Boss Radio

It's astounding the number of Brits who think it's all Gordon Brown's fault, which is plainly asinine. It's a matter of opinion whether Brown has handled the situation badly or not but blaming him for causing it... Maybe someone could exemplify for me, what exactly did he do to cause the situation? It's worth noting in fact that all the previous governments of all persuasions that I can remember were prone to the odd slump, although things didn't get really bad until Thatcher (Who didn't know that one was coming?) at which point it felt like the world only had to scratch its nose and we caught influenza. Brown as chancellor managed to guide us across at least 3 world depressions without anyone here even noticing, and ironically I suspect that why he's copping it in the neck now. Not only have we forgotten exactly how bad things were under the last administration, but there is also a whole new generation who never experienced life under The Other Lot.

The other targets of the people's ire are 'the people that play the stock market'. On one site there was a stock market gambler trying to justify herself. She pointed out that what she was doing was no worse than betting on the horses, and that she didn't really see how people could blame her for simply doing her job well, in any case she only made 34 to 35 thousand quid out of the collapse of HBOS, so she could hardly be to blame for its downfall, could she?

I never know how to handle that particular mindset. When you bet on the horses you're making a positive decision to do so and the agent who takes your bet is equally compliant, when you gamble on the stock market you're betting with people who don't want to be gambled with. When a horse wins or loses nothing in the rest of the world changes one iota, on the stock market people's lives from all over the place get affected. As for blaming her for doing her job well, her job contributes nothing to the economy or the world at large, she takes money from others and provides no service of any kind in return, she is in fact a leech, pure and simple and I regard it as my bounden duty to complain bitterly the better she does her 'job'.

Then there's that £34,000 in two days. Most people don't make that in a year. It works out at £170,000 a week, allowing for holidays that's about £8,000,000 a year. I think a few thousand people making that kind of money by simply taking it out of the economy are quite capable of bringing down the odd bank.

Not that I think they're completely to blame. In all I've read so far no one has so much as pondered the fact that banks themselves have the kind of clout to affect the market. Not so long ago a merger between Lloyds and Abbey National was blocked as not being in the public interest, now look, Lloyd's have just 'saved' HBOS, a far bigger concern than Abbey, and been thanked for it. Not that I would actually suggest for a second that Lloyds themselves might have had anything whatsoever to do with the fall of HBOS, such fenagling is, of course, completely outside the remit of these splendid institutions.

Mind you, I can't help but notice Barclays picking over the bones of AIG...