Reply to: Goldman to cut 15% of workforce

[max]

I think the next IT downturn will begin in April and probably last a year or two.

Begin in April?

It's here already.

What makes you say it'll last a year or two? Just a guess?

[Dow Jones]

Another one

Sappatz - another Russian moron along with TwAt- they seem to know more about the British economy than we do. Maybe they think they are too clever because of their hacking and phishing 'skills'.

[51st State]

The following Banks have already been nationalised :

Northern Rock
Bears Sterns (5th US investment bank)

HBOS soon ...

Hahahahaha - you absolute noob; HBOS is an old rumour being investigated by the FSA. On what basis are you mistakenly trying to rehash it?

[BlasterBates]

In the Economist I read they think the banking sector will shrink and stay shrunk, because the growth before was due to a credit bubble. Apparently Investment banking has been a high growth sector since the 80's. Looks like it might have come to an end. Might just become another "normal" sector.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Banks like GS dont like to lay off people only to rehire them again in six months time.. so if this is true they expect the slowdown to last some time..

I think the next IT downturn will begin in April and probably last a year or two.

Yes and yes.

Banks are shedding staff like autumn leaves - a Hard Rain's a gonna fall ...

[AlfredJPruffock]

Subprime Rhapsody


Is this the real price?
Is this just fantasy?
Financial landslide
No escape from reality

Open your eyes
And look at your buys and see.

I’m now a poor boy
High-yielding casualty

Because I bought it high, watched it blow
Rating high, value low,

Any way the Fed goes
Doesn’t really matter to me,

Mama - just killed my fund
Quoted CDO’s instead

Pulled the trigger, now it’s dead
Mama - I had just begun

These CDO’s have blown it all away

etc

[AtW]

You can't really regulate against booms and busts - it's the way of capitalism. You might as well try to legislate making stupidity illegal.

You can - current "boom" was riding on cheap interest rates that are controlled by the central banks.

But fundamentally something needed to be done about casino style games in the City and other places - these guys are not playing with their own money, heck, turns out they don't even have any money - using huge leveraging they achive massive potential to make money from nothing, but if market turns against them then they have massive potential to lose a lot of money that they don't have, so they go down taking pension funds, real world companies, savings (via inflation) etc.

That kind of reckless behavior is criminal and should be viewed as such.

[bobhope]

Odd chart. I think LTSB (the bank I use) had very little writedowns saying they did not play these games, which is the right thing for any good bank to do. On the other hand I think I seen HSBC having big writedowns.

Either way I think in a couple of years we will definately see some serious laws designed to cut down on this crap that banks were involved in - if they can't regulate itself then some good laws are in order.

You can't really regulate against booms and busts - it's the way of capitalism. You might as well try to legislate making stupidity illegal.

[sappatz]

hedge

just another hedge fund is collapsing under the current deleveraging mode

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba06914a-f...077b07658.html

[HairyArsedBloke]

For AtW: Hedge Funds

[AtW]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...ukbanks118.xml

Odd chart. I think LTSB (the bank I use) had very little writedowns saying they did not play these games, which is the right thing for any good bank to do. On the other hand I think I seen HSBC having big writedowns.

Either way I think in a couple of years we will definately see some serious laws designed to cut down on this crap that banks were involved in - if they can't regulate itself then some good laws are in order.

[sappatz]

banks

The following Banks have already been nationalised :

Northern Rock
Bears Sterns (5th US investment bank)

HBOS soon ...

Many British banks face bankruptcy. Look at this :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...ukbanks118.xml

[bored]

This is 15% of capital markets workforce, not of all workforce...

[AtW]

(Actually squirrels love hoarding things, so you probably have more banks there assuming naturally they're smarter than you.)

Hoarding to survive, not to speculate and resell at higher value to other squirrels when they are dieing from starvation because some squirrels used borrowed money (highly leveraged) to buy all crops.

Do you really think that the society will just tolerate this crap that originated from financial markets? I think in the USA they had pretty strict retrictions on what banks could do - it's time for those to return - the primary purpose of banks is to conduct payments and keep money in their accounts safe. They did not do that recently so now they are at risk of collapse that they use to blackmail regulators in order to get bailouts. How the heck can you protect this kind of behavior? Only if you are a complete banker.

[OwlHoot]

[..] the end result will be that the banks as we know them won't exist. [..]

Guffaw!

Are the squirrels six feet tall on your planet Alexei?

(Actually squirrels love hoarding things, so you probably have more banks there assuming naturally they're smarter than you.)