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simonmw3

Listed below are comments made by simonmw3 between Friday, 3rd July 2009 and Friday, 13th November 2009.

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New name for a new economy? 3:58pm on 13 Nov 2009 "Do we need a new name for the kind of economy we live in today?"

Stephanie, we already have a word: "Mugabenomics"!
I.e.
Destroying your own country's industry.
Printing more money when it run out.
Blaming problems on other countries.
BNP's 'hang generals' just 'humour' 11:40pm on 20 Oct 2009 Noam Chomsky said "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
Alan Bown and Michael Brown - spot the difference(s) 4:20pm on 20 Oct 2009 Michael, your argument seems to be based on a moral principle that a huge donation from illegal fraud is worse than a smaller donation with a slight irregularity due to a muddle over the electoral register. I would agree with you. However, in Britain today moral principles and what may seem fair to the ordinary person are irrelevant because we are ruled by a rats' nest of legislation, and the big guys with the better lawyers are always going to win. (E.g. you can dump your toxic waste where you like if you have the lawyers to gag the press!)

What I found particularly disturbing was that a court had already looked at the UKIP donation and made a ruling. Since the Electoral Commission had handed it over to the courts for an expert opinion, you would think they would accept the judgement. But no. They have to go and appeal because the court rules the "wrong" way. Politically motivated? It stinks like so many other things in this country!
Tuesday 13 October 2009 7:32pm on 13 Oct 2009 I also think you should place rather a lot of emphasis on gagging the press. It seems that our courts are more than willing to hand out a gagging order to protect some incompetent or negligent private company or government individual. The gagging order placed on Baby P whistleblower, Nevres Kemal, by Harringey Council springs to mind.

We rely on the press to hold the State to account, and this includes judges handing out gagging orders contrary to public interest. Someone has to hold them to account - even if the best we can hope for is another "Independent Public Inquiry" carried out by the chums of the guilty, without anyone being under oath, and then the final report being redacted!
The lessons of Lehman 3:32pm on 14 Sep 2009 "all of those whom I interviewed for the film said the US Treasury made a huge error in allowing Lehman to fail"

Did you interview any Farepak savers or Equitable Life policy holders?

I guess not. But they they were just ordinary people - the type hung out to dry by government and big business every day.

The trouble is that the rich think they have some divine right to make a profit, and if things go wrong then the taxpayer should step in to help them - be it the Lloyds Names of the 80s or the Lehman bankers.

People have to face the music, and that includes bankers too!
Exceptional times 12:16pm on 02 Sep 2009 Stephanie, you say that too much borrowing in a boom was the bad thing, so what is your view of the Austrian School theory that Central Banks should not interfere by manipulating interest rates?

During "credit booms", like the last decade, there are too many borrower and not enough savers. If the market forces set interest rates then it would be a savers' market due to to many borrowers competing for a smaller pool of savings. Therefore, the market forces would push interest rates up as the small pool of savers demanded better returns. This in turn puts the brakes on the credit bubble automatically.

However, if central government/bank can set interest rates, then they can artificially force interest rates down to exacerbate the credit bubble effect, as Brown did, but it will ultimately end in tears, as we have seen.
QE: More to do? 5:12pm on 06 Aug 2009 This will devalue the money in people's pockets and make everything we purchase more expensive. Already the Pound is down against every other major currency except the South African Rand!

£50 billion is almost £1000 for every person in the country - if they had actually given it directly to us, then there may not be much complaining, but they didn't - they just gave it straight to the banks.

I agree with Post #5. This is not prudent economics - it is just a desperate attempt to win an election.
QED 10:57am on 09 Jul 2009 Surely, the problems with QE will be that the banks will just hoard the money because Alistair Darling has called upon them to increase their capital reserves. Therefore, the objective of increasing the money supply for business will not be achieved. Effectively the Bank of England will just be creating new money to buy bad assets from the banks.

Furthermore, the argument that GDP is down 9% so we just top it up by making new money out of nothing is the logic of a delusional fool!? GDP is supposed to be wealth that has been created, e.g by manufacturing or value added services - you simply cannot make up GDP by creating money out of nothing.

If the government must print money, and lets face it QE is just making money out of nothing, then they should create the money and put it directly in the treasury so it can be spent by the government. That way the money goes into circulation and we take on less National Debt.

This whole financial crisis was largely the result of over-complicated financial trickery, and QE seems to be more of the same rather than an actual solution.
Next week's banking White Paper turns out a bit "green" 8:11pm on 03 Jul 2009 #19 JadedJean:
Maybe the banks would threaten to pull out of the UK, but we could also ask whether it is worth a trillion pounds to keep them here!?

The banks are a major contributor to the UK treasury ... or should that be "were". Personally, I believe the real case is that the banks tell the government what to do and not the other way round. The politicians talk tough to try and mislead the public, but as of yet they have done nothing to act tough.
Next week's banking White Paper turns out a bit "green" 3:28pm on 03 Jul 2009 Unless you split High Street banking from Investment Banking (a la Glass-Steagall act) then surely no amount of capital reserves will be sufficient to ensure the government does not have to do another bailout sometime in the future.

Investment banking trades in unregulated derivatives markets (described by Warren Buffet as Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction). The total liability on the derivatives market is more than the entire global wealth of the planet. No amount of capital reserves can protect the taxpayer from that liability!

Surely it is time to tell the banks that if they want backing up by the taxpayer then they only deal in ordinary banking in the UK. This is all that can be regulated anyway. If you don't have 100% regulation of everything a bank does then you may as well not have any, because the 1% you don't regulate could potentially bring the whole bank down.

I think taxpayers need assurance that they will not be made to pay for more bailouts and depositors need to be sure their deposits are safe. Without a Glass-Steagall like spit, this simply does not seem possible. The government is being most disingenuous on this, and journalist are giving them far too an easy time over it.

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