Clegg Unto The Breach

Nick Clegg and his loyal band within the Liberal Democrat party at present are taking heavy fire from all sides and it seems that some may be lost to political history. He and they are beginning to look like The Forlorn Hope of old military engagements, a group of men sent in first or to undertake some exceptionally dangerous duty.

My problem with the Liberal Democrat’s is that as whole hearted supporters of the EU this is wholly inconsistent with any reasonable definition of “democracy” and their passion for intervention, regulation and general nannying is anything but “liberal”.

To put my prejudices to one side, their situation is that after the election last year they were given an ugly choice. One was to join Brown and his bully boys and girls in their quest to destroy the life, culture and prosperity of the UK in the pursuit of personal gain.

The other was to join a bunch of smoothies who already had cash in hand in a new (well, not quite new) vision of a nation made for freeloaders. The hope was that they would be able to put enough bits of their own policy into the new administration to maintain their popular support in the hope of future gains.

We have forgotten that having help to cause the world financial crisis, New Labour, when it realised that in 2010 it would be out of power then concentrated their efforts at handing over the functions of government to agencies headed up by their own people, wild spending plans and legislation designed to booby trap and damage any real policy initiative or progress of their successors.

So the difficulties of the Lib Dem’s at present are not down so much as to their own actions and policies nor to the inevitable errors made by a new government or a civil service rebuilt on the New Labour model, that is incompetent, over complicated and designed to spend rather than manage. Anything will do and it must be good if the figures are big enough.

A major problem is that things are not getting any better in the world outside and beginning to impact adversely. The government, still hamstrung by the past, is struggling to make progress and not helped by the Prime Minster’s ducking and diving. Worse, is that the complexity and sheer scale of the problems has begun to defeat them.

As for any serious debate about most of the issues it is no good looking to the media or to any “expert” group. The former has retreated into “story of the day” to the exclusion of everything else. The latter are still working on dogmas, data and detail that is out of date and wholly misleading. Nobody seems to have a grasp of the overall picture and few can say anything sensible.

During the summer Parliament will be absent more than it is present and will have little to say or do when it does meet. We seem to be in a position when the breach in the wall that we are attacking will need to be taken and the government do not seem to know how to do it. Neither Clegg’s Forlorn Hope nor the Tory Lightweight Infantry behind them seem to be up to the job.

Apparently the French equivalent for a Forlorn Hope was known as Les Enfants Perdus, The Lost Children.

Cameron And The End Of Empire

Whatever the problems around the world today in which members of the political elites of the past based in the United Kingdom played a part quite why I should have to fork out money when I had nothing to do with any of it is beyond me. Certainly, I was alive in 1947 when Pakistan was detached from India and the issue of Kashmir arose but what was going on there was rather beyond any of my doing.

It is my generation who had to live with and sort out the mess that the Empire became after World War 2 and following. It was then a period of high taxation beginning with a long period of austerity.

Our parents had no say in the matter or much that went on. For many of my age it is likely that not all of our grandparents had the vote at any time and for many none of the great grandparents. That they may have been taken in by the propaganda of Empire or not does not matter, they had little or no say.

So quite why all the sins of Empire and the rest should now appear on our bills to satisfy the government’s political whims is something of an insult. Additionally, it may have escaped the notice of Mr. Cameron that many of the present population and their recent family have come from other shores and from the Empire.

Quite why all these recent arrivals should be dunned for the collateral costs is another issue. What does add injury to insult is that so many of our present political elite and their associates who are running around doing the “bleeding heart” act themselves go in for a good deal of tax avoidance and possibly some tax evasion. So they aren’t paying, we of the lower orders are.

It is a fine irony that a nurse of West Indian origins who is paying a good slap of tax is being told to pay towards the errors of politicians, civil servants and others made during the time of her grandparents and earlier generations by the descendants of those people who have escaped the tax net.

There is the other matter of those towards the bottom of the heap in the UK whose British and Irish forebears were also numbered amongst those who did not do well out of all the wars and in fact did rather badly. “Empire” in its pomp was also about Free Trade. This was sold as cheap food for the masses but came at its own price.

It was about the Economics of Extraction practised in other lands. It enabled low wages and in the country the Great Agricultural Depression with even lower wages and the eventual destruction of rural life and culture. Go out into the fields and the villages and see how many lower income true Brit’s are to be found.

Perhaps Cameron might find time to study the levels of industrial deaths, accidents and disease that abounded in the past and not least some of the horrors of child and female labour. There are many today who see the Welfare State as some sort of compensation for what happened in previous generations.

Essentially, it was the then political class in London with their City financial and wealthy provincial supporters that got us into Empire and demanded its relentless expansion. This went to the point, as in all booms, where the growth was unsustainable, incurring heavy costs to the UK population and its management became impossible.

Then it went up in flames and our forebears paid the price in major wars. So the latest London elite’s demand that we should continue paying for the gross errors made by their earlier families is another of the injustices of Empire.

In the meantime our governments carry on bombing.

Unfair To Neanderthals

A declaration of interest, there might be a Rooney in the loft. In 1859 in Liverpool a Catherine Rooney witnessed the baptism of one of great grandma’s younger sisters and looks to have married one of the family.

In the Daily Mail, David Jones suggests that the ructions attending Mr. Wayne Rooney’s expressions of discontent are “Neanderthal”. Mr. Jones it seems met Mr. and Mrs. Rooney in an airport in the Gulf and they discussed an article that Mr. Jones had written which was critical of aspects of their lifestyle.

It is alleged that the discussion was vigorous and used colloquial language that may be common on BBC TV drama, during banker’s exchanges on how to deal with customers and in many school rooms today but which some old fashioned and simple people regard as being impolite.

Coincidentally, there have been a number of reports recently to the effect that more powerful and in depth genetic analysis may have revealed traces of Neanderthal DNA amongst many, maybe most, perhaps all of we humans.

Also, more extensive research and detailed scientific analysis suggests that the conventional view of Neanderthals as ugly primitives operating at a lower functional level than us may be very badly mistaken. There are traces of social civility and kindness to be found.

It is claimed that a typical Neanderthal, dressed in ordinary clothes could amble down Oxford Street in London without being noticed or regarded as different. Perhaps Oxford Street is not the best example as a basis for intelligent human comparisons.

It is all very complicated but it appears the Neanderthals had bigger brains than us, were physically very strong, but more limited in their capability to deal with climate changes and in terms of dietary needs. Moreover, it may be that their body density meant they could not swim.

Then there is my own thesis that after a period of severe change long ago the few surviving humans developed violent predatory habits which with certain mental traits, a combination of subservience with greed and the need for domination meant that other humanoid species were wiped out.

This perhaps was compounded by the Mount Toba event of 75,000 years ago which reduced the humans to a small number and the later ice age which encouraged the development of both their best and worst features.

What does seem clear that humans who have a very limited and unnatural upbringing and whose social and intellectual horizons are both narrow and given to extremes develop characteristics that can represent the worst rather than the best.

However, it could be even worse. Mr. Rooney may have grown up in the political class rather than the football industry but I think that the scale of their faults would have been beyond him. As for journalism……

Wedding Bulls

The public rapture at the news of the wedding, no not that one, the other, that of Edward and Justine, is set to be the biggest alternative event of the kind since the marriage of Edward and Wallis on June 3rd 1937.

Alas, I was not invited to that one, perhaps my mistake with the gin and orange at Aunt Ethel’s was too widely known and am unlikely to be asked to any of this year’s.

Amongst the many and various reasons attributed to the couple’s decision have been the mean minded ones that it might be about political gain. Personally, I doubt that this may have made much difference. It might just be that they have been with each other for enough time and have children to make the effort worth it.

There are more cogent reasons, however, bearing in mind that the lady is a lawyer. There is, I believe, a Miliband family trust set up by that Apostle of the Left, father Ralph to ensure that the full weight of inheritance and related taxes did not impede his family’s life work for the equality of the masses.

The detail of this is not known, like most of our current politician’s personal financial arrangements they are shrouded in secrecy. But should marriage be needed to comply with certain terms and conditions then perhaps it is high time that Edward sorted out his end of the matter.

Beyond that there are reports that Edward has set up a personal company into which a variety of sundry payments may be made for work and effort on his part. It is a common device, widely used and well known.

It enables people with complicated sources of income to pay tax at company rates which are much lower than the higher tax rates on ordinary personal earned income. The higher rate of personal income tax was introduced by the previous, Labour, government with the full support of Edward.

When the sources of income become more various and complicated and the related expenses more intricate then it is often necessary to create a web of such companies and move money around them in various ways to minimise tax liabilities. There are other politicians who are adept at this, Tony Blair for one, another with a lawyer lady wife.

Where some of the companies and often connected trusts are moved off shore then the tax liabilities may simply evaporate. Quite where David fits into this is not clear. Possibly he will have his own arrangements that may have little connection with those of Edward, save for their joint interest in the Miliband Trust.

It is all very distracting and takes time away from the politics but then it does take a lot of effort to manage all that money in their quest to destroy capitalism. Perhaps they should refresh their reading on Peter Kropotkin, the class system he grew up with is strangely similar to the one they are trying to create.

He too liked to keep his personal life to himself. When in England in 1891 and 1911 he does not appear to have filled in his Census Returns. What, I wonder is in those of the Milibands?

Perhaps he too disliked the attentions of the tax collector.

Mine Was A Pint But Not Now

Amongst the bits and pieces this week was not only the Dave Clark Five song on BBC4 from April 1964 that made number one in the charts but an item on Punch Taverns also a high rated business performer until recently. It contrasted the wealth gained by those at the top from their highly leveraged operations in the pub sector with the fate of many of the publicans they have left behind.

As with other areas of activity the essence of the operation is not selling beer and food. It is about marketing a brand, extracting the maximum returns, aka “rent seeking” the first principle of economic activity for our government and its friends, and when the opportunities arise take advantage of the idea of the pub trade as a portfolio of property opportunities rather than as anything else.

There have been other things that have had a major impact on the pubs, the drink driving restrictions, the smoking bans, the deliberate changing of their customer base to family rather than adult in the blissful notion that we would all go continental in our social habits and all the employment laws that have more or less put many pubs now on agency based staffing.

In the district where I now live and the places where I lived before it is difficult to find a pub that has changed little in the last couple of decades. Also, they are now much more expensive places to go to and finding food that does not come out of a box or packet very difficult. Once it was routine to visit one now it is a rare event, indeed it much be over a year since the last time.

This is the effect of “rent seeking” or the Economics of Extraction. So long as you can maximise what you can and then get out with your money it does not matter if you leave behind the wreckage of a system or service and which carries a huge burden of debt into the future. Much as Punch is alleged to be leaving behind some £2 billion resting on the shoulders of the publicans and managers of the pubs and places that are left.

There have been other examples of this recently and in the public sector there are the equivalents in the many and various PFI deals. Those who were in at the start cash in when it is time to go and leave the consequences and the debts to others to sort out. It is a process which will take decades and which will impair and in some cases destroy what we have had in the past.

For those with an eye on economic and political history the empires of the past have often been other versions of “rent seeking” financial operations. In our arrogance in recent decades we assumed that because of ability of the City to do this across the world to the profit of London that this would earn us our keep, along with North Sea Oil.

What we did not reckon on was that this would turn against ourselves as finance became global and the companies escaped the restrictions of the states they were based in. Now we are the ones at the wrong of end of all this “creative destruction” in the name of gain and across our cities and towns and almost all across rural areas we are looking at the increasing scale of the damage.

And it will all have to be paid for and we shall have little to pay with.

 
 

Bye Bye Barclays

According to Reuters, Mayor Bloomberg of New York has said that Barclays Bank head offices would be very welcome there and would fit in with the local financial culture.

This brings to mind the Martin Scorsese film of 2002 on the subject of new and recent arrivals in that fair city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gangs_of_New_York


Perhaps all those top people in Barclays on vast pay and extras could progress there in a fine ocean cruise ship all together?

Does anyone know where I can hire a submarine?

Black Swans

The idea of "Black Swan" events is something I have mentioned before, the original idea being from Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  Simply, it is something out there which you did not think could happen.  Now, in finance and economics they seem to be coming in flocks from cobdencentre dot org - Articles - Andy Duncan 29 March on the title below.

MIKE HAYWOOD’S BANKING CRISIS DIGEST


Independent weekly compilation of current internet articles and blogs relating to Global Banking Crisis

You may not have time to read all the articles. To help you be selective, those articles which I consider an important read or viewing, I have prefixed with X

• Global Debt Clock


Overview Articles


• XXXXX US Petroleum Usage, New House Sales, and the Alleged Recovery


• XXXXX The Utter Failure Of Macroeconomic Theory


• Mauldin: Unintended Consequences (PDF)


Global Banking crisis, economy and systemic risk


• XXXXX Britain’s leaders should come clean on the true depth of the fiscal crisis


• XXXXX IMF Prepares For “Threat To International Monetary System”


• XX Blame Brown, Balls and Miliband for policies that led to the banking crisis


• XX U.S. debt situation at tipping point


• XXX Britain’s £200bn time bomb of debt interest


• X Ireland wants bank bondholders to share the pain


• Is this the endgame for the US dollar?


• America is going broke! Federal Reserve official’s fear as Libya missiles cost $100 million in just ONE day


• Portugal sees further property price falls and lack of confidence in market


• Federal Reserve and the opaque banking syndicate


• 3 Euro Debt Crisis Scenarios


• Looks Like a Double Dip, Smells Like a Double Dip, Must be a Double Dip


• Truck Tonnage Slows in February


• Spectator: Folding money – When politicians devalue the currency, hard assets are the answer


• The Dominoes Are Lining Up, Again


• Euro’s Collapse Is Not Unthinkable: Warren Buffett


• GDP Growth Doesn’t Mean We’re On The Right Road


• Dutch bankers’ bonuses axed by people power


• Ireland’s Hayes Irish Banking Crisis a ‘European-Wide Problem’


• How Germany can avoid a two-speed Europe


• Rethinking Iceland’s Recovery


• Lessons Learned in the Aftermath of the Banking Crisis


• The Japanese Currency Intervention


• Portugal 2010 Budget Deficit Could Be Revised Upward


• A Nation Of Dropouts Shakes Europe


• Eurozone bail-out deal is agreed


• Spain pledges economic reforms


• ECB close to liquidity deal for troubled banks


• Ireland: No easy fix for banking crisis, warns regulator


• French Fin Min: Public Finances Couldn’t Deal With New Banking Crisis


• Land of the Setting Sun


• Ireland 10-year bond spread hits record


• Sovereign debt joins the wall of worry


• Ireland holds talks on bank crisis with ECB


• Big players are no stranger to crises on own doorsteps


Oil and interconnectivity with Global economy


• XXXXX Oil Will Be Gone in 50 Years: HSBC


• Japan Nuclear Plans Derailed, Fossil Fuel Use To Stay High For Years


US Property slump


• XX Sales of new US homes tumble 16.9% to record low


• XX Housing raises US recession alert


• House Prices Will Drop Another 20%


• The Next Leg Down in House Prices


• New house sales are at lowest level in almost 50 years


• America’s Property Market: On A Losing Streak


• Commercial Real Estate on Borrowed Time?


• US house prices fall to 9 year low


US Foreclosure and Mortgage Fraud


• Foreclosure vote could rock the banks


UK Property Market


• XX House Cuts send chill through UK house market


• House prices down 11% since summer


• House prices drop by £45,000 since start of credit crisis


Global Pension “time bomb” and aging population


• X BBC pension deficit is ‘just over £1.5bn’


• South Carolina financial oversight board refuses to accept pension system


• Anglo to stop cost of living increases for pension scheme


• In US Public pension crisis threatens your wallet


• Brendan Keenan: Getting pensions right for posterity


The affect of Austerity measures


• Sign of the times: 200 join queue in Salford precinct – for the opening of a charity shop


Deflation or inflation?


• Cookie Inflation and The End of Quantitative Easing


• The Cost Of Living Just Goes Up And Up


US recessionary trends


• X Massive enrollment cuts at California State University expected


• U.S. Durable Goods Orders Unexpectedly Fell in February


• Rural Oregon counties face bankruptcy without state help


US Unemployment


• X US Real Unemployment Rate 10.2%, Underemployment at 20%


• Unemployment rises in nearly all metro areas


• Why Is US Unemployment So High?


• Current decade of job losses vs. Great Depression


• Most US States Post Unemployment Decline


Eureka articles which challenge the status quo


• X Centralization of power and control by elites in financial markets


• Rich vs Poor: 14 Funny Statistics And 14 Not So Funny Statistics About This “Economic Recovery”


Alternative Currencies, changing the Banking System


• X The Origin of Central Banking and Possible Alternatives


• Federal Reserve and the opaque banking syndicate


• New revelations how the Federal Reserve shrugged off housing crash warnings