Matt Ridley’s irrational optimism and unchecked Free market with no regulation, nonsense pretending to be business acumen is what drove Northern Rock to the wall.
Not an easy thing to do… Mind you, he was driving.
Under the optimal conditions he espoused then and now. In fair weather and sunshine, he killed the bank he chaired. He burned up the whole lot.
Oh boy did he burn up Northern Rock. He sucked so bad, he blew.
And along the way he blew old people’s savings and the shareholders money and destroyed value that was built carefully over some 127 years of proper business sense and value investing.
Well done sucker…
Right after he Mea Culpaed on his knees and got down on all four and he got the requisite rug burns for his efforts… he was found wanting.
And he begged and begged the public – he so disdains – to bail him out with £27 Billion. He hosed us to the tune of £27 billion and more is coming from Toxic assets and imaginary investments. All said and done He is just a banker-wanker of the worst kind. A total business and science failure too. He now wrote a Wanker’s manual in the form of a book called ”Rational Optimist”.
In it, he supports the same kind of Laissez Faire attitude that gave us Northern Bomb; only now he wants to mess with the Environment. He clearly aims to do the same execution on the wall for all species, for the Climate, and for the Environment.
Seriously… a dangerous LOSER… a hoser. Too bad He isn’t in jail but that should come too as shareholder lawsuits for fraud are winding their way through the justice system in the UK and beyond.
The Rational Optimist and his own experience it details must be entertaining read. From a dangerous lunatic to a bunch of harmless lunatics. A bit like Mein Kampf for the new Age believers. In the book Ridley attacks the “parasitic bureaucracy” which stifles free enterprise and excoriates governments for, among other sins, bailing out big corporations. If only the market is left to its own devices, he insists, and not stymied by regulations, the outcome will be wonderful for everybody. Look at northern Rock transmongrified into Northern Bomb and draw your own conclusions…
What banker wanker Ridley glosses over is that before he wrote this book he had an opportunity to put his theories into practice. As chairman of Northern Rock, he was responsible, according to parliament’s Treasury select committee, for a “high-risk, reckless business strategy.” Northern Rock was able to pursue this strategy as a result of a “substantial failure of regulation” by the state. The wonderful outcome of this experiment was the first run on a British bank since 1878, and a £27bn government bail-out.
But it’s not just Ridley who doesn’t mention the inconvenient disjunction between theory and practice. It is that hardly anyone does, from Wall Street Journal all the way down to the FB fans of Matt’s follies. His book has now been reviewed dozens of times, and almost all the reviewers have either been unaware of his demonstration of what happens when his philosophy is applied or too polite to mention it. The reason, is that Ridley is telling people – especially foolish, bitchy, NIMBY type of people – what they want to hear. He is good for the Hollywood ”beaches” and the assorted Britneys and Sarahs.
He tells them that they needn’t worry about social or environmental issues, because these will sort themselves out if the market is liberated from government control. He tells them that they are right to assert that government should get off their backs and stop interfering with its bureaucratic rules and regulations: they should be left alone to make as much money as they like, however they like. He tells them that poorly regulated greed of the kind that Matt Ridley oversaw at Northern Rock is in fact a great moral quest, which makes the world a better place. I fully expect that all the executives of BP have each ordered several copies of Matt’s book and Tony has made it required bed time reading for the company employees. Kenneth Lay’s – Enron CEO’s book ”How ENRON saved the world” – Is a Prison memoir and a close second in the BP reading list. Sadly Ken lay had to send the book from the sweet hereafter, but You can imagine the types of airy-fairy people reading it.
Or another imaginary exercise, better suited for this comparison with Matt’s irresponsible advise. This time the exercise would be to find the book that Jack Welsh would have written if he had destroyed the iconic General Electric Co. That is how iconic Northern Rock was for the UK. And then imagine old Jack as if he had turned around to give advise on the same theories he used to kill a great company and himself kept on laughing with his wealth, while the people have to eat shit and bail out the company. And then suppose he wrote a book on how You can feel good about the progress of the world he participated in sinking, and he told you that you too can now go out and destroy your immediate Ecosystem much like he did.
The divergence between Theory and practice is what distinguishes the Bullshiters from the ones who walk the walk. Sadly Matt falls clearly and squarely on the former category. And the follow on example is best suited for him…
Just imagine what the public’s outcry response would have been if someone who tells the polluters and the ”stupid wallahs” what they don’t want to hear, and he had even caused the first run on a British bank in 130 years after bankrupting it through mismanagement and then he had the gall to go crawling to the people, he had spent years attacking, for a £27bn bailout. Imagine that this person, having learnt nothing from the experience, then published a book insisting that the strategy he applied with such catastrophic consequences should be rolled out universally.
Just imagine him now naked.
Naked and running ahead of the pitchforks chasing him.
That’s the mental image You need to transpose now for Matt. Because he tells the worst sort of public anxiety rubbish and he fans the spirit of inaction and complacency.
Advise of the kind: Oil spill of biblical proportions in the Gulf?
Well people, Go ahead and eat oil cake then. That and some tar balls should satisfy your cravings.
On the other hand since He really tells desperate hopeless people what they like to hear, he should be given a book award. For writing children’s stories…
Sweet Lullabies.
He tells his daft followers, enough bollocks and gives them plenty of airborn shite to breath in, to last till their dying days; for all those morons who believe him.
No problem there is life in the Hereafter.
And some of them think they’ll live for ever. After all, no harm done, so speed them off quickly.
Even if this brutish affair is over somehow they reason – they will survive.
Famous last words of the saurian beasts about 120 million years ago.
Good Luck and God Speed.
Yours,
Pano
You’ll survive all right.
Same as Northern Rock became the Bomb and survived right?
Because if this is what Matt posits, we are screwed.
However if we only want to hear sweet nothings caressing our ear lobes; we should know what’s coming next…
A good jolly screw down the garden path.
But Matt like most Morons insists. He likes the skewering of the innocents.
He goes on and tells us: All is well and we should stay on with the Oil addiction.
Fossil fuels are good. Look at him: Drill baby drill and burn baby burn and spill baby spill – till Kingdom come – has made him a zillionaire.
Bankrupted the Northern Rock bank and holding company, he was tasked to safeguard but never mind those minor details. He walked away rich. Reminiscent of Cheney’s bush. Like Matt; bushie, bankrupted a whole damn country and half the world and still felt vindicated and victorious.
Wonder what class of drugs these guys take and what is the street name so we can go out and get some ourselves. At least to put in the children’s cereal, to not feel the pain of a fucked environment and ecosystem.
Yet Matt and his stupid fans are still high and optimistic.
Lay off the pipe dudes.
And if you look for scientific countenance, just wait a moment Matt, you are reaching again. Cherrypicking and bowl squeezing isn’t science – it’s illusion.
Chief cherry picker and squeezer…. is the only job You’ll likely get these days. But you don’t need that role too.
After all isn’t that religions’ role?
Matt; you and the BP executives are reading from the same book list… and cause the same irreparable harm to the ecosystem and the minds of the gullible.
Now be a good boy and Go spill something toxic down your gullet and then please take a constitutional swim in the Gulf, and am sure, we’ll talk again soon.
In the sweet hereafter.
