I wish I hadn't said that

Find out the stupidest things forecasters and financial companies have said that they will have regretted. And did they learn their lessons?

'I want my life back.' This one ill-considered sentence alone was probably enough to seal the fate of Tony Hayward, the outgoing boss of BP, which is one of the most widely held shares in the UK. If you have a retirement plan invested in the stock market, you probably own a piece of it and it's worth about 35% less now than four months ago.

There have been plenty of real howlers from the finance world, most of which are thankfully not linked to the deaths of almost a dozen people. Whilst many of them have been connected to catastrophes of sorts, they're also somewhat amusing, when viewed from a safe distance. Today I want to take a light-hearted look at some of the things that have been said by people or companies that they surely now regret.

The housing market will not crash!

In summer 2007, Michael Coogan of the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) told me in a podcast interview:

'No one believes there's a housing crash. We certainly don't expect it. We do expect that there will continue to be an underpin that keeps house prices going up.'

He went on to put his foot further in his mouth by taking a potshot at those who had sold in expectation of a crash. The crash started just a few short months afterwards.

Coogan has later said that the CML doesn't do property market predictions and I don't recall seeing one since 2008, which indicates that it has learned its lessons, although it does continue to present mortgage lending figures in as upbeat a manner as possible.

Green shoots

When Norman Lamont said he was seeing some 'green shoots' in 1991 he was laughed at and continues to be today, for those of us who remember. However, he did time it quite well, as the recession turned upwards in the next quarter. Many more people have not had such good timing during the more recent recession. The first mention of it I can find came from Shriti Vadera, former minister for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (now disbanded), who said in January 2009 that she is seeing a few green shoots. However, it wasn't until the end of 2009 that we actually pulled out of a recession. And we’re not out of the woods yet!

Totally free doesn't equal better

Alan Greenspan, the former head of the US's central bank, made his decisions based on a belief that companies can take care of themselves better with less regulation and interference. He talked sometimes about what it is to be a success, saying:

'The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavours without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.'

We all know what leaving the banks to take care of themselves has brought us and there have been many, many casualties. Greenspan has now denied being responsible, but he admitted that his lifelong philosophy had a flaw in it which left him in a 'state of shocked disbelief.'

Northern Rock is solid

Here's a real corker from the banks' propaganda machine, the British Bankers' Association:

'The Northern Rock is a sound and safe bank and there is absolutely no reason for either mortgage customers or savers to worry...All banks operate safely and prudently in the interest of their customers.'

That statement was made in September 2007, under the heading 'Northern Rock – no reason to worry', just as Northern Rock went bust.

It's just a bit of loose oil

Here's a warning to anyone thinking of putting all their eggs in one basket. An HSBC broker issued an extraordinary call to buy BP shares on 29th April, nine days after the explosion killing 11 people and sending tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico. With the share price then at 625p it announced an ambitious target price of 715p. The price today is 418p.

At the time of this buy call, the scale of the disaster was not known, so presumably the analyst considered the share-price collapse of 10% in nine days to be a typical over-reaction. I think that with an oil spill already known to be covering 1,500 square kilometres by the 25th April, he shouldn't perhaps have been so gung-ho.

More: How bankers rule the world | Britain's strongest banks

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