A Perfect Storm is Brewing

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

..and i trust you had a good night's kip as well teamsaint ...

S_A you might find this entertaining ..

[amateur51]

S_A, as a fellow dunderhead, I have found animated explanations like this one quite useful, at least re concepts like collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps.
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Very useful aeolium - many thanks

[teamsaint]

..and i trust you had a good night's kip as well teamsaint ...

S_A you might find this entertaining ..

thanks CDJ.. a good nights kip was had....but the work goes on and on.

Another 450 miles tomorrow !!
kids through college and then downsize...that the plan.,.... but job might not last that long !!(and i count myself lucky that this may be an option).

Never mind, theres always rob Cowan on Breakfast to keep me company..............DOH !!

Perhaps the gradual waking up to the royal ********ing that the banks, arms indutry,politicians etc are giving us will speed up and change will come before its too late.

And remember, as Dave said today, the government are doing everything they can to help the unemployed. Presumably that why they gave another £75 Bn to the banks...to help the unemployed !!

[aeolium]

Through this same controlling hand, monopoly, credit effectively transcends this in-the-first-place inequitably evening out process of production and distribution according to profitable criteria, itself susceptible to periodic overproduction, price collapse and resulting unemployment due to unplannable cyclicity, by virtue of its detachment from any monetarisability of value.

S_A, I read this a few times and although I thought I understood nearly all the individual words, when put together in the sentence it had the effect of turning my brain to suet pudding

Calum, kings of England could not control prices - look at the Tudors and Stuarts when prices shot up between 4 and 5 times. Bluff King Hal tried his own kind of QE by debasing the currency but it didn't help....

I'm not sure about Steve Keen's argument which seems almost to be against any kind of credit. Looking at the graphs there seem to be two key points in making the economic cycles more wildly unpredictable: the oil crisis in the 1970s and the deregulation of the financial system during the 1980s and 1990s, which resulted in massively more money and credit circulating around the system. This then led to the casino system of transactions being conducted which were not supported by sufficient assets (but which still exposed bank depositors' assets to loss in the event of default). The frightening thing is that I don't think anyone knows how much bank debt is out there.

[teamsaint]

Mr Cameron said: "These are very disappointing figures that have been announced today and every job that is lost is a tragedy for that person and for their family. That is why the Government is going to do everything it can to get people into work."
He said: "I accept we have got to do more to get our economy moving, to get jobs for our people, but we mustn't abandon the plan that has given us record low interest rates."


So, a bit of a porky there from Dave.

This "Plan" gave us record low interest rates.

No, really, thats what happened. It must be true because the multimillionaire dave says so.

Orwellian, really.

[Lateralthinking1]

The unemployment figures are now atrocious. They are the worst since 1994 or signal a return to the 80s, depending on who you listen to, but both are optimistic assessments. They are ultimately heading for 4 million. I am in no doubt about it. Gove is going for 17 as the compulsory school leaving age in 2013 and 18 in 2015. That may delay it a little for political gain but very little else.

Chris Woodhead and Digby Jones want to allow troublesome or bored 14 year olds to leave school. Jones has virtually admitted that it would amount to a gamble. Crassly, he says that "the UK is at five to midnight" and we have to do something even if it doesn't work out. He tosses aside the fact that employers would not find such individuals attractive to employ. He also shows little concern about it being a return to the 1940s at best. Most working class parents of people my age left school at 14. It was disappointing but at least they got jobs. Today, the Woodheads and the Jones's are in their own wild and peculiar fantasy lands.

So is it to be 16 or 17 or 18 or 14 or still getting 50% into university? What is the recipe for today Jim? When will that toy of the experts be boring as they suddenly move on to the next innovation with alleged expertise? Like Mervyn King, like the other bankers and economists, like the scientists, the psychologists, the religionists and the senior bureaucrats, the truth is that none of these people have a clue. They don't know what they are doing and they are out of control. Anyone could say what they say. We can all make mad statements. Let's lower the school age to 10 or increase it to 30. Let's do away with pensions. Let's give everyone the right to work until 105 or kill off everyone over 70. Sorry. There is no option. We must modernize. We must think outside the box. Oh dear. Look. It appears to be broken. They can have it. We'll have to go and play somewhere else.

If you or I were a someone, or had once been so, we would be heard for any old comment. We'd have "credibility". When those who are a someone understand that they are in privileged positions which in turn requires measure, it's not wholly awful. They can get it right sometimes if at other times they are wrong. When they don't, as is the case now, anything could happen and it probably will do. I think this makes them really quite dangerous to our society. The absence of mature reflection can be staggering, worrying, no actually terrifying. Perhaps everyone would be better off without them and the media who give them oxygen.

[Lateralthinking1]

The results would have been virtually the same had Labour been in power. In 1945, Britain was indeed in a different place. Bankrupt. The Government was panicking about the prospect of mass starvation. The papers it drafted on that topic were not released to the general public. Maynard Keynes, unwell, was sent to the US to get a loan. Rejected, Churchill then used his contacts to get us a bit of money.

Within 18 years, there was a welfare state and full employment. Funny how now it seems we are being asked to take ludicrous risks as if the position can never be turned around for the masses. Meanwhile, the rich have never had it so good. Globalisation of the kind we have currently was a choice. It wasn't an act of nature. The rot began to set in during the eighties and it is has been pursued by the powers that be like a religion ever since.

If I had been PM, we wouldn't be where we are now. I was against many of the changes introduced. But on education, I would go back to the position in the early eighties when about 20% went to university on grants. I would also keep the school leaving age as it is now. The issue is jobs. It isn't schooling. We need someone to sit down and work out which sectors realistically will grow. For example, farming is now on the upturn. Basic tourism is another area that should start expanding again.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i fancy Mr keen can speak for hisself aeolium, but my take on his view of credit is that it should be neither too much nor too little, that i was too much and will be too little ...what one might view as a Humpty Dumpty and King's Men problem eh ... any rational evidence based critique of neo classical equilibrium theory is most welcome, one might have expected economists to have noticed that equilibrium as a telic state of affairs has long since disappeared from ecology and natural systems concepts where rather more dynamic and chaotic models now prevail ...

alas now an OAP i have still to get sprog through final year and postgrad which seems to me quite possibly less expensive than sprog being unemployed at home! it is a tough struggle and a personal challenge .... tough struggles and personal challenges being rather in the heretofore relationship of credit to GDP .... in a state of oversupply ...

[Serial_Apologist]

For example, farming is now on the upturn. Basic tourism is another area that should start expanding again.

Farming is an urgent sector for funding in regards of new genetically more productive forms less dependent on herbicides and pesticides; but my guess is the scientific sector responsible for investigating & developing these is itself subject to cutbacks. Tourism will be favoured by the lower £, but we really need to make ourselves less dependent on this industry, Heritage's oft misprepresentation and manicurisation of history, subject as it obviously is to diminishing historical returns.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

controlling prices is difficult but i was born into a society trying to do it in 1945 .... i would not be surprised to see the return of the ration books of childhood ... this is the mother of all crises ....

[teamsaint]

So


those kids who get A levels go to uni. Leave uni with a very big debt....into a world of unemployment and under employment. They are added to the queues of already unemployed youngsters.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum , we are made to work to 66/67/68/70 as state pensions are pushed out of reach and company pensions wither.( hands up who wants their 9 year old being taught by a school full of 68 year old teachers.)

Looks to me like a way of controlling the behaviour of the population.

Lives sold into debt almost before they have started.

I despair.

[Lateralthinking1]

We are not being governed. We are all living in a torture chamber. I just cannot understand why the general public is so complacent. Life in East Germany in the Soviet era was surely better than being here now:

Electoral reform - None
Fat cats - Ongoing
Unemployment - The highest in 17 years
Pensions - Now to be claimed at a later age, if at all
Benefits - New clampdowns
Health - A rise in missed targets for waiting times of 48%
Elderly - Care described by professionals as "alarming"
Planning - Regulations to be ripped up, green belt threatened
Energy - Nuclear go-ahead as Tokyo radiation levels rise
Broadcasting - Significant cuts to the BBC
Public Sector - Decimated - with broken commitments
Wars - Several and ongoing
Libraries - Courts fail to halt cuts
Banks - Reforms slowing
Housing - Rents rising, mortgages beyond the means of many
Hospitals - One in five struggling for survival
Universities - New high fees
Inequality of income - Increasing
Scandal and corruption among elites - Frequent
Consumer rights - Patchy
Freedom of Information Act - Ignored on a whim
Salaries - Frozen
E-Petitions - Ignored
Right to Protest - New restrictions
Accountability - Virtually nil
Climate change - Inadequate response
School reforms - Destructive
Small businesses - Disappearing

[teamsaint]

great list.
Politicians lies.. frequent and increasing.

[mangerton]

Yes, a very good list. So true, so depressing. It could perhaps be summed up thus:

Government/establishment/those in charge - raising two fingers to the rest of us

[Petrushka]

Protests in Rome. I think we can expect much more of this.