Personally, I try to go to shops where I do know that the staff will have an ethos of service, and will have some actual knowledge. That usually means that these are places where staff are not treated dismally and paid abysmally.

John Lewis is a perfect illustration of this.

I do not have the time and expertise to research and become expert in every damned product or service that I wish to buy. I usually do do some research, but not to the level where I know more than people who are paid to be able to advise me and supply a service. And I should not have to expect to.

The main difference being that Comet don't stand a sales assistant in front of you and tell you that they are an expert in the subject, have achieved rigorous examination results, and undergo stringent regulation under a body set up to regulate their industry.

Banks and independant financial advisors do

They promote themselves as the complete and absolute arbitors and advisors of your financial affairs and go to great lengths during conversations to remind you how carefully they are controlled and regulated and to show you their qualifications, indeed none of them will commence a discussion with you until they have been through the whole FSA routine of explaingin just how important they are.

And then they take a guess.

And when they've taken a guess they go to great lengths to assure you that its ok and not a problem but that their advice can result in you losing money, just when you thought they were there to make you money they go and spoil it all.


My money is under the bed now, and I'm making more of it than any "financial advisor" ever did.

My goodness. It's epidemic! Some else needs SBR to explain that there is no such thing as [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9386456/Ed-Miliband-urges-a-return-to-stewardship-banking.html"casino banking"[/url.

My view is: NEVER EVER buy anything from a bank and NEVER EVER leave it to them to deal with you Will. I can't believe anyone would buy a "product" from a high street bank.

As to IFA's - if you are not paying them a fee, they are dependent on commission so will often have to advise you of something that gives them an income. On insurance-based products they tend to get an amount equivalent the first few years premiums as their introducers fee plus a smal "tail" over the life of the product. I think the industry is moving away from, commission income from January isn't it? Which will mean that access to advice will be limited to those willing to pay a couple of hundred quid an hour.

Utter rubbish. As usual. This didn't used to be the case. The banks used to provide A SERVICE.

Unfortunately, people like you repeatedly voted for parties that believed that 'greed is good' and people as a whole should be shafted to make mega profits for the few.

So what exactly is their purpose then ?

The next time you want to squirrel away some money for a rainy day then first of all you'll need to enrol at an institute of higher education, [url=http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-252-08like this one for instance[/url and then, after you graduate, only then will you be able to make your own decisions on where to place your money and which financial products to invest in, mind, those course notes could be rather amusing, given that they were written in 2008.

To deposit money with and / or borrow from.

Which parties do you think I have voted for?

So you buy into their services then ?

Once again we've disappeared off on a tangent. I do apologise for getting dragged in on this particular one. How is any of this relevant to a 'casino' economy or banking? You put money into an account with a stated rate of interest and received that interest. Not really a gamble, is it?

By the way I genuinely did laugh out loud when I saw you'd linked to an article about Ed Miliband using the term 'casino banking' as if that added some weight to the term. Hilarious.



Wow. In response me pointing out you've claimed I said something I never said you've done it again.



Who are these people? Surely you have at least one quote to back up this?
This is the at least the fourth time of asking this relatively simple question. The lack of answers is why I get bored of asking the questions. It becomes clear you've simply made things up (as you've proven you're quite willing to do).

Do try to keep up.

Banks – 'casino banking' – removing the option for straightforward, safe savings accounts, but selling you 'products' that are based on a bet: ie something that could go up as well as down.

Oh, hang on: I forgot that I'm supposed to be the expert in absolutely everything I buy – more expert, indeed, than those trained in the selling of such products (and see McLaren's posts too on this).

Do you actually think such things through? Why do you think that service is not a laudable idea and institutions such as banks have no responsibility to be trustworthy and provide a genuine service? Because if you're lumping the responsibility for being more expert than the supposed experts on to the customers, then you have ditched any such ideas of service or trustworthiness, sunshine, and it would be good to see you come out and specifically acknowledge that.

As only a very slight aside, Jon Snow is working on a report of how Barclay's mis-selling has affected individuals and small businesses. Why don't you give him a call and tell him that it was their responsibility to make sure they knew more about the products being flogged than the salesperson – sorry, banker?

In terms of the economy? Are you struggling to maintain this pretence that you don't know what is meant by such a phrase? I do hope you're paid well for being such self-demeaning apologist.

Vast amounts of what has happened, which has caused the financial crisis, have been based on – let's put it politely – speculation. To speculate – that's to guess at the outcome of something. Which is what a bet is; a gamble.

What do you do in a casino? You take money and you use it to speculate, to bet, to gamble, in the hope that you'll make more money. The odds in any bet may vary. The odds may, indeed, even be something like 90% in favour of your preferred outcome, but it is still a bet; still a gamble.

We have banks and finance betting huge sums of money – people's pensions (their lives, in other words), their savings etc – by buying really sound things like, err, debts. They do so in the hope that they'll be able to make even more money.

There has been speculation in the finance sector all over the place. Finance is a major part of the economy. Such speculation – such gambling – has been the prime cause of the crisis., because it was the reason the banks had to be rescued. Thus we see the results of a casino economy.



And what about Keynes? Did you laugh then too – or have you conveniently 'forgotten' that one?

The financial crisis was caused by:

Bad traditional bank lending, based primarily on property lending and to some extent lending to business;
Bad policy by central banks - keeping interest rates deliberately low in order to continue to fuel an asset bubble in property to mask poor economic performance (Brown's end to boom and bust);
Poor US policy in response to the crisis - causing a much deeper crisis than necessary.

In short, investment banking (which does not use people's pensions) was not the problem. They are just easy scape goats for politicians to mask their own ineptitude. In the UK we only have one big investment bank - Barclays - and that did not even need state aid.

It was not "traditional lending".

"Traditional lending" disappeared years ago.

And given that one of the biggest banks that was rescued, RBS, had been involved in gambling on a whole range of things, including but not limited to buying up other financial organisations (without checking their finances properly – how much more of a gamble do you want?), it's hardly something that is just limited to investment banks per se.

The crisis is also part of Thatcher's legacy – help create a housing crisis and then prices will go through the roof; deregulate so that financial bodies can offer riskier and risker mortgages (because people do actually need a roof over their heads). Then get a bubble – etc etc.

It's a cyclical thing. It's happened before and will happen again. Essentially it comes from too much money chasing too few assets. There is a constant stream of investment money going into the system, not least through pension funds. That has to find a home - essentially in property, bonds and shares, which generally get forced up in price and periodically drop back, often sharply, to move towards longer-term overall economic reality (ie close to overall GDP performance). It also partly comes from politicians buying into flawed economic theories, rather than being adaptive. Politicians (whether it fits your blinkered narrative or not, largely Labour ones in this country) helped by deliberate policy to fuel a domestic property boom, which exaggerated the normal cycle.

Talking of "flawed economic theories", monetarism has been a disaster, Dally.

And spouting one of its central tenets – hence the reason for its obsession with low inflation* – does not help.

Keynesian ideas, used by central banks, had improved stability – but have been deregulated away because they don't tally with the neo-liberals and the monetarists.


* See Ha-Joon Chang on inflation in [i23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism[/i.

Genuine question. Which actual Labour policy was that?

Didn't the winter of discontent spell the end of the UK's experiment with Keynesian economic management? Hardly a success story. Like I said, dogma is crass and stupid. Politicians need to be flexible and change their thinking continually with the changing environment and not stick rigidly to "Keynesianism", "Monetarism", "Market Fundamentalism" or whatever economic theory is / was in vogue for decades at a time.

The one that abolished Tory boom and bust by encouraging cheap credit? Were the Fed and BoE really acting independently of theor governments at all times?

If by Fed, you mean US Federal Reserve, its a stretch to blame Labour for anything they did

It's quite possible to blame politicians for some of the mess we're in, but its a cheap jibe to suggest Labour are "largely" responsible

This is an answer to being asked what specific policy caused the housing crisis and boom, as suggested here:



Clueless.

For you and me, perhaps. Elite elements of society? No.

Have you never heard the political maxim, [i"In this town you're innocent until investigated"[/i?

No. It was an ideological choice made by Thatcher. Things like that may have been the excuse but she would have done it anyway.

They are still doing it. The "reforms" to the NHS are purely ideologically driven. Even the "have a loan until you die then pay it off" scheme for elderly care is ideological. We already pay Tax and National Insurance so in theory we already pay for the care required. The trouble is the tax and n.i. take is not big enough to fund this and many other things [iso we are told[/i (tuition fees being another example). So what you end up with is the individual paying for everything themselves (eventually to private companies brought in to take on the tasks - you just watch) and there is no state support. This is pure Tory ideology whereby income tax is reduced to paying for a runt of services you really can't privatise and the individual funds everything else.

However has your overall tax bill gone down due to the facts students now have to pay £9K a year in fees? No and neither has your local postman's but the "postman paying tax for the students education" was how this was sold. So we end up with being taxed pretty much as we were or taxed even more (VAT 20%, income tax thresholds left to be eroded by inflation) and we end up paying for what was once state provided ourselves anyway!

Pure Tory ideology.

So, as you say, tax has not gone down but the tax take is insufficient to pay for all these things. Indeed, with the ageing demographic profile in 20 - 30 years time the tax take will be nowhere near enough to remotely provide care. Are you advocating increasing taxes across the board? Personally, I favour basic rate income tax of c. 30% plus NI at, say, 10%. We need a grown up debate. Seems to me three main options (perhaps in combination):

1. Go the Swedish, etc route and increase taxes on everyone (especially the so called squeezed middle) to fund good state care.
2. People have to pay themselves - which will inevitably be paid for by employers - who will then prefer the State to take the burden (as is starting to happen in the USA).
3. Encourage married women not to work. We have a ridiculous situation whereby women pay people (usually less able than themselves) to look after their own children and are also no longer avaiable to look after ageing parents. This to me is the most sensible approach to take in any civilised society.

[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/jp-morgan-botched-bets-lose-37bn-7942046.htmlGambling? What gambling?[/url