Lloyds Banking Share Discussion Threads

[meek] 24/9/2020 11:19

The 'scum' spreading the virus, deary me. They're just normal people fed up with the restrictions.

[sr2day] 24/9/2020 11:13

sit tight folks,the black horse has bolted.26.6 finish.

[k38] 24/9/2020 11:06

Labour is confusing the population because they think this is the way to win elections. BBC, for their own reasons do thesame. Pls give us a break!

[hernando2] 24/9/2020 11:05

Bargain Bob will be on soon letting us know that if it wasn’t for Westminster in general and Boris in particular that those students in glasgow would never have caught The Covid...

I have some relatives sin Glasgow and they really believe that sort of rubbish, we Nix is a master of brainwashing..

SNP Indépendance now fight the covid coming up from Bacteria ridden England...( thats basically what my relatives think) and one is a Head teacher of a School..FFS

[k38] 24/9/2020 11:03

The Q is is not about why this government take advice and act on them but what labour would have done differently at the start and now..They support the government as they say with his actions because is the right ones BUT they criticise at thesame time without having awnser to the problem. As for you, labour supporters, no actions good enough, or too many restrictions even labour supporting them.You don't win elections just because you change a leader!

[alphorn] 24/9/2020 11:01

G2 - for that argument to work it would mean collusion between all major countries. Do you believe that???

Has Bilderberg expanded it's membership?

[grahamite2] 24/9/2020 10:51

lefrene's idea that this isn't a medical crisis at all, but a financial crisis with COVID just a fig leaf - a financial crisis to make 2008 look like small beer - is getting quite a lot of traction.

Why is the government taking advice from people with a proven track record of getting everything wrong?
Why was the presentation the other day accompanied by charts which everyone present could see to be ludicrous?
Why hasn't there been any debate on the extreme measures the government has taken and is proposing?
Why do they need to threaten us with the army, for God's sake?

[alphorn] 24/9/2020 10:49

max - steer clear of any investment opinion when you read something like that. It should stay on the JTC thread.

[alphorn] 24/9/2020 10:46

mm2 - may become very lonely posting here. ;)

[maxk] 24/9/2020 10:46

h/t to MT on the JTC thread for posting the whole torygraph article up.




Mount Teide24 Sep '20 - 09:31 - 88692 of 88692
0 3 0



The prospect of decades of 'Japanification' for Europe courtesy of the ideological zealots running the EU political project and its single market protection racket.

The EU's trade and economic policies have always been based on systematic self-harming behaviour. The combination of import restrictions, tariffs and high taxes on wages, goods and services is a guaranteed loser in the long term. It has been failing for the past 400 years.

The laws of economics have not changed.


Europe risks languishing in slump as America's economy powers ahead - Telegraph

Risks of a double-dip recession in America are receding. Not even Covid-19 can repress the dynamism of US capitalism for long.

The eurozone is another matter. The IHS Markit composite survey for September has fallen back to the boom-bust line at just 50.1. Services are in contraction again - even in Germany.

The equivalent US index is in rude good health, with business orders rising at the fastest pace in two years. The crowded "long euro" bet against the dollar looks very silly now.

Europe’s recovery was already fading before the second wave of Covid-19 struck, a truncated V pregnant with economic, social, and political trauma to come.

It is why the EU cannot risk the unforced error of a no-deal Brexit, doubly so given that London is asking only for a bare-bones Canada/Korea trading relationship. Brussels will have to dial down its extra-territorial demands and meet Britain half way to protect its £95bn trade surplus.

We are starting to discern a replay of the trans-Atlantic decoupling seen after the global financial crisis. The US kept pumping in stimulus until the economy had reached escape velocity. The eurozone thought it had done enough - indeed, it tightened hard - committing a series of mistakes that ended in the Lost Decade. The contours are different this time. The divergence is not.

The US is still in convalescence but retail spending has held up better than feared since a divided Congress allowed the $600 weekly aid package for 30m people to expire (temporarily) at the end of July. Households are still drawing down on $1.6 trillion of excess savings accumulated over the lockdown. Homes sales hit a 14-year high in August.

For all the bluster on Capitol Hill, Congress is edging towards a bipartisan deal worth $1.5 trillion, with $500bn for state and local governments, and a $450 weekly cheque for those unable to work, and a top-up stimulus payment of $1,200 for all. Donald Trump says he can live with it. Whoever is elected, more is the pipeline later.

“We’re unabashed optimists,” says Andrew Hollenhorst at Citigroup. The Federal Reserve has more or less pledged to avoid any repeat of past “taper tantrums”, keeping interest rates pinned to the floor and running the economy hot until 2023, even if inflation blows through 2pc.

It is an extraordinary moment in post-war central banking, and probably “dangerousR21; in the view of former Monetary Policy Committee member Willem Buiter. The Fed has even redefined its employment target to a maximalist fantasy: that stimulus will flow until every jobless man or woman is back in the workforce.

It is impossible to be more dovish. The Fed is at the least signalling that it will resort to the ultimate weapon of yield control if need be. It still has ammunition.


The eurozone is on another economic planet. The Bank of Spain has just downgraded its GDP forecast again, expecting a contraction of up to 12.6pc this year, with full recovery pushed out until 2023.

France has lifted its forecast slightly to minus 10pc this year (from minus 11pc) but may have jumped the gun. Emmanuel Macron is determined to avoid a second lockdown but the 14-day toll of new cases rockets to 198 per 100,000 and is now worse than the first wave in March, with deaths ratcheting up this week to 1.0.

The French Conseil Scientifique has already laid out the criteria for drastic counter-measures. Should it declare that the pandemic has again reached a "critical state", Mr Macron cannot ignore the advice except at great political risk. The French test and trace programme has been just as chaotic as the British version.

Italy has so far avoided second wave alarms but damage below the company water line is already grave. A paper for the Review of Corporate Finance Studies - The Covid-19 Shock and Equity Shortfall - found that 17pc of 81,000 Italian companies sampled will have negative net worth within a year. The same pattern probably holds for the whole of southern Europe.

EU leaders do not have any economic margin to play with. The Stoxx 600 index of European banks this week fell below levels seen during the panic sell-off in March, or even seen during the eurozone banking crisis.

It has been a slow death spiral, made worse by regulatory overkill and negative rates that erode their bread and butter lending models. Boston Consulting says the net interest margin of banks has been whittled down from 250 basis points to almost zero. Lenders will soon face the hammer blow of mass insolvencies from Covid-19 as government loan guarantees expire.

Consultants Oliver Wyman estimate that bank losses could reach €830bn over three years, with half of the European lending system barely surviving, unable to generate enough from retained earnings to rebuild their defences. They are already acting preemptively to shore up their capital buffers, tightening credit lines to vulnerable firms, threatening to set off a vicious circle.

European leaders hailed their €750bn recovery fund as a Hamiltonian moment that finally endowed the EU with its own fiscal firepower, rising to the challenge of the pandemic. In reality the EU did just enough to muddle through the immediate crisis.

“Rather than a 'game changer', we see it as another example of the same 'game' that has prevailed for the past decade. Whenever the cohesion of Europe faces clear and present danger, European governments agree to the minimum demonstration of unity to keep the risk of break-up at bay,” says Arnaud Marès, Citigroup’s chief Europe economist and the former right-hand man of Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank.

What they created was a Brussels slush fund. The money does not kick in until mid-2021 and is then spread thinly across the EU over five years, with political strings attached. Some of it displaces existing spending. The additive impact is trivial.

As always, the ECB is left to pick up the pieces, Christine Lagarde has begun talking up a further €500bn of pandemic QE next year but such ritual incantations no longer have potency or meaning. The yield curve is already flat. Long bonds are on negative yields out to 10 years’ maturity. The main policy rate is minus 0.5pc and at - or beyond - the "reversal rate" where cuts become counter-productive.

Japanification is setting in. Core inflation has dropped to a record low of 0.4pc. Headline inflation has fallen to minus 2.1pc in Greece, minus 0.6pc in Spain, and minus 0.5pc in Italy, storing up trouble for debt dynamics.

There is almost nothing that the ECB can do to combat this deflationary freeze or to revive economic growth, short of becoming a monetary-fiscal Reichsbank and financing deficits directly. Such action would court political fate. The German Constitutional Court is already on the warpath, accusing Frankfurt of engaging in quasi-fiscal rescues of insolvent states.

There is no immediate pressure on EU debt markets. ECB bond purchases hide all sins. Risk spreads are beautifully behaved. But this is not a stable equilibrium. Sovereign debt ratios will reach extreme levels across much of the Club Med bloc this year, hitting 160pc of GDP in Italy.

Whatever they claim, EU leaders never completed the eurozone banking union. The sovereign-bank "doom loop" of 2012 is still there. All that has changed is the scale of the menace.

It is said that British Brexiteers do not understand EU politics and are deluding themselves if they think that Angela Merkel and fellow leaders will compromise at the eleventh hour to avoid a trade shock. One might turn the accusation around.

The European Automobile Manufacturers Association last week issued a full-throated warning of a “€110bn Brexit disaster” for the industry if there is no deal. It said trading on WTO terms would have a “catastrophic impact” coming on top of the Covid wave one shock, let alone a wave two.

The problem for Britain is no longer whether or not there will be a trade deal. Of course there will be a deal. The problem is that Europe’s economy is incapable of generating self-sustaining growth and is in fundamental crisis. And whether we like it or not, we are part of it.'

[grahamite2] 24/9/2020 10:39

Thanks jl5006.

[grahamite2] 24/9/2020 10:38

I know someone who retired 33 years ago and who has ever since lived in a council flat off the old age pension and nothing else. She's got over 30 grand in the bank! You never know with old people.

[mikemichael2] 24/9/2020 10:37

Maybe it's time to let it rip, and get shot of some of the old folk, they've had a good run, and they cost us a bomb. See off about half of the more dependant and the country will save a fortune!!!

[alexgc] 24/9/2020 10:32

Last week we flew into Gatwick from Greece and there were absolutely no health checks on passengers coming into the country. We had to fill in an online form, 48 hours before return to the UK, which generated an email, this was not checked, as was indicated. On the Greek side on entering there were stringent checks, one member of each family being tested with a swab. I find it hard to believe that they leave the airports open and then talk about locking down the population. You really can't make it up

[chavitravi2] 24/9/2020 10:01

Sorry double entry.

[bargainbob] 24/9/2020 09:59

Free Kent .

Independent Kent will be larger than EU member state Malta, and EFTA-EEA member Lichtenstein.

With guaranteed income from customs and transit duties, not to mention infinite duty free alcohol revenues, the restored Kingdom of Kent will be one of Europe's wealthiest nations. Canterbury will make a fine capital

[chavitravi2] 24/9/2020 09:59

Portside, I say again they have it wrong. Keep the old safe, locked down for 3 or4 weeks and let the rest who are fit and well get on with their normal lifestyle and if they haven't had covid then get it, get that immunity before winter really sets in and the usual round of flu comes. Flu is the real killer and that with covid at same time will be trouble. Accept any loses, no blame the same as we do with flu and get it out the way. We know what it is now and how to deal with it for the most. A lot that are fit and well dont even know they have it or had it. These high testing figures are fine but only a very small percentage of that figure are people who feel a bit off it, not seriously ill.

[jl5006] 24/9/2020 09:55

G2
EP- Emergency Powers

[chavitravi2] 24/9/2020 09:45

Have you noticed this last week how the share price movement has switch round?
Down in the morning not up and up in the afternoon not down.
A change of trading tactic me thinks.

[geckotheglorious] 24/9/2020 09:30

Investtofly
Post 315344
"Pensioners told to lockdown in case they catch the Virus
Now Pensioners aren’t able to go out as National Savings have slashed interest rates so have no money. Can’t see pensioners voting for Conservatives again, unless they’re suffering from Alzheimer’s at the next General Election"


k38
Post 315345
"Pensioners have more money than you think, unless you are talking the ones who never work in their lives which are quite a few... the one's who had more money than others they have to learn to live with less for the time being"


Probably a bit of both I'd wager.
There are plenty of pensioners who have money/comfortable and yes, they're the ones who have worked hard, saved,lived within their means, and importantly, are able to do with less. They most definitely will continue to vote Conservative.

But there are plenty of pensioners who are less well off, who haven't save enough,or who have never lived within their means expecting the state to pick up the tab. And they have never voted Conservative but been Labour through and through.

People who fend for themselves, are prudent, and want to ensure they rely on no one,especially the Govt, are Conservatives.

Those who don't plan,don't save, who expect to live off the State Pension only, and think the State will look after them as it is their duty are Labour through and through.

[portside1] 24/9/2020 09:30

All benefits must be cut by 10% not just hit the workers A girl with a child is better off than a person on min wage No rent no council tax no insurances No bills for repairs ,Cut their benefits

[portside1] 24/9/2020 09:26

Furlough is the problem spreading the virus these people on furlough are the very people spreading it by having parties going to the beaches ,Boris needs to make it law that if you break the rules and caught on beaches parties marches then you lose your furloughAnd if you then lose your job sign on the dole That would stop these scum spreading the virus

[bargainbob] 24/9/2020 09:17

Independence for Kent , now they have a border no reason not too.