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leftilkley

Listed below are comments made by leftilkley between Wednesday, 7th October 2009 and Thursday, 5th November 2009.

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Boxed in 5:13pm on 05 Nov 2009 Quantitative Easing is a handy way for our wholly owned Bank of England to lend money to British taxpayers. Mervyn buys UK Government Bonds in the market with his invented money. Our Bank then collects interest on our own bonds that it owns, from the Treasury. Our Bank then registers that interest as profit in the Bank. Merve the swerve than pays that profit back to the Treasury. Which cancels out the interest charges. So miniscule-cost borrowing!
Moreover, the Bonds that are now owned by our own Bank of England are assets belonging to our Bank. Which assets add up to most of the so-called debt that's been incurred buying up shares in British Banks.
Large chunks of those Banks are now destined to be sold to private investors over the next four years, and probably for well in excess of what we, in effect, "paid" for them.
It's a sort of three card trick where we, the British taxpayers, take bank shares from investors and then sell them back to them. And all the while simply paying interest on them to the Bank of England, which we wholly own ourselves.
So maybe a debt. But not as we know it!
The Treasury hedge fund 5:11pm on 03 Nov 2009 It always was the plan to sell off our bank investments. At considerably more than we paid for them. Sales that will pay-down debts caused by the temporary drop in Corporation Tax receipts this year that have caused the government deficit.
Letting British banks go bust - as the Tories wanted - was and is madness. But that policy grabbed big headlines. Even though it would make this American created recession far deeper and longer.
Reporting in Kabul 2:35pm on 31 Oct 2009 I wonder why the Chief of the Defence Staff was interviewed on the BBC news this morning? It certainly wasn't to listen or take any note of what he said about the way military operations were planned and conducted. You wasted his precious time.
What he said was that commanders in Afghanistan took full account of their resources when planning raids and that included account of the availablity of helicopters. That casualties were the consequence of having foot patrols where it is essential not to have soldiers "behind metal" and that US experiences were that helicopters were vulnerable to attack and not likely to save lives overall.
Moreover he carefully described how the officer killed in Afghanistan had reported his wish to be able to ADD to operations with more helicopter flying hours. No suggestion from him that his death had been related to a lack of such flying hours.
What you could also have added is that intelligence supplied to the British contingent before deployment to Helmand was that we would need only lightly armed engineers as our assignment was to provide infrastructure developments and not counter-insurgency operations.
That would have enabled you (BBC) to challenge the distorted stories otherwise put about. Which is what you should be doing as an impartial news service run for the information of the UK public.
Magnetic attraction of climate 'scepticism' 6:00pm on 30 Oct 2009 Consequences and risk evaluations all help us understand what precautions we should take nowadays.
Perhaps human geographers apply their sciences to advise us too? Suppose that global warming could happen and lead to higher sea levels, could geographers predict where the displaced populations would migrate to? If central London is flooded, where would we re-locate the bankers, civil servants and politicians who work there? Would those target locations welcome those invaders as potential neighbours and customers?
Scientists v Politicians: Round 3 10:42am on 29 Oct 2009 Professor Nutt is aptly named. He does NOT listen to the sciences of perception, social communications and comprehension. Those sciences would show that many people do not comprehend the sorts of nuanced analyses he bandies around. Nor do they comprehend the nature of risk. Why even sophisticated Bankers don't understand risk: especially some of those who've been awarded PhDs from highly skilled Universities.
This Professor also doesn't understand that only a minority who behave badly as a side-effect of drugs still ends up with people killed and/or gravely wounded. Which is where the risk element comes in.

Professor Nutt should study a wider range of academic researches before pronoucing on topics he plainly does not understand.
Striking a balance 6:48pm on 26 Oct 2009 I suspect that Carlisle's and Berwick's carry-outs would be the main beneficiaries of minimum pricing regimes and perhaps mail-order trades too.
I foresee people with vans doing a roaring trade with home deliveries sourced from the South. Is this what is wanted?
Bank reform: The radical way 6:38pm on 26 Oct 2009 You're probably correct to opine that Adair Turner @ FSA is prescribing better remedies than Mervyn King. Despite Mr King's excellent analytical skills, I too don't beleive that making Banks any smaller helps. Northern Rock, B&B, Alliance & Leicester and Dumfermline are each quite small but we could not allow their depositors to lose their money. When BICC went down on the BoE's watch in the early '90s, the wider effects were very bad. Likewise in the US, more than 100 small banks have closed, which is bad for confidence in the financial systems. Because Banks' actuaries are not able to be competent, the FSA will need to reinforce then through regulations in greater detail.
What we need is to enforce a greater safety culture in banks and closer supervision by their shareholders. Which ought to happen anyway because the RBS & Lloyds Group & other banks' shareholders have lost heavily. Tighter regulation - agreed on worldwide principles - is what's needed. Moreover, it's what we're most likely to get from the G20 discussions.
Why them and not us? 4:13pm on 25 Oct 2009 Two small mistakes here: it was Oscar Wilde who invented the phrase: "..., others must lose". Small point '... of no importance'.
Other mistake IS important. The US economy benefits from a growing population of working age whilst that of Euroland is in slight decline. That means that US GDP growth per head is about the same as Europe's.
Crucial difference is that the UK economy is not so dependent on manufacturing as Germany. Consequently, we don't suffer steep de-stocking and re-stocking cycles. Which also explains why France's economy didn't dip so much as Germany's economy - because France is mainly a service economy in long-term structural recession with persistent high unemployment.
Overall the UK has created far more expansion of jobs and wealth since the mid-90s than the other big economies of France, Italy and Germany. We are still way ahead in terms of % of population in paid jobs and in real GDP growth. Our unemployment situation is nothing like as tough as Euroland and much better than all other big EU States.
Early estimates of GDP growth by ONS usually under-register rather than over-estimate UK growth. Which is better than over-estimating growth and then correcting downwards. Maybe the other surveys of UK commercial confidence and ordering are more correct? Nobody knows yet. Certainly most investors are taking these precise numbers with a shovelful of salt. The Paris based IMF forecast much worse outlooks for the UK last Spring - because, they said, of our much higher share of financial services - and the figures now show they were quite wrong. Moreover, our U/E trends don't reflect continued decline either.
All of which suggests we should not assume that economic growth is quite as flat as the ONS figures appear to predict. Drastic actions are not called for - just steady as she goes.
A plan not a timetable 10:04pm on 10 Oct 2009 What's missing is any comparative assessment of now vs 1997. Then both inflation and interst rates were several times higher than now. One pound in every eight of tax revenues was diverted to pay interest on goverment debts with equal amounts spent on maintaining a vast army of early retired, unemployed and so-called disability claimants.
That's why there were so many times more bankruptcies and home repossessions then, than caused by this much more severe US credit crisis.
Because debt is so much more affordable nowadays, it is nothing like as acute a problem as in 1997. And that debt was paid off within a few years, as this one will be.
Nobody likes silly boys who panic whenever there's a problem that needs fixing.
Messrs Doom & Gloom would turn a transitory problem into a much bigger one.
Generals as politicians - lessons from history 8:41pm on 07 Oct 2009 Generals Eisenhower and de Gaulle are the most famous of former Commanders in Chief to reach the highest public policy positions in their countries and during modern times. I excuse Winston Churchill from that category because he didn't rise to a pinnacle in military service before entring politics. I also omit various dictators.
Both the Generals achieved much in their political careers. Both warned us of the dangers to public life inherent in active military leaders taking up political positions. Eisenhower was the most specific, warning us - and the Soviet Leader Kruschev - of the potential misguidance of the 'military-industrial' complex creating false rivalries for their own ends. That wise advice is worth bearing in mind when we listen to Dannat's blusters. Perhaps he doesn't like to be treated with scepticism?

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