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Matt_birchall

Listed below are comments made by Matt_birchall between Thursday, 31st July 2008 and Monday, 19th October 2009.

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Is primary education threatened by authoritarianism? 07:50am on 19 Oct 2009 Is society threatened by poor maths/stats?
Education debate is always undermined by poor maths and stats skills. Any Questions last week was dominated by the panellists experiences with their own children (sample of 1 or 2) and their own prejudices.
People mis-use stats (Jaded Jeans, #99 says expressed behaviour is dominated by genetics. This may be so but that does not stop nurture having an influence - the genetic behaviour is best predictor but parents still have responsibilities to exert control and there is plenty of evidence that people can be trained)
Today's item on the the split between areas with graduates is also alarming. How did this get published? did none of the BBC staff ask the challenging questions - "If you have a degree then where do you choose to live? If you do not have a degree then where can you afford to live? The area does not dictate how many people have degrees but the degree you have dictates where you can afford to live!
What RBS's results say about QE 11:20am on 07 Aug 2009 Can we have a story about how the pension funds have been asleep at the wheel? They own the banks on our (current and future pensioners) behalf. They take their annual fees (e.g. 1% of my pension pot every year) without any regard to how well the investments perform. They don't seem to get involved enough in managing the companies that they invest in. Is it any surprise that I and many other punters have put money into our home property rather than put more money into the money pit that our pension companies represent. I resent the way that the banks are earning commissions from churning my investments from one company to another - I get poorer and the bankers get richer while the pension companies grease the wheels.
Finding the exit 07:53am on 10 Mar 2009 What is the IMF's stance with regard to Quantitative Easing?
Finding the exit 10:15pm on 09 Mar 2009 There is a potential benefit of this re(de)pression. We have put ourselves in a state of need that parallels the state of the Japanese after WWII. Their response was to innovate their way out of the shortage of materials (and cash). Toyota's assumption of the Lean process enabled them to work their way to being a formidable power in industry. We need to repeat their renaissance by becoming more efficient, self-sufficient and less wasteful of future wealth and foreigners labour. We have to eschew foreign made goods, paid for with debt, and learn how to earn an honest wage for real work.
Bank of England: wrong and powerless 08:56am on 22 Dec 2008 One issue is not that the level of interest rates were too low over the last years but that they were too stable. This encouraged everyone (bankers, consumers, govt) to the group-think state of believing that interest rates would never rise to a punitive rate. Interest rates have been over-managed for a long time by Gordo. Thus, there was too little risk so there were precious few precautions against the normal controls of carrots and sticks. If you take the sticks away then wouldn't you expect that everyone would behave as though we were living in a no-risk, no-limit society?
Banks still not lending 07:46am on 16 Oct 2008 Gordon has borrowed from the money markets to buy shares in the banks. This is something that we are advised is a foolish and risky thing to do as an investment.
More importantly you have to question whether it will restore any of the leverage that has gone up in smoke (and mirrors) in the last 12 months. Borrowing from the market to invest in the market consumes loans as well as generating (through fractional reserve process) new loans but doesn't give the banks confidence that the end consumer is any more likely to repay their debts.
This looks like another failed attempt to restart a car that doesn't want to start. We've called the AA, we've called everyone who wants to have a go. The car is broken and has to o back to the garage for a rebuild or a replacement.
The emperor's latest clothes have proved no more 'real' than all of the previous sure-fire fixes. Is it now time for the emperor to fall on his sword? (Perhaps he is part of the confidence problem rather than part of the solution?)
German guarantee lost in translation 07:55am on 06 Oct 2008 Can we have some explanations, Robert, in simple terms:
a) To explain how the US govt intervention to prop up a bad bank by taking its bad debts will persuade a good bank to deal with the bad bank?
b) If the money supply has imploded due to de-leveraging then how does the US gov intervention alter this de-leveraging? AIUI, they are borrowing the money on the market and are therefore simply joining into a dysfunctional market by taking out and repackaging some existing money.

The graphics of cogs that have been used on the new bulletings to show how it will all be kept turning doesn't explain what has fundamentally changed.

I personally don't see how any of the US, UK or EU (individually or federal) actions changes the fundamental truth of deleveraging that occurred when the sub-primes were declared worthless.
How banks depend on AIG 07:51am on 17 Sep 2008 NickyBics:
There's no such thing as a (customer's) free lunch! you are likely to be better off with separate mortgage and savings. You are being charged a premium for the whole of your mortgage and you are getting a premium on the smaller amount of your 'deposits'. If you do the math I expect that their premium is better than yours!
Do HBOS account for this type of deal as £X deposit and £Y loan? - for HBOS it could look like a free lunch as you are providing the capital that allows them to lend to you. What do their capital ratios look like if you account for their offset deals as Y-X loans and no deposits? (Or is this insured with AIG?)
Meltdown Monday 07:47am on 15 Sep 2008 The moment that a group of bankers put together a 'collaborative' fund of $70bn is the same moment that someone else will decide to speculate against them. The fund won't fix any fundamental problems with the system so it won't be enough to halt the revaluation of everything in the system. This is a Canute-ish move!

If I remember correctly from reading Galbraith's 'Great Crash' similar moves were made at that time but it will fail again, this time, because the dogs of Wall St don't know the meaning of the word co-operation.
Treasury's mortgage rescue plan 8:23pm on 31 Jul 2008 I am surprised that anyone is advocating that the government should copy the US model and guarantee any mortgages. Wasn't that what Freddy and Fannie were made for? Did it work well?
No it didn't!
(anyone remember the words Moral Hazard that were popular a few months ago?)
Governments shouldn't intervene in the markets because you don't really fix things this way - there is a small difference between promising to be an unlimited guarantee and simply printing as much money as you want.

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