Keyboard worrier
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts

Sunday, November 09, 2014

Equity collapse: two views make a market

John Hussman thinks the stockmarket is due for at least a 50% drop. If he's right, that would be the third time since the start of the year 2000 (lows in 2003 and 2009).



On the other hand, Barry Ritholtz shows that the S&P 500 has (with a blip or two including 1929-1933) shown a rising tendency since the year 1900.

As to the latter, I'd like to see:

(a) a correlation with some reasonably fair measure of inflation (can of worms, no doubt); and
(b) a correlation with the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels

Will it keep up? Who knows? As Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead. I guess we should enjoy the unique era of mass wealth and comfort (in the West, for most, relative to past ages) while it lasts, however long it does.

But - speaking for myself only - I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket, and certainly not on the stockmarket at these QE/HFT/derivative-pumped valuations.

(Pic source)

Your view may be different - and the correct one.


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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Is your money safe in the bank? - revisited

John Ward reports that some South African bank savers are now having their accounts raided to shore up a different bank, African Bank Investments Ltd. Even more disturbingly, the example he quotes is of a customer whose SA bank is part of the international Barclays group, so the link stretches back to the UK itself.

Almost exactly seven years ago, and over a year before the global banking crisis of 2008/9 hit us, I warned British readers that protection for their savings was limited. At that time (August 2007), you were guaranteed 100% of the first 2,000 in your account, and only 90% of the next £33,000. So the maximum compensation in the case of a bank wipeout, even if you had millions, was £31,700.

Now, and as a result of the crisis (and more importantly, to prevent a system-destroying general run on the banks) the "guarantee" has been increased to 100% of the first £85,000 per person (see FSCS here). That's per bank group, so if you have more than one bank account make sure they're not part of the same group.

But why is a guarantee needed in the first place? Surely the money you have deposited is yours, same as if you'd asked them to look after your house deeds.

Not at all. Here is the law as explained by Toby Baxendale on The Cobden Centre website in 2010:

The Current State of the Law


The key case is Carr v Carr 1811 (reported in Merivale (541 n) 1815 – 17). A testator in making his bequest said “whatever debts might be due to him…at the time of his death”, the key question in this case being whether “a cash balance due to him on his banker’s account” passed by this bequest. The Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant held that it did. He reasoned that it was not a depositum; a sealed bag of money could be, but this generally deposited money could not possibly have an ‘earmark’. Grant concluded on this point, “when money is paid into a banker’s, he always opens a debtor and creditor account with the payor. The banker employs the money himself, and is liable merely to answer the drafts of his customers to that amount.” For the legal scholars among you, Vaisey v Reynolds 1828 and Parker v Merchant 1843 both affirmed this position.

In Davaynes v Noble 1816 it was argued in front of Grant that a banker is a bailee rather than a debtor. Rejecting that argument, Grant said “money paid into a banker’s becomes immediately a part of his general assets; and he is merely a debtor for the amount.”

In Sims v Bond 1833 the Chief Justice of the Queens Bench Division affirmed in judgement “sums which are paid to the credit of a customer with a banker, though usually called deposits, are, in truth, loans by the customer to the banker.”

The House of Lords, then the highest court in the land, had its say on the matter in Foley v Hill and Others 1848, duly reported in the Clerk’s Reports, House of Lords 1847-66 (pages 28 and 36-7). In summary, the appellant in 1829 opened a bank account with the respondent bankers. Two further deposits we added in 1830 and in 1831 interest was still added. In 1838 the appellant brought proceedings against the respondent bankers seeking recovery of both the principle and interest. The counsel cleverly tried to argue that it was the duty of the respondent bankers to keep all the accounts up to date at all times and thus there was more to this relationship than that of debtor and creditor.

The Lord Chancellor Cottenham said the following in judgement

Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal; it is by then the money of the banker, who is bound to return an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it. The money paid into a banker’s is money known by the principal to be placed there for the purpose of being under the control of the banker; it is then the banker’s money; he is known to deal with it as his own; he makes what profit of it he can, which profit he retains to himself, paying back only the principal, according to the custom of bankers in some places, or the principal and a small rate of interest, according to the custom of bankers in other places. The money placed in custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in a hazardous speculation; he is not bound to keep it or deal with it as the property of his principal; but he is, of course, answerable for the amount, because he has contracted, having received that money, to repay to the principal, when demanded, a sum equivalent to that paid into his hands.
That has been the subject of discussion in various cases, and that has been established to be the relative situation of banker and customer. That being established to be the relative situations of banker and customer, the banker is not an agent or factor, but he is a debtor.

Thus the settled position of the law is that when you deposit, the bank becomes the owner of the money deposited and you become a creditor to the bank.

We have now established that you shouldn't have more than £85,000 in any group of banks.

Strictly speaking, it's not the government's guarantee, it's the FSCS's: "The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) is backed by government" (my italics). The FSCS runs a fund and pays claims out of money it levies on UK financial institutions. In a bad - not the worst possible - situation it can borrow from the Treasury, and has done so, as this official attempt to reassure us says:

What if a giant goes bust? Is there enough cash?

The FSCS has paid out more than £26bn and helped more than 4.5m people since 2001. We are funded by the industry, but the FSCS can borrow money from the Treasury if the compensation costs of a major failure are more than the industry can meet. That is what happened when banks failed in 2008.

So consumers can be reassured the FSCS will always have the money to pay compensation. No-one has ever lost a penny of protected deposits and no-one ever will.

What about "bail-ins", like the case referred to by John Ward above?

For example, in the event of a building society's insolvency, depositors' claims used to rank below other unsecured creditors and so were more likely than the latter to be required to accept something other than their money back. This is now changing:

"...the BRRD has been agreed and will require us to introduce a slightly different form of depositor preference. It will require a two tier preference, where:
  • eligible deposits from natural persons and SMEs have a higher priority ranking in insolvency than the claims of ordinary unsecured creditors
  • covered deposits have a higher priority ranking in insolvency than the part of eligible deposits from natural persons and SMEs that exceed the coverage limit
Covered deposits are defined as those that are protected by the FSCS, up to its limit of £85,000. Eligible deposits are defined as those which qualify for FSCS protection, without any limit on the amount (and deposits from such natural persons and SMEs that are made through foreign branches of EU institutions). Following these changes, if an individual had £100,000 deposited at a building society that is a member of the FSCS, £85,000 would be a “covered deposit” and have a higher priority ranking than the remaining £15,000 which in turn would have a higher ranking than ordinary unsecured creditors.

We anticipate that the Directive will come into force by May 2014. The transposition deadline is 1 January 2015."

The Government's general guiding principle is to reassure depositors that they won't be fleeced in a crisis:

"Section 60B [of the Banking Act] requires the Treasury, when making these regulations, to have regard to the desirability of “ensuring that pre-resolution shareholders and creditors of a bank do not receive less favourable treatment than they would have received had the bank entered insolvency immediately before the coming into effect of the initial instrument” (the first instrument made by the Bank in the resolution)."

Why are they doing this? Well, here's Oz comedy pair Clarke and Dawe on the effect of the Cyprus bank bail-in:




Still:

(a) I don't see anything that limits the power of the FSCS and others to alter or suspend their guarantees, if they feel they have to;
(b) a leading barrister has given his views (in 2011 on CityWire) on the potential case against the FSCS's fund-raising powers;
(c) the Emergency Powers Act of 1920 allows the Privy Council to do pretty much whatever it likes in the short run, if it determines that there is an emergency*;
(d) anything can happen, and in a very bad situation some of those things could be beyond the Government's power to control;
(e) theft by inflation is always a threat, and despite a long campaign by me my MP has so far refused to stand up at Prime Minister's Question Time and ask when the Government is going to restore National Savings Index-Linked Certificates.

Where does the Cabinet hold their own families' cash? Be useful to keep that under observation, maybe. It might not just be the Russians or tax-dodgers who want to shift money out of the UK, and Europe in general. And why is the Chinese government encouraging its citizens to hold gold?

_________________________
UPDATE: *I'm a bit behind the curve here - we now have what seems a much further-reaching and potentially sinister provision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Contingencies_Act_2004

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Friday, August 08, 2014

Is the UK a tax haven? For frackers?

The Washington Post lists a host of US companies that have relocated their official headquarters overseas to reduce tax.

Apart from the usual dodgy destinations - Bermuda, the Caymans etc - there are some who have chosen the UK, and three of them are drillers. Is there a story here?

Data from Washington Post.

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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Thursday, August 07, 2014

Does inequality lead to "decline and fall"?

Seeking to draw parallels between modern America and decadent Rome, Washington's Blog links to this:


A dwindling middle class, the flight of the rich to safer places (think of the recent Chinese and Russian expatriates)... it's suggestive.

The above arises indirectly from Barry Ritholtz's latest piece, in which he lists many economists and professors who also claim that widening income inequality harms the economy and generates boom-bust cycles.


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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Monday, August 04, 2014

A dumb question

 
 

And what will happen next?

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Ayn Rand quote of the day

(Pic source)
 
"A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures."

- http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/trader_principle.html

Discuss, with reference to the banking system.


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Monday, July 21, 2014

Russia and the Great Game revisited

(pic source)

A couple of months ago I looked at Russia's possible longer-term evolution ("Russia's big plans", April 28); now Peter Hitchens, still struggling to get a balanced message across all the shrilling, reminds us of the bigger picture as seen by the USA:

"It’s useful, at this point, to recall words written by Zbigniew Brzezinski( Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, and the unsung architect of Moscow’s doomed intervention and eventual downfall in Afghanistan. He wrote in his 1997 book ‘The Grand Chessboard’ : ‘Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’

"‘However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.’"

This provides a context for what seems to be an economic war using European gas consumption as its battleground, as discussed earlier today ("A dirty war for clean energy: Ukraine and beyond").

The attempt to contain Russia, which is under pressure to expand economically in order to stave off a kind of collapse, could potentially be as dangerous as the imperial hemming-in of Germany before WWI, or the victors' pound-of-flesh approach to Germany after 1918.

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A dirty war for clean energy: Ukraine and beyond

From Martin Armstrong today (emphases mine):

"We are getting info from reliable sources that there may be another layer to the USA v Russian conflict. Just as the entire Syrian agenda was to arm terrorists to topple the Syrian government in order to push through a pipeline to cut off the energy monopoly in Europe held by Russia, we may be actually seeing another motive here. The projections of fracking technology that the USA will become a net exporter of energy has set the stage for another perhaps covert move – sanctions against Russia to open the European market for energy. In this new war of words and sanctions against Russia, it is the Americans who seem to be marching either totally brain-dead, or with another energy secret agenda. This very will may be all about one thing -:taking the Russian energy market from them. To turn off Russia as a competitor, the Russian president is to be internationally isolated. The shooting down of flight MH17 is playing into this agenda and comes precisely at the right moment to aid the U.S. strategy on energy. We will keep you advised on this matter."

And from an October 2012 VT article:

(source: Veterans Today)

"The significant question to be asked at this point is what could bind Israel, Turkey, Qatar in a form of unholy alliance on the one side, and Assad’s Syria, Iran, Russia and China on the other side, in such deadly confrontation over the political future of Syria? One answer is energy geopolitics.

What has yet to be fully appreciated in geopolitical assessments of the Middle East is the dramatically rising importance of the control of natural gas to the future of not only Middle East gas producing countries, but also of the EU and Eurasia including Russia as producer and China as consumer.

"Natural gas is rapidly becoming the “clean energy” of choice to replace coal and nuclear electric generation across the European Union, most especially since Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear after the Fukushima disaster. Gas is regarded as far more “environmentally friendly” in terms of its so-called “carbon footprint.”

"The only realistic way EU governments, from Germany to France to Italy to Spain, will be able to meet EU mandated CO2 reduction targets by 2020 is a major shift to burning gas instead of coal. Gas reduces CO2 emissions by 50-60% over coal.[xiii]

"Given that the economic cost of using gas instead of wind or other alternative energy forms is dramatically lower, gas is rapidly becoming the energy of demand for the EU, the biggest emerging gas market in the world.

"Huge gas resource discoveries in Israel, in Qatar and in Syria combined with the emergence of the EU as the world’s potentially largest natural gas consumer, combine to create the seeds of the present geopolitical clash over the Assad regime.


"In July 2011, as the NATO and Gulf states’ destabilization operations against Assad in Syria were in full swing, the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an historic gas pipeline energy agreement which went largely unnoticed amid CNN reports of the Syrian unrest..."

There's more, lots more, in that VT piece.


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Thursday, July 10, 2014

Bad business is good business


I'm reading Michael Crichton's "Airframe" (1996) and it contains a passage that has resonances far beyond the airline industry. Here, an accident investigator is telling a journalist about an explosion on an aircraft a few hours before: the operator had bought her company's excellent plane, but installed corroded second-hand engines, despite warnings.

"Super-cheap carriers are a stock scam."

"A stock scam?"

"Sure," Casey said. "You buy some aircraft so old and poorly maintained no reputable carrier will use them for spares. Then you subcontract maintenance to limit your liability. Then you offer cheap fares, and use the cash to buy new routes. It's a pyramid scheme but on paper it looks great. Volume's up, revenue's up, and Wall Street loves you. You're saving so much on maintenance that your earnings skyrocket. Your stock price doubles and doubles again. By the time the bodies start piling up, as you know they will, you've made your fortune off the stock, and can afford the best counsel. That's the genius of deregulation, Jack. When the bill comes, nobody pays.."

"Except the passengers."

Plea bargaining, court and regulator fines that come nowhere near the improper profits made, a couple in jail but hundreds and thousands of others untouched... it's not just banks, it's the way of the world.


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Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Democrat vs Republican economics

Eric Zuess' book "They're Not Even Close" compares the economic record of the American political parties from 1910-2010. His analysis shows that most aspects of the US economy are historically stronger under Democratic control than under Republican control. This is also true for the individual states, in that those which lean Democrat have a strong correlation with a robust economy and educational attainment.

Given that Republicans are strongly in favour of self-reliance, big business and the free market, while the Democrats have inclusion and the common good as their official platform planks, this data appears to be counter-intuitive. It does, however, explain why the Democrats have a hard time getting anything done, as they try to please everyone.

One possible explanation is the Game Theory of John von Neumann and John Nash. In brief, many human interactions, including economic transactions, can be modeled as a finite collection of players playing a game. Each player has a finite set of possible decisions/strategies, and a pay-off function, which depends on all of the current choices being made (for a very good explanation, see the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium ).
Nash showed that each such game has at least one Nash equilibrium. This is a choice of strategies such that, if any single player changes their choice, their pay-off will decrease. Getting there requires perfect knowledge of all other choices, which is most easily achieved by cooperation.



For a brilliant and simple example of the dangers of pure competition, consider Martin Shubik’s bidding game: We auction off $1 to a group of players. The highest bidder wins it. However, the wrinkle is that the top two bidders have to pay. The only possible non-negative pay-offs for the group as a whole require cooperation, with the maximum being one player bidding 1 cent, and the others not bidding at all.
These models explain why wolves do better than tigers, and ants beat everyone.


So what is it that Democrats do ‘better’? I would argue the concept of public spending as investment, not waste. Here are the kinds of projects usually funded by Democrats, but vehemently fought by Republicans.

Infrastructure – build better roads, water systems, airports etc, and companies can move products and workers more efficiently. In addition, construction involves well-paid jobs, which increases the tax base.

Entitlements – as onerous as this word is to hard-working people, we don’t often see the elderly starve to death, or massive epidemics. Every US city is probably safer than Buenos Aires. How would that change if the poor were actually living on the streets in large numbers?
Education – better-educated people make for a better society, are healthier and less likely to commit crimes (except for fraud).

Science – a bigger contributor to economic growth than abundant natural resources. The problem is that it requires huge investment for unlikely pay-off. This is generally not what companies like to do. Those that do so want results to be proprietary, which necessarily stifles the free exchange of information that progress requires.
So what can we conclude? Mathematics can predict that some cooperation is better for the economy than pure competition.

However, this prediction is after the fact, which is much less useful than before. The only people who will accept the original data are those to whom it is emotionally satisfying, namely economists and Democrats. Republicans will find a way to ignore or explain it away. In other words, the book is sadly unnecessary.


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Sunday, May 18, 2014

Tipping point

Source: http://www.justintarte.com/2012/10/leadership-and-your-tipping-point.html

"When looked at objectively each merger or take over is a loss of economic activity. This becomes painfully clear when we have a look at the unemployment rates of some countries...

"The pillar Prosperity of a society is about to fall again. History has shown that the fall of the pillar Prosperity always results in a revolution. Because of the high level of unemployment after the second industrial revolution many societies initiated a new transition, the creation of a war economy. This type of economy flourished especially in the period 1940 – 1945.

"Now, societies will have to make a choice for a new transition to be started."

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/current-problems-associated-end-third-industrial-revolution.html


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Monday, May 12, 2014

Who owns your money?

From The Guardian

"No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue."

- Lord Clyde (Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue, 1929)

This is not tax evasion, but tax avoidance, and Barlow has earned his corn honestly and, as far as I know, without cheating or hurting anyone. It's not his fault that, like Henry VIII, our governments in recent years have been completely useless at managing their finances.

What Lord Clyde would have thought of the Inland Revenue getting clearance to shovel money directly out of your bank account on the merest (even pretended) suspicion that you might owe them something, I can't say.

But as Martin Armstrong observes, that fires the starting-pistol for the race to get your money away from any jurisdiction that thinks it can make free with your property. Governments should not give themselves carefully-fuzzy powers to do what they will: "carte blanche" was the instrument of Dumas' wicked Cardinal Richelieu.

Nor is this the revolutionary French National Assembly, where the mob brings down whomever it wants on a whim. Whipping up public indignation is a very dangerous and two-edged sword.

And remember that the American Revolution was about "no taxation without representation" - the tea dumped into Boston Harbour was a Trojan horse attempt to get the colonists to concede the principle by purchasing a product that had been taxed at source.

You could argue - and I do - that our current electoral system is so dysfunctional as to be just such a form of non-representation.*

These appear to be desperate times.
____________________

*No, that doesn't mean don't pay your taxes. But the sense of disenfranchisement feeds potentially dangerous resentment. Power carelessly exercised creates its own opposition.

The system's increasingly urgent search for extra money to keep going, the increasing difficulty ordinary people find in making a living and saving money, plus the erosion of civil liberties and general over-bossiness, are making some people stressed and reactionary. The EU debate (for example) involves such issues. Norman Cohn's "The Pursuit of the Millennium" shows that when societies are under great stress, they are vulnerable to manias. I think we see some of this on the Net.


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Saturday, May 03, 2014

Black cloth on the towbar

We're told today that round Wolverhampton, you may occasionally see a little piece of black cloth tied to the towbar of a car.

This means, "You rear-end me, I claim whiplash, we split the compensation."

A 2010 BBC news item says that this kind of fraud adds some £44 to the annual cost of a motor insurance policy.

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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The Pa Larkin economy

First edition (pic source)
Another sterling piece this week by Archdruid John Michael Greer. Here he discusses how our lives will change as the cost of non-human energy rises and its availability dwindles. In brief, the superstructure of society will crash.

Like Charles Hugh Smith, he envisages a return to a simpler life, where we ourselves make more of what we consume, and trade surpluses. To be more precise, not a simpler life - peasants have to be multiskilled and crafty to survive - but a simpler form of social organisation. Like Smith, Greer sees education as pricing itself out of the market, and in any case it's becoming irrelevant to the skills we will need in the future.

He also touches on what he calls the fashion of despair among those who simply refuse to begin adapting. If we see the present state of affairs as the Golden Age, then of course change means decline and loss.

But there's another way to see it. The model Greer is proposing is like that of Pa Larkin in H E Bates' life-affirming books. Pa doesn't believe in bothering the taxman and when the Inland Revenue sends a young, pasty-faced investigator to see how he can do so well on apparently no income, Pa marries him to one of his daughters and sets him to work. Bates' theme is love - not just of women, but of life. It's interesting to read the four Larkin sequels and see how in different ways they restate and defend the original, glowing vision of how we could be happy.

And like Pa, some of Greer's acquaintances are operating in the "black economy", because doing things the conventional way is a recipe for victimhood.

Some years ago, we met a man in South Wales whose neighbour hasn't worked for years. The latter said he hated both work (in its modern guise) and shopping, and decided to spend the rest of his life doing neither. He'd made enough in his previous career to buy a house before the mad price explosion, and eats well from what he catches in the fields and garners from hedgerows.

We don't all have to do exactly that. Pa Larkin manages on a mixed strategy of cash dealing (turning over money in any venture that is "wurf while"), subsistence farming (no fresher eggs or more organic chicken than from your own back yard) and piling the family into the van for seasonal crop-picking (he lives in Kent, which used to be known as "the garden of England").

Don't forget to love.

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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

2014 Budget summary (pictorial edition)

What the new-style pound coin will resemble:
 
The flower is called "thrift"... (source)


What the modern pound is worth:
 
(There were 80 of these to the old pound)


What Osborne and the Coalition have done to guarantee savers against inflation:

http://img.tfd.com/wn/88/6C789-zilch.png

What will happen as a result of personal pension changes allowing the investor unlimited access to the fund:

(source)

What's going to happen long-term anyway:

(Source)

What the Government is planning for its own future:

Leading the way...


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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Osborne gives us the threepenny bits

Pic source: BBC
The proposed new-style pound coin is publicised on the day of UK Chancellor George Osborne's Budget speech to Parliament.

The 12-sided design resembles the pre-decimal brass threepenny piece first issued in the reign of Edward VIII. The resemblance is more than physical, as we shall see.

Before 1937, threepence coins had always been based on silver, but the silver content reduced over the years and the coin eventually became inconveniently small. Why? Inflation, the curse of the twentieth century.

This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War of 1914-18. The Daily Mail's purchasing power calculator shows that one pound in 1915 was equivalent to £87 today. Coincidentally, under the old coinage system, there were 240 pence to the pound, or 80 "thrupenny bits". So a modern pound coin is worth much the same as a WWI threepenny bit.

The Chancellor introduced his Budget with the words, "Our country still borrows too much. We still don’t invest enough, export enough or save enough. So today we do more to put that right. This is a Budget for building a resilient economy. If you’re a maker, a doer or a saver: this Budget is for you. "

Actually, it's still not one for savers. I'm on Day 647 of my attempts to get my MP to ask questions in Parliament about NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates. All I've had so far is substandard, ill-informed guff in written answers from three different Treasury ministers (see right-hand sidebar on the Money blog).

In Cockney rhyming slang, the "threepenny bits" stands for "the shits". Funny how all these things link up.


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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

What the Rhine maidens really wanted

(From the Bayerische Staatsoper's 2012 production of "Götterdämmerung")

Synopsis:

Having lost their gold to the Federal Reserve, who in turn foolishly leased it to Alberic (the gnome of Zurich), the Rhine maidens cling to the false gold of the Euro for comfort, though it will ultimately lead to the destruction of the Gods and all Southern Europe.

Prizing wealth and power above love, they have poisoned the wellspring of natural affection and driven away their lovers so, doomed ever to remain maidens, they are left lamenting, "Viagra, Viagra" (at 4:00 below).




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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Frankenjigsaw


Politics has become the art of the impossible.

We have a dysfunctional economy because we have a dysfunctional society, and vice versa. The pieces in the jigsaw box don't match up with the picture on the lid.

The picture shows people providing manufactures and services for each other. Families are holding together through thick and thin, and raising their children with love and discipline. Tax rates are low because money velocity and employment are high and few need to call on the safety net of the Welfare State. After paying for the necessaries of life, there is money left over to save for emergencies and old age, and saving is worthwhile because the currency keeps its value. The country is self-governing and at peace with its neighbours. Our leaders work for our best interests, arbitrating fairly between the demands of different groups.

The pieces we have now don't make that picture, and they don't even fit each other.

Our leaders have given our law and governance to the EU, effectively abandoned border controls, sold our economic base to foreign interests and combined to oppose electoral reform that would make them more answerable to the voters.

So to distract from their comprehensive failure, they select victims to be the lightning-rods for our anger. The recent "life means life" ruling on prisoners is to give us the illusion that our judicial system is independent of Europe; benefit claimants are demonised so that we don't ask why we haven't got jobs for them to do; economic immigrants, because they cannot be excluded, are to be treated as second-class citizens (in terms of social benefits) when they arrive.

This is reminiscent of Mao's Cultural Revolution, the cynical sowing of factional discord to secure control at the top. It feels like an era is ending, and those in the know are looting the system before the collapse. If Martin Armstrong's theory is correct, it's all inevitable, part of the long-cycle economic pulse that is bringing both Marxism and representative democracy to an end.

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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Oh, what a surprise!

When things go wrong, the modern meme is to blame the “Law of Unintended Consequences”, which is the modern way of saying “it’s just God’s will”. However, in all too many instances, the “unintended” consequences could be easily predicted.
 Case 1: Most stocks are now owned by mutual funds. The fund managers are interested in fees, which means waiting for price increases, and selling the stocks. Their sole interest is short-term price gains. The CEO’s are hired with bonuses for price increases, and the only oversight is the Board of Directors (consisting of CEO’s of other companies), and the annual stockholder meeting (dominated by the fund managers). Then there is general surprise that many companies are managed for short-term stock price increases, and not for long-term performance!
 Case 2: Most US school systems have curricula which are dominated by methods courses, and very light on the content that they will teach. We put those ill-educated teachers into the field, and give them the message that any failure of a student means that the teacher is incompetent (I was told this by an education professor recently). We then test students and blame the teachers for every bad result. Why are we surprised at grade inflation and cheating on tests?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Saturday, February 01, 2014

Did Lloyds Bank have a heart attack last week?

Last Sunday, "hundreds of thousands of customers were left unable to use debit cards and 7,000 cashpoints" (Daily Mail).
 
The BBC News website said the cause was "a hardware failure" but - perhaps in an attempt to reassure us - the bank told them "the faults were not caused by any external upgrade work or cyber attack."

Funnily enough, Sunday was also the day that Lloyds borrowed an extra c. £766 million, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Source: WSJ
Just in time - or very nearly so, anyway?

As it happens, our current account is with Lloyds and earns 0% interest. This Harvard economist has just withdrawn $1 million from Bank of America for exactly that reason: the odds against a collapse, though presumably small, are not zero, so the risk to a depositor is underpriced.

Weekends seem to be bad for banks: on Saturday, September 13, 2008 the Federal Reserve was in talks with Lehman Brothers, Barclays backed away from making an offer (as reported in the NYT next day, Sunday) and the bankruptcy filing came on the Monday - at 1.45 in the morning. Not much chance for the likes of you and me to queue up at the counter.

Shoebox or bank account, bank account or shoebox? So hard to decide.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.