Month: February 2010

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The Government – New Balls Please.

It was asked on one of the forums today, “Why don’t I ever hear any good news, or tales of government intelligence coming from the UK?” 

Because the idiots we elect (being idiots ourselves, for the most part) are busy churning out reams of ineffective legislation in an effort to disguise their overall impotence. They can’t control the money supply, they can only tinker with the economy, not fix it or make it work for us. Further, they can only tinker with it to a limited degree because their powers to do that are limited by Brussels. They are little more than figureheads in the same manner the Queen’s a figurehead. Just as the Queen has no authority but has a lifestyle many would envy, today’s would-be politicians aspire to a life of merely token authority but a wealth of privilege.

Want anything done, you’ve got to do it yourself. The government are just another tribe of predators these days.

BB

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Orange Jumpsuits For Barclays?

Good evening, Mr. Geithner, sir… is that a bailout under your arm? Is it yours, sir? Because, you see, we’ve had reports… ah, I see sir… it was a gift… well in that case, would you mind coming with us to the station, sir? It’s just routine…

Timmy Geithner’s in serious danger of getting booted out of favour with the Obama regime – and worse – as the stink surrounding the AIG bailout does its imitation of a spot that simply will not go away. It sounds as of the law are finally starting to get pro-actively interested in the precise legalities – or absence of same – when AIG was bailed out and passed the monies on to favoured clients. What no-one is bringing up at the moment is that Barclays were one of those clients. Barclays have made a great deal out of their not having had to be bailed out by the British taxpayer but have kept very quiet about their either beiongbailed out be the American taxpayer or being the beneficiary of outright fraud. This fruad might well be being dragged out from the shadows (banking shadows) into the generally-perceived limelight, where it will be widely understood. If Barclays are found to be in receipt of stolen, as I’ve always thought them to be, what will the likely consequences be for them as a company and the British banking system as a whole? One could argue that without the American bailout Barclays might have gone in the general confusion of the crunch. If they have to return the bailout billions, plus pay some kind of genuinely punitive fine on top, how would they survive? Who would bail them out? Who’s left to turn to? Gordon Brown can’t realistically pull another stunt along the LLoydsTSB/HBOS lines, who would fill the LLoydsTSB role? There are those who still try to suggest that what goes on over the Atlantic has no bearing on us here but the indications are that repercussions there will have resounding effects here.

Anyhoo, read about the latest goings on in this article from Ellen Brown.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/aig-gate-the-worlds-great_b_451445.html

Who knows? At this rate maybe the new Barclays uniform will be orange jumpsuits… 🙂

BB

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Springtime For The Mafia

I’m reading in the papers that in the absence of available finance from the banks businesses are getting funding from the Mafia, who are thriving as a consequence. It’s perhaps ironic to note that if you borrow money from the Mafia, they actually have the money to lend you. They practice what amounts to full reserve banking, whereas the legal banking system will have to counterfeit it, practicing as they do fractional reserve banking. It’s further interesting to note that again, the Mafia here can actually lay proper claim to interest, being genuinely deprived of the use of any monies they genuinely lend and so therefore entitled fairly enough to compensation. The legal banks, who make up the money they ‘loan’ out of thin air, obviously aren’t entitled to any ‘interest’ of any kind.
In this instance, then the Mafia woud seem to be more honest, if you will, than the banks are.
This reminds us that just because a procedure’s legal doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily in any way socially beneficial or morally superior even though such procedures often like to masquerade as such. One bunch of malevolents is much the same as another, whether they have a a sign hanging around their necks saying legal or not. Antisocial people are antisocial people, (banks/mafia) whether they have signs on them saying Legal/Illegal or not. Are their interests social, ie, coincident with that of the broader community, or antisocial? If you want your community to survive and prosper, you need to note distinctions.

BB

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Bonus Balls

Here’s a report from the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100131-703419.html suggesting bankers are now using financial instruments of the unregulated variety to turn their commission-based share options into cold hard cash. Commission payments are now made in chares as opposed to cash. This is in an effort to stop bankers selling any old rubbish under the guise of grade A material and then retiring from the game, their enormous cash commission bonuses safely stashed away somewhere no-one save themselves can get at it. If the bonuses are paid in shares, goes the reasoning, then bankers will have to behave responsibly inorder to preserve their own commission-paying companies. The bankers though, as I predicted at the time this scheme was thought of, are far cleverer than those who oppose them (whether this opposition or not is purely cosmertic for political purtposes is, of course, a different argument) and will simply invent new ways of cashing in faster than they can be understood and outlawed. Heads, the banks win. Tails, the banks win. Plus ca change.

BB