+++ S&P Downgrades UK Government Debt +++
Gilts have tumbled on the news that the debt rating agency Standard & Poor’s has just lowered its credit outlook on the U.K. to negative, from stable, in view of the government debt crisis.
S&P has so far kept the Triple “A” rating intact, but the outlook change signals that the the UK’s credit rating could be lowered:
“We have revised the outlook on the U.K. to negative due to our view that, even assuming additional fiscal tightening, the net general government debt burden could approach 100% of GDP and remain near that level in the medium term…”
Note the use of the term “general government debt”. That is because government uses discredited debt definitions to make out that Britain has lower government debt than it really does. The markets simply don’t believe the government’s figures.
Last October Guido “Asked the PM” via video (creatively using Ms Fawkes’ crayons and sticky backed plastic) about how Gordon added up the national debt:
And he, errm, cheerily trotted out a very disingenuous line:
The markets didn’t believe him and now neither do the ratings agencies…
The significant point is that S&P explicitly point to the need for an election to clarify the likely direction and credibility of fiscal policy. An election now would have a material benefit for the economy:
http://cassiuswrites.blogspot.com/2009/05/uk-placed-on-negative-credit-watch-look.html
No! there’d be chaos!
The BBC would be wise to realise who the new masters will be.
Joanna Lumley?
COULD WE GET THE BBC TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT BRITAIN’S BAILOUT?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jIXO4tIDZZq5DP_mpfgGOuH0CA4Q
LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Oscar-winning director Michael Moore vowed Thursday to turn his sights on the Wall Street chieftains blamed for the global economic meltdown in a new documentary to be released later this year.
Moore, whose past targets have included President George W. Bush, the US healthcare system and the gun lobby, said his as yet untitled film would be released on October 2.
“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more — so they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money,” Moore said. “Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie.”
The film’s distributors Overture Films and Paramount Vantage said the movie would take “a comical look at the corporate and political shenanigans” that culminated in last year’s multi-billion-dollar Wall Street bailout.
Conservative Party funders are being fried alive.
Deleveraging into oblivion.
Financial market bandits will be locked in their cages for years to come.
Thank God for the EU.
tee hee
You truly have all the mental capacity of an amoeba.
The Penguin.
You shoul seek prrofessional help, MB, seriously.
P.s. guido – its cheerily, not cherrily.
It may have escaped your attention during your latest bout of mirth but this problem is not just a party political one. It will filter through to impact on all of us at some point.
The results will not be funny.
However,as long as Tories are part of the suffering too,that’s fine, I presume?
Do you work in Number Ten?
You seem to be ‘on message’
Go and argue the point with Martin Wolfe, he states clearly that the financial markets will lose power and size in the slow climb out of the devastation that has been wrought by mumbo jumbo financial derivatives and the scamming financial market bandits.
The financial sector is shrinking and will continue in that mode for years. It will lose power and influence, which it has abused.
Governments, whether we like it or not will take a more direct role in the economy.
Get over yourselves already.
Master Baiter, you seem to have forgotten how we taught Labour supporters a lesson in the 1980s.
When the reprisals begin next year you will be near the top of the list.
Yeah, yeah, you won’t have much clout running a greasy chip van though will you?
Tuscan Tony notes : P.s. guido – its cheerily, not cherrily.
Could I quote Homer Simpson – He’s made his choice!
Penguin, I must protest about you saying that MB has the mental capacity of an amoeba because he is not that clever.
Martin Wolf also says that the UK has lost control over public spending and like it or not, voters must elect a government willing to get it back.
Can’t see Gordon Brown rising to the challenge MB – he insists you can’t cut your way out of recession doesn’t he?
Still Joanna Lumley thinks Brown is a “brave man” doing his latest U-turn. He would be if he called a general election, but we all know he is grossly incompetent and a coward, a liar and a bully.
It is Brown that has brought our nation down to this level of world laughing stock. Remind me again how much sterling has devalued against the Euro and the US Dollar in the last couple of months.
@174
Gordon Brown: the man who wrote the rule-book on courage!
Ms Lumley has earned the right to enjoy immensely both her faux-magnanimity and the deep irony of her comment about Brown’s “bravery”.
Brown is the man who, in PMQ’s a few weeks ago, suggested repeatedly the following compromise:
One solution would be for the men who offered to die for Britain and then failed (after being given years and years in which to ‘prove themselves’ in the Brigade of Ghurkas) to be mentioned in Dispatches or to receive another award for bravery, to be told to go fuck themselves.
baitor..
you promised that i could borrow your sister for a tenner.
why have you reneged on this?
British banks failed mainly because of the property bubble in the UK, not because of ‘a global recession that started in America’ or ‘derivatives’. The property boom and bust in the UK was caused by Gordoom printing money and then setting interest rates (for mortgages) according to the ‘Chinese’ Prices Index (CPI) – that doesn’t include housing costs!
Only the RBS had itself to blame in any significant way, by buying ABN at the peak of McDebt’s boom. Moreover the UK caused the ‘global’ downturn alongside the USA and the Eurozone – the UK is a main contributor, not a victim.
Mr F “general government” is a technical term see here:
http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=1161
The resettlement plans of a certain british party are starting to look attractive to get rid of all the long term dole scroungers bogging this country down.
Then bringing the army back cause Afghanistan and Iraq will implode anyway like all muslim states so best just leave them to it.
Trails and using the anti- terror legislation to freeze all assests and property of Labour MP’s and Bankers and scrapping the BBC licence would also go along to helping the purse.
Reduce MP numbers in westminister and give them the Olympic villas to use as temporary homes after the games.
Then tell the EU to give us our rebate back a huge membership fee discount or get stuffed.
reformulate the barnett formula and have a debate over the union.
Then take a hatchet to the public sector and quango’s.
Introduce national service at 16.
Huge manfacturing schemes like building electric cars, british construction and nuclear power and thermal energy investment will get us sorted out.
As the Banks discovered, keeping liabilities off the balance sheets does not make them go away, it makes them infinitely more dangerous because they are an unknown quantity.
The presence of undeclared liabilities on a balance sheet makes effective financial management impossible.
Moley
That was the purpose of off balance sheet financing
But we got our commissions of it ? Didn’t we ?
And now the taxpayer pays the real bill..
It all started with Lehman Bros and Goldman Sachs you know…
ITS GETTING WORSE………………..!
PRESS DIGEST – Financial Times – May 22
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLM6409520090522
WARNING TO BRITAIN OVER HIGH DEBT LEVEL
BANK DEPUTY WARNS OF THREATS TO RECOVERY
BUSINESS INVESTMENT FALLS
M&B CHIEF RESIGNS OVER LOSSES
BRITISH LAND HOPES TO CASH IN ON FALLEN PROPERTY PRICES
British Land (BLND.L) is said to be positioning itself to exploit a future recovery in the property market as the real estate investment trust now has access to three billion pounds of undrawn credit lines following its 740 million pound rights issue earlier in the year. British Land reported pre-tax losses of 3.9 billion pounds with gross rental and related income sliding 14 percent to 554 million pounds. Overall losses per share rose from 251 pence to 614 pence.
NATIONWIDE CHIEF BERATES STATE LEVY
Nationwide (POB_pa.PZ), the UK’s largest building society, has complained that a charge and provisions of more than 250 million pounds to be paid under the government’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme amount to “daylight robbery” of its members. The levy is being imposed on banks to pay for bank failures such as Bradford & Bingley (BB_p.L), but the amount of retail deposits held by building societies has left the societies bearing a disproportionate amount of the cost, they have complained.
HOW MANY FIRST-TIME MORTGAGES FOR 250 MILLION POUNDS?
WATCH AMERICA………….!
SELL STOCKS, SELL BONDS, SELL THE DOLLAR. ANYTHING ELSE?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/05/for-wall-streets-orneriest-bears-thursdays-us-market-action-was-a-dry-run-for-the-day-of-reckoning-they-believe-is-s.html
Some investors and traders viewed S&P’s stance on Britain as a warning about America’s AAA grade, amid our own soaring budget deficits to pay for the unprecedented wave of federal bailouts of the financial system, auto companies and, perhaps next, cash-strapped California.
To the bear camp, however, Thursday was a glimpse of what’s to come if the world finally decides, for whatever reason, that it has had its fill of U.S. assets……………………………
fucking learn to do sums you blind hoon
Will the last person to leave please turn the light out.
No need – upcoming generation shortfall means they will go out anyway
It’s gone out already
Haven’t you noticed ?
“Accountancy’s not my strong point”.
In an article in the Telegraph recently Ben Brogan mentioned that Broon’s friends had to pester him to put all his surplus cash into a high interest account. McMoron can’t even manage his own finances, how does anyone expect him to run Britains?
This from the same Credit Rating Agencies that thought all those Credit Default Swaps and Collateraliised Debt Obligations were AAA+ ??? When these crooks stop rating the Companies they are paid by they can lecture the World on Financial probity.
And off the balance sheet debt was spearheaded by the PFI’s and PPP’s Gordon and others are so fond of.
Many Fiscal institutions and commentators have already devalued the UK’s Economic prospects quite some time ago because we’re still in a crippling Recession with millions losing their jobs.
The public certainly aren’t about to forget this Recession or that Brown and New Labour were at the helm. But they also aren’t about to suddenly forget about the disgusting greed of the Bankers and the Square Mile either.
It doesn’t matter that the credit agencies are stupid (although in this case, they are right). What matters is that the majority of major Govt. debt buyers are mandated to buy ONLY triple A debt.
They have no choice.
Lose the rating, you have less buyers. Less buyers = you must drop the price. Drop the price, interest rate increased. Interest rate increase = more downward pressure on assets & growth. downward pressure on assets and growth = bigger government deficit. bigger government deficit = chance of further ratings downgrade.
You do get this, don’t you?
No and “death spiral” must mean f*ck all to me either.
If you were paying attention you would notice the words “Many Fiscal institutions and commentators have already devalued the UK’s Economic prospects quite some time ago” and the words “Crippling Recession”.
That means I dont’ believe Brown and Darlings Fantasy Budget predictions for a microsecond or the overly optimistic horsesh*t being pedalled about the Economy in some quarters.
And I’m afraid you also didn’t get the part where Guido said “S&P has so far kept the Triple “A” rating intact”. IF they downgraded it would be a HUGE f*cking story but this is is still only speculative at best and parsing and extrapolating one prediction into another.
Right on and isn’t strange that we can have so much talk of police inquiries into MP’s alleged fraud yet despite calls for a Nuremberg Tribunal for Economic War Crimes to try shyster banksters, NONE have been charged and indeed they walk off with outrageous taxpayer funded pensions (ie Tartan hoon Shredded Fred)
Nuernburg for Bankers.
That’s like trying the German generals but letting Hitler and the National-Socialist party go free.
The credit bubble was initiated deliberately by the regulation called Basel2 and governments got rich on taxing the consumption/inflation this created.
No. The credit bubble was caused by Gordoom expanding the money supply after 2001. The extra money had to go somewhere and it washed up in the property boom. Basle 2 just made it more difficult for banks to survive after a bust had already happened.
A START!
BRITAIN TO BUILD HEDGE FUND FRAUD DETECTOR
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/british-agency-to-build-hedge-fund-fraud-detector/
May 21, 2009, 7:50 am Britain’s Serious Fraud Office is building a system to help it detect hedge fund fraud, according to Reuters.
“We’re looking in particular at a system of red flags to give warnings in respect of hedge funds,” Reuters cited Richard Alderman, head of the S.F.O., as saying at a briefing Wedsnesy. “We want to be able to help the market, as it recovers, in knowing what are the features of hedge funds that can give rise to fraud.”
His comments come after British authorities arrested two men last week in connection with hedge fund Weavering Capital, which collapsed this year owing investors more than $600 million.
Guido, you are right about Brown keeping a lot of major financial commitments off the balance sheet (public sector pensions, PFA, etc) to make our debt appear less than it really is.
However, you are ignoring the fact that a lot of the other governments (e.g. France, Italy, Spain) do something very similar. Therefore, although our debt situation is dire, we are probably no worse than some of the other major economies.
PFA? I think you mean PFI – Private Finance Initiative.
Rhetorical……….. Be nice!
We’re fucked……….. general Election now.
… and replace it with a party that will do exactly fuck all?
Yes please. Doing nothing would be VASTLY preferable to the highly destructive policies of this bunch of buffoons.
Better still, a party that significantly reduced public spending, returned power to parliament and the electorate, reduced our reliance on the EU (or pulled out best of all), and stopped robbing the electorate.
You can dress it up as much as you like eventually we must all live within our means. The govt/state is about to default, the ONLY way out is for it to spend less not more. Labour have reduced the UK to penuary and all because Blaire/Brown have “a mission”.
Quack
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8059861.stm
You’ve never heard of the theory ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging’ then? To paraphrase Sir Humphrey Appleby, doing nothing is at least better than doing the wrong thing. Gordon’s been doing the wrong thing for at least eight years now. That’s why we’re fucked.
“and replace it with a party that will do exactly fuck all?”
You don’t really believe nulabour propaganda do you?
Replacing Gordon Brown with Tory Blair just isn’t going to work.
dont worry the ashes are starting soon
Bowling Shane! Bowling Warney!
o/t t leader that video of our great laeder is fuckin a horrer movie i i fuckin jumped behind the sofa
Oh Jeez.
More bad news then?
so what!
Better late than never. See how jonny foreigner views the Speaker’s resignation. Translation by Google: Der Standard – Parliament’s President Martin Announces Resignation of.
By Yoda this translation is, Bob Swiss.
I’m genuinely worried here. Seriously. I honestly believe we need a general election now or at the very least someone in the Labour Party should take action to oust Gordy because he clearly doesn’t have the capacity to run this country.
Labour should put their personal ambitions to one side and, for the sake of Great Britain, do something to get rid of this wally before it’s too late.
The Sun wants to sack con (Conservative) MPs – http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2441284/Back-Sun-petition-sack-your-con-MPs.html
No, it’s saying sack your con (con as in con artist not Conservative).
I think everyone should seriously back this campaign – whether they are right, centre or left wing. This has gone beyond party politics now.
No shit
No, plenty of shit.
Yum yum.
Not yet – not before every single MP has faced re-selection or de-selection THEN we can have an election otherwise we’re just returning the same “troughers” as before.The re-selection process should be able to be completed within 4 weeks maximum of the Euro-elections on 4 June. Brown can then indicate that he will seek a Dissolution and that the General Election will be fought early September – it’ll give them plenty of time to convince the electorate that any of them are worth voting for
Olly, of course Gordon does not have the capacity to run the country, nor does he nedd to as his socialist masters the EU do it for him. Just ask Lord/lady Mandelson for confirmation.
It must be serious – even the lickspittle propagandist dogs of the BBC are reporting it.
Treasury quoted as responding “the Budget set out a clear plan to halve the deficit within five years. That judgement was based on a deliberately cautious view of the public finances.”
hahahahahahahahahahaha
Yes but Peston is doing a nice piece of objective reporting basically saying nothing to see here and anyway these rating agencies don’t really mean it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/
Arse
He forgets to mention that the BoE bought all those gilts from its former subsidiary the DMO. Peston needs to be quantitatively eased out of his job.
Seems to be a considerable delay in publishing comments there – I wonder why that might be?
Cocksucker Toenails hasn’t written anything today – maybe he’s swotting up on the important issue of the day? No, not Moran or CGT or QE, ducks of course.
The BBC has gone ducking mad today.
Which month does “Lasy October” follow?
Lasy August you of course.
Lasy September disappears?
The Penguin.
Beats my average.
Lasy Sunday afternoon……..
You’ll be humming that all day now.
Err, is that proof reader job still open?
“Lasy October”
Send in your CV with a naked picture of yourself.
Is that the same as a picture of yourself, naked.
Very few of my pictures wear clothes. They don’t seem to feel the cold as I do.
Done.
Hey, Guido! When are you going to look at MEPs expenses? There are far bigger hogs in Brussels that need putting to sleep!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8059721.stm
All in time, lets get our own house in order first. Can’t eat every cake in the shop at once ya know. If we ruin all the politicians this year what will we next year to play with?
Yeah, well the country’s bankrupt and the only news is that the financial world is now taking that unpleasant little fact into account. As an aside, is it a coincidence that the authors of this nightmare are nearly all Scottish? I mean no offence to the Jocks in general, but they’re not the prudent money-managers they’re so often cracked up to be.
Expect to be mired in crippling levels of taxation for a generation at least.
God Gordon looks absolutely awful in that video – and that was lasy October.
Indeed he does. And you can tell he’s lying by the movement of his lips.
After this performance he’s never hold down a £92k BBC autocue reader job.
Yes Gordon looks terrible in lasy October. No one knows what he looks like now as he won’t come out of his bunker.
This whole MPs expenses porn has been a complete distraction from the elephant in the room. The economy is fucked.
Are you saying it is relaxing in that worm afterglow.
“Worm afterglow” Hehe. I lik it.
Wasn’t that an early Genesis track?
The Penguin.
I think it’s a Yes track, perhaps from Tormato
The economy has been destroyed; not damaged but destroyed. It has come to this pass by high flying guilty fraudsters, that the public mistakenly calls bankers, and by greedy, totally incompetent m.p.’s. The Government, sadly aided and abetted by Her Majesty’s opposition, has not had the will nor the bottle to charge the fraudsters, nor to remove them from the financial system, nor to recognise the total ineptitude of Westminster, nor to recognise the destruction of the entire financial system.
We are all of us so out of our depth that, like a drowning man, we are clutching at straws. We are so utterly helpless that we are discussing seriously the pronouncements of Standard and Poor. On its record, if that organization told me the time, I would seek a second opinion!
We need a savior, an economic savior, with the intellect of an Einstein and the down to earth reasoning of an Adam Smith. Sadly I don’t see such a man, anywhere, and certainly not one who occasionally turns up in Westminster Palace, on either side of the dispatch box, when he has nothing more pressing to do.
Fellow Pensioner, it is not just the economy which is in the state that you so colourfully describe, it is every last man jack of us.
I do agree with you, the economics are quite simple, the cloth should be cut accordingly, to carry on borrowing to finance non jobs and usless projects is stupidity.
“We need a savior, an economic savior, with the intellect of an Einstein and the down to earth reasoning of an Adam Smith.”
It’s all simple really.
Don’t spend more than you earn.
Thatcher understood it.
I’m sure some of the regular commentators will be along shortly to inject the obligatory dose of anti-Scottish sentiment.
You know we up in Scotland aren’t any happier about the way things are than you lot down south?
Gordon Brown isn’t a bad Prime Minister because he’s Scottish. He’s a bad Prime Minister because he’s a prick.
and because he’s Scottish
Scotch.
A strapping Jock … please!
They’ll be dancing in the streets of Hawick tonight
Those with legs will, anyway.
You put a list of good Scottish MP’s darn sarf then…they have all been scotch Hoons.
Awa’ wi’ ye, ye haggis-suckin’ Jock.
Trust this was what you were hoping for.
Over 50% of the Scottish used to vote Tory in the 1950s. We must re-establish that state of affairs.
The abolition of the welfare state in Scotland would be a good start.
Abolition of Scotchland full stop even better.
The Penguin.
I disagree, we need coolies from somewhere
But you can’t deny he is a Scottish prick. I am sure it is not your fault but you do seem to be breeding quite a lot of them up there. I can live with that but please dont send anymore down here, there’s a good chappy.
Not Scottish, Scots
Enough of this pedantic crap. If it is from Scotland it is Scotch. End of!
I tell you, this is the lasy straw.
I don’t know if I can lasy till the election.
I would return to my old trade as a cobbler, but I have sold my lasy lasy.
tadaaaaaaaaaa
The quick brown fox jumps over the last dog.
They don’t make ‘em to lasy nowadays.
Lassie rescued the lass cowboy who lassooed the lasy lazy lass
It’s all political. The ratings agencies are scared of downgrading the paper of bankrupt nations like the UK and USA from AAA because their asses will be grass. Imagine how Barry O would set the IRS on them if they tried. So the government’s junk bonds stay at AAA. But within AAA they have set up three sub groups, basically fine, dodgy and shit. IIRC, Germany is fine, Ireland is shit, and the US and UK are both dodgy, but are more likely to turn to shit.
So there you have it. The agencies are telling the markets what they need to know, while officially keeping the facade of an AAA rating. Anyone who lends money to the British government is a fool, they will pay you back the pound you lent, but it will only be worth ten bob. Anyone who holds Gordon’s junk bonds will find out what it’s like to be a ladyboy in San Quentin.
BRITISH GUILTS = PONZI SCHEME
BROWN AND DARLING LEARNT THE TRICK FROM MADOFF
I like the idea of the British government selling ‘GUILTS’ – appropriate somehow.
It’s like the UK education system; everyone gets an A+ but not all A+s are the same quality.
The economy is well on the way to recovery.
It couldn’t fail to be after the bladder-bursting quantities of Government cash poured into it.
The stimulus has worked and Brown has managed the only successful thing he’s ever done.
He should now go.
Er, that ain’t the way to recovery! It’s the way to future super-inflation. The only thing approaching is the eye of the storm.
We, and others, have just prevented a tsunami.
Inflation is a summer breeze compared to that.
The only thing your Labour inflation is good for is wheelbarrow sales, Jock.
Really? Tsunami being a term not readily associated with Economics, please explain what, precisely, you prevented?
If you prevented a situation,it did not occur. How do you make the link between cause and effect? They could be quite different.
I seem to recall that ‘boom and bust’ were also eliminated not too long ago?This statement was believed because boom and bust did not happen and credit was taken for achieving that, based purely on the fact that it did not happen.
We should not repeat the folly.
“Quantative easing” leads remorselessly to hyperinflation. Believe one who has been there: no recorded tsunami has ever killed near as many as die in a hyperinflation.
Tell that to all the folk losing their jobs…
The Penguin.
Tell the unemployed that, like the US, the UK will invest its way out of the recession and not cut out of the recession. Cutting would be more costly in the long run than investing, especially in terms of lives and communities.
Cutting in the middle of a recession will lead to a general collapse in demand and a full blown Depression.
The investment route is assured under a Labour administration. A Conservative administration will try only to protect the rich financial bandits that are their backers and who caused the financial and economic collapse through irresponsible mumbo jumbo financial engineering and speculation.
Just look at the Conservative Party Treasurers and other backers.
The game is on.
By multinational action at a cost of trillions, a catastrophic reapeat of the great depression was averted.
What matters now is not which government we have…there’s no fundamental difference… but how quickly the rest of the world recovers.
Debt repayment will take decades either way.
That doesn’t matter unless some lunatic decided we should get into the Eurozone.
Master Baiter, we are already in the worst slump of all time. Anyone who thinks that this is a mere recession, something lesser than the nineteen thirties, is in for a rude awakening. Among those who have brought us here, is those who confuse (quite deliberately), “investment” with the plain English, “spending”. The more profligate the spending, the more assiduously it is described as investment.
Ive just invested in the 3:30 at Kempton. No cuts! Oh no: we must invest, invest I say!
The money isn’t there to invest.
We are borrowing to cover day to day expenditure.
We are not investing in infrastructure.
We are not investing in any wealth creating industries.
We are not investing for the future.
The debts are mounting.
The cost of debt repayment and interest is mounting up.
Brown has no plans to improve the situation.
“Tell the unemployed that, like the US, the UK will invest its way out of the recession and not cut out of the recession.”
You don’t seem to understand the difference between spending and investing and inventing (cash).
The stimulus is nothing but a stimulus for depression and hyperinflation as others have correctly commented, we’re further away from ‘recovery’ than we were a year ago and getting further away.
Not only are the actions taken by Broon and gaggle of cronies the worst possible, they are all derived from an insane economic theory that has failed over and over again.
Keynesian economics do work any except in the fantasies of advocates of central banking, and socialist politicians that relish the opportunity to pervert capitalism, create a huge bubble and blame the ensuing chaos on the free market.
When the money supply is controlled by a single entity then there is no way the market is operating freely, and with laws in place to restrict what constitutes ‘money’ are counter-intuitive and enforce the monopoly of the paper-money supply.
I am amazed you even managed to wrestle together Brown’s ’stimulus’ and economic recovery when they are not even on the same spectrum is staggering and I can only hope you were being ironic.
Thank heavens we didn’t have a world wide banking crisis and and credit crunch.
And thank heavens world governments didn’t try to step in and save the system from total collapse.
Phew.
The banking crisis was caused by the politicians. In the USA by the abolition of Glass-Steagall and the strengthening of the CRA (both by Clinton); in the UK by Brown’s mismanagement of the economy (ruining pensions, excessive and hidden government debt, tracking CPI, expanding the money supply); in the Eurozone by the ‘one-size-fits-all’ monetary straitjacket. Ordinary British banks were the victims of the arrogantly incompetent McBust.
Never mind, the Gurkhas will come to the rescue by providing the next main headline story for the BBC
and hopefully sharpening their whatsits for some ritual throat slitting around Westminster?
Gurkhas U-turn all over the news channels now – everyone desparate for some good news by any chance?
I know it’s a good story with a high-profile supporter, but since when has “Government agrees to honour a Commons vote” been headline news..?
in conclusion:
that lampshade’s got a higher wattage than that thick kunt
It’s like a re-run of Labour in 1976. Re-arrange these words to make sense:
IMF financial 1976 crisis getting back totally stuffed off a plane Dennis Healey washed-up.
Labour are shite…see easy.
why do we let them do this to our nation?
when the fuck will we learn?
Sky News reporting that Gordo is happy with the property dealings of Hoon and Purnell – did not abuse CGT – surprise, surprise – it was all within the rules!!!
According to the article in the Telegraph, Purnell took tax advice from an accountant relating to the sale of his flat (ie how to avoid CGT), and charged the accountant’s £395 bill to his HoC expenses!
Charging the taxpayer for finding out how to rip the taxpayer off… what a fucking wanker.
Un_frigging_believable
McMentals cabinet cabal of crooks & tax evaders need stringing up.
Dissolve Parliament.
thats better than any duckhouse. If it were not so sad it would be quite funny
as we said Brown is not going to do anything after that statment “mps will be sacked if they have broken rules” what he meant to say was, i decide which rules are bent and who can bend them.
Brown the Bent.
He’s scared of the Hoon.
The Penguin.
Which one?
Tory MPs are dropping like flies. Don’t hold your breath for labour to do likewise.
Cameron’s playing a blinder here. Now he can really stick to Snotty as the do nothing PM.
The Tories will be left with electable MPs after a good cull. Labour will be left with a flock of albatrosses around it’s neck. There’ be no way out of that mess for them.
Dont know why anyone is surprised.Ive been saying for long enough that Brown is not the economic wizard that Labour and there BBC lapdogs like to make out. His qualifiactions after all is in History, thats what he studied
He followedthe usual path for ’sons of the manse’ and that is a lazy spoon fed education on ‘easy’ subjects, ending up doing the ‘History’ graduation at Uni.
The current chancellor is the same, but worse, he is a failed lawyer, failed councilor and a complete chancer!
But doint take my word for it look it up!
Exactly. In 1997, the BBC described Brown as a “highly qualified financial expert with a doctorate in economics.”
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When the dollar is weak, the value of gold and oil appear to rise to reflect this.
I know, but the dollar is sliding so fast and deep as to wipe out gains when the particular stocks are priced in USD. Need to get out of physical ETFs and get the stuff in my hand; then you are independent of currency shifts.
Frank, so why was the dollar worth 33% more against the pound than it is today.?
(was 2.05 last year, is 1.53 now)
Yes the dollar has tanked against the Euro or Yen, but the pound has done even worse against everything?
To buy oil a country needs to hold petro-dollars… as that’s the agreed currency you pay for oil with, that’s why the $ stays afloat. (Some say was the cause of Iraq II, Saddam threatened to only accept Euros instead of dollars for his oil and Bush couldn’t allow it as the US wouldn’t have international demand for dollars servicing US debt).
In recessionary times, countries need less oil so they don’t need so many dollars so the dollar drops. If oil supply drops as it will with peak oil several years ago then the price of oil will rise, countries will need more dollars to pay for it so the dollar stays afloat.
We used to profit from this while we were an oil producer in ForX, we had lots of dollars coming in, now North Sea oil’s more or less gone, we are basically up the creek without a paddle.
@Steve
The pound has been climbing against the dollar recently; the pound was worth even less than this not so long ago.
This finance lark is harder than it looks though. All my gold and oil stocks are on the up, but they’re all priced in feckin piss-weak dollars so the profits don’t translate…
Stupid money….
I think we should go back to living in huts, hunting wild beasts, dragging our women around by the hair, and wearing skins, like the Scots do.
That’ll be the next Brown cunning plan then?
I can’t disagree with your observations about the Scots, but if you have your dough in oil and gold, the strength of the dollar is irrelevant. Physical assets are a perfect hedge against paper currency value fluctuations. When the dollar is weak, the value of gold and oil appear to rise to reflect this.
“All my gold and oil stocks are on the up,…”
Sorry to disillusion you Frank, but your investments are in paper unless you’ve got the gold under the mattress and the oil in the bath. It’s called counter party risk.
There’s more (or less) to it than that. Has anyone read Gordon’s PhD thesis? It is uninspired, to say the least, and many would be far more critical than that. The only reason that mediocre man was allowed to graduate was that both the internal and external examiners were labour party apparatchiks, and put GB through on the nod. This was the first of Gordo’s political fixes.
who’s the kunt with the big ears and the wank haircut?
Wayne Rooney ?
Dennis Skinner?
Difficult to know about the ears because of the wank haircut.
Prince Charles?
WTF – Margaret Beckett tipped to return to cabinet in Brown’s summer reshuffle. That really is scraping the bottom of the trough.
Housing Minister – we’ll be be living in caravans!!
No ,tents and lean tos sent by The UN with Zimbawe sending us food aid.
Well, if it’s good enough for the Scots to live in mud hovels, then a caravan would be a luxury – and the best we can look forward to, in fact!
The UK is fucked, war is coming.
(moderation is OFF)
The dim, useless old bat should be arrested for indecent public ugliness and forced to wear a paper bag over her head at all times.
Deregulate the mortgage market.
Undo the mal-regulation of Banking reserves to prevent another credit bubble.
Kill Basel2.
Regulations per se will not stop fraud. All the time performance bonuses are permitted, whether in the banking sector, or anywhere else, profits and asset values will be manipulated to trigger the bonuses. Whether the economy can ever be resurrected is in doubt, but it is a certainty that it cannot happen while bonuses are permitted to continue.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8060324.stm
Tom Watson on e-petitions at a Lords committee. Of course, no-one asked whether the resign petition was being fiddled like expenses.
An important decision for V for Vendetta types:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8061050.stm
Mind you, if the Met had tried to do this inside Westminster then that would have been entirely justified.
But can plod be trusted to abide by the decision; who will monitor them?
Information and education.
The next “short scale” multiple after a trillion is a quadrillion. This might be useful to remember in the near future.
A trillion is the number formed by a 1 followed by 12 zeros.
A quadrillion is 1 followed by 15 zeros.
As in “Adjusted figures for the 1.4 trillion pound national debt indicate a 3.14159 quadrillion pounds actual debt due to America, Thatcher, the next Tory government and the Moon being made of smelly cheese.”
“3.14159″?? That’s pi, ain’t it. What are you, some sort of conspiracy theorist?
That figure’s been rounded up from 2.718282, naturally.
I’m going to drop some 2.718 this afternoon
We will soon enough be back to six figures when they have followed the traditional route of knocking a few naughts off. Ask any Zimbabwean.
Prezza needed more loo seats as his natural logs were getting big
Not only government, but also Plod in paralysis:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8061208.stm
(Ian) Blair’s revenge still at work in the Met
It’s a start – hopefully more serious charges will follow.
The National Black Police Association – do they fight for the rights of white officers too, or are they racist?
I suspect the British Army is trained to kill Johnny Foreigner.
That rather smacks of racism, too…
“I suspect the British Army is trained to kill Johnny Foreigner. That rather smacks of racism, too…”
Gordon will happilly turn the army on you, if you dare to exercise your historic right to protest outside parliament, if enough of you turn up.
There really is a huge amount of fat in the public sector that could be liposucked. In the NHS, only just over half of the staff are medics of one kind or another. That leaves 650,000 or more who are not healing the sick and the numbers have risen sharply over the years. It’s inconceivable that some of those jobs couldn’t be cut without reducing the care of patients. There’s no lack of money, just lack of the will to spend it properly.
Should go back to the old way of doing things in hospitals and schools.
Sack the managers and actually give doctors and teachers something to aim for. The person in charge should always be someone who has worked their way up and proven they have an understanding of the whole system. It’s crazy that you have someone in charge who doesn’t know the first thing about how the people they employ actually do their jobs.
The person in charge should be the patient.
Do you remember Patricia Hewitt being heckled on Question Time by junior Doctor Phil.Classic.
No link. Sorry.
Google it.
Most of that fat is in the shape of “management consultants” – a right little racket if ever there was one!
Joanna Lumley has just graciously thanked Brown for U-turning in favour of the Gurkhas – what a woman!
See 38 above. Of course, it is now top BBC headline, as predicted.
She has been good….but I fucking despise the luvvies & celebs.
The msn need fucking over too, the beeb being first on the chopping block.
She called Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who she had met earlier, a “brave man who has made today a brave decision on behalf of the bravest of the brave”.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Those who have read the saying of Sir Humphrey Appleby will of course be fully aware of the meaning of a courageous decision, so a load of braves is perhaps appropriate for the tribal chief.
Gracious in victory – classy lady
Jo’s got more principles in her fingernail clippings than that miserable Jock has in the whole of his strap.
Indeed, an absolute champion, but we should also celebrate another woman of substance, Heather Brookes our FOI champion without whose efforts we would not have obtained all the current evidence of parliamentary corruption.
Hear, hear. Sign Heather up Cameron for the House of Lords.
She should have done it as Patsy,champagne in hand.
According to CNBC, Britian is the second biggest debtor nation in the World. only Ireland is more in debt.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/30308959/?slide=15
Takes some doing to beat the USA…
Debt is Wealth you ungrateful gits, how can you not understand the intelligence and foresight of our Glorious Leader Brown who has furnished this socialist utopia with DebtWealth so future generations can march forward into thier own freedomdebtwealth…
…get on message comrades…afterall it was all thatcherusasitbeganinamericas fault…remember your history.
Spending is Investment too!
Spending is Investment
Debt is Wealth
Poverty is Progress*
* I’ve seen a few Gaiaists who think that we should shrink the economy.
That’s that, then. The UK, Belgium and Ireland (at least) are ripe for debt default. It’s only a matter of time. Who the hell in their right mind would consider buying Gilts after reading this?
What about Engliand? How bad are we?
Better than Scotliand I hope.
Facetious? I before A.
As a proportion of GDP, presumably, rather than as an absolute value, and even that is questionable.
The British Ministry of Truth (BBC) has fired up the No sh*t Sherlock department.
From their business page “……..Bringing down the total level of debt may be politically difficult as it will require tough spending curbs and tax rises”
Or we could just abolish the BBC and spend the money elsewhere…
Could start with Beeb.
Gives us all £142.50 a year tax break.
Sell off all OUR Beeb assets to backfill Brown-holes in the economy.
And if you believe in the CO2/Climate Change blether, you are getting rid of a major power-user and reducing all those lemonade bubbles (CO2).
Cannot see why Dave will not announce it as a policy?
They should have asked Brown before they said that.
He knows how to balance the books without spending cuts.
Its only the Tories who would cut spending.
In that piece to camera,Brown looks like a convict who has been on the run for about 12 years,having stolen billions of pounds of gold from a major country,ruined industries and lost the “Great” in Britain – oh,wait a minute……..
Ah Master Baiter, Your unilateral views are quite quaint. If you only read those with which you agree,the true picture will never emerge.
Your views are welcome but why do you seem upset that people disagree with you? You clearly accuse them of what you also practice.
Why should others be more accomodating of your views than you are of theirs?
You need to be more specific, apart from in relation that odious bird brain ‘Da Penguin’ who obviously is worthy of unfettered opprobrium because he always sinks to the depths in his replies.
Your football team partisan cheerleading of one set of thieving bastards while pointing the finger of blame at another set of thieving bastards means nobody takes you seriously.
If you want people to listen then I suggest you take off your party hat and start condemning ALL the thieves in westminster.
Just a thought.
The response of a weak PM to a weak system – weak facts & figures.
It’s hard for an empty sack to stay upright.
I always empty my sack when I stay upright
Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) has reported a half-year loss of £239m after it was forced to write-down the value of the business.
Frying tonight
It’s called recession, ask gordon he may have an idea about it.
Gordon has no idea, he thinks he abolished recessions.
An end to Tory boom and bust!
Well, an end to boom at least…
fucking hell. One step closer to an IMF bailout.
There are economists who doubt even the IMF can handle the massive debt crisis the unelected, mentally unbalanced one-eyed Scottish control-freak nutter has built up.
The public sector is still expanding and is out of control, just look at the Guardian jobs section. Look at all the pet EU projects that are going ahead, like ID cards, the children’s “ContactPoint” (ID card) database, and New Labour pissing off £18bn for a 2 week drug-fest sporting “games” in 2012.
The amount of non-jobs created is obscene, bin inspectors, diversity shit, and on and on. It’s cheaper to pay unemployment then have these non-jobs.
It is New Labour, with lack of any MP with a mathematics degree as chancellor, to understand that you can’t carry on pissing people’s money away without someone wanting their money back one day.
This predicament we find the UK in is a direct result of MPs that are not qualified in anything useful. English, art, history, politics, Latin, law and more of these w@nker subjects are completely useless in running a country, and it shows more than ever.
Two New Labour chancellors without a maths degree, a science minister who has no science degree (but runs a supermarket), a home secretary who only knows how to cook (badly), a foreign secretary who only knows how to pass snide and insulting remarks. Useless bastards the lot of them.
You could knock £ 100 bn pa of government spend easily. Anyone know how if that would bring our debt under control, or will we need to cut deeper ?
Non-Jobs aren’t created, they are merely transferred out of the productive part of the economy and thus we have lower employment.
The money to fund non-jobs comes from punishing wealth creating employers.
Darling’s (somewhat suspect) figures have expenditure 175Bn higher than income this year, and 173Bn next year.
We can get rid of a whole layer of management very easliy if required, the problem is that the management would rather cut services first. It is the ATTITUDE of senior management that desparately neds to chaange, they need to be incentivised based on cost and headcount savings, and disincentivised for public service cuts.
You’re right, we’re better off paying these quangocrats to be on the dole than the money we are currently wasting on them – is an “enthnic deversity outreach executive” really worth more than a basic MP salary??
Steve – I think you make a vital point “the problem is that the management would rather cut services first”. The power structures within the public sector bureaucracies will protect themselves at the expense of the front line delivery. So, the process will have to be driven, if not by micro-management, at least by midi-management, from the political level. Whether any of our current political class are up to this, I seriously doubt.
I don’t think anyone would deny that some sort of stimulus during a recession is a good thing.
HOWEVER…
You have to look at the cost of providing that stimulus and what it will achieve.
If the UK loses it’s AAA rating, interest payments on Govt. borrowing will rise making Govt. debt even bigger.
Had the Govt. been prudent and squirreled away some cash during the good times, then that money could have been drawn upon to provide stimulus.
The sort of stimulus I’d like to see would be concessions on business start up etc. Encourage free enterprise.
Do NOT just spend it on pen pushers – what value does that add?
Businesses realise that their revenues will drop hence trim workforces to balance their budgets.
This lot just borrow more and I believe the cost of that borrowing to be too much right now.
The economy needs to be “reset” by taking all of the non- jobs out.
OK, it will lead to a rise in unemployment, but hopefully stimuli for start up businesses would eventually bring that down and make us a more efficient nation.
The trouble is, NuLab have had such a “nanny state” approach to government, the public expect to be spoon fed over what they should do rather than take the initiative themselves.
We HAVE to get back to innovation and encourage entrepreneurs in this country in contrast to the “state will provide” view.
> I don’t think anyone would deny that some sort of stimulus during a recession is a good thing.
Then Call me Anyone. Someone pays for the “stimulus”, and it always goes to the friends of the politically connected at the expense of the serfs.
Some “stimulus”
AC1 – if you read my words I want the stimulus to encourage free enterprise. Not political spend.
Sooner or later stimulus is needed no matter how small.
Demand needs to be created, but doing it via central spending (like this govt proposes) is NOT the way.
We should encourage efficiency.
Example – this stupid quango they want for the “independent” audit of expenses.
How much will this cost? Will the guys in the fees office be laid off?
The government should encourage free enterprise and tender for a contract for a firm to provide a web service whereby all mp’s can place their receipts for the public to see.
Would be much cheaper, would encourage efficiency and would be LESS borrowing.
I’ll run the expenses quango for £150K p/a and a crate of brown ale.
Gordon Brown and his government are a lost cause on the financial front. The Credit crisis which Brown says started in America which was of his making is now like an anchor around his neck. It is a time that history will not forget, even if he has forgotten who really started it, namely him, the people of Britain will be left with his legacy and in debt up to their eyeballs for years to come. His man in No11 also doesn’t have a clue, he has not be able to predict any credible financial figures since he was installed by Brown to pick up the pieces. The only thing Labour have been good at is spin, they invented the word, and have used it prolifically since they came to power. If you want the truth get a “mole” to give it to you.
Spin another word for lies, something that Brown and his party excel at.
I see that Al-Jabeeba has sprung to the defence already, by trying to discredit the information.
“So the government has been put on notice to reduce public sector debt by one of the agencies widely regarded as having exaggerated the safety and quality of all manner of investment prodcts that turned out to be toxic.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/
Robert fucking Peston. The man who put the Hoon in SHoonhorpe.
Excuse me.That is my home town you are talking about.
The question was,if Typhoo put the T in Britain who put Elliot Morley in SHoonhorpe?
I don’t believe him either.
In fact I don’t believe him at all.
I doubt that he really knows what’s going on and he just makes up all these figures he keeps quoting about mortgages lent, companies helped and children being taken out of poverty, etc., etc. He just blurbs out statistics that nobody takes any notice of anyway.
I wish he’d just go and leave me alone
My benchmark of Brown’s honesty stems from his non-answers at p.m.q.’s
Not once has he answered a straight question and his stock reply is to quote lies about what the tories would do.
The man is seriously mentally ill and whats worse is this maniac is ruining the country and and reducing us all to penury for decades to come.
Someone in the Labour Party has to do something now or there will not be a Labour party to speak of after the next election.
With the possible exception of The Lord Of The Slime there’s NO-ONE in the Liabour ‘party’ with the guts to do anything about Brown. He’s a bully, and shambolic, and a compulsive liar, and self-deluded, but what they all forget from their schooldays is that bullies are cowards who fold up the second someone bunches a fist. The fact that they are all as gutless as Cyclops is a) laughable and b) ironic and c) the main reason Liabour will self-destruct in the next few months. Yeee haaaa!
ZaNuLiebour – Please stay in power.
Whoever wins the next GE will be despised for a generation for the savage measures they will be forced to take.
In mathematics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose states evolve with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.
Is this whot brown was alluding to yesterday.
Nice summary but Broon confused chaos with K.O.’s when the labour front bench get K.O.’d at the next election.
Cut spending and stop borrowing so much. End of.
Well you can add on the billion or more for the several hundred thousand ghurkas all apparently with housing, benefit and NHS rights having paid nothing.
More plundering of the people who have paid in to the tax coffers and now see years of taxpaying diluted by ever more outside claimants.
What a shame the same compassion is not there for the WW2 British veterans many in utter poverty, slum conditions and deciding whether to run a small heater or starve.
But of course they don’t have a glamorous woman, who I believe, has been economical with the truth re numbers, to push their cause.
It seems that some that fight British wars are more equal than many of the British themselves.
Well as people wake up to the fact that this isn’t about a few old decorated heroes but tens of thousands of wives and chidren, who have done no fighting what so ever – all of whom have to be housed, educated and given medical care in our collapsing NHS, the BNP will get even more votes.
It’s the new Standard – we’re all going to be fucking Poor !
Nowt wrong with fucking poor.
Made a living out of it.
Britain will be ok, it’s got a thing called a printing press….print loads of paper monies and pay-off the rating agency’s not to downgrade the debt ridden country…..problem solved!
You’ve gotta admire Brown’s style and flexibility in the face of such deterioration.
Metaphorically speaking, shoot the arrow of government performance into a big fuck-off blank canvas and then draw the bullseye around the arrow!
That analogy is as fit as a chest of drawers in the back passge of… er… yeah… awesome. Thanks.
Dont worry the problem will be solved because we are going to tax the bollocks off every man jack of you
Does this include MP’s allowances?
This one says : QUOTE Britain’s outlook was “negative” and no longer “stable.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE54K3SA20090521
Is this too simple? Could we not get rid of all the Scottsh MPs?
Yep.
Nope.
Reuters is smelling it. Time to sack your Darling, Gord.
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE54K3SA20090521
Is it me being cynical or do you think that brown only let the ghurkas in today so avoid double bad headlines of this and his MP fraudytroughers?
….and he only released the expenses info to avoid the ghurka issue – he’s trying to be smarter than he is, and falling flat.
Nope.
Yep.
The report I heard about the gurkhas said that they, if they met the qualifications, would have the right to apply to stay in the uk.
Standard & Poor’s you say?
They need a name change: Standard’s Poor would do.
They know nothing, as they have proved repeatedly.
We must make a citizens arrest of the criminal fraudster Brown tomorrow morning at Downing St – we shall go dressed as Gurkha’s.
See you there – bring the Kukri’s
*
Y KAN KNOT CORPUS BRAOUWN SHUT IT
NAO THAT KLAOUWN HAS OPENED KALQL8G8*
Watch the Hoon’s blink-rate and jaw movements between 0.18 and 0.23.
*
IS HOON A DGJEWISH NAME