more financial bullshit from the Conservative Party

From Cameron's speech today:

"Without proper financial regulation, there will be no lasting financial confidence, and without lasting financial confidence, there will be no lasting recovery,"...

"People don't want to abandon markets, they want us to reform markets so they work properly...

"What they want is a sense of order and social responsibility brought to the operation of the financial markets. And that is a task for the modern Conservative Party.

"We are the party of law and order. So we are the party to bring law and order to the financial markets. We are the party of social responsibility. So we are the party to bring social responsibility to the financial markets.

Of course, they were the party who invented the financial regulation in 1986 under Francis Maude.

Godfrey Bloom MEP, who used to be the Chief Executive of Mercury life and worked for many years at TBO investment, was on the advisory panel and said at the time that the regulation wouldn't work.

Ever since then we have seen the collapse of a variety of companies.

I'll paraphrase my conversation with me, because unlike Cameron, Brown and Darling, I like to speak to people who actually know what they are talking about.

"I don't know how they've got the nerve to pontificate on financial regulation when it's perfectly obvious from their performance over the last few years that they have no idea what they are talking about." he said.

"There's no such thing as 'light regulation' in financial services: the FSA write their own rules, collect and keep any fines and are above the law. It's a system a banana republic would be proud of.

"And currently, the FSA is being run by friends of Gordon Brown, and not even clever ones. This is an industry which used to make up 40% of GDP and it should be in the hands of people who know what they are actually talking about.

"Would you let your family members go for heart surgery performed by a taxi driver? Then why should the heart of our economy be managed by people who don't have a clue?"

I still can't understand how everyone let the Tories (and most politicians to be fair) get away with blaming 'mark to markets' except, I suppose, that most people writing about it didn't understand. Mark to Market wasn't to blame, that was just something which happened because the previous system of mark to model had overvalued so much.

How the man who is likely to be our next Prime Minister can get away with speaking such utter hog wash as to blame collapse of markets on a system of pricing is, frankly, dangerous.

Polly Toynbee was blathering away today in the Guardian about the need for 'good journalism' - not something one could accuse her of - to regulate the political system. Here's an example of how we really have a long way to go before most of her chums can even be classed as 'competent' or 'responsible', let alone good

Of course, her moaning was just a cry from a sinking ship for more of that tax payers money she loves to talk about wasting. I wonder if she thinks that her colleagues at the Daily Mail should also be assisted, or aren't they allowed because they don't love all things left?