Double Digit Inflation is a Black Swan
The Bank of England and most consensus economists, including most right-of-centre monetarists, are stoking deflation fears. The MPC voted to print £50 billion more this month. Which is very convenient for Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling, it allows them to justify printing money, which they can then use to buy their own escalating government debts. Which is a little like eating your own leg to stop you starving.
The economic debate on this is confusing, the data is mixed and to some extent depends on your time frame. The drop in oil prices and other commodities post-crunch had a deflationary effect. Against this you have U.S. and U.K. government debt levels which are extraordinary. Terrifying. Gilt yields (interest rates) are being held down by the Bank of England printing billions of pounds to buy gilts from the Treasury and artificially hold up gilt prices.
The Bank of England’s own pension fund however is heavily invested in inflation protected securities – which is odd given their public stance is that deflation, not inflation is the threat. Consensus economists are sheep and we need not worry too much about their bleating, more surprisingly some right-wing monetarist economists, such as those on the IEA’s shadow monetary policy committee (who tend to work in the City for investment banks) are also believers in deflation. Guido’s theory is that the reason they have supported expanding the money supply so drastically is they panicked, remember all those articles in the Guardian and the FT about the “end of capitalism”and the end of investment banking as we know it? Their morale was low, they were afraid. Printing money and flooding the market with liquidity would be a short term fix that would shore up the banks and save their jobs. Hence all these right-wing economists became born again Keynesians and could be found all over the Square Mile screaming at the Bank of England to turn on the printing presses.
Well capitalism survives and thrives. Some of those economists are now wondering about the wisdom of printing all that money. Nigel Lawson’s biographer, Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, changed his mind on quantitative easing a few months ago, the IEA’s shadow MPC is no longer unanimously in favour of quantitative easing.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb yesterday warned of the inflation threat, Cameron conceded the possibility of a British debt crisis. Guido thinks it highly unlikely Britain would ever default on it’s debt so long as it has a sovereign currency – we would just devalue and pay foreigners in devalued pounds. Though Britain could have, as Cameron said, foreign investors demanding higher risk premia, higher yields. That could see mortgage rates above 10% again – both here and in the U.S.
Warren Buffet yesterday was quoting John Maynard Keynes’ road map for political survival amid an economic disaster of just this sort: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens…. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
Protect yourself from the coming inflation. Like the Bank of England’s pension fund…
I’ve been quantitive easing every morning for my entire life sat on a bog reading the FT.
In early morning trading today, pound and FTSE plummeting, so much for the FT.
FT = Pink Toilet Paper, I use to read it and look where it got me. Broken windows.
Fred the Shred has also lost his mate Gordoom, as well. McDebt has run a mile, and used trillions of taxpayers money, to protect his own job. That’s why none of the bankers are in jail, and why most are still in jobs – if they went McDebt would have to go too.
You only took the FT because you had a pink bathroom.
If we can create billions of pounds out of thin air why do we need to increase income tax to 50%? It is going to raise virtually nothing, compared to the amount that’s already been created out of thin air, and will reduce discretionary spending, thus harming the lower paid.
Brown and Darling have no knowledge of, or interest in, tax policy. They just find a shiny new pebble on the fiscal beach and throw it through somebody’s window.
We really can create billions of pounds out of thin air, Anonymous. Sadly, what we can’t create out of thin air is one single penny of purchasing power. Every pound that has been created by running the printing press has been paid for (note the past tense) out of the taxpayers pocket.
Logically the BOE pension fund has been trying to protect its members from the inevitable, the remorseless, inflation to come, no matter how futile the attempt.
If you would like to provide yourself with a very slim degree of protection, this is what you should do:
Remove yourself and your family to a remote rural area right now. Buy yourself some arable land and plan to plant it come spring. Get yourself a gun or two and gather together all of the youthful male members of your extended family – they will be needed as crop guards. Get in a good supply of diesel oil. Spend all of your remaining cash on flour and the means to store it safely and protect it from theft.
All those young men are going to be in need of some feminine company. Country girls are best. They can be reckoned to cope easily enough with getting up to milk the cows at five in the morning.
Who is this “we”? – citizens cannot conjure money out of thin air, and anyone trying will risk being had up for forging. The government, on the other hand, in the shape of the BoE, can create money out of thin air. The result, sometime down the line (it usually takes 18 months plus), is inflation. This is what QE is for – to create inflation to counter ‘deflation’.
At the moment there is a credit strike (the term ‘credit crunch’ is a poor description). The result is the velocity of money has slowed down, making it look like there is less money available. Less money = deflation. However, it only looks like less money. As soon as money starts circulating again, there will be an apparent increase in money. Add in the QE created money and you get inflation.
the 50% tax band was introduced so that in November they can announce a raise to the basic band to 30% in April 2010. SIMPLES
With an election just around the corner? I think ot!
When did Griffin stop beating his boyfriend?
I have been banging on about this for months, nice to see you catching up at las.
So you agree with me then Guido that I should switch to a fixed rate mortgage now.
Cheers!
Absolutely. Though timing is tough. You have to anticipate the Gilt rout…
Well I have to execute what I think is a very good deal by latest December (and paperwork will take a few weeks no doubt). I think I am going to go for it but will give it another month before taking the plunge.
Ta.
NS&I have just doubled some of their savings rates.
Just paid the tail end of our mortgage off…yippee!
How can MPs forget an event like that in their life?
So true. Everybody I know who had paid off their mortgage has had a bit of a party, so how come a few MPs managed to forget..?
Mps are fucking stupid, gangsters, but stupid
So no more renting money from the Bank for you then?
Don’t in all honesty understand a word of it! In the natural order of things the banks should have been allowed to go bust. I do know that we’re in one hell of a mess, and it’s almost certainly much worse than we’re being told. Thanks gorgon for your exquisitely hand-made and perfectly formed twin progeny ………boom and bust!
I agree, all this financial speak is bamboozling and what does a Black Swan got to do with double-digit inflation and after 12 pints at the Black Swan how the hell do you get a square mile?
I could swear we have been hearing these prognostications of doom about an impending inflation apocalypse for quite some time now but I must be mistaken of course.
It is no doubt still just around the corner.
The Black Swan is a theory of the unforseen, uncommon but inevitable to put it crudely.
The author was fairly accurate about a great deal in predicting aspects of the credit crunch and banking collapse but he was not the only one.
Nouriel Roubini was startlingly accurate in his prediction of what would and did occur.
And of course we had Warren Buffet warning about the Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction, derivatives CLO’s CDS’s etc.
Nassim Taleb is also scathing about the actual predictive value of standard and well used economic models, formulas and nostrums.
It’s coming, don’t worry. The minute the banks stop hoarding the bailout money and start lending it out, inflation will jump massively. Pound is also now falling again against the dollar (we’re printing more than the Yanks then!) so imports will get more expensive hence even more inflation!
Inflation takes a goodly while to get going, then it’s a monster to stop. Look upon it as a sleeping dragon that the government and the Bank of England have been jabbing violently up the arse with sharp sticks. Get the picture?
The picture I have is hearing the same message every month or so.
I’m not saying it can’t or won’t go up I’m just pointing out that it still hasn’t. You take two different economists and you get 5 different opinions. And if you keep saying something is going to happen and it doesn’t people do notice.
It’s not an endorsement of Brown or Darling as they had the predictive skills of an astrologer with a brain injury for all that has passed, it’s simply not buying into the stagflationists or the inflationinsts camps.
It won’t just leap into double digits overnight whatever happens if the reason we haven’t seen it yet is such changes take a good while to filter through.
Believe something when you see it and have real evidence for it as we all know how prescient 99% of those involved in the City and Finance were for the Credit Crunch and Bank disaster.
Inflation takes a goodly while to get going, then it’s a monster to stop. Look upon it as a sleeping dragon that the government and the Bank of England have been jabbing violently up the arse with sharp sticks. Get the picture?
Just like last time then and the Conservatives get all the blame juat after taking office and all the hidden bombs go off. Never forget The ginger Blears when she said on QT “remember when interets rates were 15% under the Tories, well? Do you remember?”
Yes I do fucking remember and it was 18 months after the total fuckwittery of the previous Labour administration ending in the winter of discontent
DONT WE EVER FUCKING LEARN!!!!
BC,
In layman’s terms if the Bank prints money then the supply of money goes up.
If the supply of anything goes up then the price will fall to meet that supply, so the pound becomes devalued on the money markets (you get less dollars or euros for a pound).
Given that we import almost everything prices rise as we need more pounds to buy them, hence the inflation.
It does get a lot more complicated than that, but hopefullly it makes a little more sense to you now?
Ah, am a bit more wiser here anyways thanks Tat Watch.
Thanks tat, am not much wiser, to me it’s like staring into the engine of a car when the bonnet’s up. Wish I were financially literate. Though I know how to make money, been successfully self-employed for 20 years!
BC, look at Zimbabwe for what happens when you print money. It’s an extreme example but followed the economic theories through.
Basically if you print money your currency becomes worth less (or worthless in Zim’s case) and everything you import becomes way more expensive (oil, food, cars etc) – this is the main cause of inflation.
The bank have printed or are printing around 10% of a year’s economic activity, it would not be entirely unreasonable to see inflation at 10% or thereabouts within the next year…
steve steve ffs why are you and your fellow tory tramps so dumb?
you moan and bitch, quite correctly about labour printing money in a desperate attempt to win votes at the next election but your tribalism forces you to overlook the facts.
the reason we are in a recession is because of the banks policy of quantitive profiteering.
the banks lent hundreds of times more money than they ever possessed!
and then paid themselves billions of pounds in profits and bonuses for doing such a stupid and destabilising thing. you could not make this shit up.
that is what caused the problem in the first place.
it is no good you tories whingeing after the fact about the government when they try to limit the damage done by the banks.
if I were in charge the penalty for quantitive easing by banks or government would be a shot in the back of the head.
and it is interesting to note the bank of England were all for the latest injection of 50 billion monopoly pounds into the system. profit again innit.
you are not very intelligent steve.
in fact you are very dim.
your story does not add up steve. you better change the record, you are playing too many bum notes tramp.
okay tat, I’ll bite!
The main reason for the bankers’ profiteering, as you call it, it because the practices they engaged in over the past few years were not only tolerated but actively encouraged by governments, in order to generate economic activity and profits leading to taxes.
The UK and the US had the most deregulated banking sectors because they wanted to attract the banks to their shores and pay their taxes – remember that 40% of all the City bonuses went back to the Treasury, as well as a substantial proportion of the banks’ profits as corporation tax.
The problem is that the UK did not save any of this substantial tax money, they increased spending and borrowed yet more. Whereas now other countries are increasing public spending to stimulate the economy, the UK cannot do so because there is no money there to spend, credit lines are almost exhausted and the IMF are walking up the drive ready to knock on the door.
In short, I still blame the government!
Tat’s simplistic explanation isn’t bad. But look at it another way, the UK PLC at any one time is worth a certain amount. If you look at the currency, which should reflect of that value, then the more notes or “shares” in circulation at that time then the less they would be worth worth. And so to buy anything you have to use more. That is inflation.
I worked in Angola for a while where inflation was about 10,000 per cent per annum. Each passing day you got more kwanza for your dollars than you did the day before. So you only changed enough for the amount of beers you would be drinking that evening. A beer was consistently about 2 USD but the price in kwanza would increase every day, that was when I understood what inflation really was. For 20 USD you would get a carrier bag full of local currency wrapped like house bricks. We’d drink for a hour (or so) but it would take more that that to pay the bill because it took forever to count it. This inflation was caused by “quantitive easing”.
Locals didn’t want to be paid in local currency. But they would happily accept payment of cans of Heineken, since by the end of the week the cans would retain their value whereas the local currency would be worthless.
thanks phil, I did put it rather well, didn’t I.
but then I am top boy.
No, tat, you did not put it either well, or fairly. The fundamental difference between publicly quoted banks, like Barclays, and the government’s bank, the BoE, is that the government has the monopoly right to create money out of thin air – and never pay it back.
Private banks like Barclays, loan out more than their capital – true, but the vital difference (over the BoE) is that all the loans must be paid back. Crucially this is why we got the ‘credit crunch’: a large proportion of the loans went bad. So the private banks were faced with crippling losses on their loan book.
Of course when the government continues to create more ‘new’ money than the growth of GDP warrants, then we get inflation because there is more money chasing the same goods.
all the loans must be paid back budgie?
you must be having a larf.
if you are a taxpayer then your postiton is entirely flawed.
the banks are dumping bad loans on the taxpayer and still collecting pre meltdown profits.
can I get this straight budgie, are you saying you are happy with that arrangement?
Yes, tat. Legally, when you take out a loan or mortgage from a high street bank you are obliged to pay that loan back. This is necessary to balance the credit that was originally created for your loan. But now some people cannot repay their loans because they are over-extended, hitting the banks hard.
But the private banks cannot, like the BoE, create money out of thin air to pay themselves, otherwise they obviously would have done over the last two years. Instead Gordoom has used taxpayers money plus BoE money conjuring QE to bail out his banker (ex) friends because it has protected his own position.
Many bankers should be fired, and some in jail. But if that happened people would start asking ‘what was Brown the Chancellor doing whilst all this was brewing?’ Grotesquely, he was encouraging yet more debt and pretending that ‘boom and bust’ had been abolished, thus misleading the whole country into becoming over indebted.
then you are a mug budgie.
you just talked yourself into a big hole you cretin.
oh well, just goes to show that the tories are talking out the back of their heads.
innit.
77; if the pound devalues then you need to make more to export more to tax the workers more to convert tax and exports to a foreign currency such as dollars, etc, to pay down foreighn owed debt. As this is impossible to do we need to inflate or default. Either way we are fucked and even if some have paid off the mortgage and retired they won’t be able to pay the council tax or any other bills ‘cod their savings are worth shite.
Except for one thing…there never was a real boom in the first place, it was all just carried along by funny money, smoke and mirrors and and fraud until the inevitable happened.
Except for one thing…there never was a real boom in the first place, it was all just carried along by funny money, smoke and mirrors and and fraud until the inevitable happened.
So the fruits of the ex-chancellor are coming to bear nicely, with the UK in economic self-destruct mode.
The man who sold the gold is selling everything else too.
Only problem is it wasn’t his to sell.
As I’ve said before, this man should be put on trial for crimes against the country.
Seriously.
Convert him from basso profundo to soprano – at no cost to the public purse.
Not sure if he wasn’t soprano already?
you’re not saying he’s a poofter by any chance are you? Heaven forbid.
agree
I can’t believe these tory tossers are not pinning the blame on us.
After all, the economic crisis is all our fault.
The question might be why they aren’t pinning the blame on you tossers, some of the possible answers do not look good for post GE!
The reason why Gordoom McDebt has not blamed the bankers is because people would ask ‘who was controlling the bankers?’ and come up with the name of – Gordoom.
bare
Where do you want me?
Down the Swanny.
Up the Swanny , right up
Or even up the Kyber!
“The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
You’re one in a million Mr Fawkes.
Doea all this mean my savings will start to give a decent return again?
yep! It will take a while though to work through the system.Say one to two years.
Yeah, but it’s not that simple. If there remains a gap between nominal and real interest rates, savers will still be screwed. Getting a 10% return again might seem great on the face of it, but not if inflation’s running at 14%.
Inflation is the government’s way of taxing savers.
Was it worth it all those years working hard to pay off mortgage to leave the kids a house which they will have to sell to pay the sodding Inheritance Tax.
Sod the kids, sell the house now and sod off to Dubrovnik for the rest of your lives.
© Moneylaunderers Inc 2009 . all rights reserved, shares can go up, down and sideways and always read the small print if you can get hold of a Jodrell Bank telescope.
Er, what savings. We’ve had New Labour and the Bank of England devalue people’s savings for 12 years. Artificially low interest rates for all that time to create a boom (which savers took no part in). Now the borrowers are crying over their greed and having to pay back what they borrowed. Instead of borrwoers suffering, the BoE lowers interest rates to record low of 0,5% and Quantitively Easing savers cash into oblivion. Same goes for private pension funds.
What you might get in 2 years time is NOTHING compared to what savers ahve lost in the past 12 years of New Labour.
Borrowers laugh, savers pay. That’s why the UK economy is so f*cked right now. The borrowers MUST be made to pay for what they did, it is their greed and unsustained borrowing, they should take the financial hit. Stop stealing from savers.
So what should you do if you are both borrower and saver? Hit yourself in the face?
Deflation increases the value of government debt whereas inflation destroys it.
As you say, inflation is the profligate’s friend. Which is why Gordoom is trying to engineer some inflation.
There is no valid technical reason that I can see for the government failing to maintain the value of money. But our whole society, not just Liebore, is geared to inflation.
McMentals track record of stealing pensions & increasing the tax burden on UK citizens is there for all to see.
Nicking the rest of what we have via inflation is completely within his character & his insane fiscal plan to destroy Britain as an independent country.
Mandelson is probably pulling alot of the strings for his EU paymasters – & he is exacting a terrible price for the country from Mcmental to prop up the most unpopular & unmandated PM in our history.
Bleak.
Stock up on ammo & tinned food.
Agree, tinned food is the answer! My mother always said that…….a well stocked larder and the bastards ‘ll never get you, well, she didn’t say it quite like that!
Vegetable Patch, and foraging, good soul food!
a paedlo and some beer and of to the ipl lads
And a greenhouse – very useful for salad stuffs!
don’t forget to keep those lettuces shaded
Stock up on Demi-Johns from the recycling site, Blackberry wine mmm……..
Banish both of them to the farthest reaches of the Gulag Archipeligo. They should
be forever remembered for bringing this country to economic ruin – watched over
by the trades unions officials together with the sheep who followed them.
Totally agreed.
These tory idiots are blaming it all on the government.
Lucky for us eh?
We are the ones wot dunnit.
We are the guilty party but the tory supporters are too stupid to realise it!
Good one.
Don’t worry you bankers, you are protected by Gordoom. You see, if lots of bankers were sacked then people would start wondering what the guy at the top was doing for 10 years. McBust obviously thinks it is worth a trillion of taxpayer’s money to keep him in a job for a few more months.
Index Linked Gilt issuance has largely erooded the British government’s ability to inflate away its debt. Crucial point that.
Chris, please explain this point to those of us who are less economically literate ;)
Assuming no GDP growth, and government engineered inflation of 10 per cent, the value of money will be halved in under 8 years. So anyone (government or citizen) (if repaying in 8 years time) will repay their debt with money worth only half what it was when they borrowed it .
Gilts are government debt. Index linked Gilts follow inflation so the government has nothing to gain by creating inflation, if all its debts were index linked. They are not, however. I do not know the proportion but I suspect it is small.
How has the ratio of index-linked to normal gilts change over the last 20 (or so) years ?
Only to the extent of the index linked issuance. The rest of the debt and it is growing mightily and much of the off balance sheet exposure (public sector pensions) can be eroded by inflation.
It all started in Kirkcaldy.
When the media were lauding Brown in the late 90’s and early years of this century as probably “the best Chancellor this country has had in recent times” it was obvious to me that Brown was more likely the “most incompetent” Chancellor this country has had(a title which he has seemingly made his own by moving on to be the “most incompetent” Prime Minister in recent times).
Since 1997 Brown has made a series of catastrophic blunders which are “legion”; he effectively probably sealed the death knell of the world’s best funded private pension scheme by his punitive annual tax on pension funds;he sold gold at an all time historical low for little advantage;he relaxed the financial regulations enabling the present banking crisis to be nutured in the late 90’s and encouraged the banks to pump money into the retail sector to finance his over-ambitious spending plnas and encouraged the public to take on ever increasing personal debt to fuel the economic bubble on the mantra of “no more boom and bust”. His “love” for complication within the taxation system also exacerbated an already wounded economy as did his “smoke and mirrors” 10p Tax fiasco in his last budget as Chancellor which was announced purely as a device to ensure his acclamation by the Labour Party. The results of that scheme and the necessary coding”adjustments” subsequently are well documented and are another indicator of either Brown’s total incompetence or blatant politicking with the nation’s finances for his own advantage
His latest scheme -”quantitive easing” is complete an utter folly too – it will ultimately fuel inflation and the rise in public debt is a “national scandal” which has effectively “pawned” the next generation into a lifetime of debt repayment,higher taxation,a drastically reduced standard of living and lost opportunity for thousands of children being born in the UK to-day
Finally he persuaded his friends in banking circles such as Sir Victor Blank (for purely “local” political reasons)to take on a failed HBoS “sight unseen” and by doing so turn a basically sound if unexciting LloydsTSB Banking Group into an almost basket case when the correct action would be to have allowed HBoS to fail(its smaller retail depositors would have been secured by the Deposits Guarantee Scheme)and allowed other bidders to have picked up the remaining assets.
When the history of the past decade comes to be written and historians mull over the Banking Crisis of 2007/2008 they may well reason that the crisis started in the USA initially but that the past actions of Brown when he was Chancellor ensured that out of all the western industrialised nations – the UK was one of the worst placed to deal with it and that subsequent decisions taken by the UK government were driven more by political calculations and downright panic than economic.
Others will doubtless come up with many other reasons why Brown deserves national opprobium and to lose the election other than the above but the “bottom line” is that the country simply cannot afford him to be in charge and “managing” economic policy for another 5 years
You missed out the bit where he fucked up the MPs (ongoing) expenses scam. The one chance he had to go down in history for real reform…
er… and about the botched election…
er… and the overpaid tax credits…
er… The £10,000 corporation tax thingy…
er … Public Sector borrowing…
… and now they are all on holiday…will somebody please end this agony.
Excellent comment 51 Anon – succinct and understated.
Too right, if he had been allowed to grow up and had not been told he was the bee’s knees and this refrain had not been taken up by the media. He might have had to work for a living. The Guy is an ar*e
I can never remember the people of the UK being so incandescently angry with a government before. Never in my longish lifetime have I. Hatred of this government is visceral and raw and eclipses anything we saw under Thatcher in the 1980s.
Yet to watch the BBC ‘news’ you’d think there was nothing unusual going on. They like a lot of other organisations are clearly in denial and the way things are heading, are in for a very rude awakening indeed.
Yes, what planet is the BBC on? Who are they talking to, apart from Grauniad readers, that is? I don’t watch TV and I rarely listen to R4 news – it’s mostly drivel and statist propaganda. Lots of people appear to be abandoning the BBC.
I think your analysis is sound, Guido, but governments have been using inflation to avoid the consequences of their fiscal imprudence since the second World war.
Much of the so-called rise in property values is simply a consequence of devaluation of money. This has led to an explosion of debt as over the long term the debt can be repaid in devalued currency.
Governments want to be elected. They have little regard for any other issue. Accordingly they have systematically spent more than they raise in tax, knowing that the population will tolerate devaluation but that the distress caused by deflation can lead to social chaos and revolution.
The Bank of England is a willing player in this charade.
Honesty in this matter is conspicuous by its absence.
The only solution is to return the right to issue money to the population at large. That is scrap the legal tender laws and anything else that reinforces the state monopoly of money. That would also lead to the closure of the central banks roles as guardians of the currency.
Money is far too serious a subject to be left in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians.
Brilliant, Hugh !
I always thought that the reason for a centralised bank was to protect the people who invested whether by buying shares or banking their money with all the other banks, and silly me that these other banks had to lodge enough money in the central bank to cover this investment. (ha ha)
Because there were bank failures before and this was the solution, also HaHa.
The freedom-loving folk of Lewes, East Sussex have taken matters into their own hands without the need to repeal anything at all. The initial Lewes Pounds have had a local deflationary effect as they were taken home by tourists, clipping the supply of locally accepted currency.
They’ve issued a £20 note now (exchanged at par with the GB Pound). Expect the Tourist Pocketary Deflation Effect to multiply, even as their currency gains in acceptance in local cheese shops, pubs and antique shops.
Thomas Paine’s spirit lives on…
Guido,
Can you or someone else who is financially literate please explain to an economic ignorant like me, what “Protect yourself from the coming inflation” might mean in basic actionable steps?
- Fix rate mortgage for a couple of years??????
- Anything else???
Step 1=Wrap Head in Tinfoil.
Step 2=Go to the Nearest Beach.
Step 3=Dig Head Sized Hole.
Think my sides just split or my bowel just blew up lol
Depends how pessimistic you are. If you’re quite pessimistic, buy gold or silver. If you’re very pessimistic, buy tin. Tinned food that is. And lots of it.
The obvious thing is not to hold any cash (including savings in banks/building societies). Buy physical assets that can’t be devalued.
That is my view, productive physical assets are hard to manage as investments…
Medium term I suggest to buy shares in companies who will benefit from the rapid modernisation of Asia. China is debt free and will be a much more dynamic economy than the overindebted West.
Since all western economies are competing to sell masssive amounts of government paper, interest rates are bound to rise eventually, constraining economic growth.
For people like me with no mortgage and a little savings, put all spare money in index-linked National Savings [NS&I].
I found The Black Swan almost unreadable. Indeed, I haven’t yet finished it, and probably never will. So many books, and so little time. I found his previous book, Fooled by Randomness, far better. It’s more rigorous, and lacks the discursive and tedious repetitiveness of the later (supposedly more popular) book. Far more thoughtful, and far better written than the pot-boiler. Thoroughly recommended.
Currently, I’m reading The Divided Self by R.D.Laing. (It’s taken me several days working out differences between ‘inner self’ – embodied or unembodied), but I’ll get there. Looking forward to finishing it so that I can move on to Bertrand Russell’s Power – A New Social Analysis, 1938. Wish me luck!
Currently I’m reading ‘Biggles flies undone’
It’s not a very good read I’m afraid. Best of luck plowing through it.
Laing was a complete pseud, quite frankly. The words form nice patterns but do not mean anything.
I was wondering why it was taking me so long to get my head around the meaning of Kierkegaad’s ’shutupness’. How Laing describes his patient’s ‘false-self system’.
you’re not saying he’s a poofter by any chance are you? Heaven forbid.
207 should have gone as an answer to a previous topic. Apoligies
Laing and Kierkegaad? I’m not really bothered, poofters or not!
Regarding the ‘inner self’ Contessa – if you haven’t already seen it, you might enjoy this ‘take’:
http://www.tpuc.org/content/ego
accompanying article for those who don’t ‘get’ it:
http://www.tpuc.org/content/many-people-cannot-distinguish-what-ego
Thanks, very interesting Sukyspook!
i’ve always been in two minds about ‘the Divided Slef’
FFS, contessa, Laing is one of those you move on from once you’ve turned 14.
Probably, I was reading English Literature at the time.
Taleb put his money where his extremely large gob is, back in 2008, and made $ millions by betting on a collapse and against the market. He’s a clever bastard, right enough. Nu Labia’s Phyllis Starkey criticized Cameron for appearing on the same platform with him, describing Taleb’s views as “eccentric” … just as if the statist, thieving vermin of her party occupied the centre of the circle!
I know whose opinions I prefer, and they aren’t Gordon Brown’s.
I’m currently reading “Economics for Dummies”, but it’s a bit of a struggle because they haven’t got to hard-working families or post neo-classical endogenous growth theory yet, and Gordon told me they where important.
Gordon’s only halfway through the book himself. I believe he got stuck at the chapter about public sector debt.
I’ll just say again that in the run up to the 1997 election, the BBC described Brown as an expert in finance with a Phd in economics. LOL!!
Here’s what to do: open your mouth wide (just like ‘normal’); insert book in mouth; find busy main line; lie down for a few hours and rest your brain on one of the rails. Problem solved.
Despite the Guardian’s attempts to whip up Cameron’s comments last night into a story and their sudden volte-face on Taleb, a man they previously decribed as a “genius financial doomsayer”, I can’t really see anything objectionable in anything Cameron said.
IF the Govt keeps spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave then yes, the markets will start demanding higher interest rates; HMG sufferered its first bond auction failure in many years recently seemingly because the rates being offered were too low, and one of the main uses of QE funding appears to be repurchasing government debt. The yield curve already suggests a likely sharp rise in interest rates to 5% or so in a couple of years and if inflation takes hold then nominal rates will have to be higher still.
IF the Government keeps spending even more than that then yes there is a chance of default; taken to its logical conclusion, if debt gets large enough it can never be repaid so HMG would have to default.
Dear flatcap army.
I’ll have you know, it is the duty of every matelot to get the pongos to pay for the drinks when ashore.
you dhould see the gaurdian piece and comments
It could always declare the issues concerned ‘irredeemable’ and just continue to pay the interest on them, like with the old War Loan stock.
In what way would not repaying the principal and paying interest instead NOT count as a loan default?
It’s default in all but name, because the government originally undertook to repay both principal and interest. The important thing is though, that there is established precedent for it. it’s been done before and looks highly likely to be done again. International investors beware.
O/T but
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article6801053.ece
See my post yesterday!
No doubt those who say deflation is upon us:
Do not do the weekly shop
Do not have to pay for the petrol in their tanks
Do not pay council tax
Do not pay road tax
Do not pay telly tax
Do not pay water bills
Do not eat out
Do not pay income tax
Do not pay to park at hospitals
Do not get parking, speeding or clamping fines
Do not travel on public transport
Do not smoke or drink
Or are MPs and public servants on expenses.
Yes that’s why deflation is upon us because people have very little disposable income left to spend on anything after Gordon & Co have finished, taxed till the pips squeek! by H.M. and then swindled by various utility companies and local authorities of what little is left.
As to the future fiscal situation my hedge is tinned corned beef, this is an entry level investment which should suit novices with lower £- portfolios.
Tinned tomatoes and tinned beans are a better bet as we all know what happens to corned beef if it is not tinned properly.
Does it explode?
Sugar’s a good one. It last indefinitely and can always be bartered for something worth more if the shit hits the fan big-time. It’s natural anti-depressant qualities mark it out as ideally suited for extended civil strife.
None of those things are anything to do with deflation.
Deflation is a decrease in the supply of money & credit.
Inflation is an increase in the supply of money and credit.
We have had the inflation already (i.e It caused House price rises,Property price speculation etc)
Next comes…..deflation! Big falls in the values of asets etc
Yep, with you on this and especially your snappy use of the plural of “premium” in it – I assume this is a result of a constant supply of Ricard 45 to the brain.
Ricard 45?
Real louches like me say ‘Pah!’ to your under-strength pastis, and raise a glass of le veritable 51 to the coming economic shitstorm…
The simplified Misean view would be that QE IS inflation. That destruction in the value of a currency by its over-production or the erosion of its quality will certainly lead to a rise in the general price level. In other words price rises are a result of inflation, not its cause. Hence inflation is a monetary problem not a price problem. Deflation is the opposite.
I have never ever been a supporter of QE. Nor in any way do I support the bail out of any bank. Both of these actions will lead to a rise in the general price level as they are inflationary. If the banks had been allowed to fail a lot of the funny money supplied by Brown and others from 1997 to 2007 would have been destroyed – deflation – and we would now be in a position to benefit from the general global deflation driven price reductions.
But, nope. Witless Brown has printed so much extra Sterling that it is transparent to every trader and investor that it is worth a lot less in relation to other currencies.
I’m with Guido. A high rise in the general price level is on the way as is a serious ramp up in interest rates. Which is why Brown is doing all this so that the shit will hit the fan on someone else’s watch. He has no care as to whether or not this damages the UK. He just cares about his own political future or how the future will judge him.
Personally I reckon such behaviour is treasonable and he should be arrested. Unfortunately I don’t think the death penalty is any longer available.
If the Lisbon Constitution becomes full EU law as Gordon Brown wet dreams about, then there is a clause in it where “the state” can kill someone in “extreme” circumstances such as terrorism. I think what Gordon has done to the UK economy counts in that category. He should have read the Constitution before signing it.
It doesn’t say how we should imprison them though.
Extricate ourselves from the EU, repeal any parts of the human rights legislation that could possible relate to treasonable politicians and Bob is your uncle. Regarding Brown and B Liar, you would be very hard pressed to come up with a punishment that was cruel or unusual in the circumstances.
Yeah, Blair/Brown were not in power very long before they passed a law to abolish the death penalty for treason. That should have told us something at the time!
I think that the Scottish People have first claim on any death penalty for Gordon he was our traitor first.
fight ya for him
ermm
wait a minute
that’s what he wants
divide and rule
nah, let’s beat the bastard up togevva
The death sentence for treason was dropped, but not for high treason.
With sighning the lisbon constitution they have committed high treason, if proof ever got out that they were purposely sabotaging the future economy then that would also be classified as high treason.
But when they own the courts there is nothing you can do legaly.
In a post-revolutionary Britain, the revolutionaries can do whatever they please. They’re not bound by any laws at all unless they chose to be so. I can envisage a scenario unfolding where certain people (we know who they are) are hanged for treason. The revolutionaries may also decide to hang all the child killers in the prisons, too, whilst they have the freedom to do so, and right various other injustices, before sitting down to draft a Constitution to – among other things – prevent such a blatant abuse of an elected government’s powers in the future.
Lola said: “Hence inflation is a monetary problem not a price problem. Deflation is the opposite.”
Presumably you mean “Deflation is the inverse” because deflation is also a monetary problem.
Central banks constantly inflate the money supply through open market operations. This leads to price inflation as more money is chasing the same supply of goods.
Those that receive the money get a first mover advantage as they get the money before the price rise. Those who can afford to speculate have an advantage over those who do not. Politicians can buy votes, by defering the costs unto future tax payers.
The only answer is to end central banks, and introduce a free money system.
The only politician with the guts to propose this is good old Ron Paul.
Not being an economist let me see if i’ve got this right. When the government wants to spend more than they collect in tax,they take out loans in the form of “gilts”. So called i suppose, because countries don’t generally go tits up on the balance sheet. Gilts are sold to investors on the basis that said investors will get their outlay back,plus interest. Now because the Gov/BoE can’t sell these gilts,they have resorted to the method of printing money to buy them.
So,the taxpayer owes the taxpayer for repayment of said loans that were brought with fairy money that doesn’t really exist. I believe this sum is either 50 billion or 175 billion. Where does the money come from to pay these loans back? Please don’t tell me we print more.
I’m willing bet that part of it at least will be paid back by higher taxes after the next GE , regardless of which party wins.
agreed
nell,
but why should taxes be increased to pay debt when we own several banks and could therefore borrow from our own nationalised banks.
you see that is the problem with tory policy: because their friends own the banks they won’t allow the taxpayer to have the dividends and so will increase taxes instead.
the tories are part of the problem nell.
as an intellectual reading all this guff from Guido and the rest of the tory mob living in their fantasy economics world and tryin to sound so clever here is like listening to my niece arguing why she should not share an ice cream with her brother.
it is sad and pathetic and damaging to the country.
but first things first. quantitive easing must be stopped immediately.
atleas we can agree on that, no?
Well Merv actually wanted to QE by 25bn pounds more than the colossal figure that was just agreed, but was voted down by all but two others in the Committee. It’s almost as if Merv is in on a pre-planned destruction of the currency!
merv must be on acid head innit.
Tats Anger Management councillor said: “Please don’t tell me we print more.”
Yes, Gordoom probably will print more.
Most government debt in the form of Gilts has to be paid back (to the public, the Chinese, whoever).
But QE enables the BoE to create money out of thin air and use that purely invented money to buy Gilts. That ‘money’ can then be spent by the government, where it competes with, and looks like, pre-existing money. The government gets money for free and we get inflation in 18 months time or thereabouts.
As someone who is right wing come election time, I never bought into the idiotic New Labour mantra of idiotic Keynesian economics. What has happened to the UK is that we are using Mugabenomics, printing lots of money and hiding the dire state of the economy. Putting off the pain until after the general election.
In the UK we have rigged statistic after statistic to justify the Quantitative Easing scheme New Labour and their Bank of England sycophants pursue, that includes the inflation rate which people in the REAL world know is miles higher than what New Labour and the BoE claim it is. Has Council Tax EVER gone down – no it has not.
The UK press (tv / radio / print) is not in the slightest bit questioning of the QE, and least of all the BBC, who refuses to print any critical comment of QE and what it is doing to the REAL economy.
Savers are seeing their money being devalued, foreign investors starting to turn their backs – why put money into a country only to get less back than when they started. The UK pound has been devalued, our supreme leaders Adolf Blair and Adolf Brown avoiding the “pound in your pocket” speech in the 1960’s of a previous failed Labour government.
Just found this video clip, Peter Mandelson denying that the UK economy is not shagged by record high levels of debt people and New Labour have run up.
what a c’unt.
Quote from DT just now:
“Today’s news that the governor sought an even bigger QE expansion of life support to the economy will be taken as a signal by financial markets that he harbours doubts about the strength of the recovery in the UK. Sterling reacted quickly to the news, with foreign exchange traders driving the pound down more than a cent against the dollar to just under $1.64″.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/6053877/Bank-of-England-governor-defeated-in-bid-to-expand-money-printing-plan-to-200bn.html
Invest in Norwegian Kroners, small population, not in EU, Hydro-electric power, plenty of oil and gas revenue 50% of which is goes into a trust for future generations, not spent on illegal wars.
Is the language difficult? We may have to relocate there in due course.
They all speak English.
And if you want to speak Norske pronounce an “a” as an “r” and you’ve cracked it.
For example the city of Stavanger in English = St”a”v”a”nger becomes in Norwegian = St”r”v”r”nger.
I talk like that when I’m drunk!
So Whale would be pronounced…. extinct?
Yeah, great country in principle, but beware it’s cold and dark – permanently dark in the winter. In the latter part of December, the sun never rises at all!
Yes and you don’t have a border with England and you do not have a traitorous political class that sold you down the river in the 1970’s to keep themselves in power.
Just think if they had not lied in 1970’s, Scotland could have been independent and there would be no Grodon Brown as Prime Monster and the UK would not be tits up now.
We need high inflation because it is the only way we can cheat those silly foreigners who were good enough to subsidise our spending binge and subsequent recession. They won’t get their money back. Ha ha ha, the joke’s on you Johnny Foreigner! True, UK people who saved for their retirement will also get screwed, but more fool them. Those of us who were wise enough to inherit large tracts of land or pay ourselves lavishly for mucking everything up will do quite nicely, thank you.
It’s the same the whole world over;
It’s the poor what gets the blame.
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure.
Ain’t it all a blooming shame?
Seems to sum it up well.
Black swans, while rare in Britain, can be found on Norfolk Island. I was there on holiday and one of them swam up to me and said: ‘You’re Matthew Parris – you’re even rarer than me’.
I was surprised at this highly unexpected event, but I had to admit that the swan could not be contradicted.
He’s finally floated away to La-La Land.
breke yer legs one of them, or is it yor arm?
Both arms and legs remained intact, but I’m about to felch a gerbil so the situation might change
To Matthew, try not to antagonise it or better still forget the Gerbil and go for something with smaller teeth, and remember animals don’t take to everyone, in that respect they are very similar to people.
Sorry this is O/T Guido but needs must in this increasingly scandalous situation:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/6051666/Gen-Sir-Richard-Dannatt-We-need-24-hour-surveillance-in-Afghanistan.html
As more of our troops are killed or seriously injured, it is quite clear that no one has a grip of the situation and that things are deteriorating rapidly. This disgusting and squalid little government has betrayed our armed forces to an extent that broders on the criminal. They have also effectively shredded the military covenant. They have starved our troops of the resources they so desperately need. Our troops are paying for it with their lives for God’s sake. What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan anyway? This must surely be the time to recall parliament and for DC to show some leadership for once by calling for a vote of no confidence. How else do we remove, very urgently, the lunatic at the helm? Can we impeach for gross dereliction of duty? McBust and Aintworthatoss are frankly pathetic.
Someone do something! MPs, stuff your 82 days holiday and do something important and urgent for once in your miserable lives. Your complacency is a national disgrace. And if the government’s only response it to try smearing Dannatt then don’t even think about it, because we know exactly what you bastards are up to.
there was apiece in the mail saying minsters where going to smear dannett over his expenses
‘elicopter Bob is in theatre at Blackpool and has no intention coming back early.
He’s building sand castles, planning our next invasion and drawing maps of Hiroshima in the sand. He has a pictures of John Wayne on the walls of his beach hut and keeps whistling the “sands of Iwo Jima”.
He was last seen going in to Blackpool’s Army & Navy stores to buy some surplus camofluage trousers but he couldn’t find any the stupid sod.
Do any Python fans note the startling resemblance of Anusworth both facially and by the sound of his voice to The Gumbies, and in particular, the cartoon Gumby called Arfa?
knock, knock…
come in…
crash, smash, boing….
open the door and come in
Yeah, it looks like his brain hurts. :-)
perhaps in ‘onour of ‘elicopter bob the new default swearword on this site should be ‘OON
Being in Afghanistan has allowed the UK to be flooded with record harvests of heroin. This keeps the drugged up population happy and so don’t question what New Labour have done. This is especially true of New Labour lovies who were at Thatcher with great zeal, but stone cold quiet at the destruction of the UK’s economic and social fabric New Labour have unleashed.
I’ve never met a happy smack head.
Well when they’ve finally admitted defeat in Afghanistan, they can send the lads back to Iraq, because it’s increasingly obvious the mission failed there too. Everything this fucking useless government touches turns to shit. It’s like a fucking curse.
The Faecal Touch!
**Applause **
**Applause** too
Maybe it’s time for a military coup.
Tanks outside parliament, MPs arrested for treaston.
If only.
Good idea Sarah, shame there’s no spare tanks though. Maybe “Snatch” Landies outside Parliament instead?
You’re fantasising again Sarah!
Dannatt says they need 24hr sureillance. Uh – who has been CGS for the last 3 years ?
I don’t think that’s very fair – I think you will find that Dannatt has made more noise during his term of office than all of his CGS predecessors put together.
Happy to be corrected HJ – but can you give examples ? Other than what he has said in the last few weeks ? His record is not good over the 3 years, in my understanding ( which may be wrong )
Anon 146 – could I recommend that you view the parliamentary select committee questioning McBust a week or two back (sorry, I don’t have the link) when he was asked whether there had been any request for 2000 additional troops? His blatant but pathetic attempts to repeatedly avoid answering the question said it all. And so it goes on – helicopters being another case in point. He spins that helicopter capability has been increased by 60% (however you measure that) but conveniently ignores the fact that that the requirement for helicopter lift has increased by nearer 300%. Dannatt obviously failed to convince him on this point but it wasn’t for the want of trying.
McBust and his cohorts have blood on their hands for their lying and cheating when it comes to providing sufficient resources for our troops. I hope one day their crimes catch up with them. They are utterly beneath contempt for their gold-plated treachery and incompetence.
I take your points, HJ, but still remain to be convinced. That NuLab are c*nts goes without saying. But the problems aren’t recent – there were various ways of sorting them – and I find it hard to believe that Dannatt and the others at the top in the military could not have done better. If – big if – he genuinely did try to sort helicopters / mine protection etc. – during his term – not just a few weeks off retirement, and was blocked, then the honourable course was to resign and go public. Having senior serving military publicily go head to head with the Minister of Defence is banana republic politics. It is for the electorate to sort NuLab out, not the CGS.
No…us out there have been very content with him
He spins that helicopter capability has been increased by 60% (however you measure that)
Whenever this government use the % figure to mark an increase they are lying and spinning to cover up their failures. This government do it all the time. 60% increase in 5 helicopters is 3 extra but 60% sounds better in a soundbite than 3 extra. Bastards!!
Fair enough, Gurk
Go to “Defence of the Realm” blog for a corruption scandal on helicopter services purchase.
My bad. EUReferendum blog, not DoR.
Even illegal immigrants are wanting out of your sodding country but Ryanair don’t do cheap flights to Afghanistan and your sodding government is refusing to send us back in Business Class.
UK fucked, end of. Why waste time in your valuable life working out why Britain is and always was a shithole, a bolthole for bankers and bastards. You either live there like a sheep being fed shite or wise up and fuck off out.
Now, elsewhere, in the real world, folk, ordinary, everyday people, not psychopathic scum, are enjoying the boon of falling prices. In eurozone, consumer prices have fallen compared to 12 months ago whilst wages have been maintained for most, so providing a welcome rise in purchasing power. In Germany, a society built on industry, not Ponzi schemes, wholesale prices have fallen 10% compared to last year; factory gate prices have fallen 8%, the largest fall on record.
The real and only route to sustained recovery is a fall in prices with folk willing to buy again at real value prices. UK and US, run by psychopathic scum elites, will and are doing everything to prevent prices falling, with the final result of worthless money before too long; middle classes wiped out; only a kleptocratic elite and a serf class; but that was the plan all along.
As to Consevatives saving Britain’s descent to Weimar republic hyperinflation witness the wankers on Bromley Council using council tax payers’ money to prop up private school fees(prices in ordinary language). To maintain demand for their services when their usual clientele is diminshed the market response would be to drop prices to stimulate demand with new customers. I though these wankers swore by the market mechanism? Britain, fucked shithole.
Too true.
Don’t forget, politicians’ and public sector employees’ pensions are index-linked!
Don’t start me on that one.Our pension funds will be inflated away(apart from those stolen by McTwat already)leaving us impoverished in retirement whilst paying the fat pensions of those lazy bastards in the public sector.And there is nothing we can do about it.
Majority of Public Service Pensions are worth very little, if you mean MP’s and Top Civil Servants and Top Public Servants, then yes. There are people in Public Service you cannot do without, all of those listed here can be disposed of.
All Public Sector Pensions should be linked to the state of the economy. If they fuck up they suffer, like the rest of us… the bastards..!!
whatever the govt. says is a LIE!!!!!!!!
whether it is inflation figs,unemployment etc………
in the u.s it is the same…….
there will NEVER be enough jobs and the funding situation for uk citizens to enter higher education means that the country will continue to suck in qualified people and leave us in the Brown stuff!!!!!!!!
if printing money is the cure then why dont they print £10 million pounds for each of us?we would all be rich!!!!!!!!!
answer- because it is madness!!!!!!!!!
and it is the same for govts.
the uk and u.s are buying their own bonds via a web of deceit……..
at some stage reality will kick in-
no jobs+no money= bankruptcy!
well done all you nasty little champagne commies
Yes, Guido i tend to agree about inflation taking off.
If you look at the outside infliences on commidity prices due to recovery in Europe, Asia (French, German and Japanese GDP all growing while we continue to contract in Q2 2009) then added to all this QE – we are heading for inflation. How much i do not know but i think it scandelous that Brown and Co. seem able to get away with this and a few folk yourself flag it up as a likely consequence but the mainstream media seem to shy away from prosecuting Gordon Brown and Labour for the mess they have created.
Stupid, wank people worship me. They believe every bit of shite I write. I was the kunt who told them to lump on US Housing in 2008. I’m a kunt and a shill par excellence. Don’t forget euro shit, dollar fab, got that? Spin 1.000 words off and print ad nauseum.
New Labour are now trying to smear the UK’s top General
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/08/fox-hits-at-unnamed-minister-smearing-dannatt.html
Ha ha – bunch of Hoons, did they not learn anything from the McPoison affair?
Wait a couple of weeks until Dannatt is properly retired, then let’s see what he really has to say!
I suspect you’re right. The combined effect of all the recent reflationary measures is akin to a huge shot of adrenaline straight to a patient’s heart. The critical dose has now been given and we await with great uncertainty the prognosis. Unlike adrenaline, however, this medicine doesn’t work instantly. We must sit back and watch what happens as the months ahead unravel. One thing is highly likely, though. The imbalances are so massive that a steady recovery in the historically-accepted sense is virtually impossible. In other words, we’re fucked. And right royally so.
Quantitative Easing is like getting a shot full of MRSA. The cure is being delayed by New Labour and the BoE until after the general election, making the cure more painful than if administered straight away.
line up the mps ( all of em ) pull there trousers down ( or skirts ) and place a shotgun up there arse and then pull the trigger , sorted
A firm but fair solution Freddie, & well worth considering.
am sure there would be no shortage of people willing to admin it
It’s certainly half the solution to our problems. The removal of the current bunch of incompetent hoons by permanent (if temporarily messy) means would be a good start.
The second half of the solution, finding competent replacements, may not be quite as quick or easy. I am, however, willing to consider all reasonable possibliities.
You might have a bit of time available after next week, Fred. Fancy a go at running the country? You couldn’t do any worse than this lot.
free peodlos for all ? and beer drinking classes , all current mps to be sent to afaghn, all lords to the tower , and footballers taught how to behave to referees
ok modded , free peadlo for all and footballers taught how to behave
You’ve got my vote.
P.S. Can I be Minister for Culture with special responsibility for the Miss World contest?
my cabnat
chanceller = nassir hussian
cultre sec = beefy
forigin sec = lord gower
defence min = bob willis
Education secretary – Goughy.
Min. of Ag, Fish & Food – Gatting.
Minister for Justice – Dickie Bird.
home sec = phill tuffnal
minister for tech = david ” bumble ” lloyd
Engineer?
Is that you, Farouk?
Damn, but you were great for Lancashire!
I’d suggest Sir Geoffrey for Wimmins minister, and Gatting for Health ;o)
But wouldn’t that give many a honourable member a stiffy? MPS have some pretty strange sexual appetites don’t you know.
Of course the Weimar Republic did so much pioneering work in the field of quantitative easing – now lets think, how did that go . . . .
Your Cap’n M’Darling is doing his best, sailing straight in to the wind. Hold on my hearties! Brace the main sail! och aye the noo! aside……” Gorgon put that life raft down!”
isint quantitative easing what zimbarbware have been doing for years , or am i stupid ?
You’re not stupid freddie, you’re exactly right!!! Maybe they’ve been doing it on a more substantial scale than we have done here, but if you look at Zim then you can see the effects.
so if it worked so well in zim , and we are doing the same that means we could be on the edge of a very big cliff
You got it!
Printing money means that the pound gets devalued (as there are more pounds around), so imports get more expensive. Hence the inflation.
We won’t see it quite as bad here, but to say that inflation could hit 10% by early next year is not particularly excessive.
right six more days then of to the india or south africa or west indes with me peadlo and me beer
Well good luck with the next six days – let’s hit the convicts for six at the Oval!
am going hit them more than six times
I have got £100 at 10-1 that you bowl 4 Wides, 4 No Balls and take 4 wickets in the first Innings. £400 if you make it happen.
sorry chronic the best team will win
More than 45,000 NHS workers call in sick each day and a third have mental health issues.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/NHS-Sickness-45000-Health-Staff-Call-In-Sick-Every-Day-And-A-Third-Have-Mental-Health-Issues/Article/200908315364670?lpos=UK_News_First_Buisness_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15364670_NHS_Sickness%3A_45%2C000_Health_Staff_Call_In_Sick_Every_Day_And_A_Third_Have_Mental_Health_Issues_
NHS workers are more obese, smoke more than private sector and 45,000 are off sick every day.
This is not O/T this scandal must be costing the UK billions.
The National Health Service lead by example.
As the world’s biggest and best employer, we here at the NHS take great pride in our accomplishments. We are happy to have the world leading sickness of staff figures because it means we are doing our job. All indications are that without being sick you would not need the NHS. We are, therefore, as is obvious, actually making provision for a constant through steam of consistently sick people to both maintain and develop our services. We aim to reach a point where everybody is sick at least one a year so that our through put is maintained at an encouragingly high level. This in itself means we use more resources but at the same time highlights the need for such a service. Anyone wanting to affiliate to this is welcome to walk into a fast moving bus or catch a horrible infection whilst visiting an already sick person and therevy catching an infection. Thank you
Ah I see, a self-fullfing eutopia where the hospitals are always full of their own staff, either by working or being ill and no room for outside nuisance patients.
They must take turns. No wonder you can never get a bed. It’s the holy grail to everlasting employment. let’s all get sick.
These are appalling figures and I’m not here to defend them. Perhaps it would help to bear in mind, however, that nursing and medical staff (in my daughter’s hospital anyway) are discouraged from turning up to work with any kind of infection because of the risk to some very sick and vulnerable patients, particularly those with cancer where there is very little immunity. Even the common cold could be very serious for some of them. For staff with little patient contact, however, these figures are alarming. Just one more sign of the deep-seated malaise in the public sector?
As a previous employee in the NHS I must agree with you regarding nursing staff, however because the NHS staff out with Medical Staff are so badly paid the candidates for jobs previous to the downturn were very poor and many did not really want to work, hence they went off sick, at least they did where I worked.
Only a third?
Physician, heal thyself.
Researchers found that hospitals with worse staff health are less productive and have higher rates of superbug infection.
No shit Sherlock??!!
Well what do you expect? NHS workers are continually surrounded by ill people so there’s bound to be some rub-off from infections and whatnot. The simplest thing to do is just to abolish the health service – and of course the licence fee. :-)
What are the chances of interruption of trade and exchange? I have an account with a US forex broker and keep cash there to service their maximum limit per trade.I think the Central Banks of the World stabilise the situation between themselves with swops.Is there a realistic chance of me not being able to retrieve that particular bankroll?
Guido – what are you doing appearing on Channel 4 Asian News? I thought you had principles.
i didnt know he could speak asian
Does anyone know whether you can get Channel 4 Asian News on HDTV?
I am not an economist either , but the scale of Labours ecnomic mis management and risk taking is to say the least dramatic and still ongoing .
total QE is about the same as Darlings projected borrowing i.e £175bn , which is then used to buy guilts which then turns into goverment borrowing , hence liquidity is being kept by the banks and poor old buisness is being hung out to dry .
I think as soon as oil starts to feel demand again , our weak sterling will mean increased balance of trade gap , you could argue that when we get round to reversing QE this will also be inflationary . given we cannot really do any more QE , and an economy too weak to repay its debts darling has effectively set us up for the most scary 2 yr nightmare imaginable .
As other economies pick up (we will have had the deepest recession) we will be worst placed to start importing the inflation , as Guido points out this lag is the difference between getting through with high debts , and arriving at a place of ecnomic hell where you just cant shovell the import inflation out quick enough on the back of a weak economy .
if you devalue sterling further the bank debts increase , and you get inflation due to imports .
basically we could miss a very important boat , because we were in recession the deepest , all thanks to Labour and the ruin
Unrelated
http://www.contractoruk.com/news/004492.html
Why am I not surprised? esp. breakdown of Inland Revenue, what a set of clowns.
More from The Daily Mash http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/mandelson-pledges-to-support-geffen-yacht-dream-200908181990/
ROFL – loved the quote from the Geffen source.
What is interesting is why the Intellectual Property Office is being sidelined in all the “Digital Britain It’s My Toy I Saw It First” bitch-fighting about copyright, licencing etc.
The IPO carried out a large and very comprehensive consultation exercise with musicians, public, rights holders and so on.
Their findings are at variance with the Geffens of this world so the (about to be released) report will probably sink without a trace.
It’s not helped by having David Lammy at the helm. A nice guy but really doesn’t have the whatsits to stand up to Mandlescum and his gay billionaire posse.
The oft-quoted statistics about how much revenue is “lost” by illegal downloading is pure fantasy.
You are so right Sarah – the simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people who download music do so because they can’t afford to buy it, and they still won’t be able to afford to buy it if they can’t download it.
Of course the fact that a CD album that retails for between £10 and £15 (or more if it’s a double) costs less than 50 pence to manufacture and package (and little if anything more if it’s a double) doesn’t seem to register with Geffen and his fellow thieves. Maybe if they charged reasonable prices they might see their sales increase. These big record companies are greedy scum – they treat the artists without whom they would have no businesses like dirt and give them a tiny fraction of the money they get from sales. Any musician who wants to make money knows it’s all about live performances, but the record companies hate them, as they don’t get to steal any money from said musicians.
The fact that greedy scum like Geffen with no talent anything (other than exploiting people with genuine talent) manage to thrive is just sickening. Major labels don’t even earn their money – they wait until bands and musicians build up their own following and then step in. No making judgment on what the public might like until after the public have already spoken,
The internet is doing wonders for music, and there’s more and more great stuff coming out all the time, much of which the Geffens of this world can’t get their grubby little paws anywhere near, and that can only be a good thing. These days the innovators don’t need a big record deal, all they need is a computer with some half decent recording software and maybe the odd nice little gadget (I won’t elaborate, as I’d probably be boring everyone to death even more than I already am) in their home to be creative. Even if they do manage to get a grip on so called illegal downloading, which they won’t, it won’t make them any more money, as the public who can’t afford to spend lots of money on music will simply deploy other methods of sharing with their friends.
Aside from that, as if billionaire David Geffen needs more cash!
Not quite true. Every time someone downloads a song, God kills a bunny.
Phew, thank God it’s not a bird.
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
Short term policies that keep the ‘Party’ in power for as long as possible have dogged this country since WWII.
The great projects that would have made Britain world leaders in Satelite&communications,rockets,planes etc all cancelled by short sighted politicians.
Now the chickens come home to roost.
Party politics have cost us dear.
But it doesn’t matter! Brown will blame Thatcher, Heath, Supermac, Churchill: ANYONE but himself!
But there’s more!
Benn skewered by Grocer, Obama thinks he is in control of Scotland, Kerry McCarthy thinks Brown is ‘in depth politician’ (in deep, more like) and millions of unemployed byt Darling thinks its all going to be OK
In depth politician? Yeah, right.
Where Their’s Greed, the prophetic title of a long lost piece of scribbling by Mr Brown, he should open a retail outlet: Where Theirs Greed R US (only chance of him getting anybody to stock his wretched books as well), Everyday Heroes, ha,ha,ha, the clue is in the title.
I think Gordon’s next book should be: “Transcendental Hoonism. Or how to transcend normality and become an utter Hoon”
Scotland! Stand up for your legal system and defy the Americans. What the hell has it got to do with that harridan Hilary Clinton? USA always interfering in the ways of other countries! Sort out your own unequal society first Mrs.Clinton!
Clinton & Obama’s statements are purely for domestic political reasons.They have to be seen to be doing something otherwise they’ll get totally skewered by the US media.Effectively they realise that Al-Mahgradi will probably be released by the Scottish Government and that their intervention makes that fact even more likely as the Scots will not take kindly for another government even the one in Washington telling them what to do. So Mr Al-Mahgradi could be home in Tripoli in time to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Libyan Revolution!!
Believe me there is not a hope in hell of bullying us, we have had enough as it is.
Just tell the merkins that Al-Mahgradi stays here as long as McKinnon stays here. Let em choke on that one.
Sorry o/t but Well done Tony Blair and Gordon Brown!
I really don’t care in what order it is done, but I want Gordon, he is ruining my life.
Afghanistan – complete fiasco! Why don’t the ‘powers that be’ tell us the truth. We are there to defend the oil, with the Americans driving us on! What a fiasco!
I thought we were there to bring equality to Afghani Women – oops oh no 80% are still no better off ! Then hows about bringing democracy to Afghanistan and keeping the “warlords” in check – oops wrong again ! Then it’s to stop the poppy trade – oh no poppy growing is on the increaseThen we must be there to stop the insurgency ! Oh no that’s on the increase too Well then it’s to make British streets safer – pardon – oh sorry – we’re still no safer apparently.Then what the **** are we there for then ? Answers to Gordon Brown c/o 10 Downing Street London please
If the USSR in the 80s could not do it, can we? Please can we have a worthwhile debate about this?
Okay, where is Afghanistan? Where is Iraq? What is on the east of Iraq and the west of Afghanistan? Put the two together and think about it.
Comment 188, Thought about it and you have a very good point, so this will not end soon.
NO “WE” CAN NOT have a worthwhile debate. It is the duty of the opposition to support the government when our troops are in action. To do otherwise is traditionally considered unpatriotic.
Even though it is not unpatriotic to question what the fuck are we doing in Afghanistan and our boys and Girls are dying for a worthless cause by the hundreds, I will not ask for a debate as I wanna win the next election and be the PM. Unpatriotic chaps do not make PM so I am prepared to accept cannon fodder as a small price to pay for my ambitions.
When the puppet master jerks, the puppet obeys.
Comment 188; You’ve probably got a better idea why we’re there than the bloody government has then ! But if we’re there to deprive the insurgents of safe havens in the “badlands” of Pakistan:to neutralise Iranian Power in the area and also give some stabilising effect to Pakistan and try and ensure that a another militant islamic republic with a nucleur arsenal is not created THEN we should firstly properly re-inforce;adequately supply and tell the other european nations such as the French and Germans that its their world too and their safety in which case they should also be getting more involved than they are and finally be straight with the British public and say that ok we’re going to have to re-inforce our troops;we’re going to have to increase taxes switch what spending we have into defence away from the NHS and education;we’re going to there for at least a decade and we’re going to see a lot of troops killed and/or seriously wounded. It may not be popular;;it may mean that Labour will lose the election although the Opposition parties especially the LibDems are no better but sometimes you have to do these things.
Now when I hear a government minister say that and mean it I will believe that this war IS winnable and worth the price
So what will happen if we get inflation, say 8% to 15% … but NOT wage inflation? (sorry should say in the private sector!)
Then our “purchasing power” will reduce by an anount corresponding to the difference between wage inflation and price inflation – in other worlds we’ll be lucky to afford to pay the mortgate, put petrol in the car to get to work and put sufficient food on the table for our families. If taxes rise then the situation will be compounded further still.
Get out while you still can!
What happens if all the countries manufaturing stuff, Germany, China, Indian decide they are fed up with suppling us with cheap stuff and want a fairer price, i.e. better wages for themselves. Have we the clout to ward this off?
Could be tricky, especially so if all the printing of money causes the pound to fall (which it will, unless everyone else prints at least as much!)
An investmest advisor might say that it was an appropriate time to fix your mortgage rate and “diversify your investment portfolio” out of Sterling
“What happens if all the countries manufaturing stuff, Germany, China, Indian decide they are fed up with suppling us with cheap stuff and want a fairer price, i.e. better wages for themselves. Have we the clout to ward this off?”
Yes. It’s called ‘being skint.’
Steve, the only reason the pound isn’t weaker than it currently is against the dollar and euro is because the markets know that they’re not really any better. The US has been printing money like it’s going out of fashion too and the PIIGS look like causing the collapse of the euro. There was no conversion at the outset and those 5 countries should never have been allowed to join it.
294 correct about the relativity of currencies – the whole Euro project could be very close to collapse. Spain and Ireland would be out now if they could, their economies are fucked and they now realise their national governments can do nothing about it!
The US are printing lots of dollars, but the elephants in the room are China and the Middle Eastern countries, with literally trillions of dollars in reserve giving them the ability to skew the markets in almost any way they like!
As soon as the fixed term increases in the NHS and Public service are finished so are they. After all, they were all negotiated when the idiot government was watching the private sector getting bigger pay deals and they wanted the pay held down.
Spend all your savings and then go on the dole. Everyone else is.
Talking of black swans:
A climate change scientist, a politician and a mathematician are travelling in Scotland for the first time. They see a sheep.
“Look!” says the climate change scientist. “Scottish sheep are black!”
“No” says the politician. “We can only deduce that SOME Scottish sheep are black.”
The mathematician intones “In at least one field in Scotland, there is at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black.”
Black swans, I believe, are only found in Australia.
Wrong. Go to Dawlish in Devon.
Are the ones in Dawlish native, or were their ancestors brought back from Oz ?
There was one in Shropshire. ‘e came on a student visa and let it lapse, apparently.
monty, it was ryanair :0)
Wrong, try a few docks in SE16.
Put it another way, they are only NATIVE to Australia.
And Leeds Castle in Kent – they’ve been there for years.
From Australia.
Sorry to be picky but “No” says the politician. “We can only deduce that SOME Scottish sheep are black.” is far too discerning for any politicians I can think of.
“Quick” says the politician. “We must set up a new quango to investigate racial prejudice among Scottish sheep, and to administer the compensation program for the inevitable disadvantaged minorities.”
Magrahi was almost certainly fitted up. There is more to this case than meets the eye! Why was Mandelscum meeting Gaddaffi’s son in Corfu? Could it be that oil is at the bottom of all the unsavoury wheeling and dealing in the same way as it is in Afghanistan? The plot is very sick.
Mandy + Gaddafies Son = Oil will be on bottom
Watching some very unsavoury dealings with unionist parties here in Scotland. The Scottish Government, who were not in power when Megrahi was tried is getting stick. Considering that there is no benefit to them regardless of what they do, as as some Americans are saying, likely to feel some economic pain. The UK Government should hang their heads in shame for their conduct.
They’ve all got the get out clause, Megrahi will die where he is before the paperwork for his release filters through.
Clearly, Lord Mandelson is simply heeding the Arab tradition of: “Women for breeding, boys for pleasure, but melons for sheer delight”
It has been reported that after the trial, Libya offered compensation to the families of the victims totalling about £800 million.
A few months later, the British government (following the improvement in relations between the two countries) made a grant to Libya of about £800 million to facilitate oil exploration.
I’m sure there was no connection between these two events.
So I guess the victims families never got the compensation/reparation that they where entitled to.
They did, but who, ultimately, paid?
@eng, Thats the way of the world those who ultimately pay every time. No need for elaboration, ‘he that pays the piper calls the tune’, Gordon has that writ large, ‘the buck stops here’ no chance!
What about BP with it’s interests in Libya? Any connection there I wonder?
Yes, Eng., I heard this too on radio4. The mind boggles! Oil seems inevitably to be at the bottom of conflict. (Was that a split infinitive?)
Brown has shown he does not care about Savers, Private Pensions, ( UK gold saving) so he will be very happy to see inflation reduce the Government debt.
As a private citizen of this country I find it deplorable to have to think a leader of this country would do such a thing. To think more of winning an election than to stand proud, lead and support this country.
What about the rest of his party? Is it so important to win an election, that they stand by? Where is the argument, the debate, the passion. History will be the judge, I think Mr Brown will go down as the worst Chancellor, the worst Prime Minister this country EVER had… where did the 80s go?
Personally the 80’s were the start of the noughties and the troubles, after all Brown just kept on with Tory policy, and for a controlling Stalinist he took his all but blind eye of the balls.
Sorry Mrs B. That’s a typical Scots view that implies everything Thatcher did was wrong. To suggest that Brown has been merely following Tory policy these last twelve years is also an inversion of reality – did the Tories piss money up the wall like the imbecile Chancellor/Prime Minister has? The only blame that can be laid at his predecessors’ door is that they actually laid in sufficiently good finances by 1997 to enable his spending spree to take place….unfortunately, like an old dowager drunk on sherry, he didn’t know when to stop.
nah, load of old tosh steve the ham.
we have had conservative policy running the country for the last thirty years and look where it has got us.
up to our necks in shit and up to our eyeballs in debt.
and the answer is more tory rule?
what was the question: how to finish the country off?
FFS tatweasel, time to be taken off the road for a rebore, and believe me I mean a fucking re-bore, you’re starting to repeat yourself all over again.
And no, we don’t want to have our skulls bashed in, or to join your creepy, fictitious fan club, so stick your application forms up yer bum.
The Tories are in opposition and not once called Brown up on the banking situation prior to 2007. Do we really think they would have stopped the Banks! Called a halt to the boom? NO! they were making nice profits on their property portfolios along with their banking chums. Get real, we have a political elite who ALL worship at the same trough.
3.36pm fishwife,
there is no point you filling out a thick as thieves fan club application form, it would not be accepted.
it is your poor bastard husband I feel sorry for.
just imagine having to live with a nagging c’unt like you!
oh dear. he would be better off topping himself innit.
Mrs. Broon, your on the right lines there, and to Steve the H, everything Mrs.T. did WAS wrong. It was Clark who put the finances on the right road for the tories, and yes newlabour squandered their inheritance. Newlabour pursued tory policies with hardly a backward glance at their manifesto. Blair didn’t care what party he represented, he just wanted the power to do whatever he thought was RIGHT! The gorgon is the same.
Great article by Buffett, as always.
Banks lent staggering sums of money to homeowners with dubious credit, convinced in their tiny minds that things could only get better that real estate prices could only go up. Our Government has also spent as it saw fit and bugger the consequences.
The oncoming inflation as a result of printing money will be an onslaught, to put it mildly. Quantitative easing, my arse. The quote “governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens…. ” is truly unnerving. However nowhere is it mentioned the possibility of another line of attack: reduce taxes, or at least tax fairly.
Reading between the lines, he sounds even less optimistic than he did last year:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17buffett.html
Guido – I’m every bit as concerned that you cannot distinguish between a possessive pronoun (‘its’) and reported speech (“it’s…….” being short for ‘it is’.) Can’t have you deflating grammar and syntax while the unprincipled pursue a scorched earth ticking inflation bomb policy in the hope creating a one term Tory succession – it is (sic) the only electoral bounce they can now hope for.
A very wise post by Guido. Liam Halligan has been saying this for months in his Sunday Telegraph column. He goes a bit further suggesting that there could be hyper inflation. It’s pretty basic. Too much money chasing too few goods leads to inflation. Simples.
i would like to abolish punctuation it serves no useful purpose and only confuses people you can understand this perfectly well I suggest without any punctuation can you not
iwouldliketoabolishpunctuationitservesnousefulpurposeandonlyconfusespeopleyoucanunderstandthisperfectlywellIsuggestwithoutanypunctuationcanyounot
This can also be read and understood, but it requires more effort to interpret. Same with punctuation, you chump.
Lynne’s going to be mad at you!
Also, notice the amount of tatty notes in cash machines? This happens when the government limits the printing of new money and the velocity of circulation of the old, tatty notes speeds up.
But wait! The government has put lots of new money out! Yes, but it doesn’t seem to be getting to the public, does it? So where IS all this new money they are printing, ending up? Not with your High Street banks. Or in your pocket. So what is going on?
Half of it goes straight into our bonuses, we make sure of that.
What a super wheeze, eh?
We got everyone in the shit in the first place and now all the lovely extra lolly is ours as well.
You mugs will be servicing the debts we created for the rest of your lives.
Sweet deal.
For us.
Hmm. It might just be worth voting for CMD if he had the back bone to sack a few of you bankers. At least when Gordoom has gone there will be no one protecting you any more.
It doesn’t physically exist – it is merely an”illusion” much like the promise on a bank note i.e. “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of whatever £5 – £50″.In the old days the bearer expected that the BoE would if required stump up the exact amount in gold sovereigns rather than as to-day simply another paper note for the same face value but then again thanks to Brown they haven’t actually much gold in the vaults anyway!!
“Velocity of circulation” increases with inflation as people are understandably keen to get rid of cash asap before it further devalues. It has nothing to do with what you wrote. We haven’t seen any unduly remarkable inflation. Yet.
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens….
Not so secret Guido if you are a pensioner reliant on savings income. RPI at 4% plus, savings rates 0.5%.
What’s so secret about that?
And when inflation kicks in as a result of paying all the bank note printers overtime ….
It is a peculiarity of Socialist solutions that the responsible always end up paying for the irresponsible.
Fuck Gold
I’m buying into the manufacturers of printing press’ and ink/paper suppliers.
McMental and his ex boyfriend Lord Fondlebum intend to destroy Western civilisation and then try and turn us all into Sodomites and Lesbians.
“They will be swinig from a lampost pretty soon”
MANDY, wear your best, cleanest undies just in case”
I hope they string him up by the Balls.
Hello there
can somebody tell me if qualitatative easing is a better class of quantatative easing?
thanks
Nearest I could find was Quillian.
Quillion, an example of an indefinite and fictitious number as in Chancellor of the XQuillion, Bank of Quillion and the number of people currently unemployed Quillion.
eg, How many feathers did the ballpoint pen save……..A Quillion.
Titus Groaned
The only “qualitative easing” we saw was the change of government in 1997.
If you and some others are predicting the inflation, that hardly complies with the Black Swan theory which “refers to high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events beyond the realm of normal expectations (courtesy of Wikipedia)“.
What you’ll find is that more and more sensible economists will switch to inflation hedging theories but then something totally unexpected will come back to bite them.
Even your hero Warren Buffet was not immune from the credit crunch, losing hefty wads of notes. I wonder how Jimmy Goldsmith would have fared in the credit crunch.
Well the inflation fearing are in the minority. And double digit inflation is seen as improbable so… nevertheless your point if a fair one.
Warren Buffet is not Guido’s hero. Gordon Gekko is my man.
“Gordon Gekko is my man”
I am pro lesbian, but that is just going too far Guido.
He is actually a lizard. Name gives it away.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6801213.ece
So watch out. This Liskula Cohen he sounds a right skank, whatever that is. Is it an upper-class skunk?
The New Labour debt crisis is like finding a big pile of shit in the street, nothing to alarming until to realise it is human and then to your horror you find it has blood in it
Gordon Brown need whipping until he barks like a dog
“Gordon Brown needs whipping until he barks like a dog”, No.. until he sounds like a set of bagpipes shat on by a cat and dragged into the crypt and dragged out again accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing sea shanties on the last night of the Proms. That should take some time.
Whatever it is, please make it very slow and very painful.
And then to your horror,you find its down to you to clean it up.
Senior Tory wants MP pay doubled….
the best way to restore public confidence in Parliament.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8209783.stm
… get me out of here..!!
‘Make MP poverty history’!
A slogan with the ring of righteousness and conviction behind it, yes it will happen and soon (We know M.P. poverty never existed), spare a coin gov?, its me poor old mar, got three residencies to support, ain’t eaten since the 5 course meal in the old HP 2 hours ago, anybody buy my last copy of the big issue?
Yes. A quite astonishing remark to say the least. Still totally out of touch, obviously. And highly insensitive.
Ooo Boy! Some serious skunk that niggaz tokin.
He’s one big assed hopped up dude.
It must be serious stuff Sir Rap, that guy is out of control and he don’t care he’s gone.. like outta sight,
Have been saying this for some time. Deflation is a red herring, inflation is the real danger. The government encouraged too much borrowing, and had no fiscal discipline of its own. The result is an economy drowning in debt, and the only way they can see to get out of this hole of their own making is to inflate and devalue out of it.
The worst is yet to come.
[...] Double Digit Inflation is a Black Swan – Guy Fawkes' blog By Guido Fawkes black-swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb yesterday warned of the inflation threat, Cameron conceded the possibility of a British debt crisis. Guido thinks it highly unlikely Britain would ever default on it's debt so long as it has a sovereign … Guy Fawkes' blog – http://order-order.com/ [...]
Screw it I’m going to link spam because I like Liam and he’s tearing Ruth Kelly a new one.
Truly marvellous that NuLabor’s Jockland Intelligentsia have come up with such a brilliant economic wheeze to get the economy back on its feet, by printing more money.
Of course back in Beowulff’s grandad’s time economists who devalued the coinage were lucky if they lost a right hand for such a heinous crime, mostly they lost their heads .
How wondrous that we live in such enlightened times, and can hold such scum in such high regard.
Good article, Guido. The markets are a bit of a hot topic at the moment, with the ongoing inflation/deflation debate. Inflationists have good reason to be bullish, but in the real world the public are paying off debts and saving. It looks like we’re heading into a deflationary depression which will catch all inflationists off guard. 97% of traders think the dollar is about to crash, sparking hyper-inflation, but the smart money is going the other way. Beware, these are very dodgy markets!!
(P.s, nice tits today!)
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens…. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
I’ve saying a translation of this into simple English for the last dozen years (except for the one in a million bit), ever since GB set the inflation target, but did anyone listen to me?
Brown has already confiscated 29% of the wealth of anyone foolish to invest solely in gilts or too poor to have nothing except a building society account and, even nastier, 29% of the income of anyone with an old-fashioned private sector pension that didn’t have inflation protection because most of them were set up in the 50s, when inflation was not thought to be a continuing problem (but continued until Brown wrecked them).
For avoidance of doubt my pension is protected from 2% inflation (so I am almost unscathed) but my soul is not protected from outrage at his pillaging helpless elderly pensioners
A good article, and you may want to take a look at Cynicus Economicus, who has been writiting against printing money for ages.
http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com/2009/08/monetization-of-government-debt.html
Paints a worrying picture.
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