So what exactly is their purpose then ?

Mintball wrote: I do not have the time and expertise to research and become expert in every damned product or service that I wish to buy. I usually do do some research, but not to the level where I know more than people who are paid to be able to advise me and supply a service. And I should not have to expect to. The next time you want to squirrel away some money for a rainy day then first of all you'll need to enrol at an institute of higher education, like this one for instance and then, after you graduate, only then will you be able to make your own decisions on where to place your money and which financial products to invest in, mind, those course notes could be rather amusing, given that they were written in 2008.

Mintball wrote: I do not have the time and expertise to research and become expert in every damned product or service that I wish to buy. I usually do do some research, but not to the level where I know more than people who are paid to be able to advise me and supply a service. And I should not have to expect to. The next time you want to squirrel away some money for a rainy day then first of all you'll need to enrol at an institute of higher education, like this one for instance and then, after you graduate, only then will you be able to make your own decisions on where to place your money and which financial products to invest in, mind, those course notes could be rather amusing, given that they were written in 2008.

To deposit money with and / or borrow from.

Which parties do you think I have voted for?

So you buy into their services then ?

Once again we've disappeared off on a tangent. I do apologise for getting dragged in on this particular one. How is any of this relevant to a 'casino' economy or banking? You put money into an account with a stated rate of interest and received that interest. Not really a gamble, is it?

By the way I genuinely did laugh out loud when I saw you'd linked to an article about Ed Miliband using the term 'casino banking' as if that added some weight to the term. Hilarious.



Wow. In response me pointing out you've claimed I said something I never said you've done it again.



Who are these people? Surely you have at least one quote to back up this?
This is the at least the fourth time of asking this relatively simple question. The lack of answers is why I get bored of asking the questions. It becomes clear you've simply made things up (as you've proven you're quite willing to do).

Do try to keep up.

Banks – 'casino banking' – removing the option for straightforward, safe savings accounts, but selling you 'products' that are based on a bet: ie something that could go up as well as down.

Oh, hang on: I forgot that I'm supposed to be the expert in absolutely everything I buy – more expert, indeed, than those trained in the selling of such products (and see McLaren's posts too on this).

Do you actually think such things through? Why do you think that service is not a laudable idea and institutions such as banks have no responsibility to be trustworthy and provide a genuine service? Because if you're lumping the responsibility for being more expert than the supposed experts on to the customers, then you have ditched any such ideas of service or trustworthiness, sunshine, and it would be good to see you come out and specifically acknowledge that.

As only a very slight aside, Jon Snow is working on a report of how Barclay's mis-selling has affected individuals and small businesses. Why don't you give him a call and tell him that it was their responsibility to make sure they knew more about the products being flogged than the salesperson – sorry, banker?

In terms of the economy? Are you struggling to maintain this pretence that you don't know what is meant by such a phrase? I do hope you're paid well for being such self-demeaning apologist.

Vast amounts of what has happened, which has caused the financial crisis, have been based on – let's put it politely – speculation. To speculate – that's to guess at the outcome of something. Which is what a bet is; a gamble.

What do you do in a casino? You take money and you use it to speculate, to bet, to gamble, in the hope that you'll make more money. The odds in any bet may vary. The odds may, indeed, even be something like 90% in favour of your preferred outcome, but it is still a bet; still a gamble.

We have banks and finance betting huge sums of money – people's pensions (their lives, in other words), their savings etc – by buying really sound things like, err, debts. They do so in the hope that they'll be able to make even more money.

There has been speculation in the finance sector all over the place. Finance is a major part of the economy. Such speculation – such gambling – has been the prime cause of the crisis., because it was the reason the banks had to be rescued. Thus we see the results of a casino economy.



And what about Keynes? Did you laugh then too – or have you conveniently 'forgotten' that one?

The financial crisis was caused by:

Bad traditional bank lending, based primarily on property lending and to some extent lending to business;
Bad policy by central banks - keeping interest rates deliberately low in order to continue to fuel an asset bubble in property to mask poor economic performance (Brown's end to boom and bust);
Poor US policy in response to the crisis - causing a much deeper crisis than necessary.

In short, investment banking (which does not use people's pensions) was not the problem. They are just easy scape goats for politicians to mask their own ineptitude. In the UK we only have one big investment bank - Barclays - and that did not even need state aid.

It was not "traditional lending".

"Traditional lending" disappeared years ago.

And given that one of the biggest banks that was rescued, RBS, had been involved in gambling on a whole range of things, including but not limited to buying up other financial organisations (without checking their finances properly – how much more of a gamble do you want?), it's hardly something that is just limited to investment banks per se.

The crisis is also part of Thatcher's legacy – help create a housing crisis and then prices will go through the roof; deregulate so that financial bodies can offer riskier and risker mortgages (because people do actually need a roof over their heads). Then get a bubble – etc etc.

It's a cyclical thing. It's happened before and will happen again. Essentially it comes from too much money chasing too few assets. There is a constant stream of investment money going into the system, not least through pension funds. That has to find a home - essentially in property, bonds and shares, which generally get forced up in price and periodically drop back, often sharply, to move towards longer-term overall economic reality (ie close to overall GDP performance). It also partly comes from politicians buying into flawed economic theories, rather than being adaptive. Politicians (whether it fits your blinkered narrative or not, largely Labour ones in this country) helped by deliberate policy to fuel a domestic property boom, which exaggerated the normal cycle.