Rhetorical question about Lloyds Banking Group's results
Posted by Christie Malry on February 25, 2011 at 9:32 am
Listening to Eric Daniels this morning discussing LBG's results with Robert Peston, there was one standout figure. LBG repaid £61bn of its government support during the year and, as per his chat with Peston, has repaid a further £13bn during this financial year.
So, the question is this: will UKuncut etc shut up about the bailout having cost us £1trn? Because, as their results make clear, we're getting vast globs of that money back again. It's a loan that's being repaid, not a revenue item.
OK, so I couldn't resist. I had to see what the perennially dreadful Jill Treanor had written. Not a dickie bird about the fact that LBG had even repaid so much as a penny!
Written on my Android mobile phone. Article may be edited later.
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Perhaps rather than criticising those who are critical of how UK banks have performed, you should think about what the economic purpose is of banks in a modern mixed economy and then about how well they have performed that role in the UK in the past 10, 20, 50 years (go and read a neo classical economic text book if you need help on this rather than Casinos Weekly or whatever is in vogue in dealer circles these days). For some reason I don't believe borrowing and repaying funds from the State will not figure highly in such an analysis. What do you think the effect on GDP was of the banking crisis?
I might ask what the "economic purpose" of you is. Or welfare claimants. Or factories. Or anyone.
Your point considers it axiomatic that everything has a purpose. Sounds to me like you think everything has to be ordered, if not by the current state then by an omniscient one (that no doubt would find a place for you to do a bit of the ordering).
When you see that things exist of their own accord, do not need permission from you or anyone else to do so, and that many benefits flow to everyone from such emergent behaviour, you might give up your twisted view of reality.