Speaking, as I was, of people making noises with their mouths, there was an expert (economist? something?) on radio prune the other morning, explaining the credit crunch and banking, with much patting on the back from the R4 presenter.
Apparently, he said, banks used to be in the business of taking deposits from people, and investing it by lending it out to businesses and people wanting mortgages and loans. But that, he said, is not where the problem lies. The problem is, they've started "speculatively trading with each other". They should stop all this "speculative trading with each other", and get back to the bread and butter of taking deposits and lending out money. That's a pretty accurate quote.
I'd like to ask him a few questions, like, if it was trading with each other that was the problem, how come they ALL seem to have lost money? If one bank lost, why didn't the other gain?
And if they were speculatively trading with each other, WHAT were they trading? Bubble gum cards? Oh, no, wait, it was those loans that you said weren't the problem?
And how did this speculative trading cause the banks to get into this mess? Was it because those, er, loans that they traded, that you said weren't the problem at all, turned out to be worthless?
So you want them to stop this speculation and get back to their bread-and-butter of lending money out? Doh.
