Slashdot Mirror
Collapsed UK Bank Attempts to Censor Wikileaks
James Hardine writes "Wikileaks has released a couple of hilarious legal demands over a confidential briefing memo entitled Project Wing — Northern Rock Executive Summary. Northern Rock Bank (UK) collapsed spectacularly late last year on the back of the sub-prime lending crisis and was re-floated by the Bank of England at a cost of over £24bn. The memo was used by the Financial Times, the Telegraph and others. It attracted a number of censorship injunctions, as reported by the Guardian, which only Wikileaks continues to withstand. In their legal demand to Wikileaks, Northern Rock's well-known media lawyers, Schillings, invoke the DMCA & WIPO, claim it'll be 10 years in prison for Wikileaks operators for not following the UK injunction, but then, incredibly, refuse to hand over a copy of the order unless Wikileaks' London lawyers promise not to give it to Wikileaks. Finally they claim copyright and more — on their demands! The letters raise a serious issue about the climate of censorship in the UK, where one can apparently easily obtain a censorship order — a judge made law — that everyone is meant to obey, but no one is meant to know."
What's obvious is that this issue is not about censorship per se -- it's about the move to fascism. Corporations rule. Here in the US, corporations often literally write the bills that the corporate-funded Congress then pass into law. This UK innovation just has the courts directly acting on the corporations' behalf.
"Fascism could better be called 'corporatism', for it is merely the merging of state power with corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who "invented" fascism.
"I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- Thomas Jefferson
If you consider having to get an emergency government loan of £24 billion in order to maintain solvency in the face of depositors withdrawing their money, together with a government guarantee worth £30 billion or so in order to allow you to access the wholesale money markets, trading normally then that's right. It's more accurate, I think, to say that Northern Rock's business model of borrowing short (by issuing short term paper secured on their mortgage portfolio) to lend long collapsed following the flight from mortgaged backed securities in August/September. There may be a legitimate debate to be had over whether or not Northern Rock's mortgage assets are really as valueless as the markets think - the UK government certainly seems to think not but I'm not sure that's a punt I want them taking with my taxes.
Gentleman, we've pinned it down. I'm 43 and at school was taught that a billion was a million million, but by the time I got to work thousand million was the norm.
Note that in Italian the term "corporazioni" (ie: corporations) has a complete different meaning than the English one.
...
The term "Corporazioni", especially in the Mussolini context, refers to "associations" of people/companies doing the same kind of work.
It would be like
Associations of car makers
Associations of car makers' employees
Associations of lawyers
(actually in most of the EU it's the same - e.g. in Germany, Nazi related things are illegal -- um, ironically...) In the UK this has most often been used in relation to the IRA, e.g. internment in the early 70's, or the forbidding of Sinn Fein to speak publicly in the early eighties -- which resulted in the BBC using actors to relay their words. Actually, it's very, very interesting that the BBC were keen on free speech in the Eighties, but are no longer so bothered about it.
Nor, incidentally, do you truly have the right to remain silent. That was removed a few years ago as well. You silence can be construed as admission of guilt -- no pleading the fifth.
It really is time that the UK people realised that Big Brother is here, today, right now. The UK is not as free as some dictatorships in the World. Democracy is smoke and mirrors here, nothing more. It probably is already too late. Americans, you need to ensure you have a change in your Government. Do not repeat the UK's mistakes.
There most definately is copyright on legal documents. They may not be art but they have been created in some sense.
:p
By your definition I can freely copy anything by Britney Spears because it's not remotely creative
"Recently the RIAA made a claim that it is illegal to rip music from your own CDs to listen to that music on different devices that you own"
In the UK this is in fact 100% illegal. As is using a VCR to record a TV programme, for example.
Luckily we don't enforce the law over here... In Europe we only seem to enforce laws when we feel like it, pretty much.. hence the number of silly laws still on the books eg. it's legal to kill a welsh man with a bow whilst in Hereford.
This is basically caused by a wunch of bankers who loaned money they did not have to people who cannot afford to repay it.
That's what the sub-prime crisis is all about, yes. But Northern Rock's problem was not primarily that they did not have the money, but rather that they did not have the liquidity and were caught off guard. Also, while NR did lend in some dubious ways (another reply to my previous post noted some particularly daft examples), so did almost everyone else in recent years, and Rock are reportedly much less exposed in this way than much of the competition.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
While I agree that Northern Rock had relatively little exposure to sub-prime lending in the US, it was doing the equivalent of sub-prime lending in the UK - lending inflated amounts on uncertain security to people who couldn't afford to make the repayments. They were on the outer limits of legitimate business, an accident waiting to happen. And the government has bailed them out with over £1,000 for each man, woman and child in the whole United Kingdom - an utterly colossal sum of money. Is that good value for your taxes? It certainly doesn't look like good value for money for mine.
The Rock is bankrupt. It has suffered the consequences of bad lending practices. Admittedly the hype over sub-prime lending didn't help, but sooner or later this sort of thing was going to happen. The government should just have stood back and let it crash.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
The lawyers in question are also those who tried to suppress Craig Murray's (former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan) allegations about Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
But Northern Rock's problem was not primarily that they did not have the money
The initial problem may have been a liquidity crunch, but the subsequent problem is that they do not, in fact, have the money. They cannot sell their mortgages for the booked value on the market today, they cannot borrow against them, they cannot in any way obtain the money needed. This is not a liquidity problem, this is a solvency problem.
so did almost everyone else in recent years
Yeah, well, some didn't.
The fact is, 'everyone else' will also get what's coming. The sheer scale of this bubble outclasses most before, and it will hit even the most conservative lenders. Even the ones that didn't lend to more than 90% are in trouble; 90% loan on a house valued at 200% of historical markets is still 180% of loan-to-value when the market's settled.
Perhaps we'll get regulation requiring longer term valuations for collateral to avoid further asset bubbles, but that's far in the future. This time unwinding of debt will be excrutiating.
The important bit to note is that this is the first time the pound has taken a hit against the Dollar in quite a long time -- and it's been a significant one at that, considering the short timeframe.
Likewise, a more enlightening comparison would be against the Euro, where a *VERY* perceptible dip is noticeable, considering that the exchange rate between the two has remained constant, apart from a bit of "noise" for the past few years. This is the first time the pound has taken a noticeable "hit" against the Euro. The dollar's been rather volatile for the past few years, so it's not exactly the best benchmark to compare against -- the EU, on the other hand, is a quite good benchmark to tell how well the pound's been doing, especially considering that Britain is a part of the EU and all....
Similarly, fears over the US economy caused international markets to take the biggest hit they've seen since 9/11 today. The US exchanges aren't trading today because of MLK day, so it'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be a "black Tuesday", although there are fears that it could happen, especially considering what happened abroad today.
The dollar has definitely taken a definite hit over the past 8 years (and is inexplicably recovering at the moment....), but this is the first time that the Pound Sterling itself has taken a hit, which is indeed something to make note of.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose