Is money-lending approaching its tipping point?

Chartists are always trying to scry a pattern in markets. Here's one that doesn't seem too difficult to discern: the long-term deceleration in bank lending to the UK private sector.

It looks like a cycle of around 18 years, but rather than simply repeating, the pattern is progressive: lower peaks each time, and lower lows. And for the first time since 1963 (which is as far as the online BoE data goes), we are in negative territory. Previous highs of  c. 35%, 25% and 15% suggest that the next peak will be more of a hillock, at 5%.

Or maybe there will be a phase shift, into some disorderly deflation. Australian Economist Steve Keen has attempted to model macroeconomic change as debt increases, and one curious feature is that the model predicts an apparent tendency towards a moderate point, followed by a catastrophic breakdown in wages and profits - see for example the graphs on pages 43 and 44 of his paper entitled "Are we 'It' Yet?".

The economy is not a machine, of course. It is more like a game played with ever-varying rules, like Calvinball. But the value of Keen's observations is in showing that there must, in fact, be a change in the rules at some point, simply because without it the game breaks down altogether. 

Currently, our counters are cash notes, bank deposit statements, share certificates, bonds, Treasury promises and property deeds - plus the derivative contracts that outweigh everything else. Whether they will be freely accepted by all players in the next version of the game remains to be seen; perhaps they will suffer the fate of Continental and Confederate currency.

No wonder that many thinking persons are converting to tangible assets of various types, even if they seem overpriced according to the present system of reckoning.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Libertarians should consider commercial tyranny as well as political

I've just happened on a documentary screened on Russia TV (Freeview here in the UK), about the battle between a small Canadian farmer and Monsanto.

I think the fight for freedom is no longer solely against Big Brother. Libertarians should consider Big MD/Big CEO as a major threat, especially since multinational corporations are more powerful than many governments.

And I don't think I'm alone in feeling that patenting life itself is in some way an outrage.

The Royal Yacht and the pig-ignorant commentariat

Even Sunday Times journalists can be stunningly ignorant and stupid, it seems. Camilla Long ("never 'eard of 'er", as Harry Hill would say) opines - well, no, read the crap yourself, if you can stand it. The arch title is pretty much a précis of the whole article: "A yacht? Wouldn’t the Queen prefer a really nice soap?"

Perhaps it's the Murdoch connection, I don't know. But this anti-monarchical drivel is of a piece with the sniggering on Radio 4's News Quiz, which I heard driving home yesterday. The panel are usually OK making funnies about animals and human foibles, but when it comes to politics and economics they don't know sh*t.

Has it not occurred to all the pseudo-sophisticates in the media that

(a) The Queen is the Head of State (something Tony Blair was liable to forget).

(b) Show matters. If you don't understand the importance of symbol and pageantry, get out of the commenting game. The soi-disant Labourites understand, all right - why else would TB attempt to get himself a "Blair Force One", and Brown find a way to refuse it him?

(c) When the Royal Yacht was operational, before the Inglorious Revolution of 1997, it was not only a status symbol for our country, but a roving, floating venue for discreet diplomacy and business dealing - and may I suggest, rather less demimondaine than Oleg Deripaska's (the Queen K). Or Murdoch's own Rosehearty.

F****** idiots.

The trouble with economics

It's not a machine, model or mechanism. It's a game of Calvinball.

Sack all teachers who can't answer this

"Supergravity theories are often said to be the only consistent theories of interacting massless spin 3/2 fields.

Discuss."

There. That should sort out those baaaaad teachers. Did you know only 17 were struck off for "professional incompetence" in 10 years? (Shame about the Lord Charles-like pic of Michael Gove in that article.)

Erm, how many bad teachers SHOULD there be, then?

Or is this really about the naughty larrikins not wanting a second scything of their pension rights, "at a time when the whole country is suffering"? In prosperous times, they could've switched to a different career, if they were any good, which by definition they're not; in bad times, we simply can't afford to treat them decently.

Much easier to make them keep their heads down with a steady fusillade of criticism, threats and insults. Serve them right, they forgot they were below stairs people.

Fred Goodwin is 53.

Pip pip!

Why history should be part of the core curriculum

Steve Keen: Dow to drop 35%, housing 40%?

Australian economist Steve Keen has previously argued that it is far more beneficial to bail out consumers than the banks, and now has made it part of a manifesto for avoiding a worse-than-the-1930s economic depression.

As part of his analysis, he looks at the Dow:

... and the US housing market:

If his exponential trend lines are correct, stocks will have to fall by a further 35% and houses 40%, ignoring overshoot.

If that seems overly pessimistic, consider James Howard Kunstler, who revisits his "Dow 4,000" mantra and modifies it to 1,000 by 2014. Unbelievable? Only if you think tomorrow will be no worse than yesterday, and ignore how freakish the whole period from the mid-1980s has been. I had a go at reading the patterns back in February 2011 and the next Dow low looked around 4,500 - adjusted for CPI, in view of our inflation-happy leaders.

What would I know about it, you may say. Well, what does anybody know, and more pertinently, what do they know?

I have to say that I may soon need to modify my investment disclosure, as it may be prudent to begin buying physical gold in regular small quantities, against the possibility of a serious market breakdown and savaging of the value of cash. The gold price is still rather rich for my taste, but what's the alternative?

Do you really think our politicians, bankers and economists have a credible plan to sort out the problems? I like Keen's, but I'll give you long odds against it ever happening. Still, better noble failure than dishonourable compromise, I think the Japanese would agree: 判官贔屓.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.