Credit Crunch – a father’s view

My dad and I emailed today about money, savings, Iceland and the credit crunch… I loved his insight, so thought I’d share it:

Money’s funny stuff really…………..it doesn’t exist, unlike things!

The government did the right thing though overall for jumping in and nationalising [Bradford and Bingley], although if they had made the £50,000 offer to savers at that time they would not have needed to nationalise it. That’s what they’re doing with banks now, so that the nationalisation only happens if they reach the payout point (I think).

Really, it’s socialism by default [thelayoftheland note - not everyone agrees], which is excellent really. Now if they can re-nationslise the railways, power, and water, we’ll be laughing!!

Mind you, water is owned by the country…………………………………..but it’s France……..whoops. Le mess.

Vive la France eh?

Howard hitches a ride

Ride em Cowboy! The new Lloyds HBOS logo perhaps? Courtesy of the FT’s blogs.

Still, what could possibly go wrong?

Crash, Bang?

I found this rather amusing video this afternoon… how to make light of a ‘bad situation’ perhaps (although vaguely reminds me of the Will and Grace scene with Al Roker)

Still if we’re all doomed, at least it’s a better way to make light of the doom than others are doing:

While there is a tendency among the self-righteous to criticise individual short-sellers who make money out of the misfortune of others, the fact is that those playing the stockmarket in such a fashion are merely a product of the system, rather than the catalyst behind the so-called evil. Once upon a time, stockmarkets were there to provide companies with a means to raise capital from investors; today’s financial world is a vastly different beast.

Nowadays, there is as much incentive to kick a company while it’s down as there is to support it when it is in ruder health; short sellers hover around a dying stock like vultures anticipating a feast, and every financial institution is as guilty as the next when it comes to gorging on the remains. Lehman Brothers’ demise is a case in point, as too is AIG’s seemingly impending collapse.

Time for a new world order?

world of work

I was reading an amusing post today on the London Word – talking about callous world of work in a London advertising job:

When I accepted employment as an account manager at a London advertising agency my nearest and dearest patted me on the back and sent me off to the frontline… My first boss at the ad agency was a venomous blackguard with an IOU from God where her soul should be. She was a fully operating exoskeleton with a latex cover for reality. Callous, cold and heartless are the key words on her biog… other superhuman traits include heightened selfishness, talking through ass 24/7 and the ability not to care about ANYBODY; even their own wives and children…

Which got me thinking. Unlike the author, I am lucky enough to be doing a job I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Even the computers in the Careers Centre at school when I was a kid always chose my job in the top three of the “careers” they planned out for me… I guess though, working in the public sector (for now, at least) is quite different. Regardless of the political anxieties and pressures of the job at least I don’t have to put up with quite the same c*ntishness that the self-obsessed power-hungry son-of-Thatcher jobs London exudes. At least I’ve got a career that I enjoy and work somewhere I can be myself (singing in the office and all). I’m not one of the many lost souls in soulless or soul-destroying jobs earning a buck to keep myself in tins of beans. I’m lucky – I shouldn’t forget that.