compassion, collaboration & cooperation iN transistion
The Axeman Commeth ...
First published by Michal grove @zaadz 10th March 2010
LISTENING to Gordon Brown’s speech in Docklands, east London today,
I couldn’t help but draw comparison with what I can only imagine was the
speech to Parliament by King Charles I, expounding his divine right to
be God on Earth and to ask for the taxpayers of Britain to again put their
hands in their pockets as the elite of the nation carried on regardless.
THAT WAS before he had HIS HEAD chopped off !
Simon Schama’s excellent History of Britain television series for the BBC, which explained in exquisite detail the shenanigans [trickery and humbug] behind the public execution of a king and the creation of a republic in the episode entitled THE BRITISH WARS, also reminded me of the tale of Schama’s own experience teaching World History to American undergraduates, when referring to the Second World War, he was asked by one of the shocked students …
“IF you are talking about a second world war, presumably
there must have been a first, when on earth was that !!!??? “
As I have quoted elsewhere there are as many versions of history as there are historians and in the context of British Politics, listening to Gordon Brown absolutely confirms that there are as many versions of economics as there are economists. Never forgetting that it was he who for ten years of this government held the job of chief economist of the nation in his role as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Second Lord of the Treasury after Tony Blair as Prime Minister and the First Lord of the Treasury.
"For better or worse, with me what you see is what you get" said Mr Brown.
It is a line so at odds with reality, so manifestly untrue, so utterly ridiculous that one barely knows where to start challenging it.
Joseph Stiglitz’s comment the other day on CNBC that the Federal Reserve system “smells bad, it looks bad and it undermines confidence” comes to mind as well as Liz Hunt’s comments that Gordon Brown’s performance at the Chilcot Inquiry ...
“was a masterclass in cynicism, weasel words, prevarication and buck-passing”
in the context of answering the question as to whether the Ministry of Defence had received adequate funding for its needs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More recent events have indeed confirmed Gordon Brown’s betrayal of British troops and by inference the families of those troops, the entirety of the British taxpaying public and the rest of our species on earth – a betrayal that, shamefully, he persists in denying whilst being adamant that the long-overdue strategic defence review, will NOT take place until after the next election.
Tell that to the troops who are still paying for their own boots and who are having to wait until the latter half of 2011 before they get bomb-proof armoured vehicles as well as ALL of those of ALL the species of the earth which suffer the consequences of war.
YET another tragic example of this government creating layer upon layer of non-accountable top down bureaucracy, spending more and more of the budget on consultants to advise them how to do the job, and leaving little over to pay for well trained, adequately motivated and appropriatly remunerated personnel to actually DO the work that the organisation was set up to provide & administer: and even as I pen these words the shear incompetancy of the system IS BEING broadcast over the airwaves to the undoubted disgust of every hard-working taxpayer in the land, who has NOT succummed to Gordon Brown's MAGIC SPELL.
EVERY investigative report established by this government, for the last 13 years, has stated that "lessons are being learned by the agencies involved "; and yet time after time after time the reality has proved to be absolutely the opposite.
THE king's new clothes
have indeed been found
to be somewhat transparent
as Hans Christian Andersen suggested in 1837, having been inspired by the Spanish story recorded by Don Juan Manuel, who lived between 1282-1348.
In the context of Gordon Brown’s treatise that THE ONLY way to recovery IS through growth, growth and more growth and of the more realistic POST PEAK OIL scenario referred to in Richard Heinberg’s ...
Life After Growth – What if the economy doesn’t recover ? ...
WE MUST ALL ask ourselves IS or IS NOT Gordon Brown & this Labour Government,
as delusional leader of the global economic system as well as JUST one of the 27 Council of Europe Ministers of the EUROPEAN UNION ...
punching 'above' its
international weight ?
For entirely the same
reasons as the King
WHO lost his head !
WHAT IF Nassim Taleb's "Black Swans" were engineered by a group of men -
living together in society today - as a result of information asymmetry ?
" When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society - they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it "
Frederik Bostiak
The whole thing is essentially a house of cards.
First published by Michal Grove @zaadz 10th March 2010
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Comment by Michael Grove on February 18, 2011 at 12:25
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Keiser Report - Episode 122
Following Max's Episode 121 discussion about Dominique Strauss Kahn's proposal for the IMF to back a NEW World Currency to "shore-up" virtual assets - just stop to think a moment about what's happened to him since this discussion - and then consider whether anyone in Banking and their Political support "team" can be trusted to act for social good ever again !! ??
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During my involvement with the creation of the INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA industry, I used to talk about how the virtual world would eventually evolve to the state whereby we would not be able to tell the difference between the virtual world and the real world. I had hoped at the time that some common sense be applied to this evolutionary development, but common sense was obviously thrown out of the window with respect to Enron, Worldcom, Madoff et al and following The Great Financial Implosion the trend obviously continues.
As Max Keiser explains in his program above a family living in both the real world and its virtual equivalent has already allowed its real child to die of starvation at the expense of cow-towing to the needs of the virtual equivalent. Indeed as Benedict Brogan has detailed in his Daily Telegraph article entitled "We judge Brown a failure - but his success haunts the Coalition" ... as resistance to the Coalition’s work takes hold, Mr. Cameron should realise that this is as Mr Brown planned it.
He is the invisible enemy, but the point is that he hasn’t gone away – he’s all around us.
A young man without socialism doesn't have a heart.
An old man with socialism doesn't have a head !
I would suggest that this IS SO because Mr. Brown has convinced a large proportion of the British people that the virtual world which he has created is free of any cost and bears no resemblance whatsoever to our bankrupt real world which is based on a model of continuing growth and finite resources.
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IF it is indeed the case that the British people have decided that the "virtual world" is free of any cost and bears no resemblance whatsoever to our bankrupt real world which is based on a model of continuing growth and finite resources -
What price on THE HEAD of the man responsible for deciding IF and WHEN Greece has defaulted ?
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Dutch Freedom Party pushes euro exit as multi-trillion EURO rescue looms
"The euro is not in the interests of the Dutch people," said Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing populist party with a sixth of the seats in the Dutch parliament. "We want to be the master of our own house and our own country, so we say yes to the guilder. Bring it on."
Mr Wilders made his decision after receiving a report by London-based Lombard Street Research concluding that the Netherlands is badly handicapped by euro membership, and that it could cost EMU’s creditor core more than €2.4 trillion to hold monetary union together over the next four years. "If the politicians in The Hague disagree with our report, let them show the guts to hold a referendum. Let the Dutch people decide," he said.
The report conclude that EMU membership "locks the Netherlands into a system in which cost competitiveness is matched by massive structural over-valuation of costs in Med-Europe, resulting in deficits that will suck cash out of the core Eurozone".
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Having lived and worked with ALL nationalities of the EEC, as it was in the 1970's, following my secondment as an Air Traffic Area Radar Controller to the Eurocontrol Upper Airspace agency - I would concur with the sentiment of midenglander in his posted comment to the Daily Telegraph article entitled -
Spain's sovereign thunderclap and the end of Merkel's Europe -
" Perhaps at last, nations are awakening from their intellectual slumber and are realising that closer European cooperation actually means domination by Germany. The French are an important German ally as they were through the Vichy Government in WW2. The European Union is led by a Germany, that in its whole history has yet to achieve a full hundred years of democracy. Like Russia, Germany's inclination is always dictatorial and authoritarian.
There are many perceived forms of "democracy".
The EU's and Merkel's vision is one to be avoided at all costs."
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In juxtaposition to ALL of the above the following posted comment to the Daily Telegraph article entitled - China, Argentina, and the mystery of the "middle-income trap" - paints a completely different perspective to those who would espouse the coming of "The Chinese Miracle" -
"The collapse has already started and the Central Party Committee and aspiring members are already well aware of this fact and all its implications. I suspect even they doubt their ability to ensure a so called "Soft landing" ! Published figures from official sources are worthless. Inflation is headlined at 4-5% yet in 2011 ran at a real rate of around 16-18%. Non performing loans to provincial governments and large state industries are variously officially published at 30%. Many in China know the true figure is in excess of 60%. The High Speed Rail "Project" is bankrupt. In October circa $475 (million) equivalent was injected into the project and did little more than pay 9 months of unpaid salaries. Many large companies are under enormous financial pressure as their contracts to provincial and military customers are not being paid.
A number of Tier one cities and provinces have been allowed to sell bonds. Why do governments sell bonds? Just like the west to raise finance. Just like the west raising capital finance to pay day to day revenue expenses is not sustainable practice, as Europeans will now tell you! The main 4 banks published large increases in profit but only made 2.5% provision for bad debt. Even with a rate of 30% bad loans this seems ridiculously small.
House and more importantly land prices, have collapsed in the past 4 months.
The Lewis point has been passed and indeed the need to move to an internal and innovative high tech economy must be the way forward however there are two major problems. The move should have been started a decade ago. Instead of wasting money on so much useless construction and corruption the government may have been better off building social support so the Chinese would save less and spend more. Now salaries are high enough to render, what were already minute profits, none existent and the populace is at best a little nearer spending on mass.
The second problem is the education system and the controls propagated by the communist party. This education system beats innovation and independent dynamic thought out of the populace. Chinese television is always telling the viewers how great China is and how much they develop and innovate. In reality, in virtually every case, they have only moved to a higher level of high tech copying and glitzy marketing.
Finally, look to western and south western China. What is happening in Chongching. How is it that, after recent events involving his deputy Wang, Bo Xilai has not been removed by Beijing? How is it that the party secretaries of neighbouring provinces and cities can openly pledge allegiance to this man? How in November last year was he, a mere party secretary, sent to Chongching under a fair size cloud of disgrace, able to mount military exercises? A good half of Chinese military is stationed in western China! What is this Princling's true relationship with Jiang Zemin, the last Communist Party Chairman, who never supported Hu Jintao and is known to continue to agitate in the background while retaining substantial loyalty from the military? How many in the west understand just how popular Bo Xiali is with the masses. Were you aware that under his leadership many Maoist practices have been re-introduced? I would suggest the possibility of a rather more interesting than usual change of leadership might just be on the cards this time round! I for one watch with fascination and concern.
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Global liquidity peak spells trouble for late 2012
The global liquidity cycle has already rolled over. Assuming that no fresh action is taken, world economic growth will peak within a couple of months and then fade in the second half of the year - with grim implications for Europe’s Latin bloc.
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Far from being "the end of this eurozone debt crisis", or even the beginning of the end,
Friday's debt-swap was probably just the end of the beginning.
Liam Halligan is chief economist at Prosperity Capital Management .
To which John Ward responded -
I think the outlook for Greece is not so much cloudy as totally dark. But if bribes and profiteering mean the taxpayer there pays double for German submarines, that isn't going to help.
The sheer scale of the rip-off involved is disgraceful. The Elite have done everything the Troika asked for one simple reason: if they are ejected from the EU, the Establishment's graft & gravy train gets completely derailed...
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For the purposes of simplicity, I'm going to confine myself to the example of Germany and Greece, but the same dynamic acts on a wider scale between the surplus and deficit countries of the eurozone as a whole. As the crisis intensified, German banks started to withdraw the money lent to Greek banks to finance the Greek deficit. Since no-one would lend to the Greek banks to finance these withdrawals, they were forced to call on European Central Bank liquidity support.
Meanwhile, the German banks are suddenly flush with cash from their newly called in Greek loans. Some of this money is on lent to the German economy, where there has been something of a construction and investment boom, but there is obviously a limit to how much of the money coming back from Greece can be viably on lent, so it gets deposited with the Bundesbank. The Bundesbank in turn lends the money to the ECB, which lends it to the Greek Central Bank, which lends it to the Greek commercial banks to repay their German loans. The circle is squared and the deficit is financed.
Quite obviously, this is an unsustainable model. It is simply not viable indefinitely to finance a customer who cannot pay his way. But generally you don't find that out until you demand the money back.
So to return to the question raised at the start of this article, at what point does that happen? Well it might happen sooner, but it will certainly happen once the costs of the demographic timebomb start to impinge on the German economy, and it requires its surplus savings to finance a dignified old age. These costs start to kick in big time about ten to fifteen years from now.
So assuming the euro manages to stagger on until then, that's the point of no return.
Now back to the real world. It's most unlikely the euro will survive in its present form to see this moment of doom, but you get the picture.
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Of course voters need to consider which party has the best programme for the next five years and beyond; but they are also entitled to ask whether the party that has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy deserves yet another chance.
Going for growth? Pull the other one.
This Labour Government is going for VOTES and how many Labour stronghold voters will vote for the British National Party could be the subject of
yet another Hans Christian Andersen ”fantasy” …
Meanwhile, NO ONE's talking about the European elephant in the room!
What with talk of double dip and triple dip recessions, the French and Germans doing a somewhat justifiable wobbly over the recent US Government contract that EADS lost, the shutting down of CERN's LHC, the spat between the USA and China and talk of global
protectionism aloud, one has again to ask IS Gordon Brown planning to
take a leading role in the theatre production of that Hans Christian Andersen's ”fantasy”?
… perhaps against a re-run of the 1930's GREAT DEPRESSION.
WHEN will our new masters of the globe AWAKEN to the reality of the mess which our species has created for the entirety of our LIVING PLANET ?
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Despite the undoubted frustrations of ALL the peoples of Great Britain, and most particularly the working mums, with ANY of their political representatives in Parliament, IT WAS a.n.other step forward in the process of justice, in respect of OUR own Bill of Rights [European Union Directives not withstanding], to see 3 MPs and a Lord being instructed by the Senior Magistrate, to stand in the dock at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday.
The You've Been Cromwelled representative present would have presumably been thinking along the lines of Oliver Cromwell's statement …
” You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of GOD, GO !”
ALL this ACTION apart - I cannot but bring to mind the fact that GROWING FOOD yourself HAS already become THE MOST RADICAL of ACTS in our society; and that IT IS truly the ONLY EFFECTIVE PROCESS that one can make in the face of our leaders obsession with growth, growth and more growth; and ONE that will overturn the political, scientific and corporate powers that be !
By the process of directly working in harmony with nature, WE DO the ONE THING most essential to CHANGE the WORLD.