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verano

Listed below are comments made by verano between Saturday, 4th October 2008 and Saturday, 24th October 2009.

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Good morning. 07:24am on 24 Oct 2009 This morning's IPM about Alan and Tom in Shrewsbury was absolutely brilliant. Magnificent real journalism, congratulations to the PM team for setting it up, and to Eddie Mair for handling it with such astounding aplomb.

Eddie had to do the road-crossing to get this piece of art. The show exposes what is going on opposite ends of this Motorway (they are today's Grand Canyons, ahem). Alan, self describes himself as an "old codger", and is at heart a mostly tolerant person, but wants to protect his right to be intolerant. Tom, a younger sort, has been taught that he and nobody else has any right to be intolerant, and unwittingly has focussed all his own innate intolerance on Intolerance itself!

Tolerance and Intolerance. They don't take plurals, but what could be more Plural than that?
The axe begins to swing 2:46pm on 18 Sep 2009 Why speak of cuts?
Is it knife-crime Britain we hear of?
Or grey Stab-in-the-back incisions
by politicians whom insist on a title -
Lord or Lady - mayhaps that it is disputable?

Why speak of cuts?
Too late, after the tree has already died
Too late, before any cuttings could be taken
Too late, when all the fruit has already been eaten without saving any of the seed...

Why speak of cuts,
except that empty minds have nothing else to speak of
And the emptiest minds are those whom have silently worn the laurels
of fiscal glory delivered by the Economic Inclusion of Asia,
And never once envisaged this future?

Why speak of cuts,
Unless you are a surgeon held in esteem by your peers
For a patient faced by such newfangled slashers
Would hasten to the NHS with their fears.

For cutting back is best done by those whom have practised it always, and even a gardener could explain that in less words than are wasted on the Internet!
Why tax the rich? 10:27pm on 26 Apr 2009 Yes, tax the rich. Why not:

1. introduce higher council tax band for properties worth over £400,000,
2. Remove Capital Gains Tax Allowances
3. Make Tax Evasion a serious offence involving the confiscation of international assets as well as sentences of a minimum of 5 years imprisonment.
4. Have a completely progressive income tax rate ladder. This silly method of having only three simple tiers forces Brits to dumb-down at their GCSE Maths, and creates this endless quibbling by economic modelers who are competing for consultancy fees.

And Have a Double Taxation rate for Economists who make too much noise about economic modelling, when they haven't taken any responsibility for their inability to analyze the Economics or Monetary Flows of National Banks, until the likes of HBOS were already on their knees.
Reversion to the extreme 1:11pm on 25 Apr 2009 In response to Stephs Blog Post, and inspired by my disappointment with the quality of recent News Reporting:

This graph of GDP growth should not be presented as news unless it improves the knowledge and intelligence levels of its audience!

As a graph, it is mathematically as basic as something that would be taught to 10 year olds.

There are fundamental questions in Economics that have to be re-examined. The BBC is screaming with a foghorn about every limp-wristed statistical collection and economic prediction brought out by every attention/status/funding-seeking Economics organisation (the CBI, the IMF, and the endless queue of 3 man bands that demand a living for throwing together a cheap graph on a spreadsheet).

1. Who defines what gets measured as GDP?
2. How often does this get re-assessed, and when last was it done?
3. Why should so much attention be focussed on GDP, when indeed even Economists know that their statistics are a complete waste of time at predicting anything even 6 months ahead?

GDP exists as an Economic measure of MINIMAL evidence. It does not, should not, and never should have represented the be-all and end-all of either individual or collective human economic management. It is not a target that should be aimed at without wondering why you are aiming at it, and understanding what you are aiming at!

Example: If Britain had been part of a global economy where over the last decade it existed purely by growing BANANAS, but these BANANAS never got eaten (they were being grown because they look pretty?), our Economists would still find a way to count this production as part of GDP. Why?

Get serious, Economists (Don't take it personally, Stephanie, or BBC). We're not fed up with bankers. We're fed up with the ignorance propagated and perpetuated by Economists whose only aim is to keep their own jobs. Economists have been flogging a system of Economics that depends on endless growth. Why? Because when an economic system assimilates more parts of our globe, the savings made through specialisations, industrialisations, and economies of scale justify the jobs of Economists.

No Growth? No jobs for Economists?

What we need is some serious pruning in the World of Economics, in every university, and in every institution that uses Economists. Get rid of the dead wood.
How Dunfermline fell 9:52pm on 30 Mar 2009 (Dunfermline acquired £274m of buy-to-let and self-cert mortgages from the likes of defunct Lehman Bros and from GMAC)

This is highly suspicious to me. If this country were not so obsessed with the pedestrian non-financial crimes investigated by TV drivel such as Inspector Morse, then they would be able to imagine that:

if you are a Corporate Executive, if things are going bust, you might as well go bust in big style and make some trustworthy friends rich. Those friends will repay the favour some day.

This simple basic philosophy of abusive corporate governance is usually legal, and that's what makes the job of the Serious Fraud Office so difficult.

If we were more intelligent people properly scrutinizing corporate governors, and not a bunch of distracted journalists and academics squawking around in the pretence that Economics is a respectable field of study, (or that Financial Accounting has made any progres since Enron), we would at last have a worthwhile system of corporate oversight, and there would be far less of the nonsense we have had to witness from Scottish financial institutions, amongst others!

I've seen this in head offices before. If you're in power, you can make
Gilts and guilt 4:43pm on 25 Mar 2009 A little more info please, Mr Peston? Economics is about money, numbers, supply and demand, at the very least!

eg.:
1. Demand. Who normally buys 40 year gilts? I understand that pension annuities are usually covered by UK gilts, but I would like to know for a fact whether Pension Funds/Insurance companies would do this with 40 year gilts.

2. Quality of Goods Supplied. You could have quickly mentioned that if a Government bond sale is not fully subscribed, it would also suggest that the yields offered are too low. So interest rates had better go up? Which is what we expect if deflation has not transpired, as confirmed by yesterday's official inflation rate, the Office of National Statistics' CPI increase of 3.2%. Nice to see Markets are operating properly again, (they also determine Interest Rates, and it isn't just a Central Bank with a poorly modeled computation of the Money Supply that has the power to establish interest rates).
Beware the City merry-go-round 2:42pm on 12 Feb 2009 In the Obama Age, these things are at last unacceptable: spin, factual evasion, and being unable to admit responsibility for your mistakes. Gordon Brown has been an insult to our intelligence since before Tony Blair was exposed as a George Bush lackey. And still, in 2009, GB is forced to continue suffering because of a GB.

It all makes so much sense now. Remember 2002? Stock market crashes after 9/11, compounded by the end of the Dotcom boom? Remember the Transatlantic pact to keep economies alive at all costs, as a means of proving that the "West" could not be bullied by Terrorism? Push money, keep interest rates low, do whatever is necessary to produce measurable "growth".

Well those of us who were appalled by the wasteful and indulgent consumer boom years that took off after 2002 have been waiting for the history to become clear.

So this is what happened....

The reins were loosened by the Chancellor on the FSA's regulation of lending growth? James Crosby, CEO of the largest mortgage lender in Britain, gets a nod and a pat on the back, and a "you know what you have to do".

Most people were distracted from all of this by the Iraq war: I wasn't, because I'm more interested in economics than international politics. So it got worse, and the economists kept coming up with positive statistics, and the investment bankers found ways to exploit the whole financial system before the whole illusion exploded.

Remember everyone calling for Gordon Brown to be the ideal replacement for Tony Blair, because he was doing "SUCH A GOOD JOB FOR THE ECONOMY"? I was calling for Gordon Brown to be examined by some financially intelligent people back then, but who was bothering to challenge him, when the notion of Sustainable Economics was equated with sandal-wearing asceticism?

Economic warnings from the likes of Anthony Hilton fell on ears deafened with bigotry and hearts sclerosed with the glut of material wealth all purchased on Credit.

But now, at last, we can see the whole incestous mess... James Crosby, HBOS, Gordon Brown, the FSA, and the fawning adoration of all those Journalists who gave us Gordon Brown as our obvious replacement for Tony Blair.

In 2009, we are still paying for 2002. And what is worse, it will probably be 2012 before we have gotten around to paying for 2003. When will we get around to paying for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008? Please, tell us, o wise political pundits?
Why Sir James Crosby resigned 6:07pm on 11 Feb 2009 So many small shareholders of HBOS had heard of James Crosby, and had been so trusting of him that even when he turned up with his report to Gordon Brown last July about the credit crunch in mortgage lending, we thought we were getting a truthful and objective report.

Indeed, you, Robert Peston, I think it was in the ensuing months, said on the radio that there was no way that HBOS could ever go down, because it simply was too big! And we all believed the same as you. It was too big, and there was no way it would be allowed to go down. Of course, things took a fatal turn in September, after the Lehman Brothers wave of the Global Financial crisis, and HBOS was given away to Lloyds TSB as the only way of saving it.

Now this revelation about James Crosby this week, whether the allegations of Paul Moore prove true or not, open up the scrutiny at last of the persons who were really in positions of influence when this era of Global Financial excess was indulged in: the era following 9/11/2001, whence a blind eye was turned to economic wisdom for the sake of keeping economies flowing.

Excellent. The Times Online shows where we are with this investigation of James Crosby's role. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5705212.ece

To quote from there, "the unmasking of Sir James, one of Gordon Brown’s top City advisers, for his culpability in Britain’s banking meltdown is long overdue. There is still amazement in the City at the miracle of timing that had Sir James step down from HBOS in July 2006 in favour of the much maligned Andy Hornby – a hospital pass if ever there was one. For it was the Yorkshireman Sir James – whose knighthood in 2006 is thought to have been on Mr Brown’s recommendation – who devised the business model that brought HBOS to his knees.

Furthermore, from the creation of HBOS in September 2001 from the merger of Halifax and Bank of Scotland, it was he who implemented that strategy until he stepped down."

Banquo's Ghost! I'm delighted to see intelligent minds are not only looking beyond their noses, at last, but adding such witty examinations of the failures of Corporate Governance.
The Glass Box. 5:52pm on 21 Jan 2009 Today's PM is one of the best shows I can ever remember.

Absolutely stunning content, perfectly presented, excellent timing... Eddie's good, but who is this lady, again? Must be the invigoration of novelty!

The Jim Rogers interview was an amazing BAG! It was worth repeating in whole!
How to solve the crisis 5:09pm on 04 Oct 2008 An idea like this seems clever at a point in time when Governments are having to create huge pots of money and stand as the last resort for capital.

Since all currency is created by the state, it is a mere design of accounting to place the newly created capital into the hands of PADA. The same effect of pension wealth redistribution could be achieved by many other ways. For example, some states have Sovereign Wealth funds. Britain does not have one, yet has been pumping oil out of the North Sea for several decades, and collecting a wonderful fuel escalator tax from it.

To be truly clever, economists and accountants should really table all the various options and present them in ways that would be comprehensible even to 10 year olds. Coming up with only one idea and then running around shouting about only it is neither methodical, nor rational.

A sovereign wealth fund is a commonly understood and successful international idea. PADA des not yet sound like a very encouraging vehicle, especially from a government that:

1. still has not taken action on Equitable Life
2. was responsible for removing the dividend tax credit
3. has not satisfactorily supported or regulated simple-to-understand personal savings schemes (that collapse of the Christmas savings firm, was it in Wales, only two winters ago).

Simple-to-understand personal savings schemes should be at least one of the primary elements of improving national pension allocation. Yet every simple saver at the moment has tax taken off their interest earnings, even though those with low incomes have no incentive to reclaim the tax refunds due to them.

Something like PADA, or a Sovereign Wealth fund, would form part of the collective (not individual) element of improved national pension allocation.

These nice ideas are supposed to be presented to us and discussed by our politicians as policies. Shame that they treat everyone to be as stupid as tabloid readers.

Sticking one's head into the abstract world of Economics and Accounting risks ignorance of real wealth. Monetary wealth is only monetary, and unless there is a corresponding consideration of production and demand control of real wealth (eg., food and population demand), the design of an economic system risks becoming as useless as the Global Financial System whose collapse we have been so entertained with.

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