at the very top, not their employees.

Who exactly is at the top? Bank managers? regional managers? Is it just easier to blame them cause there's no face to the accusation?

robbiezero

FamousSeamus wrote: »

Who exactly is at the top? Bank managers? regional managers? Is it just easier to blame them cause there's no face to the accusation?

I said I don't blame them.
They were no different to the dot-com CEO's. And I don't care about the faces or individuals, if it wasn't those guys who led the banks into ruin, it would have been others.

FamousSeamus

robbiezero wrote: »

I said I don't blame them.
They were no different to the dot-com CEO's. And I don't care about the faces or individuals, if it wasn't those guys who led the banks into ruin, it would have been others.

True, everyone was so caught up in the hype they just saw profit and not the risks!!

robbiezero

FamousSeamus wrote: »

True, everyone was so caught up in the hype they just saw profit and not the risks!!

Exactly. They didn't intend to bring down the country, they were just doing what they do best.