See You Later Demonstrator

Two days after having posted on Brooksley Born and her stance on over the counter trading, notably in derivatives, JP Morgan have lost £2 billion on one of its trading desks, just like that.  As the boss of the man concerned earned £14 million last year, perhaps he was underpaid and need to moonlight at the expense of the day job.

Rather longer ago, March 2011, I was wondering if Cameron might not be headed for the modern equivalent of the Marconi Scandal of 1912 because of his cavalier approach to contacts and money movement. 

In this case it wasn’t the issue I had in mind, the Serious Fraud Office botched it, but it has emerged that he was much too close to people he needed to stay way clear of and whose capacity for causing embarrassment and disaster is unlimited.

Meanwhile, over the Channel, it appears that the new very egalitarian and deeply socialist President has useful property investments in Cannes.  All we need now is the accounts in Zug or Zurich into which the rents are paid.

His promises of heavy taxes on the rich have sparked great interest in those selling London property, in that a flood of French rich people is said to be heading for the border.  They will not be held in a modern version of Sangatte, however, it will be somewhere with better shops and wine merchants.

This supposes that these people have not already made arrangements to protect their wealth and incomes.  My information is that for many years the French elite have almost all taken the steps necessary to shield their wealth and have been fully protected by the privacy laws they enjoy.

The only reason they may be in London is to snap up property available at present prices knowing that we and France could be heading for rampant inflation soon from all the money being slushed into our financial systems to reduce the real liabilities of governments and their immediate allies.

Amongst them are institutions such as the Santander Bank.  It claims that the problems in Spain will not affect the British end because that is run by a separate company.  Does that means that there is no risk from systemic issues or just that the UK taxpayer will bail them out regardless?

The flood of news and figures is becoming more and more difficult to make sense of.  We have governments that cannot govern, civil services that lose money at a catastrophic rate, banks incapable of banking and educated workforces unable to find work that requires any sort of extended education.

One is almost driven to go out and demonstrate about something.  The difficulty is finding something which makes much sense to demonstrate about.