High earners in any industry tend to enjoy their wealth, so yes I'd say that the fruit from the tree of plenty does fall far and wide. Take footballers for example who like to have ostentatious displays of their treasure.... They'll drive flash cars, admittedly from Germany or Italy, providing jobs nonetheless in sales and servicing, they'll buy a palace from another footballer, and gut and refit it because the Mrs dosn't like the colour of the marble and yes the new marble will be Italian of course, but the guys fitting it will be from Cheshire or Surrey......
Lucky they're not all like me, because if I was a high earner I'd stay in my little terraced house counting my money!! Bah!! 
Yes it's nice for those trades to have such work Tigg - but in relation to the country as a whole, any distribution of wealth from such a narrow source can never hope to add anything of a substantial nature to the equation - I suppose that's why a not inconsiderable swathe of the country seldom gets a sniff of such work from those people who have substantial disposable income.
I would think we need to have people in regular dependable employment as there are only so many marble clad dwellings or high-end vehicles around to provide a constancy of employment to those who install them or service them. There's nothing wrong with exploiting such a market but what I would like to see is a broader based economy in place to take up the lion’s share of employment opportunity.
I don't think that anyone is disagreeing with you here Den about Britains financial industry and the over reliance on it. However we find ourselves in a juxtaposition whereby the very industry through deregulation, has brought the economy to it's knees, but we still need that very industry to be successful to help drag ourselves out of the mire. 
As I've pointed out, The City needs to be competitive on the global scene not just in Europe, and in my view Merkozy were aiming to blunt that competitiveness, to the advange of Frankfurt and Paris's Banks..... 
One must remember that the blame for the economy being on its knees (and this applies even more so to other countries in the EZ) cannot just be placed on banking practices, but rather on governments spending too much. We currently have a sovereign debt crisis, not a mortgage crisis. 
We currently have a sovereign debt crisis
For the benefit of this poor old ex-copper, how did that happen?
Sorry, Den, I missed this post earlier.
Basically, sovereign debt refers to the national budgets. Most nations these days have a deficit where income (largely, taxes) fails to meet public expenditure. Nations ("sovereigns") routinely issue bonds (known as Treasury gilts in the UK) to cover these deficits. Bonds are essentially IOUs, providing interest returns or yields if you buy them. The credit rating agencies, such as Moodys and S&P rate debt according to the likelihood of the bonds being repaid when they mature. For years, the European countries have enjoyed AAA ratings, meaning their debt is as safe as houses. Recently, though, the prospects for many EU countries has been downgraded, meaning that the chances of default are higher. To counteract this, the bonds that the countries need to issue to balance their books have carried ever-greater interest rates to attract buyers.
The problem, though, is that this sovereign debt has increased and many economies (especially the PIIGS, Portugal Italy, Irleand, Greece and Spain) are becoming so laden with debt, that no-one wants to lend them money - via bond purchase. Hence, the crisis goes on and they get downgraded further, with the possibility of some countries becoming so mired in debt they effectively go bankrupt.
Hope that's clearer!
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Topic: Credit where its due (politics) (Read 4519 times)