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GrouchoMarxist1

Listed below are comments made by GrouchoMarxist1 between Friday, 6th February 2009 and Sunday, 27th September 2009.

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Brown and bonuses 12:59pm on 27 Sep 2009 I posted my comment before I read #3, but, unsurprisingly, I agree. Monetary reform is a must. As long as banks issue money with compound debt attached, or any debt, then the vast majority of us are unwitting slaves continually selling our labour to fund the wealth of others.
Brown and bonuses 12:22pm on 27 Sep 2009 It's depressing really. The reason why Britain will never legislate on bonuses in any effective way is because the banks rule. They literally do. Both through financial muscle, and the dominant worldview that seems to have triumphed everywhere.

Even when we, the taxpayer, own the banks, we still can't stop them hiding losses, legally, and then declaring profits, and then, unbelievably, paying themselves bonuses. I mean, the banks are busted, broken, not able to live without taxpayer support, but the people who did this still get a bonus.

What happens now? This is the bit that makes people mad. Now, we go into deflation and the cash rich (bankers, bonus-paid bankers with no company liabilities) can pick-up assets at knock-down prices. Assets that people had to buy at hugely inflated prices. (They get left with the debt, of course.)

Gordon Brown, does he even get it?

Anyway, if all this happens, as it will, since the times hardly feel revolutionary, then it's old, old, old news: Thomas Jefferson predicted it 200 years ago, and the history of the 19th century is, in many ways, democratic powers fighting the oligarchy of the banks.
Gordon Brown's monuments 11:46pm on 24 Sep 2009 I hate to point out the obvious, but if there is tighter regulation that corrects the lop-sided balance of surplus money, then we, the UK consumer, will not be able to borrow so readily and will go into a deeper recession than we are currently in. And if that surplus cash doesn't come to the US and UK consumer then it is not likely to be spent here, boosting our economy. It will be spent on infrastructure projects and investment in the fast-growing economies, thereby boosting their wealth and their competitiveness quicker than would otherwise be the case. Not only that, it may go to other countries as investment, who, following the China model, will develop and provide greater competition in export and domestic markets.

I know there will be light-headed people who think this is a good thing; but as we've never actually partaken in a world of free trade, and unlikely to do so, and Ricardian trade theory is just wrong, then why would we think that this is a good thing for us? A fair thing, yes, but it means that the jobs drain will continue. Unless...

Unless we do the one common sense thing that will inevitably happen anyway - protect our economies. Countries that don't protect their economies end up undergoing a form of economic primitivization, not privatisation, PRIMITIVIZATION; like Mongolia losing its industry and going back to yak farming (having followed IMF advice); or in SE Asia fisherman using spears and nets because it is more cost-effective than outboard motor trawler fishing. Yes, it has happened.

Remember! We are coming off the largest boom in human history where outright fraud and unbelievably stupid and lax lending were essential to the binge. There is not one single method currently proposed that will do anything other than nothing or accelerate the contraction of the economy, aside from printing money (QE) and dropping interest rates, or re-indulging in massive, outright fraud, and stupidity, again.
G20: America's struggle to adapt as the world turns 10:33pm on 22 Sep 2009 If fiction represents the fantasies of the society that produces it, then I think that are many who wish dramatic social change.

People have predicted a civil war in the US for years, but what's different this time is that you feel that there are people who are in well-established in the political class who would re-fight the civil war. The type of people that Newt Gingrich seemed to bring in with him.

I think that there is obviously a huge step between massive political controversy and the fragmentation of the state, and it's stupid to be hysterical or shrill, but public insults traded in the seat of representative democracy, well it reminds me of history books about the 1850s.
Can governments squeeze bankers' pay? 10:08pm on 03 Sep 2009 You keep hearing about these wonderful brains that will go somewhere else if they get paid less. Let them. There's nowhere for them to go. The power of banks are intimately connected to the power of the State. Bank of America isn't going to relocate to Honduras in any meaningful way, and the Bank of Honduras isn't going to start hiring the big brains made redundant by slimmed down banks. The idea that a Third World Bank could ever be on a British High Street being so ridiculously laughable tells a lot for those who want to learn.

Why? Because bankers stack the deck, and count the cards. (And own and make the cards. Oh! And the Casino itself!) So there is no chance of them losing. There never has been. Unless, the State, lead by a Roosevelt-type character, and supported by mass discontent, reins them in significantly.

Look at the recent crisis. Every single major bank in the Anglo-Saxon world, or even every Western Bank, is bust or would be if another major one fell. However, what happens? The State bails them out. And, here's the rub, or the nub, the State allows the banks to change their accounting practices so losses don't have to be registered. (i.e. they don't have to write down their losses and start looking for capital or make margin calls.) That's legally endorsed fraud.

What happens? The bankers are now making money again on paper, paying out big bonuses, REAL losses are still mounting, but that's fine the taxpayer will be stuck with them along with the poor individuals who aren't lucky enough to be bankers and can't change the rules of the game, or their credit agreements.

So, why don't we junk this argument about the best brains. They're not. They're good at Maths and lack a developed worldview, or have feeling or courage to see the short and long term social effects of their actions. They certainly don't care about the taxpayers, or the country who will have to clear up their legal fraudulence. (Work out that oxymoron.)
West Brom BS to be rescued 3:34pm on 11 Jun 2009 There's a lot of psuedo-optimistic talk about the end of recession being nigh. Let's think about why this isn't the case.

Look at the unprecedented efforts made by the government and financiers to put more money into the system. Interest rates at half a point; government borrowing the highest ever (in monetary terms); money being printed. Of course, if you flood the system with money things will pick-up, but this success is really storing up greater failure - I'd like to be excused from being accused of showing a Fabius-type character who sees the gloom in everything.

If successful and lending re-starts then the excessive amount of money will lead to inflation in two ways: the first is that the pound will lose value and we'll be importing inflation that way; the second is that in an attempt to keep up the real value of the debt that lenders have leant they will raise interest rates. This will mean that companies will have to raise prices - workers will demand higher wages -companies will have to raise prices - and so on. How can this end?

Well, I doubt the traditional remedy of raising interest rates by the Bank of England will work because interest rates will be the problem; more money can't be printed without increasing the inflation we're trying to get out of; and government can't subsidise because of the weakness of the pound.

It looks like we're heading for the worst of all worlds: inflationary depression.

The key to the whole is issue is debt and the means of exchange. Yet these are the issues that are not being dealt with by governments or by individuals. In fact, understandably, debt is actually increasing; and there means of exchange is being corrupted and devalued further!
The past returns to life 7:08pm on 25 Feb 2009 Psychological issues are usually so deep that it seems unlikely, unless by happenstance, that they could be effected by the internet. It cannot be a step on the way to a healthier society, but then they aren't on the road to a sicker society either. What is happening, perhaps more clearly than ever, is we are being shown what is there. And what's there in a way that isn't circumvented by 'taste'.

There are people who are Nazi-sympathisers, melancholy idealists and lovers of obscure footage.

I agree with a previous poster. With this massive explosion - is any of it registering? We are being swamped with over-production? Does that matter?
Brown's cautious bank reforms 3:21pm on 22 Feb 2009 #7 you still don't understand how profoundly things have changed.

There's no going back now. There are several daunting challenges that we have to face and believing that we can turn back the clock to the largest and most unprecedented and completely credit funded boom in human history is not realistic.

The state is on the hook for trillions of baby-boomer pension liabilities - they don't have the money. Where is it going to come from? Not a booming economy. It means cuts in both pensions and wages.

Peak oil - we probably have hit peak oil now and if the output runs true to hisitorical form then the fall off is sharp, very sharp. Given that only oil gives the kind of energy returns that can keep an economy like ours going then we have to view major change as a real possibility.

Population - the global population is heading for 9 billion. This is unsustainable even with GM foods and without climate change. Where are all these people going to go, and what social unrest will it cause?

Economic crisis - face it, we're supporting banks that are bust to the tune of hundreds of billions if not trillions. They're holding on and hoping that there will be an upturn. But why should there be? There's no one left to lend to, therefore the shrinkage of the money supply is guaranteed. I don't see how quantitative easing can work: it either will be used to try and offset money that is being sucked out of the system, failing as it does so, or it will be 'successful' i.e. the economy has so much stored inflation that we'll be a basket-case very quickly; bond holders will walk, and uk gov will be printing money to meet public spending commitments, and soon enough we'll be in the Euro (or the dollar); causing a massive slash in our standards of living (if the Euro countries will touch us because they'd then take on the DOLLAR liabilities of the UK which would be quite expensive).

Asia - look 1.3 billion in China can mass produce every commodity the world needs. Our manufacturing has gone, the rest will follow as the lack of money at the bottom eats into the above service structure. Asia doesn't need Western markets in ten years and this might accelerate because China will reflate its domestic economy.

I'd be more confident about UK's future if there was a strategy, but there isn't. There's no high-tech strategy, no low tech one, there's just 'getting lending going'. Obama's got a plan. We don't.

I hope I haven't cheered anyone up.
Bonus buck stops with Brown 4:12pm on 06 Feb 2009 I posted before I realised how many posts there were! Hitting a nerve?
Bonus buck stops with Brown 4:10pm on 06 Feb 2009 Ever read Moby Dick? The mediocrity of the lieutenants allowed the disaster to happen. Let's face it, if there were brilliant thinkers at RBS then they wouldn't have got into to such a disasterous position. If they are brilliant thinkers then what else was lacking?

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