Month: November 2009

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Plan B From Outer Space

Look at this look; “The MPC needs to have a Plan B up its sleeve, just in case its expected strong recovery doesn’t materialise next year,” said Colin Ellis, economist at Daiwa Securities SMBC.” quoted in the FT today.

Hmmm. Perhaps an over-optimistic assessment of the situation. The MPC, in my view, haven’t shown any evidence of a plan A yet, let alone a plan B. The whole output of the QE exercise has vanished into the black holes the banks have where their reserves ought to be, as I suspect will any more monies they’re given. If we want to get money into the broad, real-life economy, we need a distribution network independent of the existing private banks. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me whether the CDFA banks are properly licensed, ie can operate fractional reserve banking, as if they can’t they’ll be worth FA in terms of CD.

Also, from the same source, “Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank, has said that he would like to see the money supply growing at a similar pace to the 6-9 per cent rate it was before the financial crisis”.

I bet he would – why doesn’t he just wish for world peace while he’s at it?
BB

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Banking Uber Alles

The rotting corpses of the banks are being preserved at the expense of the rest of society. More evidence here;

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1673-They-Arent-Really-This-Stupid,-Are-They.html

It speaks of the banks going bankrupt. Given they’re clearly already insolvent this seems inevitable. We should do a remake movie called Banking System In London, in which our banking systems, already dead, physically deteriorate every time we see them through the movie. Actually, it’s more like we’re already in this remake, and the fact that where before we had lively institutions we now have animated corpses is getting harder and harder for Darling to conceal. Oh it’s worse than we thought, he reluctantly concedes. That’s nonsense, the government knows how bad it is, it’s OVER is how bad it is, and they have no clue whatsoever how to handle the situation. They bluff, they bluster. Like frightened hamsters will seek the familiarity of running in their wheels even though it gets them nowhere they simply repeat the same useless and irrelevant actions over and over.
I bought a water purifier, gravity-driven. You should too.

BB

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Clegg pulls ahead…

I’m watching the speeches from the CBI gathering this fine morning… Brown has pulled out reams of the same old claptrap, unbelieveable that he’s still pulling the same stunts… he praised the business community for having more apprentices at the moment then ever before while what they should be congratulated upon of course is surviving at all the mess he’s stwearded them into… but Corporal Clegg has come up with some interesting ideas and observations on banking and specificall reform and competition. Long overdue. These are subjects usually conspicuous by their absence from political discussion – one wonders where young Clegg imagines his future funding will be coming from!

BB

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Load Of Cockermouth And Balls

Here’s Gordon Brown, the Man Who Hates Showbiz, popping up in front of the world’s collective lenses in the dreadfully flooded Cockermouth.

Where will he be in the weeks and months ahead, one wonders, as the cry for money, more money and still more money comes wailing up from the abandoned Cockermouth inhabitants trying to live unaided in the ruins of their lives and their town? It’ll be back to being McCavity’s Cat for Gordon, he’ll be nowhere to be seen and unreachable on the subject.

BB

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You Can Be Predator Or Prey

When the going gets down and dirty you either get down and dirtier (predator) or you get to be prey. In a twon already laid low by predatory banking, Detroit, we’re seeing more predatory behaviour. This time it’s from the local police, who are raiding entirely innocent people and claiming their property to be involved in crimes. If that sounds like a broad definition I suspect that’s because it’s intended to be. The reality is that someone, anyone, in any way conected to property seems to be excuse enough for it to be seized and then auctioned off, proceeds to go to the local police dept for equipment and so forth

http://www.detnews.com/article/20091112/METRO/911120388/Police-property-seizures-ensnare-even-the-innocent

Times are very hard in Detroit, the city is disentegrating and resources are scarce. Those picked on are sometimes eventually understood to be entirely innocent – but they mat still have to pay to get their property back, at what looks like hefty profit for the police department?

Think it couldn’t happen here? It already is. The Proceeeds Of Crime Act (POCA), introdiced just recently, is along the same lines. You have to ask now, is anyone safe from either robbers or police? Are you safe from these predators, or will you be their prey?

BB

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Still No Inflation, Still Not Surprising

The only economic indicators suggesting we’re out of recession are ones that work in the shadow economy, not the real one. when all these things were initially determined as indicators of anything much, there wasn’t any such thing as a shadow economy. We’re being measured against outdated criterion. All the QE has been going straight into the shadow economy and staying there, that’s why there’s been no inflation in the one we use. In real-world terms, we’re worse off than we were at the start of the crisis, we face the same problems and we’re far more in debt. This is the National Debt ‘owed’ to bankers who’re demanding we pay them back billions they never had in the first place. We all work for the banks, there’s no two ways about it.

BB

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Financial Services Bill – Same Old, Same Old

The new bill is supposedly going to “lay out plans to improve financial education in schools” says the Daily Mail.

Hmmmm. By how much exactly, one wonders? Will it educate schoolchildren to understand they’re being prepared for financial milking all their lives by a monopolistic banking system? Will they be helped to grasp the consequences of a fractional reserve banking system entirely owned by private interests who are separate from the community compelled to bank with them?

Doubt it!

BB

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The Ascent Of Not Getting It

I’m reading The Ascent Of Money by Niall Ferguson. A few pages in he makes the mistake of referring to what we live in as, ahem, civilisation. Has he not read Roman historian Tacitus; “In their ignorance they call this civilisation, when in reality it’s but part of their servitude”? Ferguson refers to the Medicis (bankers, if you didn’t know) and their part in the Renaissance. That wasn’t civilisation, that was a prison culture. The Romans spread it all over Europe and encouraged the population to consider it civilisation so they’d be less trouble to handle. Who suceeded in subjugating the Britons where others failed? Agricola, because whereas his predecessors tried to enforce behaviour, creating resentment, he instead suggested modes of behaviour, encouraging it by competition. which took the place of compulsion. It fell apart when the Romans let it all slide in the early 5th century. When the Medicis helped bring about the Renaissance, it signalled a return of the same societal model, one where a ruling elite (formerly Romans, now bankers) ruled by virtue of effective monopoly of the money supply in a culture money-dependent. What happened in between, misnomered The Dark Ages, was probably in reality the Age of Light for Europe, we’re just schooled not to think of it that way because it suits the banks to have us consider our lives of indebted servitude to be the only civilised way of life.
I suspect I will find much in this book to dismay me…

BB

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Brownian Motions

I see Gordon Brown has proposed something similar to the transaction tax that’s been recently floated by Turner, this at the G20. It was promptly said no to by Tim Giethner for the Americans.
This is just political posturing by Brown, I reckon he’s aware he can propose that the banks be hung drawn and quartered routinely every day before breakfast, making himself look good in the process, because of course in the American’s corner is Tim Geithner representing Government Sachs who will nay-say it. The American government pretty much IS the banking fraternity so Brown can suggest all manner of draconian measures secure in the knowledge they’ll all be vetoed by former Goldman Sachs’ man Geithner. Brown knows he will look good to the uneducated public but he also knows the educated bankers will guess what he’s up to and understand Labour is still the bankers’ friend. Brown’s suggestions amount to political theatre, nothing more.

BB