The Angry Exile: Mortgage rationing.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Mortgage rationing.

Oh, great. Another authoritarian twat deciding for businesses who they may deal with and for customers what contracts they can enter into.

Mortgage lending would be “capped” to stop borrowers taking out risky loans under radical Bank of England plans to prevent a repeat of the credit crisis, a senior official has disclosed.
Charlie Bean, the Bank’s Deputy Governor, said “direct constraints” may be needed to restrict access to credit, and that homebuyers could be forced to put down sizeable deposits before being granted a mortgage by their banks or building societies. This would mean that prospective buyers would have to put down between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of a property’s purchase price as a deposit before being able to obtain a loan.
It is the first time that a senior official has indicated that the Bank may intervene directly with new rules on so-called “loan to value ratios” to stop risky lending. In the years before the credit crunch, some borrowers were lent 125 per cent of their property’s value and became stuck in negative equity when prices crashed. The move would also mark the return of so-called “credit controls” — scrapped in the early 1980s — which made it difficult for many borrowers to get a mortgage.
The Bank of England is expected to be given responsibility for regulating the overall banking market in the autumn after new laws are introduced by George Osborne, the Chancellor.
Over the weekend, Mr Bean published a policy paper at an international conference detailing how the Bank would approach its new role. There had been speculation earlier in the summer that Mr Osborne favoured a “mortgage cap” although he has never publicly discussed the scheme.

/facepalm

It's like Labour never really went away, isn't it?

Last month, the Financial Services Authority, the current banking regulator, said that a policy of limiting mortgages was “too blunt” and could “unfairly deny” loans to creditworthy Britons.
But, in a speech to other central bankers in America, Mr Bean raised the prospect for the first time of the Bank restricting the size of mortgages as part of a package of measures to stop the economy overheating.
He indicated that, in future, the Bank of England should take a multifaceted approach that included setting interest rates; ensuring banks had sufficient capital to stop them going bust; and intervening directly to restrict mortgages or other credit. After describing the other policy measures, Mr Bean said in his speech: “Finally, there is the option of introducing direct constraints on the terms or availability of credit, for instance imposing maximum loan-to value ratios in the mortgage market.
“The best approach seems likely to involve a portfolio of instruments.”

Pardon this humble amateur for disagreeing, but I feel the best approach is to stay the fuck out and let people and businesses get on with things themselves for better or worse. Yes, it probably was stupid to go letting people 125% mortgages, and it was equally stupid of those individuals to over extend themselves to that extent (actually, over extending yourself at all probably isn't a good idea). But the biggest disincentive to borrowing that much ought to be personal bankruptcy, and the biggest reason not to loan money in those kind of proportions is the risk of the entire bank collapsing around your ears. All that is achieved by trying to put in some kind of hard ceiling is a lot of people looking for ways to squeeze through the gaps around the edges, if not actually knock holes through the bloody thing. On top of that there will still be lenders for whom lending to the limit is still just a little too much for their institution, and borrowers for whom the maximum allowed mortgage is still a little more than would have been wise. And we all know what will happen, don't we? The cries will go up:

'But it's not our fault. It was within the new guidelines. It was within your rules. It's not our fault. We only did as much as you said we could do. It's not our fault. Help us!'

And what can you do then? How can you say no? Not only did you not say so last time but actually they will be right - you will have taken control and responsibility away from them and should not then be surprised when it turns out they are not in control and are being irresponsible. So someone will go on TV to say that lessons will be learned and others will dream up new limits and regulations to fail to prevent something similar happening again.

Alternatively you could just make people 100% responsible for their choices now. Lenders loan what they like and borrowers borrow what they can in the strict understanding that they will go bust if they lend too much, and the state will not lift the smallest finger to save them. The only regulation that the BoE ought to be thinking of insisting on is that all mortgage applications state in 72 point bold on the front page and above the signature box, "You're on your own."