No it wasn't. It was because the other banks didn't have any money to lend and Northern Rock was more exposed to a drying up of the credit markets since that's where most of their funding came from.

[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33578778[/url

Pretty much spot on from Varoufakis. Frankly, I think the way he's been demonised in the media is a disgrace. The guy is a legendary economist, and one of the finest of his era, he (and people like him) should be the ones leading the EU economy out of crisis, instead of the neo-classical talking heads currently at the head of the table.
On a slightly separate note, I recommend his book [iA Modest Proposal[/i which he wrote with Stuart Holland. I think it's a must read for anyone with an interest in the Eurozone crisis.

Banks had money to lend, they were just frightened of lending to other banks as they did not know where the losses stopped.

Pre-failure, NR had a big surge in mortgage lending, yet its share price fell and it issued a profits warning. Would seem everyone but its management and the FSA saw the writing was on the wall!

You are completely wrong. The reason why NR went belly up was because of its business model whereby it borrowed money in the UK and international money markets so it could provide mortgages which it then sold on. The market for these re-sold mortgages dried up due to the 2008 crisis and so due to lack of revenue as it was unable to re-sell the mortgages, its source of funds to repay the loans it had already taken out dried up.

They were engaged in the exact same thing as Fannie mae and Freddy mac were in the US. Bundling up mortgages to create a Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) and selling it to the secondary mortgage market. When that market dried up, so did NR's ability to meet its creditors.

It wasn't its inability to borrow that killed it but its inability to sell on mortgages to fund is already existing debt that did for it.

Now we are getting somewhere. No one would buy because they were worried about what was bundled (ie the potential for defaults within the bundle)!

Varoufakis has been totally discredited not just by the media but by his record.

At the start of this year things were looking up for Greece with a poll of economists predicting 2% growth for 2015 following 2014's modest 0.8% growth. Unemployment while very high had edged lower. The same group of economists now predict outright recession this year with even worse to come.

The reason for this adverse change is the election of the Syriza government in late January. They have plunged the economy into uncertainty and snuffed out the positive signs that they inherited. They showed little sign of wanting to negotiate seriously and niavely played poker with the EU and instead of gaining sympathy and substantial concessions from their creditors and so ended up accepting a much worse set conditions with much worse austerity to come.

Varoufakis has to take a big share of the responsibility for their failed strategy and for a dire lack of financial management of their economy. He was the one to whom the MD of the IMF directed the remark about the need for "adults in the room" for any future negotiations and led to him being sacked.

The six month experience of the ultra left wing Syriza with their dysfunctional government of academics and dreamers has set the economy back years. As the IMF have pointed out earlier in the year it was thought that Greece would require no further debt relief. It now believes it will need a further €50 billion over 2015-18. The bill that the poor Greek people will have pay for 6 months of Varoufakis and Tsipras is huge.

Billy the Kid was legendary but he was still a criminal.

Wrong again it wasnt the threat of their mortages going bad - we didnt have anything the default issues we had in US. They just got caught up in the whole mailstroom of financial issues surrounding sub prime mortgages getting AAA ratings.

As I said the market for their MBS's dried up. Why it dried up isn't the issue, it's [ibecause[/i it dried up they had no funds to meet their creditors.

The similarity to Mae and Mac in the US is that is exactly what those organisations did, sell MBS's. The fact no one wanted to buy Northern Rock's MBS's anymore was virtually certain to be because Mac and Mae effectively killed the market due to the sub-prime issue, (they were selling bundles of worthless mortgages no one wanted so you'd have to be a bit of an idiot to think MBS's were still a good idea whoever was selling them).

Well austerity does have a negative impact on GDP. That is an economic fact and as the Greek's have just had more austerity heaped on them why would you expect any different? You don't need to believe me the IMF will tell you the same thing.



Simplistic nonsense. They haven't snuffed anything out. Greece has been running a budget surplus and continues to do so if you disregard loan repayments. Of course you can't because if those repayments exceed the surplus you still have to borrow money to pay your creditors and that is what the whole argument has been about. Restructuring the debt so Greece can pay its creditors which it can't if this doesn't happen.



The IMF pointed out what Varoufakis and Tsipras have been saying all along. That without debt relief there isn't a viable solution. On that they were signing from the same hymn sheet and to suggest otherwise is being disingenuous. What Varoufakis and Tsipras wanted was debt relief without further austerity as they believed that would contract the economy and make matters worse not better. This is not a controversial view and one shared by plenty of respected economists outside if Greece. The German's were having none of it and have won.

Of course austerity has a negative effect on GDP as it did in Ireland, Portugal and Spain. The difference with Greece, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, is that they failed to implement the fiscal and monetary structural changes that they had agreed to before they took the money. Had they done so they would have been in a better position. However this was the fault of the administration over the previous 5 years.



Despite the previous succession of poor governments in Greece there were some positive economic signs by January (small though they were) and as I said until these Syriza comedians took over and set the whole thing back by a further €50 billion. The debt will have to be restructured but without the necessary structural changes which include collecting taxes, real changes to the overgenerous pension terms for state workers, reducing the top heavy public sector etc etc




What Varoufakis and Tsipras say and do are quite different things. They may have had good intentions but they have made the situation much worse for the Greek people.

Their negotiating tactic was based on a scene from a restaurant in Athens: Greek Waiter speaking to the owner of the cafe [i"table 2 can't pay their bill.......they've taken a vote, hoping you'll reduce the amount owing and lend them the money to pay the remainder"[/i

Given the recent terrorist bombing in Turkey which is threatening to destabilize yet another nation on the front line of the US & EU's assault on Russia please tell me that at least ONE OR TWO OF YOU are beginning to think Greece's current predicament might just have something more to do than "debt"?

It's depressing seeing so many people channeling the opinions and arguments of major media sources (verbatim) as though they were their own.

Now the duplicitous Varoufakis faces treason charges for hacking taxpayer accounts in a secret plan for Grexit

Source?

By that I mean a credible, verifiable souce

Which part(s) of the story are you unaware of and are challenging?

1. That Varoufakis had a covert Plan B to use a secret parallel banking system to raid central bank reserves by hacking into the tax system accounts and restore the drachma?

2. That the supreme court has referred the case to parliament to vote on whether he should lose his immunity from prosecution

3. That all those implicated face criminal charges and that Varoufakis could also face charges of high treason and breach of duty

Quote ="cod'ead"Source? By that I mean a credible, verifiable souce'" Not really... www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... otice.html

Quote ="cod'ead"Source? By that I mean a credible, verifiable souce'" Not really... www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... otice.html

Quote ="Charlie Sheen"Not really... www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... otice.html'" Wrong. The details of the secret plan were divulged by Varoufakis on July 16th in a teleconference with investors a recording of which was released by the Official Monetary & Financial Institution Forum which hosted the session. I read the various reports in the Times, Reuters and FT. The disgraced arch villain Varoufakis himself has boasted about it on his own web blog and twitter.

Quote ="Charlie Sheen"Not really... www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... otice.html'" Wrong. The details of the secret plan were divulged by Varoufakis on July 16th in a teleconference with investors a recording of which was released by the Official Monetary & Financial Institution Forum which hosted the session. I read the various reports in the Times, Reuters and FT. The disgraced arch villain Varoufakis himself has boasted about it on his own web blog and twitter.

Do you think you're narrating a Bond film?

So you use selective passages from three different publications, cobble them together and come up with your usual bull[is[/ihit.

That's the sort of trick a 13 year-old would try to pull with his homework and he'd be pulled up for it too

Wrong as usual. The three reports I read had exactly the same story as I reported.

So I repeat my questions which you have avoided answering ie: which part(s) of the story were/are you unaware of and were or still are challenging and which do you consider to be bull?

1. That Varoufakis had a covert Plan B to use a secret parallel banking system to raid central bank reserves by hacking into the tax system accounts and restore the drachma?

2. That the supreme court has referred the case to parliament to vote on whether he should lose his immunity from prosecution

3. That all those implicated face criminal charges and that Varoufakis could also face charges of high treason and breach of duty


Why is it that one eyed lefties so quickly use an insult when they are unable to form a sensible argument?

Lord Elpers out of touch and sense as normal.

I've read Varoufakis's blog and can find no mention of the bollox Standee's currently spouting

Have you read the transcript of the conference call between Varoufakis an investors? And will you now answer my three questions that you keep avoiding?

I can comment on facts, not your wild speculations and fantasies