Have Your Say

What I love about the blog and Twitter is the interaction you begin to get with clients, other bloggers and the general public. That is the whole point of it and I thought I would share some of the feedback I have had.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people actually read these comments and as I have never pretended to know everything I welcome criticism of my views as much as praise. Something many people I know should learn to do!

My comments on the BBC caused a few responses such as this one, “Are we not in this mess because the banks lent to anyone? Surely what we want is the banks to lend to people who are able to pay their loans -i.e. responsible lending. If so don’t think your comment has helped the situation”.

I understand your point James, and I agree with you. I am not for one minute saying we go back to the crazy days, far from it. The issue now is that banks have taken things too far and are constricting the market. I know it is not all their fault and they have capital adequacy issues etc., but it is further choking the economy.

An overcorrection is no good, and all we need is sensible lending up to 90% on decent rates at no more than say 4 times income. That is surely sensible enough but we need government intervention.

Cheerily one of my favourite clients wrote the following after I emailed out our views on the general economy for 2009 – “You’re wrong!!! Interest rates in double figures by end of the year (imported inflation + collapse of the £), close to double digit economic decline for the year, depression called next Christmas, mass unemployment and the FTSE @ around 2000. We’re not coming back from this one!!!”

Cheers Mark for cheering me up after a long hard day! Unfortunately in some of my darkest moments I worry you may be close to the truth. However, as an eternal optimist I have to drag myself back from the brink and believe that a concerted global effort will be enough to avoid this.

We got into this quickly and suddenly due to globalisation and therefore I believe we will be out of this quicker than before.

By the way, I feel like Barry Took from Points of View!

I also got a page long response from someone clearly angry at what I had said, ending with “Give your clients some real professional advice. Get everything out of the UK. Short the £ as far as you can and invest in YEN meanwhile and wait until about the 2nd quarter of 2010 and buy stocks that are rising aggressively whilst still shorting the pound”.

Sorry I riled you David but everyone is entitled to their view. I do my best to be honest in my thoughts, I do not follow a Cobalt company line, these are my own thoughts.

I just believe that we all have a responsibility to tear ourselves out of this. We need decisive government action that is actually rich in details and followed through. We need to stop talking everything down with almost perverse glee, that does not mean just saying things we don’t believe to make things seem better.

I do not do that, whatever some may say – I am not naïve to the situation.

In today’s world only joint co-operation will work, G20, EU, UK government, banks, brokers, public.

Finally, it was nice to see the following on Twitter – “following Andrew Montlake, the only man in finance Mr. Brown should listen to!” – hey, I’m allowed one positive comment.

Thanks Dee, I am humbled, but there are many more learned voices already in conversation with Browns people who are not being listened to – they need to start listening now.

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