Politics Thread!

[gravy]

Ooof

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ea9da740-3acd ... z3hvRQFWt7

Short some RBS shares so you can buy a load more at reduced rates. Nice one!

[k345y]

Yup it is average, I knew it was around 40% but I had read that was high in proportion but it's on average with Germany etc.

Is it bollocks.

The european average is around 1.2 asylum applicants per 1000 population. That's applicants, not accepted applications. The UK is at around 0.49 per 1000, 20th position of the 28. Germany take 5 times more per head of population and six times more in terms of sheer numbers.

Is it bollocks ?
Sounds a bit aggressive , why not just say that's wrong, my opinion differs ?

The number of people seeking asylum in the UK peaked in the early 2000s with 84,130 applications (excluding dependants) in 2003. It has remained much lower since this point. Between September 2011 and September 2012, 20,838 people applied for asylum. 10,750 asylum applications in this period were refused (64 per cent of the total).

http://www.irr.org.uk/research/statistics/asylum/

36% acceptance, roughly 40%. I wasn't that far off.

Same in 2013.

In 2013, 36% of asylum applications were accepted initially.

http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/br ... -uk-asylum

[Absolute_Zero]

Really. With the most expensive fines yet to be imposed from the residential mortgage-backed securities sold in the US before the 2008 crisis... sans an investment arm that made the big profits in the good old days. Under an increasingly wobbly world-outlook, RBS will surely roar ahead as a traditional high-street deposit holder... making Osborne and Balls-approved Carney look like fools. Oh well, his profits from Lloyds [likely] + Bradford & Bingley + Northern Rock > than if he sold the full holding at the price of the first tranche.

Pack in that false dichotomy bullshit. I'm not saying RBS will ever reach the heady heights they once traded at. I am saying selling now is poor timing and doesn't gel with Osbournes claims for the economic outlook of the country. It still has a strong balance sheet even post 'cleansing' which even the most pessimistic fine forecasts would make fuck all of a difference to and I -think- once out of public ownership they'd be precluded from going back into investment banking.

Worth noting the that this sale was over subscribed by a factor of two and that also one of the criticisms leveled on the timing is this was done before the fines were leveled, the hit taken and the dust let to settle.

The implication of what you're saying is the the chancellor is a super genius while the slow witted investment bankers have been sold a pup. I think they've been given a gift.

I'd be more convinced if the treasury could give some solid reasons for the timing rather than trotting out plattitudes.

Have you considered the possibility that they fear RBS may be worth less in the longer term? Maybe the septics are going cane them.

It's not all about the genius or otherwise of the Chancellor... you need to address the fact that the well-regarded BoE Governor is in on this too.

[gravy]

It did cross my mind they may know about some bad news on the way.

But not to disclose that as a publically traded company doing a share offer?

Are you saying Osborne is crook? I think I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt by calling him an idiot

[Absolute_Zero]

Hypothetically, if he heard a rumour [from Carney perhaps] that the US regulators were thinking of being harsh to RBS... I don't believe he's under any obligation to repeat such rumours in public.

[merman]

See, to bail out RBS and Lloyds cost us billions. And then it cost us billions more in the interest payments on the Government bonds taken out to pay for the bailout.

So even though ON PAPER the Lloyds sale comes out as just about break even, the real cost is much higher.

Channel 4's Fact Check clarifies that the country has lost £1 BILLION on this 5% sell-off. That's £17 each.

How can we trust Gideon's figures and predictions if he can't even work out that 330p per share is a massive loss?

[pogo]

As I wrote earlier you can do the sums all sorts of ways to get all sorts of results. The govt. is not a normal investor and you cannot compare this to other ways they invest. You can say that the alternative, of not bailing out the banks, would have been far worse.

The main decision for this govt. is when to sell, and there is no perfect time to do so. The price could go up or down so delaying could raise more or less. Given that other factors will determine when to sell, such as not selling too quickly in case the markets take fright.

[Absolute_Zero]

See, to bail out RBS and Lloyds cost us billions. And then it cost us billions more in the interest payments on the Government bonds taken out to pay for the bailout.

So even though ON PAPER the Lloyds sale comes out as just about break even, the real cost is much higher.

The Government currently holds 13.99% of Lloyds. So you must know when the remainder will be sold and for how much. Do tell.

[VNVObit]

See, to bail out RBS and Lloyds cost us billions. And then it cost us billions more in the interest payments on the Government bonds taken out to pay for the bailout.

So even though ON PAPER the Lloyds sale comes out as just about break even, the real cost is much higher.

The Government currently holds 13.99% of Lloyds. So you must know when the remainder will be sold and for how much. Do tell.

you can do the calculation without them realising all the money (mark to market)

Anyway shares can go up or down, past performance is no guarantee of future performance yada yada

As I wrote earlier you can do the sums all sorts of ways to get all sorts of results. /quote]

yes but if you don't take into account all cash inflows and outflows you are kidding yourself

The govt. is not a normal investor and you cannot compare this to other ways they invest.

you can you know just because their reason for investing was different doesn't invalidate the comparison, and it is a useful way to quantify the true cost of bailing out the bank.

such as not selling too quickly in case the markets take fright.

If they tried to sell all the price would fall due to straightforward supply and demand economics
can't help feeling the decision is more to do with Osborne's political aspirations rather than a purely financially driven one

[pogo]

How is it political? It would be political to hold on to them for longer than necessary, to use them politically by enacting policy through them. Selling them as soon as possible is the least political option.

[(o)(o)]

What's to debate here ??

Tory modus operandi since at least Thatcher is sell off assets below market value to benefit investors, corporates executives, bankers, fund managers etcetera

The class of people who bankroll the Tory party (large percentage of whom operate in City of London).

You can argue about finer details but seriously, what's the point.

This is what they do it's true to form.

[pogo]

The market value is whatever the price is today, or in this case when the shares were sold. Not whatever other value you are imagining. The govt. could hold out for a better price but with no certainty one would materialise. The price could rise or fall.

All they can do to minimise losses due to volatility is not sell all at once.make a number of sales spread out over a period. This will tend to average out losses and gains. And it is what they are doing.

[(o)(o)]

The market value is whatever the price is today....

Yawn technically whatever... you know what I mean. RBS is being sold on the cheap.

The price could rise or fall.

It has fallen.

Shares were offloaded barely above the bank's 326p 52-week low and with a 2.3% discount.

Well below the 410p it was trading at February not to mention 502p paid by the taxpayer.

60% of the shares went to hedge funds and gosh what a surprise - they were tipped off.

[gravy]

The market value is whatever the price is today, or in this case when the shares were sold. Not whatever other value you are imagining. The govt. could hold out for a better price but with no certainty one would materialise. The price could rise or fall.

All they can do to minimise losses due to volatility is not sell all at once.make a number of sales spread out over a period. This will tend to average out losses and gains. And it is what they are doing.

You know the shares were sold below the market price? Like other state hold share sales there's a discount. It's not a massive % but it's a shit load of cash.

What's rhe argument for selling below the market price?

And you also know that the sale was over subscribed by a factor of two?

Demand hugely outstripped supply by a factor of two. What does that tell you about the price that was set?

And you also know that there was a load of stock shorting the Friday before the annoncement that drove the RBS share price down? Even ignoring the discount, the asymettry between supply and demand, it's not unreasonable to suspect some serious market manipulation when the sale went through,

Can you defend all of that please. The first two are facts, the last one reasonable speculation IMHO.

[(o)(o)]

Oversubscription speaks to a lack of equilibrium between price and value.