http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10272286.stm

God only knows what Prescott buggered in his time

Between Gordon as Chancellor and then PM, Labour had plenty of warnings from a multitude of sources and did very little when it would have mattered, far as I can tell

The bankers did mess up all the worlds economies except those where the local central bank stopped them from getting into fancy sectors. The root of the problem was the deregulation in the early eighties both here and the US, though Labour failed to stand up to the banks and ensure that regulation worked. They were more interested in keeping the city in support of Labour. Gordon's mistake was to split bank regulation. The civil servants were responsible for the failure of Northern Rock because they were simply not inspecting the bank enough and then when there were problems they did not act fast enough.

To be honest I think it was all of us. Bankers politicians and a large number of us the public, who borrowed too much and bought too much, and didn't save enough. And didn't see the spiral ending in a dip/recession,as it always has before.

After the third of fourth time it happens you get cautious.

Unfortunately the wise die and the younger naive generations will restart the cycle.

I'd be interested to know whow the big winners were out of this crash, in much the same way that what's-his-face reputedly made a billion dollars on Black Wednesday during the Conservative years. I am aware of the odd fund that got vast quantities of RBS shares when they were ridiculously low priced, but nothing more than that.

Is it just me who finds word "bugger" offensive?

Because to me he said this: "bankers performed anal sex on the economy"
or this: "economy took it up the arse from bankers"

Yes there are no single causes of the crisis. Governments creating a perfect environment for property and asset bubbles must take a big blame, but even then the banks demands reduced regulations.

As you say excessive lending by the banks and insufficient saving is another. Though the government policy is to have even lower interest rates deterred saving. Though if you wanted to buy a home you were sucked into the bubble, you had no choice.

Then banks were allowed to confuse customers with shoddy lending practices. I would like to see a mandatory "vanilla" products with very simple and clear terms. Twenty years ago credit card agreements could be printed on a double sided page. Now they are considerably longer and illegible to the average person. If "vanilla" credit cards were regulated in that the interest free payment period was 56 days and fees were fixed for all cards then the only difference would be the interest rates.

I think that's a pretty fair analogy, frankly...

+1

Oh and some hedgefunds made a huge amount of cash predicting the banking crisis...