by EconomyMeltdown

June 2010

from YouTube Website

 

 

Part 1
How The Banks Never Lose
June 19, 2010
 

As the credit crunch continues to leave Britain cash-strapped and high street banks report huge losses, Dispatches investigates who is responsible for the current crisis.

Reckless lending and risky investments have been blamed for directly driving up mortgage rates and increasing the numbers of people losing their homes.

Dispatches investigates how the bank chiefs allowed this to happen and if lessons have been learn from the Northern Rock crisis.

Former investment banker James Max tracks down the banking bosses who have presided over the colossal losses to see if they will be held to account.

He examines the billion pound bonus culture and lifestyle of the City’s wide boys and investigates how the banks are now seeking to make back the money they lost before the credit boom hit the buffers.

Featuring the results of an exclusive survey of bank lending rates, and how much money banks are re-claiming through them, the film also offers expert advice on how to cope with higher interest rates and shows how customers can take banking into their own hands.

 

 

 

 

Part 2
Crash - How Long Will It Last
June 16, 2010

 

In the second half of this special two-part Dispatches, economist and author Will Hutton continues the definitive insider’s account of how Britain’s economy went from boom to bust.

Hutton reveals how those who tried to warn of the impending financial disaster were shouted down, ignored or fired. As a result, the repercussions of the collapse of Lehman Brothers hit an unprepared and vulnerable UK, and left the government frantically trying to prevent a banking collapse from turning the UK into an economic wasteland.

Despite the collapse of Northern Rock a year before, the government, the regulators and the banks had largely ignored the warning signals that more collapses would follow. Hutton looks at the weeks that followed Lehman’s collapse: weeks that will go down as some of the most crucial in Britain’s economic history.

Nationalizing key banks, and then underwriting the banks’ bad loans, prevented meltdown, but at a terrible cost that will haunt us for years to come.

 

Dispatches reveals the mistakes that lead to the current crisis and asks:

what will it take to lift the UK out of the biggest recession in living memory?