Howay

What don't they know TBH.

Aye his post about BoE predicting it would line up with that. The market will always go up and down CT but on the whole the housing market trends upwards, everyone knows this. A normal dip wouldn't have caused the crisis that is why nobody was worried, what we saw was a horrific turn that nobody, bar a tiny handful, thought was even remotely possible. As I say if this was some widely known thing what possible gain would they get from sitting on their hands? Bear in mind my other post talks about what happened to them and how all they 'milked' quickly went away because of it. Bankers generally don't love risk especially with bonds and in hindsight we saw all of the largest banks in the world take on crippling levels of risk, if theyand everyone else saw that coming why on Earth would they ever have accepted it?

:lol: :lol: You actually think this? This is absolutely absurd. They were almost all put out of business man, many of them lost a hell of a lot from this and some even lost everything, why would anyone in their right mind do that? If they knew it was coming then they would have all bet against it (like Burry did) and kept silent but that isn't what happened, why would they all keep investing in mortgage backed securities? They basically wiped out everything they 'milked' out of it, many in fact lost far more than they had ever got out of it.

Stop it man, they didn't know it would crash. Two of the biggest financial firms in the world (Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers) went belly up from this and the Government had to bail out many more or it would have been twenty times worse, if everyone had known it would crash why would the two biggest financial institutions in the world expose themselves to that level of risk? AIG was buying up tons of these Mortgage backed securities, billions and billions of dollars of them, so much so they were in massive jeopardy and had to sell off massive portions of their business operations to stay solvent. No body batted an eye when they were doing it, in fact it was seen as smart business by investing their money in securities that were assumed to always be good. You are on about predicting something that had never ever happened before, the banks missed it, the Big 4 accounting firms missed it, the bond rating firms missed it, and government regulators missed it. Stop acting like it was this inevitable thing that everybody saw coming a mile off, if that was the case Michael Burry wouldn't have been able to hoover up huge amounts of credit default swaps against them for a relatively small amount (he was able to use his small-ish hedge funds funds to bet against a massive percentage of the entire market on these things). Of course it was scandalous, but as I say that was all due to easings on regulations well before the fact there was nothing they could do at the time because as I say nobody thought this was possible, even the people placing bets against it weren't that sure early on it was a theory. It's absolutely ridiculous to say that in the mid-2000's everyone knew this was coming.

I'm more impressed that he sat through a film about how no body saw any way the housing market would crash except a handful of people (who were all on the fringes) and what he took from it was that it was clear to any and everybody that it was an unsustainable bubble that would definitely crash.

Or a wealthy mans Stephen Glass.

That's the dream.

He's playing mind games now by stating his prediction. Will Ewerk copy his 2-0? I've went with 2-0 in all by the way, I made the prediction before I saw Dougles but he makes me more confident that I'll notch up 2 more points.

I live in Northern NJ, coincidentally in a town almost entirely populated by investment bankers (that was my aim as well but alas I'm an accountant hence the no insult intended to any Moodys/S&P people). I occasionally comment in the US politics thread but Trump terrifies/depresses me too much. Anyway I've completely derailed this topic, I watched Triple 9 recently and thought it was pretty pish .

Thanks, I know a little about this mainly because I'm a nerdy accountant and have read the Big Short as well as most of Michael Lewis' other books (he's my favorite author, I've already qualified that I'm a nerd). When it comes to politics in general I tend to get lost as I find it hard to keep track of all the major events you guys talk about in there, as well as the fact I've lost touch with UK politics a bit since I moved to the US. Point taken, I was going to give him the Leicester analogy for how unforeseen the bubble bursting was but sensed it would be lost and went with the 12th century Britain thing.

I occasionally pop my head in there but it's mostly people that know far more than I about the issue so I wind my neck in and keep quiet, but you're right this is like talking to a wall... you're right CT the Government should have divested itself of any gold they had and lumped it all on a product that had been invented that year, ignoring the fact that nobody bar a tiny handful of people had any possible belief that it could happen (not far off telling people of 12th century Britain there was no god) as well as ignoring the massive swing that would have happened if that volume of money had been placed on that bet which would have no doubt caused banks to instantly tighten up to defend against it meaning it may never have happened resulting in the Government losing incredible amounts of money.

Read my larger post no one saw it as unsustainable ffs that is why Burry was laughed at, as I said the Government has some blame but it's mostly in the aftermath where their blame lies and in preventative measures not in failing to catch it while it was happening. It's also a systemic issue with Government as I get you are trying to imply that this was a fault of Labour, the Conservatives wouldn't have done it any different, just look at the US for an example of what I mean it happened all while Republicans were in charge but you had bank deregulation under Clinton. Hindsight is 20/20.

Aye he wants greater regulation on banks, that isn't him claiming the Government knew it was coming and just got the popcorn out.

No they didn't, did you actually listen to what they were saying in the film? People thought it was absolutely insane that a bloke would bet against it as it's generally a given that land will always appreciate so loans on it will never be underwater. The entire movie is about a very small group of people that noticed oddities and bet against the market so it's ridiculous to say the government saw it coming, as I said there was no such product as a credit default swap against mortgage backed securities it was invented for Burry and fashioned from other credit swap products that weren't commonly used that is the level to how improbable people thought it was. These tranches were disguised as premium bonds as the risk on them was so diversified and hidden behind levels of legitimately good mortgages that they said there was no way a significant amount of them could default causing that security to effectively become junk, Moody's and Standard and Poor (the rating agencies) are staffed by a lot of people that didn't make it into these front office investment banking jobs so they missed this and the Government regulatory staff are even further down the list in getting quality candidates (no disrespect to anyone that works for Moodys, S&P or Government, just speaking in general terms it's not like I'm at GS working in IB). No body knew when it would go pop or what the consequences would be no one had any idea it would happen, even Burry and co had no idea about those things they simply had a theory that it would come at some point when no one else was looking or paying attention as like I say it's always been a given that land appreciates in value. Where Governments fucked up is loosening regulations on banks in order to attract them to do business but this is exactly what the Tories have wanted and have been doing themselves, if you are going to point a finger at the Government in general and attribute some blame then that is fine but to put it squarely at the door of Labour for them not seeing something that everyone bar a handful of people in the world spotted is absurd.

The shorts against that type of financial product didn't exist before Michael Burry had them made for him by either Deutsche Bank or Goldman Sachs, that is the level to which people didn't see this coming. So to say the Gov't fucked up by not buying shorts is akin to saying a bloke fucked up by picking the wrong lottery numbers. It's a good film like and it does a good job at giving a high level explanation of some of the terms and products they talk about. If you really want to blame the Gov't CT be advised this whole thing is starting to emerge again with sub-prime car loans. Of course this wouldn't have the massively devastating effect the Mortgages did but it shows how common this sort of stuff is.

He never got over Pardew picking Gabriel Obertan ahead of him, it was a crushing blow to his confidence.

It doesn't really matter who it is tbh, the FA will completely fuck it up and appoint someone who should be nowhere near a top 15 International job. The players don't bother turning up either so they may as well appoint Bruce and say he can only play Championship players, we'd probably see similar results to what we have had since Sven left.

I'm not shocked by how shit they're doing TBH, they got 20 points less than us and we were fucking dreadful. They would have needed a mental overhaul to come even close to what we were then let alone trying to match what we are after our own overhaul. Instead they got Di Matteo and then about 5 strikers who they have to play out of position to get on the field. Joke of a club.

It was dreadful aye.

He's like a younger, really shit version of spider man.

He's very proud of it.

No I live in Northern NJ. I get that his desire for lower taxes would appeal to financially minded Republicans I think I just assumed that the fact he's bonkers might frighten them off a bit. I can sort of see why Dems would vote for an independent as Hillary is pretty dis likable as well really but I do agree it's sort of mental to make a stand like that in this sort of election. My worry for the middle grounds is if they are enticed by the 'he's not like politicians', 'he runs a big business so he knows how to make things profitable' type of spiel. You're spot on about the minority vote, I just cannot imagine any sane non-white person voting for him as it's clear as day the menace lurking behind him when it comes to civil rights is. Of course you have bonkers minority voters, like Don King just come out in favor of him. I completely agree that a moderate Republican would have won, I even think Romney would have won this election let alone if it had been someone like John McCain.

I still wish he had went arse over tit down the stairs when we got battered by Pompey and he made his way down the stairs to a hail of abuse after the 3rd flew in.