I love it when a plan comes together

There are a few stock phrases being bandied around by financial commentators which are starting to get to me, either because they're meaningless; offering no explanatory power whatsoever, or simply misleading

My favourite cliches of the moment include...

'The Credit Crunch'

Coined early on in the current crisis and now blandly and repeatedly used as the 'explanation' for everything that is being and will be inflicted on us

'Why have I lost my job?'
'The Credit Crunch'

'Why is my pension worth fuck all?'
'The Credit Crunch'

'Why did my life savings disappear?'
'The Credit Crunch'

etc etc


'Banks are hoarding cash'

Misleading because it gives the impression that great big piles of touchable, sniffable cash actually exist. I've even seen the words '...in their vaults' used a few times. For fuck's sake

Also perplexing because I've yet to hear anyone identify which of the banks actually are the ones hoarding all that cash in those, er, vaults

That would be kind of interesting to know, given that virtually all of the banks are actively pleading poverty and holding their hands out for trillions more. Solely for the Common Good, obviously


'x billion pounds was wiped off the value of shares today'

Misleading because it supports the impression that those shares were ever worth their inflated values

The market value of a company's shares (or market index, or houses, or special collectors edition Beanie Babies) is based solely on the price paid for the last one sold

So, in theory, if one irrational idiot pays way over the odds for a share, or a Beanie Baby, everybody else holding the same share, or Beanie Baby, gets to kid themselves that they'll all fetch the same price

For a while anyway

and vice versa if one irrational idiot sells a share, or Beanie Baby, for way under the odds


'Too big to fail'

Which is a euphemism for 'They've got us by the nuts' or, more accurately, 'I think they've got us by the nuts because I'm not permitted to conceive of any alternative way of doing things'

There Is No Alternative

On the subject of 'too big to fail' here's a clip of Max Keiser talking with Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky does a very passable impression of a total fucking idiot...





I make no bones of the fact that the attraction of Chomsky has always passed me right by. I find his prose turgid and, as far as I can tell, his political reputation is based largely on expressing something very obvious; something that any cab driver, or blogger, would tell you, but in a turgid academic way. Chomsky's pseudo-rational attitude towards 9/11 was just icing on the cake

In the clip, Keiser articulates a thought that quite a few Loons seem to share; that stock market prices are being manipulated to scare the crap out of people. To use fear and panic as a means of manufacturing their consent to hand over 'hoards of cash' to the banks

Chomsky just doesn't seem to get it

He even goes so far as to say that a market crash is harmful to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's interests

/ scratches chin

Hmmmm, is it really

Henry Paulson

And, in the same vein, I suppose George Bush appearing on US television every five minutes crying out 'Don't Panic!! Don't Panic!!' really is the sort of behaviour that's genuinely intended to positively discourage panic

George Bush

Yes, in exactly the same way that cutting interest rates is a sure-fire way of boosting stock markets

As the chap who left me the link to the following article suggested, I'm also thinking that F. William Engdahl is sniffing along the right lines...

Behind the Panic: Financial Warfare over Future of Global Bank Power

One World Banking - You Know you want it

And even if you don't think you do right now, you will

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