The bank bailout may or may not be necessary, just as it may or may not be desirable, but how can you have trust in the intentions of a person who has set out and created the problems he is faced with?

If you trust his intentions how can you think his judgement is to be trusted?

And if you are saying that he isn’t to blame then he is impotent and is already half-way out of the door.

Brown is in the position of ultimate responsibility and should be held accountable.

Keeping our basic financial system from collapse is vital. Replacing Brown won’t change that, or change what is needed.

There will be a very small proportion of loans – if any – where the banker genuinely forced people to take out a loan they couldn’t afford.

I’m not saying the banks aren’t complicit in creating their own problems but there is a point at which people have to be responsible for their own borrowing actions.

That man was Gordon Brown (thanks to Andrew Rawnsley).

The global problems would be massively helped by just one small, localised solution – get rid of Brown.

You are right of course: but the biggest problem for Darling right now is that as fast as he gives the banks more bailout monies, foreign depositors withdraw it. And that won’t stop until reality hits No 10 and the Treasury, and the enormous debt is reduced. In the current environment, whatever one does for the banks of a traditional nature, it’s like building roads to reduce traffic – all it does is keep the car problem getting bigger and bigger.
New Model capitalism is I admit a bit of a catch-all soundbite. But its principles are simple: make nations less dependent on trade, more self-sufficient, and less domino-linked in financing; ensure bankers lend to the young businesses on which tomorrow depends; make (in the West) margin, quality and durability the goal,not volume;reserve more land for growing stuff, not developer sleaze; and above all, reduce business dependence on remote shareholders pumped up by hundreds of people screaming at each other across a Bourse trading floor.

To do this would be better for both the Environment and the Third World, give employees a better life-balance and bigger say/interest in the business,and restore the original concept of creative craftsmanship and genuine riskupon which the mediaeval borsa were based.
It’ll take ages to do this, and have to adapt to global change that isn’t even on New Labour’s radar yet. But not to do it will – just like letting credit rip until it became a crunch -involve infinitely more pain than more of the same.
JW

Until we do that there’s no solution – and we are the only mainstream party that actually tries to stand things on their head and tackle the hubris to create change. We embody the main thinkers of this society that actually challenge the status quo so John is right to write his piece.

As for what we all can do – well, I’m eschewing the big stores and simply buying local by taking my custom to local independents – on banking I’m afraid a trick has been pulled on Brown by the banks – now there is no real incentive to either save nor support mutuality – they’ve created a system by which as far as banks are concerned `they’re all the same`.

I think the reason Brown did nothing is much more simple than just some electoral calculation (that was just short-term serendipity at the time for Brown/Blair). He didn’t do anything because like a lot of people he BELIEVED in that system and didn’t have the nous to question it!

I would love to soak the greedy super-rich bankers and financial manipulators by heavily taking those excessive bonuses – But, if “old model” capitalism goes belly-up, a lot of ordinary people will suffer.

Read Peston on the BBC website, and he will tell you that as things stand, it would be irresponsible for the banks to lend more, because they would not have sufficient security for their funds. They would only be putting themselves at risk of going bust. It would be wrong for them to do that, just because some politician tries to bully them into doing so.

Peston also says that globalisation is rapidly giving way to a form of national protectionism, with governments restricting credit outside their own boundaries. Will it be a good thing if that eventually means we can’t buy food, oil, etc from abroad?

Let’s not forget, we are the champion spongers of the Western world, here in the UK. We don’t manufacture, we just spend spend spend on Chinese toys and German white goods. We live by tourism, arms sales and high finance, and deplore that as we Lib Dems might, we are going to be in a mess if those earnings dry up.

This party has to learn to live in the real world – not the idealised world we would have liked it to be.