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the_nutty_dragon

Listed below are comments made by the_nutty_dragon between Sunday, 8th June 2008 and Wednesday, 15th July 2009.

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How long will China finance America? 10:32am on 15 Jul 2009 The retoric has been building momentum for the us$ to lose it's status as the world's reserve currency. I think it is particularly pronounced that Timothey Geithner has gone to the Middle East to bolster support rather than the far east. I suspect that this has more to do with the risk that if oil were no longer priced in dollars then other commodities would follow suit. Should that happen the dollar's days as the reserve currency would be numbered.

Meanwhile I see no reason why China could not be placing a number of forward contracts to sell dollars as and when their T bills mature, or when they are in a position to sell them on.

Technically this will cause the dollar to fall and a loss of competitiveness for China. However, the pain will be temporary, and if we learn nothing else from the current mess, we need to learn that it's cheaper and less painful to deal with the issue early than to let it build up in the misguided hope that it will self correct.

The downside for all of this is that the US would be left with an inflationary set of circumstances requiring them to raise interest rates and accept the pain that that would cause. Once they get through their pain though the US would be in a much better position in the world economy by being more balanced.

Ultimately it is the only way the US can survive.
Has the City learned anything? 10:21am on 14 Jul 2009 Basically this is a scam to take money off people's pension funds for doing nothing special. When will we be allowed to put our pensions into long term cash savings accounts. At least then they're guaranteed to grow every year, even if the results won't be steller. (like the returns of the last few years?????)
Making banks safe 2:20pm on 28 Apr 2009 VentilatorBlues

Interesting comments, but it all relies on the idea of holding people accountable. realistically nobody does.

Think about it. You are help accountable by your boss at work because it's normally just one person. Now imagine you have 60 million. You can ignore them all by saying you're doing what the others have asked you to do. I'd like ot see them check!

It's the same with local govt, with pension funds, with the city. There is no true accountability.

We could solve this though. Follow a lead from America. No Prime Minister is allowed to be in power for more than 2 terms (10 years). Theyc an change the leader, but that leader has to be elected. Can you really believe that we'd have Gormless Brown under those circumstances?

Secondly, finance. Stop the current situation with pension funds. Your company picks a pension fund for you and that's that. How fair is that? What if you don't like hte risk profile? Tough. Perhaps a better option would be that the company pays into MY pension fund. I pick where it goes, and if my employer goes bust that's fine because it's MY pension fund. If I have multiple employers I don't leave orphan funds dotted round the economic landscape, they're all in one place.

Admitedly most people don't understand finance. So perhaps they better start to learn!

But imagine a situation where YOU manage your pension fund. If you think things are reckless you can moev your money around to avoid exposure. If enough people move their money then the markets quickly realise what's acceptable. Perhaps as the holder of shares you also get to vote your shares yourself. I bet that would make the boards behave differently. And if the building societies get their act right they could provide pension bonds (simiilar to fixed rate ISA's) to entice fudns from the markets to the safety of fixed returns. It would certainly shake the market up, and in doing so it might bring about a greater sense of accountability.

As to Govt. there's no hope of accountability there.
Gilts and guilt 5:29pm on 25 Mar 2009 I wish Gordon Brown was a football for a month after all this.

Then everyone could give him a good kicking!
Lloyds and HBOS humbled 4:11pm on 13 Feb 2009 Staggering! We pay over a £1bn to the Beeb in fees every year yet this post has been going for over 75 mins, there are 60 posts, and so far NONE of them have cleared the moderator.

Did they forget to hire a moderator today?
Bank of England must lend 12:15pm on 25 Sep 2008 thinking about the $700bn bailout. if the root of the problem is hte sub prime housing mess then perhaps the answer is to use this money to buy up a percentage of the bad mortgages and make them interest free. the portion that the homeowner can afford continues to be paid, but the govt holds a percentage of the property.

Thus it helps tax payers, the govt has an asset which hopefully will have value in the future, the banks no longer hold toxic debt, and it's a wholly US bailout.

Only downside is it's not a $700bn giveaway to the investment banks.
Lloyds to buy HBOS 10:14am on 17 Sep 2008 And the combined entity would also be even more "too big to fail".

So perhaps the answer is to break up these big banks (say 5% market share) so that in future they are all small enough to be allowed to fail when they're down right stupid and reckless.

It's time to break the banks up!
Rock's rocky valuation 5:07pm on 08 Jun 2008 As the govt was a major creditor at the time it took over, is this nationalisation or simply repossession? This is exactly like a bank repossessing your house. In which case the govt should continue tryingt o release it's loans from the business and then return the remaining company back to the shareholders.

Compensation - none as none is required.

Sure, they probably should have gone through the courts properly, but isnce when has that stopped the banks!

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