I'm reading an Andy McNab yarn ("Exit Wound") and halfway through his protagonist (Nick Stone) says that Iranian President Ahmedinajad has his own blog (dormant since 2007). I don't know why it should surprise me, but it turns out to be true - and on blogspot, to boot. Here it is.
Any others? Did Bin Laden have one?
Mind you, I'm getting to the point where I watch Russian TV (RT) to get something like the truth about stuff that is scarcely covered on BBC et al. (Max Keiser is gonzo in style but revelatory in content) - and even Al-Jazeera, for goodness' sake. It's a reversal of the days when Germans listened to the BBC during WWII etc.
Speaking of Max Keiser, he interviewed Brit econ commentator Ian Fraser (from minute 12 onwards) a day or two ago, who revealed that following the Blue Arrow debacle in 1992 the message had come down from on high (see 15:15) that no senior banker or institution would ever again be prosecuted; and (see 16:00) that the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 included a crippling clause that said the FSA had to consider the international mobility and competitiveness of our financial sector when deciding how to proceed against our red-braced Bolly-swigging crooks.
Where was either of those messages in the papers?
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
US financial system has now been reset
For the first time in 40-plus years, the ratio of monetary base to credit in America has returned to 5%.
(If you want to check the data, see here and here.)
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
(If you want to check the data, see here and here.)
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
US Financial System has now been reset
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Is gold still fairly priced?
The nominal price of gold has soared over the last decade, prompting some to worry that it may be something of a bubble. And ceratinly its price path is erratic, reflecting sentiment more than monetary fundamentals.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
- the British Government is still not offering index-linked National Savings Certificates (I've written about this to my MP, who has written to the Chancellor, who has not replied so far);
- the high streets around my area are still boasting a number of shops buying gold, not selling it;
- China has (some time ago) announced its determination to build up a stock of 10,000 tonnes;
- other central banks are buying;
- you can still purchase gold in the UK without VAT.
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.
Is gold still fairly priced?
The nominal price of gold has soared over the last decade, prompting some to worry that it may be something of a bubble. And ceratinly its price path is erratic, reflecting sentiment more than monetary fundamentals.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
But whether you look at the US monetary base, or alternatively at the growth of total credit market debt, gold is slightly below its 42-year average in relation to these benchmarks:
I didn't have the money in 2005 to pile in as I wanted to; but I'm starting to buy small amounts of physical gold now - no longer to make a killing in real terms, but as a hedge against inflation.
Why? A number of reasons:
- the British Government is still not offering index-linked National Savings Certificates (I've written about this to my MP, who has written to the Chancellor, who has not replied so far);
- the high streets around my area are still boasting a number of shops buying gold, not selling it;
- China has (some time ago) announced its determination to build up a stock of 10,000 tonnes;
- other central banks are buying;
- you can still purchase gold in the UK without VAT.
In the medium term, I kind of expect UK housing (ex-London and some other chi-chi areas) to cheapen as unemployment, uncertainty and bank crises continue; by the time we get to sub-Weimar I hope to have moved house (using much of our spare cash) and then with what's left I'll hope to be in fairly defensive stocks (utility companies etc), gold and maybe Marc Faber's beloved emerging markets.
For now it's cash, plus gold plus anything officially guaranteed to hold its value.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
UK baby boom since 2000
I'm picking up on an anonymous comment on conspiracy blog The Tap, in which the writer says they've noticed an increase in pram-pushers and it reminds them of an observation by Alan Watts that promiscuity increases before a major war.
I'm less sure about the cause - it may have more to do with a reaction to recession, possibly leading to more women deciding that in the absence of paid work it may be time to start or increase their family. But the ONS statistics do bear out the commenter's perception, and it seems not to be simply a quirk of demographics in his/her geographical area.
However, it's also not simply down to teenage mums - the average age of the mother is increasing (which could be because the births recorded are trending to more second or subsequent births).
The increase is also not merely in raw numbers (which one might expect as the total poulation grows) but also in births per 1,000 head of population.
Here's the data in graph form (ONS November 2011 update), starting with 1940 or 1997:
I'm less sure about the cause - it may have more to do with a reaction to recession, possibly leading to more women deciding that in the absence of paid work it may be time to start or increase their family. But the ONS statistics do bear out the commenter's perception, and it seems not to be simply a quirk of demographics in his/her geographical area.
However, it's also not simply down to teenage mums - the average age of the mother is increasing (which could be because the births recorded are trending to more second or subsequent births).
The increase is also not merely in raw numbers (which one might expect as the total poulation grows) but also in births per 1,000 head of population.
Here's the data in graph form (ONS November 2011 update), starting with 1940 or 1997:
The end, and a new beginning
The Classic FM radio news said that "David Cameron" (the Prime Minister, apparently - Google him up) "may consider" a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. (My position is that we're not in it.)
The Sunday paper (Mail, of course - I need to know what the gullible are thinking, they're - we're - the ones who vote) gave this a big front-page splash, though their (print-version) headline "BRITAIN TO GET VOTE ON EUROPE" might just as easily have been "PRIME MINISTER COUGHS." For a few seconds' further reading tells you his new sort-of-potential-policy is a bit of skirt-twitching, hinting that you might get lucky in 2015. It might be part of a General Election manifesto, or a stand-alone referendum (which might be in-out or might also include some alternative about staying in but clawing back some powers). Or it might be just a hand job, or maybe you should give up and buy a packet of chips.
We've had duplicitous bastards before. Think of John Major (who prided himself on being able to talk to "the man in the four-ale bar") and, of course, the lucky, hard-wriggling spermatozoon Blair who pierced the Labour Party and altered its DNA. But they only employed special advisers; Cameron simply was one, is one.
Perhaps everything that's happened since the 1960s has been a kind of reconditioning of our expectations, so that we become habituated to hoping and believing less and less every year. The end point will be when we don't buy newspapers (the proprietors are already starting to give up selling them), disbelieve what we see on telly news, stop voting altogether. Those with get-up-and-go will either run the country (how many modern politicians go straight into the machine from university!), own it (increasingly, from abroad, at least from a taxation standpoint) or leave it. The rest will lapse into a dumb brutishness quite, quite unlike that of the mediaeval peasantry.
I heard years ago (and it's plausible) that Allied soldiers taken prisoner in the Korean War were initially placed in a holding area, and their behaviour observed. Those who displayed signs of initiative were taken to smaller, heavily-controlled camps; the rest were herded into much larger pens with few guards. And when I taught in an inner-city school in Birmingham in the late 70s, I was interested to note that the very dumbest kids were white: anybody of the old population who had anything about them, had left, and the new incomers were entrepreneurial, legally or otherwise.
The British Left, with its self-loathing and penchant for anarchic mischief, and the British Right, with its love of money above all else, have conspired in a cultural subversion that I cannot see anywhere else on Earth. For decades, brains and talent have fled this country like Equitable Life investors scrambling to get out of their with-profits fund, while immigration has been keenly encouraged, by the Left on Gramsci-ite principles and the Right because cheap imported labour has helped in the transfer of wealth from the (increasingly indebted) working and lower middle classes to the rich.
But the last laugh will be on all of them. For as with America, the key is initiative: those who had the gumption to leave their country and try to make a living here will eventually acquire whatever schooling, skills and knowledge they need, but the jizz is hard-wired into their DNA. The Left will wither as a new class of entrepreneurs springs up that sees no need to support anyone who isn't family; the Right will find that the domination game is no longer so easy, and while they spent their time foxhunting and otherwise aping a class from which they did not spring, their businesses were outcompeted. Eventually they will be kept going in genteel captivity, like pandas, while a new class arises that works hard, protects their family and fears God in whatever form they worship Him.
As Alexander Pope, observing the self-indulgent decadence of the filthy rich in the eighteenth century, dared to hope:
Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
The Sunday paper (Mail, of course - I need to know what the gullible are thinking, they're - we're - the ones who vote) gave this a big front-page splash, though their (print-version) headline "BRITAIN TO GET VOTE ON EUROPE" might just as easily have been "PRIME MINISTER COUGHS." For a few seconds' further reading tells you his new sort-of-potential-policy is a bit of skirt-twitching, hinting that you might get lucky in 2015. It might be part of a General Election manifesto, or a stand-alone referendum (which might be in-out or might also include some alternative about staying in but clawing back some powers). Or it might be just a hand job, or maybe you should give up and buy a packet of chips.
We've had duplicitous bastards before. Think of John Major (who prided himself on being able to talk to "the man in the four-ale bar") and, of course, the lucky, hard-wriggling spermatozoon Blair who pierced the Labour Party and altered its DNA. But they only employed special advisers; Cameron simply was one, is one.
Perhaps everything that's happened since the 1960s has been a kind of reconditioning of our expectations, so that we become habituated to hoping and believing less and less every year. The end point will be when we don't buy newspapers (the proprietors are already starting to give up selling them), disbelieve what we see on telly news, stop voting altogether. Those with get-up-and-go will either run the country (how many modern politicians go straight into the machine from university!), own it (increasingly, from abroad, at least from a taxation standpoint) or leave it. The rest will lapse into a dumb brutishness quite, quite unlike that of the mediaeval peasantry.
I heard years ago (and it's plausible) that Allied soldiers taken prisoner in the Korean War were initially placed in a holding area, and their behaviour observed. Those who displayed signs of initiative were taken to smaller, heavily-controlled camps; the rest were herded into much larger pens with few guards. And when I taught in an inner-city school in Birmingham in the late 70s, I was interested to note that the very dumbest kids were white: anybody of the old population who had anything about them, had left, and the new incomers were entrepreneurial, legally or otherwise.
The British Left, with its self-loathing and penchant for anarchic mischief, and the British Right, with its love of money above all else, have conspired in a cultural subversion that I cannot see anywhere else on Earth. For decades, brains and talent have fled this country like Equitable Life investors scrambling to get out of their with-profits fund, while immigration has been keenly encouraged, by the Left on Gramsci-ite principles and the Right because cheap imported labour has helped in the transfer of wealth from the (increasingly indebted) working and lower middle classes to the rich.
But the last laugh will be on all of them. For as with America, the key is initiative: those who had the gumption to leave their country and try to make a living here will eventually acquire whatever schooling, skills and knowledge they need, but the jizz is hard-wired into their DNA. The Left will wither as a new class of entrepreneurs springs up that sees no need to support anyone who isn't family; the Right will find that the domination game is no longer so easy, and while they spent their time foxhunting and otherwise aping a class from which they did not spring, their businesses were outcompeted. Eventually they will be kept going in genteel captivity, like pandas, while a new class arises that works hard, protects their family and fears God in whatever form they worship Him.
As Alexander Pope, observing the self-indulgent decadence of the filthy rich in the eighteenth century, dared to hope:
Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
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