Someone explain this to me please

Ive read many books on the JFK assassination. Crossfire by Jim Marrs is probably the most comprehensive, its a long read though! Whole thing was a massive con job. Seems to be a lot of them around!

I'm organising a revolution here,

I will not be sidetracked with all this JFK crap.

Fight the power, 68 bus stop next Saturday.

They've beat you. The 68 stopped operating the other week...

That's the problem with selling modern day capitalism to the masses.
we all want the benefit of using banks and investment companies but when it goes wrong we complain that its not fair. 
You invest your money and take a chance. It may be a cruel thing to say, but perhaps the banks should not have been bailed out. For capitalism to work sometimes there will be those who are unlucky enough to be collateral damage and go bust. I'm sorry to say that I think that this is a flaw in the system and should have been accepted by all.
by bailing out the banks all that has happened is that people believe they can continue to invest foolishly, borrow recklessly and banks can continue operating stupidly without any repercussions.

The fact is it won't benefit the individual, because the whole process will be repeated, again and again.    The B. of E. will generate more phoney money (effectively credit) by means of "quantative easing" and this will be given directly to the financial sector (the banks!) as has always been the case.    The banks then "lend" this non-existent capital to individuals to be repaid over increasingly longer periods of time as personal debt mounts and property and living costs spiral upwards.    In the end, we can all forget about retirement and needn't worry about pensions as we not so merrily work until we drop.    Enslavement by any other name.     The powerful and tiny elite mentioned in a previous post have never lifted a finger in their lives to do anything as menial as press a key on a computer.     We aren't permitted to identify them though.     Brown's old chum has a new job at Minitruth. 

True......the ones they wanted rid of and gained the most in severance payments.

Come on Mike your not that daft . Or if you are you send send me any real money you don't want then I can buy the Old Kent Road.

Repossessions currently run at about 0.005%, approximately 1500 a year... that's 30 a week... in a recession...tops.

So if we persuaded a Saturday crowd in the East Stand to stop paying their mortgages we could cause the collapse of the global financial market.

Incidentally, how many of the 0.005% could have avoided repossession if they only had to 'pay back' the 'money' they 'borrowed' and not the crippling interest rates ?

£100,000 over 25 years, 5% interest, Monthly payment £585
£100,000 over 25 years, no interest, Monthly payment £334

After ten years you will have paid £71,000..... made up of £45,000 interest fees, but only £26,000 of your initial 'loan'

Lose your job, miss a few payments and they'll repossess, despite never having put a penny into the whole system.

A fascinating thread, full of all kinds of very interesting responses on all sides.

Of interest to me is the fact that there are very few posts concerning what causes the borrowing mentioned on this thread.  The actual cause if our deficit, that is we collect less in taxes than we have to pay out.  So obviously if the deficit is reduced, then you have to borrow less money to make up the shortfall.  So then it follows that there must be a number of ways to make the deficit reduce, and ideally to get it to a surplus if at all possible.  These ways are to cut mercilessly at what you are spending, increase massively what money comes in or a combination of the 2.  

What would be the best way to do this then?  I would imagine it would be better for everyone if we could do it through an increased tax take, that would mean companies making more profit, part of that passed on to employees and larger payments to the treasury, everyone happy.  However, how would we as a nation do that?  We are no longer capable of producing anything much anymore, we no longer have the big industries to do it, we are now largely a service driven economy.

So, next best is to try to balance out how we go about it by increasing the tax take somewhat, and also cutting services.  How do we increase the tax take though, do the rates of taxation rise, or do we invest in things like infrastructure projects, which means more borrowing, certainly in the short term?  Increasing tax rates can be counter productive though, it often results in a lower tax take overall, so again we'd have to be reliant on productivity increases to raise taxes.  This apears not to be in the current plans, obviously the Government don't think it is achievable.

What we're left with is massive cuts, which is obviously the direction we're going in.  In fairness 5 years ago the public sector was massively flabby, with loads of pointless jobs for pointless people, and cutting there was absolutely required.  Unfortunately as is usually the case, the people who do the work are those who get cut, the pointless fools who have meetings about meetings (I've seen them) are still there, and are now a bigger proportion of the public sector than ever before.

So, there is no right or wrong answer, it depends where your political affiliation lies as to which philosophy you buy in to.  I can't see the British economy making a surplus for any year during the next decade, even given massive cuts, so the amount we owe on loans is going to continue to increase, so debt will continue to get bigger, and soon interest rates are going to increase, so the interest payments will increase meaning further cuts, or more tax raising.

I'm glad I'm just a humble worker, and nowt to do with running the country.  These are huge questions, and I have to give credit to those politicians, on all sides of the debate for having the guts to back their philosophy and having the guts to have a go.