British democracy has lost its meaning. The political and economic system has come to serve the interests of a tiny elite, vastly wealthier than the run of the population, operating through corporate control. The state itself exists to serve the interests of these corporations, guided by a political class largely devoid of ideological belief and preoccupied with building their own careers and securing their own finances.
A bloated state sector is abused and mikled by a new class of massively overpaid public secotr managers in every area of public provision – university, school and hospital administration, all executive branches of local government, housing associations and other arms length bodies. All provide high six figure salaries to those at the top of a bloated bureaucratic establishment. The “left”, insofar as it exists, represents only these state sector vested interests.
These people decide where the cuts fall, and they will not fall where they should – on them. They will fall largely on the services ordinary people need.
Meanwhile we are not all in this together. The Vodafone saga only lifts the lid for the merest peek at the way the corporate sector avoids paying its share, hiding behind Luxembourg or Cayman tax loopholes and conflicts between international jurisdictions – with which our well provided politicians are very happy. The often excellent Sunny Hundal provides a calm analysis of the Vodafone case here:
Let me tell you something else about Vodafone. Vodafone took over Ghana Telecom three years ago. They paid an astonishingly low price for it – 1.2 billion dollars, which is less than the value of just the real estate GT owned. The value of the business was much higher than that, and there was a substantively higher opening bid from France Telecom.
The extraordinary thing was the enormous pressure which the British government put on Ghana to sell this valuable asset to Vodafone so cheaply. High Commissioner Nick Westcott and Deputy High Commissioner Menna Rawlings were both actively involved, with FCO minister Lord Malloch Brown pressurising President Kuffour directly, with all the weight of DFID’s substantial annual subvention to Ghana behind him.
What is the point of DFID giving taxpayer money to Ghana if we are costing the country money through participating in the commercial rape of its national assets?
And why exactly was it a major British interest that Vodafone – whose Board meets in Germany and which pays its meagre taxes in Luxembourg – should get Ghana Telecom, as opposed to France Telecom or another company? Was privatisation at this time the best thing for Ghana at all?
This Vodafone episode offers another little glimpse into the way that corporations like Vodafone twist politicians like Mark Malloch Brown around their little fingers. It mioght be interesting to look at his consultancies and commercial interests now he is out of office.
BAE is of course the example of this par excellence. Massive corruption and paying of bribes in Saudi Arabia, Tanzania end elsewhere, but prosecution was halted by Tony Blair “In the National Interest”. BAE of course was funnelling money straight into New Labour bagmen’s pockets, as well as offering positions to senior civil servants through the revolving door. Doubtless they are now doing the same for the Tories – perhaps even some Lib Dems.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/01/jack_straws_cor.html
It is therefore unsurprising the BAE were able to write themselves contracts for aircraft carriers which were impossible to cancel and that their New Labour acolytes were prepared to sign such contracts. It is, nonetheless, disgusting. Just as it is disgusting that there is no attempt whatever by the coaliton to query or remedy the situation. There is no contract in the UK which cannot be cancelled by primary legislation.
Meanwhile, bankers’ bonus season is upon us again and these facilitators of trade and manufacture are again set to award themselves tens of billions of pounds to swell the already huge bank accounts of a select few, whose lifestyle and continued employment is being subsidised by every single person in the UK with 8% of their income. This was because the system which rewards those bankers so vastly is fundamentally unsound and largely unnecessary. Money unlinked to trade or manufacture cannot create infinite value; that should have been known since the South Sea Bubble.
Yet even this most extreme example of government being used to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else, has not been enough to stir any substantial response from a stupoured, x-factored population, dreaming only of easy routes to personal riches, which they have a chance in a million of achieving.
Conventional politics appears to have become irretrievably part pf the malaise rather than offering any hope for a cure. But political activity outwith the mainstream is stifled by a bought media.
I see no hope.
Police is saying its an ongoing incident and that the police is fully armed, they refuse to say whethger it bis an exercise and they are not obliged to inform the papers or the public.
My phoning them has put their backs up and they wanted to know where i’m living, my name, I’m assured of a vist to ‘explain’, they say.
well, well, ask questions and you get, action!
ingo: there’s a report about the Ber St operation here:-
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/armed_police_in_ongoing_operation_in_norwich_1_719745
Indeed MJ, thats all the explanation there is, an ‘ongoing incident’.
This is not enough imho, if there is an armed idiot running around, intend on doing harm, then their first step should be to warn us, not scare us.
@suhayl
Rule 1 for handling trolls: Do not enter a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.
PC Sweeney just rang me back, trying to explain away the fear that has been created in Norwich City centre today.
He said that there was an ongoing incident and that it was not an exercise.
So I asked whether there is someone armed running loose, he replied that he did not say that and that he can’t say what the incident is about.
I asked whether they expect top arrest someone at the end of this incident and he said he couldn’t say.
So I implied that he has not really assured me and that his answers were vague and as ambiguous as the deployment of armed units in the City.
I said that it is as important for the public to be in the know, so they can get out of your way and look after their own safety, as it is for you to explain yourselfs in terms that does not make you look like fearmongering storm troopers.
He did not like that and not unlike an automaton he rewound and said the same thing again.
So, this leaves us with an ongoing incident in the centre of Norwich, it could be a hoax, or just an expression of Norwich Police’s anxiety over the ongoing corruption investigation at Bethel Street, the public could be under a threat of an armed mad person, it could be a terror incident (in Ber Street of all places??)
Maybe fag ash Lil has risen from the dead and is haunting her old neighbourhood, thing is my missis is out in it, shoppin’.
If you think about it, governments use military parades to scare other nations. With the oncoming demonstrations/riots no doubt it would be an expedient exercise for our rulers to show off their might. I believe members of the army have already been asked if they were prepared to shot at the civilian population.
Ingo
Let’s hope they are going to arrest the staff of the EDP – always amused me that the Tory media whores are in the red light district.
“I believe members of the army have already been asked if they were prepared to shot at the civilian population.”
Probably an unnecessary courtesy. An old gentleman of my aquaintance knew one of the officers who had been in charge of a machine gun in George Square in 1919 when the government, fearing a Bolshevik rising (those were the days), sent in tanks and troops. He asked him if, had he been ordered, he would have told his crew to open fire. ‘Yes’ he said, ‘but I had the firing pin in my pocket’.
I don’t believe it. Troops have no problem firing on civilians, including their own. Remember Bloody Sunday? Kent State University? Self-defence is the usual plea.
Speaking of Kent State, I wonder how long before we see the formation of our own National Guard – it would seem a logical consequence of the numerous scares and panics. The British TA have already held joint exercises with Wisconsin National Guard.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1bb_1186520308
Fat chance of that happening Craig, but this is the latest from the Tory whores, as you say, I prefer to call Archant Arsechant, a much nicer word than ‘farts’ don’t you think?
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/armed_police_in_ongoing_operation_in_norwich_1_719745
actually remember an interview with one US commander complaining that it was extremely hard to get soldiers to fire at people, even other soldiers. He reckoned only 20 percent would, a fact born out a stat I remember reading from WW2, which again said that about 80 percent of troops shot into the air.
No links, I’m afraid; but have good memory.
“numerous scares and panics”
Remedy for the ‘St Louis Blues’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbXYS8ws5KY
If that falls flat then a ‘sing along’ to this never fails:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MLBfwblps8
apologies to Dreoilin & Ruth
@ All,
A lucid analysis which indicates why the US economy remains in the shit it is in, as shall suck the world economy along in the mess….
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Fed and the Debased “Imperial Dollar”: Future Inflation,
Timid Economic Growth and
Higher Interest Rates Ahead
by Rodrigue Tremblay
“Under a paper money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.”
Ben Bernanke, future Fed Chairman (in 2002)
“My thesis here is that cooperation between the monetary and fiscal authorities in Japan could help solve the problems that each policymaker faces on its own. Consider for example a tax cut for households and businesses that is explicitly coupled with incremental BOJ purchases of government debt ?” so that the tax cut is in effect financed by money creation. Moreover, assume that the Bank of Japan has made a commitment, by announcing a price-level target, to reflate the economy, so that much or all of the increase in the money stock is viewed as permanent.”
Ben Bernanke, future Fed Chairman (in 2002)
“The Fed, in effect, is telling the markets not to worry about our fiscal deficits, it will be the buyer of first and perhaps last resort. There is no need – as with Charles Ponzi – to find an increasing amount of future gullibles, they will just write the check themselves. I ask you: Has there ever been a Ponzi scheme so brazen? There has not.”
Bill Gross, PIMCO’s managing director
On Wednesday, November 3rd, the Bernanke Fed announced that it stands ready to resume money printing to stimulate the economy through quantitative money easing, an euphemism for printing more dollars. Indeed, it intends to buy $600-billion of longer-term Treasury securities until the end of the second quarter of 2011, plus some $300 billion of reinvestments, on top of the some $1.75 trillion of various types of securities, many of which were mortgage backed securities, that it has added in 2009 to its balance sheet, currently standing at a total of $2.3 trillion. There could even be additional increases in newly printed money as the Fed intends to “regularly review and adjust the program as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability.”
After the election of fiscal conservatives on November 2nd, it seems that printing money is the only instrument left for the Obama administration to stimulate the economy. I fail to see, however, what is “conservative” about that. Actively debasing a currency to stimulate an economy used to be a Third-World economic recipe, ?”A recipe for disaster. Now, the United States government feels that is the only way to get out of the economic doldrums.
But U.S. economic problems are essentially structural in nature, and are due to a bad housing mortgage policy, a bad industrial policy, a bad financial policy, a bad fiscal policy, a bad foreign investment policy, too much entitlement debt, severe demographic problems related to the aging baby-boomers, and to very costly wars abroad. Relying exclusively on monetary quick fixes to correct them misses the mark and may have serious unintended negative consequences down the road.
In fact, it is likely that in the long run, this extreme monetary policy risks exacerbating rather than correcting the problems. Economic structural problems cannot be corrected with monetary means. They rather require real economic solutions. That means correcting the housing mortgage mess and devising an industrial strategy, a fiscal strategy, and an investment strategy that can put the economy back on its tracks of economic growth.
But, for better or worse, the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) seems to be the only branch of the U.S. government left that can still function properly, i.e. that is not caught in a permanent political gridlock. As a consequence, for the time being at least, bankers are in charge of the U.S. economy. Since they are the ones who created many of the current problems, this is not very reassuring.
Let’s remind ourselves that the Fed is a semi-public, semi-private organization that has a long history of creating financial asset price bubbles in the U.S and around the world, essentially because the U.S. dollar is an international key-currency widely used around the world and is an important part of other central banks’ official reserves.
Thus, the real danger is that the Fed will again overdo it and create unmanageable financial and monetary bubbles in the coming years. ?”It did it in the past. It did it in the late 1960’s and early ’70s, and we witnessed the same scenario unfolding with the Greenspan Fed in the late 1990s, when excessive easy money helped inflate the Internet and tech stock market bubble. We saw this again in the early 2000s, when easy Fed money helped inflate the housing bubble. And now, we’re seeing it again with the Bernanke Fed. As a general rule, a central bank should not push the monetary gas pedal to the floor and be obliged to slam on the monetary brakes later, thus placing the real economy on a roller-coaster of booms and busts. That is not the way to run a large economy.
But because of the circumstances, the Fed may be at it again. This time it is busy creating a massive bond bubble, some important currency misalignments and a massive gold and commodity price bubble. We should also not forget that abnormally low interest rates and lower bond yields increase the present value of pension liabilities of most defined benefit pension plans.
Therefore, I would not be surprised to see a pension crisis developing in the coming years under the current Fed monetary policy. Of course, all of these bubbles are interrelated but when they come crashing down, four or five years down the road, maybe sooner, the economy may then be in worse shape than it is today. My most likely scenario is for the Fed to keep the monetary gas pedal way down until the 2012 election, and then slam on the monetary brakes thereafter to salvage what will be left of the imperial dollar.
If so, this could be a partial repeat of Japan’s experience in mismanaging its economy in the early 1990’s until 2000, a period known as the lost decade.
The current Fed’s monetary policy is to flood financial markets with liquidity, i.e. newly created dollars, and, in the process, devalue the U.S. dollar, spur American exports and prevent deflationary expectations from taking hold and from making already high debt loads even heavier. For this, the Fed has been engaged since 2009 in round after round of money creation and interest rate reductions to the point of pushing short-term monetary rates close to zero and keeping short-term real rates negative. But if the economy is in a liquidity trap, as it is fair to assume it is, although a central bank can print all the money it wants, this is unlikely to stimulate the real economy for very long. ?”This is like pushing on a string. Printing money, if it is an emergency temporary measure, can help mitigate the effect of having too much debt and debt-service costs relative to income, as is the case today with many debtors in a debt liquidation mode. However, if this becomes a feature of monetary policy for too long, it can have disastrous consequences.
In general, it can be said that the Fed can manipulate short term interest rates by artificially increasing demand for short term securities, but inflation expectations are a big component of long term interest rates and are much less influenced by the Fed. Therefore, if the Fed’s intention of printing large amounts of new money raises fears of future inflation, long term interest rates may rise rather than fall, and this is bound to hurt long-term productive investments.
Moreover, make no mistake, with globalized financial markets, a large chunk of the newly created dollars is flowing out of the United States and is invested in higher interest rate countries, pushing the dollar further down and these countries’ currencies further up. Of course, some of the newly created money will immediately find its way in the stock market, but there is no certainty that this will induce already stretched banks to increase their banking loans to businesses.
Another consequence is this: The current outflow of U.S. dollars helps keep the dollar exchange rate low, but when the Fed is forced to aggressively raise interest rates, as it will inevitably be forced to do later on, the reverse will happen and the U.S. dollar will likely overshoot and then become overvalued. This is the case today with the Japanese yen which became unduly strong when the Japanese carry trade (too much cheap money invested abroad returns home) collapsed.
What counts for most people, however, is that the Fed’s zero-interest rate policy has not cured the structural housing mortgage crisis, since home foreclosures are still very high. The Fed now places most of its hopes on a currency devaluation, which is the old trick of the “beggar thy neighbor” policy, i.e. trying to export one country’s unemployment to its trading partners by devaluating the currency. This was a form of protectionism much relied upon during the 1929-39 Great Depression. This may work for a while, at least as long as other countries can absorb American exports without launching their own money printing process in order to prevent an appreciation of their currencies.
Indeed, is it likely that countries which see their currencies being revalued by the Fed will remain passive? The Fed is implicitly making the bet that these countries will not retaliate, and that the international dollar-based currency system will remain intact. But for how long? Sooner or later, some central banks around the world will have no choice but to impose capital controls in order to slow down the inflow of unwanted outside money and the onslaught of imported inflation, and prevent their exchanges rates from rising too high too fast. If they do, the entire process of economic globalization may begin to unravel.
Meanwhile, foreign central banks, for example, could accelerate their rush to dump the U.S dollar and to accumulate gold and other more stable currencies such as the euro, the Swiss franc, the British pound, the Canadian dollar and the Australian dollar. China has already begun to do just that. The share of dollar official reserves would then decline from about 60 percent presently to perhaps less than 50 percent. That may signal the beginning of the end for the “imperial dollar” which has dominated the international monetary system since the Bretton Woods conference of 1944.
This is to be followed closely.
_____________________________________
Rodrigue Tremblay
is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal
and can be reached at [email protected]. He is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics” at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/
@ Larry,
Provide your agrument and evidence to convince us that it was not you:-
“Your best argument against me is that someone impersonating me used the term “raghead.” ”
Shall await your defence and reasoned argument.
LARRY THE LIAR PAID TO SMEAR ME AGAIN
Re ?” His comment November 5, 2010 10:07 PM.
Bare in mind that I am a whistleblower who has exposed criminal behaviour by MI5 / MI6 and it is their normal practice to resort to SMEARS, using bottom feeders like the Larry Team, when confronted with a message they don’t like. Smearing on the internet is Larry’s job; he is paid to do it. The story that I think Larry is referring to happened after I left Grosvenor International, a company owned by the Duke of Westminster, where I had been Group Controller. Here is the story that Larry’s clients are scared of:
http://russell46.livejournal.com/
@ All,
The UK cuts and revised economic policies have to have one reference point if there is to be recovery and a viable economy ?” there must be real manufacturing production, bolstered by globally saleable technologies to complement the goods produce along with special services that the world is prepared to pay for. What we find is a lot of arms production, which, truth be told is also real ( albeit highly destructive) production.
The UK economy, seems to me, like all other in the world, remains as a sub-set in the global scheme of things, where the US dictates the shape, nature and pace of all things economic to come. So what is the US really saying and doing?
If you reason this one out, you just may come round to accepting that the Republican prescriptions for the US economy will not work. In this regard, I now make no distinction between the Republicans and Democrats as regards macro economic policies, and I say so for two reasons:-
1.Now that the labour movement in the US lacks the clout it used to have and cannot buoy the Democratic party with finances, the Democrats are as fully reliant on corporate backing as are the Republicans ( i.e. he who pays the piper calls the tune). In other words, it is the same money putting the politicians in – 50/50 here or 75/25% split there as the case may be – but same backers – now dance to the tune.
2. Both the Republicans and Democrats have moved away from some economic basics. In essence it is real production that moves an economy forward, and the printing of more money to move an economy out of economic crisis has never worked. One can cite Germany’s hyper inflation or even Mugabe’s Zimbabwe for that inflation becomes inevitable and the dive and loss of value of the currency is a natural consequence of prolonged pursuit of these monetary policies. Monetary policy, by way of printing more money, may stave off deeper immediate crisis for a short while, but the economic recovery plan ultimately must factor in plans for increasing real production. America has far more room for manoeuvre than any other economy in the world because it has the world’s reserve currency and can export more readily its domestically created economic problems to other economies. The IMF and World Bank remain the primary US institutions which have done so over the entire post World War 11 period. We are now facing a new phase of global financial crisis where the traditional measures used are approaching their outer limits.
Let’s see how it plays out over the next 2 to 3 years – brace yourselves, the US policies will impact and inevitably feed into the UK.
Read this: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1130
I fear, Craig, you are right.
Democracy doesn’t work any more, and it’s arguable that it can’t work for any length of time without degenerating into plutocracy.
Perhaps we need a strong man to put the rich in their place and give us all Brot und Arbeit – as they say in Germany.
@Courtenay Barnett
“What we find is a lot of arms production, which, truth be told is also real ( albeit highly destructive) production.”
There is nothing to disagree with the rest of your analysis, but your are being charitable in your characterisation of the value about arms production. If it were being funded by actual present tax revenues and without fiat currency then it would be real highly destructive production. Instead it is destructive to economies and to lives, and in times of war is a vast number of expended bullets, bombs and fuel that gives no permanent value to an economy. It’s the broken window fallacy of economics. Better to spend your money on a new suit rather than repairing a window a vandal has broken, or spending money to break one yourself.
Besides, war, unless purely defensive, is totally utterly evil, and even a defensive war, which is morally justified for the defender, is initiated by an evil aggressor, and the UK and US have never been in danger of being invaded since World War 2, yet have initiated or supported war, without so much as a smidgen of genuine justification, quite regularly.
I feel empathy for the people who are casting votes, writing letters to their politicians and signing petitions in a vain attempt to be safe from economic disaster or state aggression, while achieving the exact opposite. When it all comes crashing down around our ears, the ones that figure it out post crash that they brought this down upon themselves, are going to be, to use a war metaphor, in shell-shock.
Remember, Remember the 5th November
http://www.anniemachon.com/annie_machon/2010/11/index.html
Ah yes, Annie Machon, 911 Truther of the most stupid kind.
Ingo – EDP in bed with BBC Norwich who were so fair to Craig in the by-election NOT.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/norfolk/hi/tv_and_radio/newsid_9159000/9159850.stm
Roderick – are you currently under any psychiatric help? You need help. The idiots around here will keep nudging you on – so much so that Suhayl will blow through his ethical responsibility – but I’ll do the favour of telling you how it really is: you’re mentally ill and you need help. You could live a much better life with counseling and medication.
And you’ve still presented absolutely no evidence that MI5/MI6 is out to get you because you once quit a job.
Does Steve Jobs have an iphone?
@ Antonio,
I do not see us as being in any fundamental disagreement.
My overall point was not any excuse for the “war economy”. If a person works in an arms production factory, builds bombs – a person designs more efficient ways of delivering payload – a person is employed by the military to devise ways of conditioning soldiers to fight for the “cause” without questioning the policies that underpin that cause – are all one way or the other earning a living and a wage or salary doing their nine to five. The economy is impacted within the town that supplies the workers, when the workers spend, when the engineer spends his pay, when the psychologist pays his taxes etc. Not a choice I condone or approve of – it is just how it ‘works’ at present in the war economy. Physical production has taken place, money has been paid, an economy is affected by the expenditures when the pay is spent.
If I am correct, I recall reading something of Leonardo Da Vinci shelving some designs he had of flying machines. The reason was that he foresaw the military destructive capacity, where if humans could fly they may be enabled to deliver payloads from above with horrendous consequences. ( Not sure if what I read is apocryphal). Now – just think about it all these centuries later. We, humans have not merely perfected the means of flying but on Hiroshima and Nagasaki we have delivered the atomic payloads, and on Laos and on Cambodia and in Afghanistan and in Baghdad and on and on and on. My, how truly impressive – haven’t we as a species ‘progressed’ magnificently?
LfStL Would you recommend ECT? Or how about some SSRIs? From your experience which would you recommend?
I’m a lawyer, not a doctor.
“I’m a lawyer, not a doctor”.
No you’re not. You’re an itinerant watch salesman. Now go away.
Who killed Willie McRae? New call by a retired police officer for fresh probe. Very interesting. I know a lot of very sober and sensible people in Scotland who are convinced Willie McRae’s death was not suicide.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/security-service-tailed-snp-activist-on-day-of-his-death-1.1065975
Why were you offering a medical opinion to Mr. Russell then?
If someone tells me that little green men are telling him to drive off the highway, it seems reasonable for me to call him delusional.
In any event, I wasn’t really issuing a medical opinion – I was telling him to get help. Which is also quite reasonable.
But not all medical opinions are valid. For instance, Suhayl tells the man that he believes him.
When clearly even Craig Murray doesn’t believe a word the man says.
MORE SMEARS ?” A REAL STEW OF CORRUPTION
Larry’s not a lawyer. The Larry’s are bottom feeders who are paid to TROLL the INTERNET and SMEAR whistle-blowers like myself. It’s his job, and he smears me almost every time I comment. Readers of this blog will note that every time Larry appears here it is to smear somebody. He does nothing else. Lawyers comment with contact details, not hide behind anonymity as Larry does. Here is the story that Larry’s clients are scared of:
http://russell46.livejournal.com/