The ONLY solution is to disband the World Bank, issue a parliamentary claim for £100 trillion or more back from ( a named banker who is clearly not the main beneficiary -ed)who is the ultimate benefactor of this organised stealth over the past decades, and after claiming back these stolen funds, to re-distirbute them back to the people. Oh, and we also need to urgently disband the ‘spawn’ of this hierarchical and highly corrupt set up: namely, to do away with the Federal Reserve, abolish the IMF, abolish the Council on Foreign Relations & Trilateral Commission, and bar them from owning the ‘printing rights’ for the world’s money supply. this G-20 summit is a complete waste of money, playing in to these idiots hands, and they need to get the message that the world does not WANT the G-20 nor anything it has to offer, and we know their GAME. It’s time for urgently Monetary reform, also regulatory reform and Judicial reform. It’s time to clean up the widespread corruption and raise the bar across the board. Questions, anyone ?

I think you are right. Most shareholders do not understand the company accounts they see, and cannot see the numbers underlying the numbers anyway. I have done enough due diligence work to know that the published accounts hide a multitude of sins and a company which looks profitable may be anything but.

On the Huffington Post last week, a writer made the statement “if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big” and I think this is right. Over the last 10-15 years companies have grown and grown through acquisitions and unwise credit to a size which I personally believe is unsustainable. I saw it myself, as my own company absorbed others – beyond a certain point senior managers cannot keep effective control and that is when bad decisions are made with other people’s money.

In my view, what we need are more, smaller companies because when the economic climate changes, smaller companies are quicker to adjust. I have a very tiny business but I’m on the first page of google, competing with the big boys. I’m increasingly winning business from them, yet they have far more resources than I do. Why? I have no bank loans, no expensive infrastructure and no hordes of staff to be paid. And I know where every penny goes – big companies cannot possibly know that. I’m at one extreme of the spectrum, but you are right that other models of mangement, i.e partnership, tend to be much more cautious and hence safer in the long term. I take an increasingly dim view of the management of listed companies, given what I saw of them over the years.

Maybe I’m just a cynic or maybe a realist?

Why agree to share a platform with Mr Draper, I grasp that he may be in financianal straits with a new baby on the way and to a certain extent the media may be looking after their own (his wife). But his acumen in this field is limited at best.

If shareholders are toothless, I guess the question then is whether it is best to have bank ownership structured this way. If the failure of a bank is more damaging to the economy than the failure of another, similar sized company then perhaps we need owners who are alot more engaged?

I remember reading something a while back about how when Goldman Sachs were a partnership, any investment decision was carefully considered but once they became a shareholder owned company, decisions were much quicker and money thrown around

Thanks

I noticed Jonathan’s comment above about why the private sector was caught out by this – it would be more accurate to ask the question why parts of the private sector did not spot this coming. I worked in the City in the run up to the downturn and can say that some areas did see this coming – in 2006 some of us started planning for the downturn. Recruitment in many firms stopped in autumn 2007, and firms began to actively plan their actions for the point the bull market turned bear.

Why didn’t the financial sector see it? Probably because they didn’t want to or were unable to. If you sit in a coffee bar in the square mile and estimate ages of the people passing by (I did this!) you would be hard pressed to find anyone over the age of 45. A lot of these financial vehicles were dreamt up by whizz kids straight out of university, supported by questionable accounting practices which had as their aim the desire to avoid the increasing burden of taxation. Many firms did not have experienced heads in the position of decision makers and those who were more experienced often didn’t understand it but took the view that everyone else was doing it, so it must be ok. There was a complete lack of experience of crashes and recession in a large number of staff in the city, so no concept of what could happen if any part of the chain went bad.

Shareholders are toothless and exert no effective control, the questionable practices mentioned above had the effect of making balance sheets look great, so why worry? I’m sure there are more views on this, but that was my perspective at the time…