Dear God, the cretin’s gone and said it
There is no natural reason why anybody should pay interest.
Sheesh.
So why do we pay interest? Well, simply so that the banks can compensate themselves in two ways. One is so that they can actually cover their costs of making the loan. I accept that’s a real thing that they should be paid for.
Secondly, the risk is that you won’t repay them. I accept that’s a risk that they should be compensated for.
And thirdly, there isn’t a third thing. It used to be that they would say you’ve got to compensate their savers. But you haven’t because they don’t need to have any savings in their bank to be able to make you the loan in the first place and they never lend you other people’s money.
So, that third argument disappears.
He’s forgotten again that the bank is bust by 4.30 in the afternoon if it does not attract a deposit to finance that loan its just made.
Euphemisms, eh?
Given the vagaries of English spelling:
It was a shock and awe tactic that divided opinions, with some critics branding it a “Gerald Ratner approach”, the British jewellery magnate who called his own company’s products “total c—”.
Given that I have a long memory I remember what he actually said – total crap.
But given what is usually elided that actually reads, to a modern, as “total cunt” which doesn’t really quite work, does it?
Not really and wholly
Biden won’t let America supply the world with low-carbon gas. It’s green energy madness
Sure, they’re playing to the green lobby. Even, claim that you’re doing it because etc.
But really, this is the argument of the export of crude oil all over again. There are winners if not exports are allowed – the domestic producers of derivatives which can then be exported. With crude, petrol, with gas ethane and other plastic precursors perhaps.
Allow exports and the discount domestic users gain on prices shrinks, lowering their profit. So, it’s a fight between large scale commercial users and producers. Currently, the producers are losing a bit.
Jesu Christe
He can’t even get a bank run right:
Let me give you an example. In 2007, the Northern Rock Building Society, by then actually a bank, went bust because its directors had been irresponsible. There’s no way around that observation. They had lent people who had applied for mortgages 125 per cent of the value of the properties against which they were lending for the purposes of security. In other words, if you wanted to buy a house which was going to cost £200,000, the Northern Rock Building Society offered you £250,000 in mortgage. It was reckless because they were using other people’s money. And that building society ran out of road. It could not pay its creditors. The government had to bail it out.
That isn’t what happened in the slightest. The creditors – those Granite mortgage bonds – all paid off.
Northern Rock was illiquid, not insolvent.
They couldn’t attract the deposits to match their loan book. But of course Spud insists that banks don’t in fact need deposits, doesn’t he…..
NRock was a wholesale bank run, nothing more and also nothing less.
Don’t think so you know
Now it is true that the definition of reserve for a fossil fuel is slightly different from the definition used for the sorts of minerals I’m more familiar with. But even with that I’d very strongly suggest that the Telegraph is wrong here:
Russia has found vast oil and gas reserves in the Antarctic, much of it in areas claimed by the UK.
The surveys are a prelude to bringing in drilling rigs to exploit the pristine region for fossil fuels, MPs have warned.
Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.
It follows a series of surveys by the Alexander Karpinsky vessel, operated by Rosgeo – the Russian agency charged with finding mineral reserves for commercial exploitation.
Antarctica is meant to be protected by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty that bans all mineral or oil developments. The UK’s interests are overseen by the Foreign Office – but it has been accused of ignoring the emerging crisis.
A mineral deposit is “there’s some stuff here”. A mineral resource is “there’s some stuff here and given a bit of work we’re between sure and very sure that we can extract at a profit” and a mineral reserve is “we have shown to the level of proof that a bank will lend to us, a stock market allow us to raise money on the claim, that we can extract from this deposit, using current technology, at current prices and make a profit. Also, we’ve the licences and legal right to do so.”
As this claimed deposit is in an area where extraction is illegal then it’s not going to be a mineral reserve, is it?
Does Kenan Malik actually believe this shit?
‘Do you think you could live on £4.87 an hour?” Liam Byrne, the chair of the Commons business and trade committee, asked Peter Hebblethwaite, the chief executive of P&O Ferries, last Tuesday. “No, I couldn’t,” Hebblethwaite replied. “Why do you think that your staff should have to live on that?” Byrne continued. Because, Hebblethwaite responded, “these are international seafarers”.
The select committee was taking evidence from business leaders, academics and officials on the protection of workers’ rights. Two years ago, Hebblethwaite faced another select committee after P&O had caused national outrage by abruptly sacking almost 800 workers, replacing them with low-paid agency staff from countries such as India, Malaysia and the Philippines. Just how low was exposed by a Guardian/ITV investigation in March that found some being paid at less than half the minimum wage in Britain. Many routinely work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, for up to 17 weeks at a time. But no matter, they are only “international seafarers”.
That’s the scene setting.
The case of P&O exposes the problems both of globalisation and of much opposition to it. “Globalisation” is a concept with myriad meanings – and with economic, political and cultural dimensions. Mostly, as with P&O, it refers to a particular mode of capitalism that relies on an international division of labour and the diminution of controls on capital movement across borders to depreciate costs and push up profits.
You what? £1 an hour in either India or the Philippines is a damn good wage. So, here we’ve got labour from those places being paid near 5 times that to work in (OK, if you insist, right on the edges of) our economy.
This is the international division of labour? But, but, that would be insisting that those poor folk have to stay home and make £1 an hour. And the mobility of labour is in fact proof of the mobility of capital?
Seriously, does even Malik believe any of this shit?
The social consequences of such globalisation, from soaring inequality to the
How does people moving from £1 an hour labouring to £5 an hour labouring increase inequality?
It’s all complete bollocks, isn’t it? The sort of shite that would only survive in an echo chamber, the result of groupthink.
One of those times, eh?
The judgment leaves behind a divided community fighting battles on internet message boards and in meetings. One side believes the creation of the new city is elitist, racist and protectionist, and that it will exacerbate existing segregation by hogging tax dollars. Their opponents believe they are exercising their absolute democratic and constitutional rights as Americans, voting to stop their money bleeding out into a needy parish whose residents don’t earn enough money to look after themselves.
It’s not always that we can see that both sides are – potentially at least – entirely correct.
Bandwaggoning a bit, innit?
And when grief is compounded by an injustice — an outside factor, a chain of decisions that were morally unlawful — it can become unbearable. I often have to bury the issue of my mum’s contamination with hepatitis C because it hurts too much.
I feel both guilty and conflicted for not standing up for my mum more vocally, especially since she championed so many vulnerable people. I am part of a congregation of heartbroken families who have been subjected to a form of institutional manslaughter or murder. I use the term “murder” because the negligence has continued to knowingly cause harm.
Wellll
The Body Shop founder contracted fatal hepatitis C from a transfusion after giving birth in 1971.
Ah. 1971. Hmm:
In the mid-1970s, Harvey J. Alter, Chief of the Infectious Disease Section in the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, and his research team demonstrated how most post-transfusion hepatitis cases were not due to hepatitis A or B viruses. Despite this discovery, international research efforts to identify the virus, initially called non-A, non-B hepatitis (NANBH), failed for the next decade. In 1987, Michael Houghton, Qui-Lim Choo, and George Kuo at Chiron Corporation, collaborating with Daniel W. Bradley at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used a novel molecular cloning approach to identify the unknown organism and develop a diagnostic test.[128] In 1988, Alter confirmed the virus by verifying its presence in a panel of NANBH specimens, and Chiron announced its discovery at a Washington, DC Press conference in May 1988.
In 1971 we – as a species – didn;t even know of the existence o9f hepatis C. Let alone have a test or anything.
It’s really a bit over the top – de trop even – to be calling this institutional murder you know….
This seems particularly cretinous
The Telegraph can now reveal the data that is currently being gathered by the Valuation Office, where officials are building an “automated valuation model” to prepare up-to-date values for all of the 1.5 million homes in Wales.
As part of this model, they are using “aerial and street view photography” in order to verify the size of houses and gardens.
They are also looking at Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), meaning the more energy efficient homes – for example, those with double glazing – could potentially be charged higher taxes.
They’re subsidising everyone to have greener homes. Then taxing them for having greener homes.
Well, actually, yes, they do
In the case of our so-called national debt, undoubtedly, the government has a credit, which is said to be a debt, but somebody else has a debit, and that is an asset. Now, that asset is private wealth, because quite literally what the national debt represents is money that people have chosen to deposit with the government for safekeeping.
That’s something which is identical to what happens with a bank. People can choose to save their money in a bank, and when they do, nobody goes around and says, “Oh, the bank’s in trouble, it’s in debt, it’s got to repay, everybody put money into it, and therefore if it doesn’t it will all go bust.” No, they don’t.
How do you think bank runs happen?
Sheesh
A very fun point
What is less recognised is that there is an important relationship between the levels of taxes and the structure of a country’s economy and society.
Partly because our tax rates have historically been lower, but also because of features such as our tradition of a solid rule of law; confidence that UK governments (regardless of their political hue) will not introduce arbitrary wealth confiscation; our welcoming attitude towards foreign immigrants and foreign investments; the UK tends to attract a disproportionate amount of the world’s most mobile capital and high-income labour.
Think of finance professionals, lawyers, high-skill management consultants, highly-educated design professionals and those in similar professions.
The UK creates and trains its citizens into these roles, disproportionately to our share of the global population, and we also attract foreign-born workers of this type.
We also draw in foreign investors and manage the assets of wealthy individuals and institutions.
The ability to entice this globally-mobile capital and high-value labour is what is called “competitiveness”. Other economies envy our ability to do it.
But one side-effect of our having high shares of such mobile factors is that if we tried to raise taxes on them they would tend to depart.
In any country the attempt to raise taxes beyond a certain point risks failing, because the attempt to raise taxes damages the economy enough that taxes actually fall rather than rising.
But in the UK, because such a high share of our economy involves highly-globally-mobile capital and labour, the issue is more acute than elsewhere.
Very fun indeed. Now, how overwhelmingly important it is is another matter. But it’s a very fun – and clearly true to some extent – point to make.
Just to advise about Bath property
City centre, Bath
The Netflix show Bridgerton may be a fantastical reimagining of Regency London, but much of it is filmed in Bath – due to its protected Georgian architecture and Unesco world heritage status. This two-bedroom penthouse sits on the third floor of a classic curved terrace on The Circus in the heart of the city. It is south-facing, and has a balcony and triple-aspect views. The Royal Crescent, which has featured in the series, is just around the corner, and over the River Avon is the Holburne Museum – used as Lady Danbury’s townhouse. £675,000.
The Guardian thinks this is lovely and aye, it’s not bad. The Circus is very grand houses indeed. This one, well, slightly, it’s on the corner with Gay St, so you’ve buses bridning up to the entrance to hte Circus often enough. But the real point is that “third floor” is actually the old servants quarters up beneath the eaves. High ceilings and big windows – the standard Georgian belief – it won’t be.
Damn pesky foreigners should just do what we say!
Especially those foreigners in Africa!
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are coming under pressure to use their financial might to persuade Ghana to reconsider a proposed law that could lead to anyone who identifies as LGBTQ+ being jailed for three years.
Charities and campaign groups are calling on the global development bodies to tell Ghana they may stop funding the country if the proposed legislation – which will be challenged in the country’s supreme court next week – comes into effect.
Palmerston sent gunb oats, apparently we’re now to stop supporting the Supplenentary Development Goals if thoseblasted Johnny Foreigners just don’t do what we say.
Tsk.
Don’t they realise that we are right?
Fascinating
Nearly half of all cancer cases are linked to obesity, new research has found.
The study of more than four million adults, who were tracked for decades, found excess weight could be fuelling more than 30 types of the disease.
Experts said the findings, which will be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, were “groundbreaking”, showing a timebomb ahead.
Health charities urged ministers to act on the “wake-up call,” with obesity already estimated to cost the country almost £100 billion a year, including £19 billion in NHS costs.
Could even be true. But we do still need to shoot the first person who claims that us all being thing will save the NHS money.
As explained so often, we all die, we all gain terminal care, the NHS is a lifetime health care organisation. The determinant of the lifetime cost is not, therefore, what we die of nor that terminal care – it’s how may years we’re cared for. Well, within certain bourndaries that is.
Obesity, tabs and booze all save the NHS money, not cost it.
Man’s shouting at the ceiling now
In other words, there are no good reasons for bank deposits to be rewarded as they are, except that it very much suits some in society that they should be, and the Bank of England is intent on rewarding them.
The only reason banks take deposits is because regulation demands banks take deposits.
This then gives to the obvious question as to why we now need to move to a situation not known for most of the last 15 or so years in the UK, where we might have positive real interest rates in this country i.e. the rates payable to depositors of funds might exceed the inflation rate that otherwise reduces the value of the funds that they save.
If we didn’t have that regulation then banks would not bid up interest rates on deposits. Then we could have negative real interest rates. For always!
Growth’s been so good this past 15 years of negative real interest rates, hasn’t it?
And there is no time value of money – nope, really, not – which leads to thinking that real interest rates should be positive. Nope, all just made up by regulation.
In other words, as I have always said, inflation was always going to go away. It is now doing so. There never was a reason to raise interest rates. Nor was wage restraint required. But, the government and the Bank took the opportunity to create positive interest rates to increase inequality in the UK, which harms growth whilst also seeking to suppress the wages of most people.
Yep, the claim is that the only reason to have positive real interest rates is so as to increase inequality.
Howling at the ceiling.
Well, yes, obviously
High levels of immigration are fuelling Britain’s housing crisis, according to the Bank of England’s chief economist, who blamed skyrocketing rents on a shortage of properties.
Huw Pill said higher interest rates were not responsible for record hikes in rental costs, which jumped by 9.2pc in the year to March.
He said “quite large increases in immigration” were piling more pressure on Britain’s housing stock, after net migration hit a record-breaking 745,000 in 2022.
The idea that it’s interest rates is crazed – Spud believes it, so, obviously – for an increase in costs does not, in fact, mean an increase in prices that can be charged.
More people chasing the same number of houses, yep, that could do it.
Well, no, this won’t work
Dominic Cummings has unveiled plans for a new “Start-Up Party” which he claims could replace the Conservatives.
Speaking to the i paper in his first interview since leaving Downing Street in 2020, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser said the new party could capitalise on the expected collapse in the Tory vote at the next general election.
The Vote Leave mastermind claimed a majority of the electorate would support a party that is “completely different” to Labour and the Tories.
Have a go, by all means, but it won’t work.
If you start now you might get somewhere in 2035….
No
What are you doing? You’re saying to the bank by tapping your credit card on a credit payment machine that you would like to have an extra loan, which you promise to repay to the bank. The bank knows you because it’s done credit checks on you and says, “yes, okay, we believe that you will repay us. Therefore, we’ll let you have this money to make this payment now, to the person to whom you want payment to be made.”
It’s your promise to the bank to repay, matched by their promise to make payment to the person you’ve asked them to make settlement to that creates money. Literally, your exchanges of promises – the bank to you, you to the bank – creates the money that exists in this country.
That’s *credit* creation. Not *money* creation.
“Money” is note and coins and central bank reserves and stuff. M0 in the jargon. Add in all the credit and everything else and we get to M4. This distinction is important – tho’ it’s true we don’t have to use the words money and credit to describe it.
M0 is something under the control of the central bank. M4 is something influenced by interest rates – as well as financial repression, credit controls and so on. It is M4 that matters for inflation – that’s the amount of chitties that folk can spend chasing things.
The link between the two is V, velocity of circulation of money. It’s a multiplier – how may times does each bit of that M0 get used in the economy? Very strongly related to how much M4 – credit plus money – is created on that supply of base money, M0.
We can also use base money, narrow money, to describe M0, wide money to describe M4.
So, how much M4 there is is how much base money times the velocity of it, how much credit is created on top of it? Or, MV=PQ, the money equation.
It’s only if we grasp this that we can understand why Spud is so wrong about inflation. Lots of new M0 causes inflation because that multiplies up, by V, into M4. We can reduce this either by reducing V – raising interest rates – or reducing the M0 supply – QT.
Sigh.
An actual Arab genocide
Gruesome new testimony details one of the worst atrocities of the year-long Sudanese civil war – the large-scale massacre of civilians as they desperately tried to flee an ethnic rampage in Darfur last summer.
Witnesses describe children, still alive, being “piled up and shot” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they attempted to escape the regional capital of El Geneina in June last year during a bout of ethnic violence in which thousands of civilians were killed.
Together, the 221 witness statements collated by Human Rights Watch offer the latest evidence that the Arab-led RSF has orchestrated a concerted 12-month campaign of ethnic cleansing against Sudan’s non-Arab Masalit tribe in West Darfur.
Of course, Britain’s own Arab Sudanese commentator, Nesrine Malik, prefers to talk about the evil Joos. As does just about everyone else.