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Cheers - AE

Wednesday 16 June 2010

What the hell's it got to do with you, George?

I still haven't got round to blogging my thoughts on the new rule of The Twins, the Queen's Speech, blahblahblah, but I've said plenty of times before the election that the main British parties were as bad as each other and often stood for the same kind of illiberal shit, making it a bit like one party government but with a choice of which wing of the party you want to vote for. And just as I'm thinking that maybe things might turn out different this time I see something that make me think maybe not. Today's example comes courtesy of the Trancellor, George Osbourne, who thinks its now up to him personally whether you get a mortgage or not.
House buyers could be refused mortgages under new Bank of England powers to be unveiled by George Osborne.
The Chancellor will announce that he will hand a host of new controls to the Bank to prevent another financial crisis.
The powers will mean that, for the first time in the modern era, the Bank could impose restrictions on the amount banks can lend.
Of course thanks to Gordon Brown and his badger faced sock puppet buying a couple of banks for the current government to play with he can probably do that to an extent anyway. But who the fuck is he or the Bank of England to say how many mortgage loans a private company can supply? What the fuck's next? Is (googles the name of the Transport Minister) Phillip Hammond (who he? Any relation of the short one off Top Gear?) going to cap the numbers of cars built in British factories so as to reduce traffic jams? Fucking hell, why not copy China's One Child policy and take some of the pressure off the education system?
The Bank and its Governor, Mervyn King, would be able to prevent banks from lending too much, or to over-extended customers, if they judge that this would destabilise the economy.
The precise details of the controls the Bank is to be given will be detailed fully at a later date.
However, they are likely to include restrictions on the loan-to-value ratios offered to customers. For instance, families could be prevented from taking out a mortgage for anything more than 75 per cent of the value of their home.
The collapse of Northern Rock was widely attributed to its policy of lending customers up to 125 per cent of the value of their homes – despite the inability of many to repay the loans.
Yes, and apparently the 24 carat bellend controlling the nation's pursestrings doesn't understand any better than his predecessor that the best disincentive for other banks repeating that policy would have been to let Northern Rock go to the fucking wall. That's water under the bridge now, so the next best thing would have been to spell out very clearly that the safety net is gone for good and that any bank that over-lends in future is on its own. But Georgie-boy, with the instinctive reaction of every paternalist cunt born, has decided he knows best. He knows better than the bankers who are already reconsidering the decisions that got their fingers so badly burned. He knows enough not to cap mortgages but other lending too.
Mr Osborne's "toolkit" is also likely to include broader restrictions on lending to businesses.
Want to expand your business? Well, come into the Angry Bank PLC and talk to us about a loan. Unfortunately we have to run our decisions past the government now, and actually the whole industry has hit it's quota for loans, so I hope investment in your invention for turning dog shit into diamonds can wait till the next financial year so that... wait, please don't go. There's no need to get on that plane and take your wealth creating ideas abroad. Oh dear, never mind. Want to trade up to a larger house? Well, come into the Angry Bank PLC and talk to us about a mortgage. Unfortunately...

Oh, and I notice the same article says you're going back on your pledge to dismantle the FSA, that regulator of the supposed de-regulated market that we're to believe fucked everything up rather than the distortions twats like you lot introduced. I realise that deals had to be made in forming the coalition but all the same it just proves that it's not just Labour manifestos that aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Fuck you, George. Fuck you very much.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...

"He knows better than the bankers who are already reconsidering the decisions that got their fingers so badly burned."

As we saw when we dug into the US lending market crash, a lot of the bad decisions were mandated by government pressure to ensure 'fairness' and 'equality' for the urban underclass.

The banks wouldn't have granted them otherwise.

Angry Exile said...

Yep. In fact that was, as I understand it, the raison d'être for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac in the first place. That's a time bomb that's been ticking since the 1930s and rather than defuse the fucking thing some Presidents (I'm thinking of a certain cigar loving one) chose to pile a few gas bottles on top.

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