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StJohn_Red_Legend - Elixir of Horse Placenta, as used by Herbert West!!!

Listed below are comments made by StJohn_Red_Legend - Elixir of Horse Placenta, as used by Herbert West!!! between Friday, 26th September 2008 and Thursday, 5th March 2009.

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Man Utd look unstoppable 09:03am on 05 Mar 2009 Phil, not a bad blog. But I do detect a sense of resignation to Manchester United's forthcoming parade to the title.

As others have said, United have been winning games while playing way below their own high level while on their current run - its got to end some time - and Liverpool's visit to Old Trafford might just be that time. The real question is, should Liverpool do what they are capable of, and get the win at OT, how will United react?

They've also got a real cup tie coming with Inter, and Jose won't be coming to make up the numbers, of that we can be sure!

I feel that the situation will be much clearer after these two games - two defeats and the wheels could very well come off, to victories, and it WILL become a procession...
Parry loses power battle 1:29pm on 27 Feb 2009 Are the FA still sniffing around for a Chief Exec for their World Cup bid?

If so, methinks Uncle Rick is walking out to a far bigger paycheck than the one he leaves behind.

Now Rafa has one less excuse to cite if he fails to deliver next season...
England's elite in pole position 10:40am on 26 Feb 2009 Prior to last night's games, everyone was lauding Real Madrid as the biggest threat to an English team's progression in the competition.

10 goals in the last 2 games; unbeaten in 13 games. Critics, with Manchester United fans crowing at the front of the queue, were pointing out how Liverpool were going to be soundly beaten...

Here we are on Thursday morning, with Liverpool not just having survived their Real examination, but having won the game and given themselves an advantage to take into the return leg.

Que the very same critics saying how poor/lucky Liverpool were...

Frankly, it was a mark of the performance that they feel so threatened they have to come back and have another go, saying how poor Real were and how Liverpool should have done better - NicosBg is a classic example.

Well done to Chelsea and Arsenal for their wins. Both will be rueing their misses and how they missed out on transforming their dominance to goals. But both are more than capabl to go to Italy and get the away wins which will allow them to proceed to the last 8!!
Scolari fails to step out of Jose's shadow 10:00am on 10 Feb 2009 Scolari's sacking is a ludicrous decision. The man hardly got his feet under the table before he's gotten his P45 and shown what is now beginning to resemble a revolving door.

He's had precious little funding to shape the team to his liking - Boswinga looked to be a purchase with his prints on it, and bringing in Quaresma could have proved a turning point to free up the reliance on the full backs to provide width and attacking threat. He needed to bring in now blood to revitalise the team but not given the tools to achieve it. Big players like Ballack simply haven't performed and shipping them out, with the contracts they are on, is next to impossible, so Scolari couldn't generate new transfer funds easily.

I think that there may be a hankering for the 'good old days' of Mourinho, but this is poisoning the water for every new manager coming in. When combined with Roman's itchy trigger finger, he may find that money won't buy him the quality of manager he'll need.

Every manager needs time to shape their team. Who is their right mind will take a job knowing they have less than a season to not only begin shaping a team, but also to be instantly sucessful???
No carping about Kaka coup 3:36pm on 16 Jan 2009 The bid for Nigel De Jong is a sensible one, considering City's defensive problems.

If Kaka was their only serious bid, then I'd suggest that maybe they're going to be looking for 5-4 wins - great to watch for the neutral, but as a City fan, your fingernails'd be chewed down to your elbows!!!

Looking at the other proposed signings, however, shows that Hughes feels (if indeed he is the one drawing up the Fantasy Football list) that creation and scoring of goals is his main problem, which is odd, since last season, they were quite free-scoring, on occasions handing out some humblings.

If the signing of Lescott goes through, then I fear for Everton, however. They've been stable and their defence is one of the keystones to that stability. Loosing a key man like Lescott would weaken them at the back and also remove a potent threat at set pieces.
G20: Good and bad for UK 1:00pm on 17 Nov 2008 I have been watching this financial disaster unfolding and the belated action being taken by the Governments of the world. Its like a rollercoaster - the slow buildup to a crescendo, then the wild, runaway ride, with chancellors holding on for dear life, chucking money hither and thither in an attempt to gain a modicum of control.

Into this all strides George Osbourne, looking like a man who's lost his nerve, and effectively says "I want to get off"
Its far too late to push the prudence button - The Tories sold off the leavers with which some measure of control could be applied (National Utilities etc.) and deregulated the markets, New Labour have continued these policies.

So, for George to shout "Prudence now" would lead to a greater catastrophe, as we would get caught between two stool, and on neither. The punishment handed out by the markets would be greater still, as we'd doled out the money to stabilise the financial sector, but let the rest of the economy sink without trace. Such an imbalance would leave us in a worse position and stuck in a stagflation recession without the stimulus to get us out, unlike other 'spending' economies.
Central banks to the rescue 4:41pm on 26 Sep 2008 RE #111

The US plan is to take the debt at the FULL mature value of the debt, i.e. what the debt was expected to generate at full price.

for example. A house priced at £100, mortgage for that pays back around £120 over the term; the collapse in the housing market means the value is now £70.
Each mortgage would lose the US treasury £50, supposing it could even generate the new market value on foreclosure.

This is a dreadful idea and would saddle the US taxpayers with a massive debt. They aren't responsible for anything other than believing in the 'American Dream' and are about to be royally stiffed by a President who is leaving office and knows that Obama is going to be choosing the furniture in the Oval Office, so why not leave him crippled...
Central banks to the rescue 4:34pm on 26 Sep 2008 All those here calling for state intervention by the US are supporting the propping up of a fundimentally (arguably fatally) flawed system.

The ability to move debt off the balance sheet, to securitise debt as an asset and raise money by it, having a debt greater than your assets etc. is the basis of the crash.

For those who have studied it, the Great Depression was also founded on unsustainable debt in the US. And historians will tell you that things move in cycles.
It was money lent to individual investors (now homebuyers) by banks to buy shares(homes) on the basis that the value of the shares(home) would continue to rise. The system collapsed when the value of the shares (homes) collapsed and insufficient money was available to service the debts. Banks went to the wall, but 10-12 years later, the world economy was able to climb out of the pit it had unwittingly created.

This time around we should have seen the parallels and taken the copeous warnings that the situation was unsustainable. The financial experts were best placed to see this coming, but the wretched blinkers of short term profit and making your returns look good for a single year meant grossly irresponsible behaviour. You could argue it was verging on professional negligence. Could this be the behaviour being investigated by the FBI?

Regardless of this, the system needs to be allowed to fail. If it is propped up, those senior execs responsible will be given the opportunity to sell their shares, cash in their over-generous pensions and run away with the loot. Crashing the banks around them means that they won't get the opportunity to get out unscathed and will have to suffer the same pain as their customers.
Time for Everton to deliver 1:33pm on 26 Sep 2008 David Moyes is a good manager - he's achieved some very good results and steered the club well, despite being hobbled with a board who haven't walked the walk after Kenwright talked the talk.

The significant signing of Fellaini does look to be a 'figleaf' to cover the poor performance of the club over the summer in failing to sign anyone from the list that Moyes must have submitted to the board. And given his initial performances resemble Bambi-on-ice, this can't have helped to relieve the building pressure of Moyes, and more significantly, on the board.

I know that as a Liverpool fan, I'll be derided as having a view on the boardroom of Everton, but as a club that I want to do better for the benefit of the city of Liverpool, to return them to the 80s pomp, when the two clubs bestrode the league and Europe as titans, I hope that they get a good businessman in soon. Kenwright has mostly been PR, and he's taken the club as far as he can with that...
Central banks to the rescue 12:09pm on 26 Sep 2008 We're beginning to see the dominos fall in the US. WaMu failed and was instantly sold off - this is the kind of promp action that is needed - weeding out the foolish and sickly members of the financial community, like an old gazelle taken by a pride of lions.

What the market cannot suffer in the long term, and continue to operate as a 'free market', is the interventionist approach being touted by the US Government. Buying out $700billion of bad debt at full price will distort the market (you don't see lions licking gazelles better, do you?) and reward the financially weak and faulted institutions which should, in the law of ecomonics here, go to the wall and be dismembered and parcelled out.

And a concern now over here is the way the sell-off of HBOS was conducted. That the government was willing to green-flag the creation of a 'microsoft' in the banking sector has to be described as poor economic judgement, coloured by political opportunism. Gordon wanted to be seen to be 'doing something' about a crisis not of his making. This will be paid for by the mortgage buying public in the long term, and will not benefit the HBOS mortgage customers in the short term. Gordon didn't encourage HBOS (or other banks like the Rock, for example) to offer loans which wouldn't be serviceable WHEN the market correction (which had been muttered about since about 2003) arrived. These poor decisions and advice came from the mortgage lenders, who should have known (I actually think they did) better, but were blinded by the possibility of profit.

SO, when the crash arrived, why bail them out? The markets have needed correction for some time, the bubble was created by the frenzy of poorly designed loans on properties grossly overvalued. Proping up a failing system will ultimately only postpone the inevitable, not stop it.

The best think to do in the long term is to allow the crash to occur, it will be short term extreme pain, for a healthier system in the longer run. This is how Capitalism works.

If you want Socialism and a planned economy, you pay up front, Capitalism just gets the cash later and leaves you in debt...

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