Toxic Loans took my home

Marcus Halberstram

“Credit crunch”, “Quantitative easing”, “Credit defaults swaps”….who’d have thought that these words would enter the daily vernacular of the average Wycombe supporter? The G20 meet next week (not to be confused with the G14 European footballing elite) with a crisis on their hands…a Global recession, 50% wiped off shares values, Credit lines have dried up, 2 million unemployed and rising…against this backdrop we are sure to see a rising level of civil unrest with bankers being the first target…in my eyes it won’t be just the back window of Fred the Shred’s Merc that’ll be stoved in come the revolution…at Christmas we saw activists entering the RBS head office http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3xEfNyCH9Q&feature=related …in time we’ll see much worse…that time could well be next Wednesday (aka Financial Fool’s day)…I’ll be lending a couple of trader mates my stab jackets and wishing them bon voyage as they board the 6.30am to Paddington…watch this space…

But how did we arrive at such a situation? – Part 1




In my eyes “if you don’t know your past you don’t know your future”…back in 1920s a stockmarket bubble was created and ended in the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression….in the fall out from this the Glass-Steagall Act was introduced (aka the 1933 Banking Act), it’s job was simple…to keep retail banking and investment banking separate…a sensible move I hear you all say, who wants their hard earned savings being placed on a 3 legged donkey called Sinbad in the 15.30 in Mohali….well, in his wisdom Bill Clinton repealed this act on 12th November 1999…and believe me the City partied like it’s 1999 until the onset of the credit crunch…your normally staid Banks such as Barclays, RBS etc suddenly started involving themselves CDOs (Collateralised debt obligations), CDSs (credit default swaps), SIVs (structured investment vehicles), and no doubt STDs (well certainly the bankers smashed on Cristal who headed to the high class knocking shops during those debauched times)…even Loans companies were to blame…ratcheting up peoples debt levels having obtained cheap credit through the wholesale markets…you’ll note that certain loan companies were sold for many millions of pounds during this period, I’d described these millions as “the fruits of reckless lending and impending misery”…money was being lent out to people with very little being asked (“can you afford to repay this”….”yes”….”here’s 25 bags then”)…all the while no one was looking ahead to tomorrow….it was like flying first class and then landing in Rwanda in 1994…

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26.03.2009. 12:25

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