In the comments section of my previous piece, "Arthurian" picks up on a remark I made regarding the mindset of some it's-all-going-to-end-ers. I respond:
What I'm thinking re the bit you quoted is that there is a self-aggrandizing tendency to think that the end of the world is nigh, which kind of ties in with one's own mortality and somehow makes the latter more meaningful, e.g. when I was a teenager we'd write poems about the threat of nuclear war.
Take James Kunstler: very sparkly prose style, but through it you sense a relish in contemplating the end of the corrupt old order, which will be replaced by an energy-efficient, sunny, bike-riding, low-food-miles happyocratic New World. In its way it's the sort of fantasy promoted by Communists to justify the awful things we must regrettably do before we get there, only here it's simply inevitable and we don't have to do anything to make it happen, so no guilt.
Fact is, when the money system broke down in Germany in 1923 and Hungary in 1946, the history books don't conclude their accounts with the sentence "As a result, everybody starved to death". The worst things that happened in Germany were what people decided to do about the collapse, in particular to look for a strong leader - ah yes, what we all need.
So ignoring the Doomsdayists and the Bright New Worlders, we should look at the social and political ramifications of what is undoubtedly major financial change. Growing inequality, increasing unemployment, and a State more determined to keep tabs on the populace. Money meltdown has been prevented, but civil liberties and the democratic system are definitely threatened. We've all (or most of us) been a lot poorer materially before now, but our birthright (even in the UK) is the expectation of liberty and the rights and intrinsic, inalienable worth of the individual.
The US has an advantage in that this eighteenth-century vision of man and society was preserved, crystallised, installed in the Constitution, and there'll be a hell of a ripping sound if someone tries to tear it out. The UK's constitution is much more liable to change and so while the biggest noise comes from America, the biggest loss may be ours - if we don't fight for the Rights of Man.
As a financial adviser (while there is much of a financial system left), I try to defend the little wealth of my clients - property rights are part of the R of M - but as I say, at the end it's not really about money. Once a basic minimum has been achieved, the material aspects of life are less important than the social.
What good would all the money in the world be, if you were the last human being on earth? That's a question I'd like to ask the 1% who own 40% of everything. I suspect many of them are gripped by a kind of madness.
DISCLAIMER: 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.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Apocalypse whenever, whatever
Republished from the Broad Oak Blog:
The present crisis is as much psychological as fiscal. That's not to say that it's not real - psychological stress can result in behaviour that is very real and destructive. But talk of financial limits ignores the fact that the limits are elastic.
I'm reading Simon Schama's Book "Citizens", which is about the French Revolution. He points out (p.65):
"Not only do we now know that the British per capita tax burden was three times heavier than in France, but by 1782, the percentage of public revenue consumed to service Britain's debt - on the order of 70 percent - was also considerably greater than the French equivalent."
The UK's GDP is now an estimated £1,410 billion, of which about half runs through the government's fingers. On average the interest rate on government debt is 4.3% (until we have to renew loans) and last year the forecast was that the debt would rise to some 100% of GDP. So long as we can carry on rolling over the debt, the main thing is to be able to afford the interest, which on this showing would look like being about 10% of government revenues.
Returning to Schama, he says (p.79) that in 1788 the French government debt servicing was close to 50% of its revenues - still well below what Pitt had to deal with in 1782. But in France, there was mounting resistance from the tax-farmers and foreign creditors, and the high rates the government was going to have to pay to attract additional capital triggered the crisis - which had implications for rich tax rebels that they hadn't expected. Oo-er.
We've had much worse public debt before now, even in the 20th century - see the graph below. It's not "can't pay" that will determine the course of events here, but "won't pay".
The present crisis is as much psychological as fiscal. That's not to say that it's not real - psychological stress can result in behaviour that is very real and destructive. But talk of financial limits ignores the fact that the limits are elastic.
I'm reading Simon Schama's Book "Citizens", which is about the French Revolution. He points out (p.65):
"Not only do we now know that the British per capita tax burden was three times heavier than in France, but by 1782, the percentage of public revenue consumed to service Britain's debt - on the order of 70 percent - was also considerably greater than the French equivalent."
The UK's GDP is now an estimated £1,410 billion, of which about half runs through the government's fingers. On average the interest rate on government debt is 4.3% (until we have to renew loans) and last year the forecast was that the debt would rise to some 100% of GDP. So long as we can carry on rolling over the debt, the main thing is to be able to afford the interest, which on this showing would look like being about 10% of government revenues.
Returning to Schama, he says (p.79) that in 1788 the French government debt servicing was close to 50% of its revenues - still well below what Pitt had to deal with in 1782. But in France, there was mounting resistance from the tax-farmers and foreign creditors, and the high rates the government was going to have to pay to attract additional capital triggered the crisis - which had implications for rich tax rebels that they hadn't expected. Oo-er.
We've had much worse public debt before now, even in the 20th century - see the graph below. It's not "can't pay" that will determine the course of events here, but "won't pay".
Another difference is that the crisis is now global. The US and the UK are in serious difficulty, but so are many European countries and the European banking system that has tried to hold them up; and the increasingly productive East has become dependent on the profligate West.
Historically, says Schama, the pre-Revolutionary French government would partially default on its borrowing (e.g. the 1720s, and in 1770), as well as raise more taxes and find more lenders. Now, we seem to be trying hard to avoid default (perhaps because once it started in one place, there'd be so many following suit); taxation of various kinds is already taking well over 40% of our income, in return for a creaking system of benefits and services; and where are the lenders who will take on so much global debt? And if they do, at what price?
Yet international finance is so murky, anything could happen. Towards the end of Andrew Rawnsley's book on New Labour, "The End of the Party", he says (pp. 626-7) that at last year's G20 summit "it was reliably estimated that more than $10 trillion of private wealth was concealed in paradis fiscaux [tax havens]". I don't think it's all invested in BP shares. Maybe it's waiting for governments to come to heel; to co-operate with each other in some glum global deflation that will further enrich the "oofy", as P.G. Wodehouse would term them.
In a splendidly furious recent rant, American writer Joe Bageant said:
"If we decide to believe the money economy still exists, and that debt is indeed wealth, then we damned sure know where to go looking for the wealth. Globally, forty percent of it is in the paws of the wealthiest one percent. Nearly all of that one percent are connected to the largest and richest corporations. Just before the economy blew out, these elites held slightly less than $80 trillion. After the blowout/bailout, their combined investment wealth was estimated at a little over $83 trillion. To give some idea, this is four years of the gross output of all the human beings on earth. It is only logical that these elites say the only way to revive the economy, which to them consists entirely of the money economy, is to continue to borrow money from them."
Or as humorist J. B. Morton (aka the Daily Express' "Beachcomber") put it in his “A Dictionary For Today”, long ago:
“WORLD-PEACE: A state of affairs which would make it possible for the international moneylenders to get even more power than they possess at present.”
It's there to be taken from us: for except among the very poorest, there is so much wealth we still have, such a high standard of living. In the early 80s, businessmen strode into our insurance office with mobile phones the size of bricks tucked proudly under their arms; now, the primary-age children of the underclass have iPhones that my fingers are too fat to operate.
Underneath the polemic of many of the doomsters who now write on the Internet is, I think, a hope that in some way disaster or revolution will save us, because they cannot see us deliberately planning and achieving a better state of affairs. I think this is a dangerous line for the imagination to take: we might find we'd burned what we thought was the Phoenix, but were unable to resurrect it.
But change of some kind is certainly on the way, and in the course of it we must remember to hold onto the things that really matter, especially civil liberties and the democratic form of government. Perhaps the biggest mistake is for us to think that money is the main issue.
Apocalypse whenever, whatever
The present crisis is as much psychological as fiscal. That's not to say that it's not real - psychological stress can result in behaviour that is very real and destructive. But talk of financial limits ignores the fact that the limits are elastic.
I'm reading Simon Schama's Book "Citizens", which is about the French Revolution. He points out (p.65):
"Not only do we now know that the British per capita tax burden was three times heavier than in France, but by 1782, the percentage of public revenue consumed to service Britain's debt - on the order of 70 percent - was also considerably greater than the French equivalent."
The UK's GDP is now an estimated £1,410 billion, of which about half runs through the government's fingers. On average the interest rate on government debt is 4.3% (until we have to renew loans) and last year the forecast was that the debt would rise to some 100% of GDP. So long as we can carry on rolling over the debt, the main thing is to be able to afford the interest, which on this showing would look like being about 10% of government revenues.
Returning to Schama, he says (p.79) that in 1788 the French government debt servicing was close to 50% of its revenues - still well below what Pitt had to deal with in 1782. But in France, there was mounting resistance from the tax-farmers and foreign creditors, and the high rates the government was going to have to pay to attract additional capital triggered the crisis - which had implications for rich tax rebels that they hadn't expected. Oo-er.
We've had much worse public debt before now, even in the 20th century - see the graph below. It's not "can't pay" that will determine the course of events here, but "won't pay".
I'm reading Simon Schama's Book "Citizens", which is about the French Revolution. He points out (p.65):
"Not only do we now know that the British per capita tax burden was three times heavier than in France, but by 1782, the percentage of public revenue consumed to service Britain's debt - on the order of 70 percent - was also considerably greater than the French equivalent."
The UK's GDP is now an estimated £1,410 billion, of which about half runs through the government's fingers. On average the interest rate on government debt is 4.3% (until we have to renew loans) and last year the forecast was that the debt would rise to some 100% of GDP. So long as we can carry on rolling over the debt, the main thing is to be able to afford the interest, which on this showing would look like being about 10% of government revenues.
Returning to Schama, he says (p.79) that in 1788 the French government debt servicing was close to 50% of its revenues - still well below what Pitt had to deal with in 1782. But in France, there was mounting resistance from the tax-farmers and foreign creditors, and the high rates the government was going to have to pay to attract additional capital triggered the crisis - which had implications for rich tax rebels that they hadn't expected. Oo-er.
We've had much worse public debt before now, even in the 20th century - see the graph below. It's not "can't pay" that will determine the course of events here, but "won't pay".
Another difference is that the crisis is now global. The US and the UK are in serious difficulty, but so are many European countries and the European banking system that has tried to hold them up; and the increasingly productive East has become dependent on the profligate West.
Historically, says Schama, the pre-Revolutionary French government would partially default on its borrowing (e.g. the 1720s, and in 1770), as well as raise more taxes and find more lenders. Now, we seem to be trying hard to avoid default (perhaps because once it started in one place, there'd be so many following suit); taxation of various kinds is already taking well over 40% of our income, in return for a creaking system of benefits and services; and where are the lenders who will take on so much global debt? And if they do, at what price?
Yet international finance is so murky, anything could happen. Towards the end of Andrew Rawnsley's book on New Labour, "The End of the Party", he says (pp. 626-7) that at last year's G20 summit "it was reliably estimated that more than $10 trillion of private wealth was concealed in paradis fiscaux [tax havens]". I don't think it's all invested in BP shares. Maybe it's waiting for governments to come to heel; to co-operate with each other in some glum global deflation that will further enrich the "oofy", as P.G. Wodehouse would term them.
In a splendidly furious recent rant, American writer Joe Bageant said:
"If we decide to believe the money economy still exists, and that debt is indeed wealth, then we damned sure know where to go looking for the wealth. Globally, forty percent of it is in the paws of the wealthiest one percent. Nearly all of that one percent are connected to the largest and richest corporations. Just before the economy blew out, these elites held slightly less than $80 trillion. After the blowout/bailout, their combined investment wealth was estimated at a little over $83 trillion. To give some idea, this is four years of the gross output of all the human beings on earth. It is only logical that these elites say the only way to revive the economy, which to them consists entirely of the money economy, is to continue to borrow money from them."
Or as humorist J. B. Morton (aka the Daily Express' "Beachcomber") put it in his “A Dictionary For Today”, long ago:
“WORLD-PEACE: A state of affairs which would make it possible for the international moneylenders to get even more power than they possess at present.”
It's there to be taken from us: for except among the very poorest, there is so much wealth we still have, such a high standard of living. In the early 80s, businessmen strode into our insurance office with mobile phones the size of bricks tucked proudly under their arms; now, the primary-age children of the underclass have iPhones that my fingers are too fat to operate.
Underneath the polemic of many of the doomsters who now write on the Internet is, I think, a hope that in some way disaster or revolution will save us, because they cannot see us deliberately planning and achieving a better state of affairs. I think this is a dangerous line for the imagination to take: we might find we'd burned what we thought was the Phoenix, but were unable to resurrect it.
But change of some kind is certainly on the way, and in the course of it we must remember to hold onto the things that really matter, especially civil liberties and the democratic form of government. Perhaps the biggest mistake is for us to think that money is the main issue.
DISCLAIMER: 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.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Economic apocalypse and The Terror
I'm putting these links onto Bearwatch because they're too hot to include on the Broad Oak Blog, where I try to maintain a cooler view of the economy and investment. But pace my attempts at sanity and balance, it may be that the urbane attitude is fatally mistaken, and that matters are approaching a crisis of apocalyptic proportions.
Let's start with an absolutely magnificent rant by Joe Bageant, whose fireball sermon takes as its text the principle that "at ground zero of human species economics [...] the only currency is the calorie" - here he is.
I came upon that link from a comment on this blog, which foresees a new feudalism that begins by victimising the poor and goes on to terrorise the middle class. Again, as we slide into accepting permanent structural unemployment, I begin to doubt the continuance of democracy as I grew up knowing it. On the way, this post tells me things about mainstream Eng Lit icon poet and preacher John Donne that I almost wish it hadn't. And bloggers should take note of the fate of protesters against the Outland-style Virginia Company: "For making “base and detracting” statements against the governor, the Company managers ordered one servant to have his arms broken, his tongue pierced with an awl, and finally to be beaten by a gauntlet of 40 men before being banished from the settlement. For complaining that the Company’s system of justice was unfair, a man named Thomas Hatch was whipped, placed in the pillory, had an ear cut off, and sentenced to an additional seven years of servitude." Read the whole post here.
And in its turn, that came from the sidebar of Jesse, an investment / economics commentator who has been turning (or progressively revealing himself to be) more radical over the last year. His archly-named section "Matières à Réflexion" contains much that is indeed worthy of reflection.
More than once I have quietly challenged James Higham on his "Them" conspiracy theory, but that was to see if he really could prove the links. Perhaps such proof is impossible, just as (thanks to the careful exclusion of fussily minuting civil servants) it is impossible to know exactly what was said by whom at Tony Blair's sofa-style inner Cabinet meetings. Coming from the financial angle, all I can say is that there seems to be growing unease at what many feel to be a crooked manipulation of the entire economic system for the benefit of a rich and powerful elite - to the point where the system may break down altogether. Which, to quote the now tarnished Johne Donne, "makes me end, where I begun": do read Bageant - I think the drink and drugs have merely fuelled his oratory, rather than turned his brain.
Let's start with an absolutely magnificent rant by Joe Bageant, whose fireball sermon takes as its text the principle that "at ground zero of human species economics [...] the only currency is the calorie" - here he is.
I came upon that link from a comment on this blog, which foresees a new feudalism that begins by victimising the poor and goes on to terrorise the middle class. Again, as we slide into accepting permanent structural unemployment, I begin to doubt the continuance of democracy as I grew up knowing it. On the way, this post tells me things about mainstream Eng Lit icon poet and preacher John Donne that I almost wish it hadn't. And bloggers should take note of the fate of protesters against the Outland-style Virginia Company: "For making “base and detracting” statements against the governor, the Company managers ordered one servant to have his arms broken, his tongue pierced with an awl, and finally to be beaten by a gauntlet of 40 men before being banished from the settlement. For complaining that the Company’s system of justice was unfair, a man named Thomas Hatch was whipped, placed in the pillory, had an ear cut off, and sentenced to an additional seven years of servitude." Read the whole post here.
And in its turn, that came from the sidebar of Jesse, an investment / economics commentator who has been turning (or progressively revealing himself to be) more radical over the last year. His archly-named section "Matières à Réflexion" contains much that is indeed worthy of reflection.
More than once I have quietly challenged James Higham on his "Them" conspiracy theory, but that was to see if he really could prove the links. Perhaps such proof is impossible, just as (thanks to the careful exclusion of fussily minuting civil servants) it is impossible to know exactly what was said by whom at Tony Blair's sofa-style inner Cabinet meetings. Coming from the financial angle, all I can say is that there seems to be growing unease at what many feel to be a crooked manipulation of the entire economic system for the benefit of a rich and powerful elite - to the point where the system may break down altogether. Which, to quote the now tarnished Johne Donne, "makes me end, where I begun": do read Bageant - I think the drink and drugs have merely fuelled his oratory, rather than turned his brain.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Protest! Index-Linked Savings Certificates withdrawn!
I have just looked at NS&I's website and found that Index-Linked Savings Certificates (and some other products) are no longer on sale. I've spoken to a rep and she confirms that they've been withdrawn as of today (19 July 2010). NS&I cite the extreme popularity of the products, evidenced in unexpectedly high sales volumes that have led to the Treasury's sales targets being fulfilled.
This product was introduced at the beginning of the high inflation in the 1970s. The point of it is to preserve the value of your hard-earned savings against the surreptitious theft of devaluation.
As I pointed out last month, anyone invested in it for the 12 months ending in May would have an effective 6.5% tax-free gain, 100% securely. Find that on the High Street.
This is a government that was going to sort out the system for the benefit of the citizens. It's started with a big fat failure. If my hunch about future inflation is correct, you are about to be stuffed by the financial system.
Protest! You can call 0500 007 007 and ask to make a complaint. They'll take brief details, give you a complaints reference number and have a member of their complaints team contact you.
Please pass this on. Know anyone in the news industry?
UPDATE (3 p.m.): BBC News has caught up with this story:
"Building societies are likely to welcome the move as it removes a strand of competition from the market... NS&I, which is backed by the government, works under rules that state that it must not dominate the savings and investments market." So when artificially low interest rates rob the saver, the government must follow suit.
"It has withdrawn both products from the market for new customers and has not set a date for when they might be offered again." I can't remember when this last happened - if it ever did.
FURTHER UPDATE (Weds 8 a.m.): Indeed this hasn't happened before, as The Guardian reports. Hit quote: "Rival banks and building societies have lobbied intensively to make sure the rates offered by NS&I and other government-owned banks are not so competitive that they restrict the flow of funds into other banks."
DISCLAIMER: 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.
Protest! Index-Linked Savings Certificates withdrawn!
I have just looked at NS&I's website and found that Index-Linked Savings Certificates (and some other products) are no longer on sale. I've spoken to a rep and she confirms that they've been withdrawn as of today (19 July 2010). NS&I cite the extreme popularity of the products, evidenced in unexpectedly high sales volumes that have led to the Treasury's sales targets being fulfilled.
UPDATE (3 p.m.): BBC News has caught up with this story:
"Building societies are likely to welcome the move as it removes a strand of competition from the market... NS&I, which is backed by the government, works under rules that state that it must not dominate the savings and investments market." So when artificially low interest rates rob the saver, the government must follow suit.
"It has withdrawn both products from the market for new customers and has not set a date for when they might be offered again." I can't remember when this last happened - if it ever did.
This product was introduced at the beginning of the high inflation in the 1970s. The point of it is to preserve the value of your hard-earned savings against the surreptitious theft of devaluation.
As I pointed out last month, anyone invested in it for the 12 months ending in May would have an effective 6.5% tax-free gain, 100% securely. Find that on the High Street.
This is a government that was going to sort out the system for the benefit of the citizens. It's started with a big fat failure. If my hunch about future inflation is correct, you are about to be stuffed by the financial system.
Protest! You can call 0500 007 007 and ask to make a complaint. They'll take brief details, give you a complaints reference number and have a member of their complaints team contact you.
Please pass this on. Know anyone in the news industry?
UPDATE (3 p.m.): BBC News has caught up with this story:
"Building societies are likely to welcome the move as it removes a strand of competition from the market... NS&I, which is backed by the government, works under rules that state that it must not dominate the savings and investments market." So when artificially low interest rates rob the saver, the government must follow suit.
"It has withdrawn both products from the market for new customers and has not set a date for when they might be offered again." I can't remember when this last happened - if it ever did.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Massive inequality
See this series of slides for some eye-openers about the distribution of income and wealth, e.g.:
It's getting very "us and Them" these days, rather worrying if you're not able to sit it out like Cicero on his country estate at Arpinum, 70 miles from Rome. But even he could not hide forever, and Antony's thug Herennius found him at Formiae.
DISCLAIMER: 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.
- In the US, the top 10% have 81.5% of all the wealth, and 90.4% of financial wealth such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
- Of OECD countries, the UK has the 3rd most unequal income distribution, after the US and (can we perhaps ignore it?) Luxembourg.
It's getting very "us and Them" these days, rather worrying if you're not able to sit it out like Cicero on his country estate at Arpinum, 70 miles from Rome. But even he could not hide forever, and Antony's thug Herennius found him at Formiae.
DISCLAIMER: 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.
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