At last, BBC News says something useful

And so tour operator XL goes down, as City Unslicker warned.

But from the pile of horse-puckey that is BBC News gleams a speck of gold: advice on how businesses must survive recession. Participating in a price war isn't the way to do it, since you make yourself vulnerable to misfortune, such as the 44% increase in fuel costs (and tightening bank credit) that did for XL. No, here's their three valuable tips:

1. Go for custom with higher profit margins, like BA's focus on business class flights.
2. Hold lots of cash, like Ryanair.
3. Cut costs, like Flybe with their modern, larger, more fuel-efficient craft.

Things are a little different from the consumer's point of view, of course. We came back from Dublin a few years ago on a certain airline, and the electrics failed before takeoff. They fiddled with them for a bit, then we flew to Birmingham, where they promptly failed again just as we were taxiing to the terminal.

Good job they hadn't failed halfway across the Irish Sea, or we'd have been up there all day.

LHC update

Two days after the Mighty Marmite Machine was switched on, and no news. Did they run out of shillings?

Or is this proton recycling thing one of those EU subsidy scams? * At 11,000 circuits a second, the turnover would much quicker.

But I still think it's really a bunker and escape tunnel to Switzerland (geographically the sane eye in the mad mask of Europe). The elite have something to flee from, as Tony Sharp points out - this is the 14th consecutive year of accounts rejected by their own Court of Auditors.

So how WAS the £4.4 billion spent, exactly?

I don't care; I'm off to look for the Great Wine Lake. If they'll tell me where it is, I'll sign the bl**dy accounts myself. **

* "In 2003 German authorities combined isotopic evidence with paper-trail analysis to put a stop to a sophisticated scam, known as "carousel fraud". A group of German companies had been illegally claiming subsidies by trading EU-made butter to and from Estonia (then not a member of the EU). Each time a butter lorry crossed the border from Germany to Poland the companies were given EU export subsidies. Once in Estonia the butter was repackaged and labelled to make it look like it had originated in Estonia, heaved back on a lorry and hauled back to Germany. This time, the importers took advantage of a tax break on foreign imports aimed at increasing trade with prospective EU member countries, as Estonia then was. The investigation revealed that 22 out of 25 butter samples taken from Estonian-labelled butter imported into the EU were not Estonian. In at least one case, the isotopic ratios of hydrogen and oxygen in a butter sample indicated it could only have come from Ireland."

** Wasn't a Chinese emperor deposed for excessive taxation, which he used to create an artificial lake and fill it with wine so that ships could sail on it and have mock battles for his entertainment?

Foreign powers are also battening the hatches

Jesse passes on a report from China Daily about China's decision to diversify out of dollar-denominated assets, and he notes that Japan and India are doing the same.

Prepare for a storm; they are.

‘Late late yestreen I saw the new moone,
Wi the auld moone in hir arme,
And I feir, I feir, my deir master,
That we will cum to harme.’

O our Scots nables wer richt laith
To weet their cork-heild schoone;
Bot lang owre a’ the play wer playd,
Their hats they swam aboone.

("Sir Patrick Spens")

US banks preparing for the moonlight flit?

This is a post you will wish to read if Lehman and/or other US Banks go down.

"London Banker" notes that US creditors get first pick of US assets in the event of insolvency, and speculates that Lehman may recently have pursued a strategy of selling foreign assets to increase their US-based holdings. In the event of the bank's failure, this would minimise the loss to American creditors, stiffing their foreign counterparts. Such a pre-crash preparatory repatriation of wealth, he says, might account for some of the recent turnaround in the dollar and US stocks.

He even hints at the temptation for banks to misappropriate assets in nominee accounts for which they are technically only the custodians. Kind of like the old "Muddling up the firm's money with my own," or Father Ted's "It was only resting in my account."

There is a sick plausibility to these speculations.

UPDATE: ... and Sitemeter tells me we are attracting the attention of Beijing (IP: 61.48.41.# (CNCGROUP Beijing Province Network)). A little paranoid frisson to enliven my Friday evening.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai

Has the spider made a deal with the fly?

Gold: window of opportunity?

Gold per ounce is now $752 in US Dollars. I've been trying to track down an article I read in the past couple of days, that said Investec expected gold to veer between $750 - $1,000 (similar article here). Is this the time to get back in? An increase of 33% within months is nothing to sniff at - unless you're one of those greedy City boys.

Large Hadron Collusion

It came to me in a flash. How would you or I know the difference between decay products in a particle accelerator, and a sparkler in a steam bath? We've been had, Ron.

17 miles of construction deep below ground... It's a bunker! When the EU project finally and inevitably collapses, taking the economy of Western Europe with it, the corrupt, incompetent and eye-poppingly expensive politicians and bureaucrats are going to need a hidey-hole.

But what about the pipes and cables?

We saw them as Professor Brian Cox tootled along through the circular cavern, didn't we? D:Ream on. What we saw was a CGI loop, entirely familiar to computer games players. Beneath this illusory overlay is footage of working, sleeping and recreational facilities, water filters, air recycling machinery, food stores and all the rest. Like Slartibartfast on his planet-constructing world of Magarathea, the Euro elite will be able to sleep through the coming recession and return in time to impose fresh taxes and regulations.

Meanwhile, the border-straddling tunnel is a convenient way for them to pop across to Switzerland and check their bank accounts.

Judge Mental rules on religion

Yet another group of young men has been found guilty of conspiring to commit mass murder for political-religious reasons.

Britain has extended tolerance to religious dissenters for over three centuries - e.g. the Toleration Act of 1689 - but always on terms designed to maintain peace and national sovereignty.

Perhaps the regulation of religion needs to be brought up-to-date, and maybe the model should be changed. Everything is commoditised these days, so why not treat emotional investments in chosen philosophies like financial ones?

For example, after a rant against the infidel and a call to slaughter him, for which the promised return is an eternity of brilliant food and sex in Heaven, firebrand preachers should add, "Regulatory warning: souls can go down as well as up."

Foreign powers calling the tune on the US economy

... foreign central banks now are in a position where they can influence, through their asset allocation, the allocation of credit inside the US economy.

... says Brad Setser.

Right, left and centre

I told my brother that I find Hillary more scary than Sarah. He replies:

You understand that she scares me because of the fundamentalism and reported vindictiveness. As for her daughter being up the spout, my complaint is that the social conservatives and left-wing social engineers claim to have all the answers to raising my children, yet can't get their own houses in order. At least liberals pretend to be more understanding of the weaknesses of others.

On the right wing here, we have, off the top of my head:

Jimmy Bakker (evangelist) - caught stealing, cheating on taxes, and convincing religious young girls that he should have sex with them

Ted Haggard (anti-gay evangelist) - caught doing heavy drugs and having sex with a male prostitute

Larry Craig (outspoken anti-gay senator) - caught trolling for gay men in an airport

Mark Foley (right wing congressman) - caught trolling for underage congressional page boys

Sarah Palin - see the above

Karl Rove (I believe the grandson of one of Goebbel's propaganda minions) - engineered Bush's victories and the anti-gay marriage movements in 2004, plus the outing of Valerie Plame, covert CIA agent. Married, but well-known in Washington circles as liking the underground gay sex clubs.

Rush Limbaugh (very right-wing TV radio voice) - drug addict. He got probation for obtaining the drugs. His housekeeper went to jail.

Dick Cheney (VP) - strongly supported the anti-gay movement, which got voters out, while his own daughter is gay.

Tammy Faye Bakker (evangelist and ex-wife of Jimmy, now deceased) - both evangelist husbands went to jail for tax evasion and theft, yet she managed to publicly cry her way through both trials, and got off scot-free.

Jimmy Swaggart (evangelist) - caught hiring prostitutes

Jeb Bush (former governor of Florida, brother of Pres. Bush) - kept the hard-line anti-drug line, except for his addicted daughter. His wife was caught trying to smuggle jewelry through customs.

I could go on, but you get the point.

My observation, and supported by some conversations with southern Baptists, is that the draconian rules that they want to impose on society are for everyone else, to keep them in line. I don't like, nor need, that kind of government.

All I'm looking for is a FISCAL conservative.

And by the way, whatever happened to "moral suasion"? Why does everything have to be banned or compulsory?

For example, I've always thought that aborting inconvenient children is very wrong, and the "they haven't developed nerves yet" argument is irrelevant hooey - we all went through that stage and it doesn't make killing any better if the victim is unconscious (even Peter Pan woke up the pirate first). And maybe US demographics, like here in Britain, would be very different if the slaughter of the innocents hadn't happened - but we are all bending under the weight of a thousand daily coercions.

As I said to my brother: And I trust that you and all Americans who understand theConstitution will remember to keep telling the State to s*d off.