Then I remembered there weren't any.
edit: actually, Gerald Celente got reamed, so make that two silver linings, and a nice sweary wrap-up to his account of his reaming...
'You're about to get MF-ed'
Showing posts with label That's Numberwang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label That's Numberwang. Show all posts
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Every cloud has a silver lining
I've spent the last few days thinking about getting in touch with and offering my commiserations to all the good friends I made during the brief time I spent with MF Global a few years back
Then I remembered there weren't any.
edit: actually, Gerald Celente got reamed, so make that two silver linings, and a nice sweary wrap-up to his account of his reaming...
Then I remembered there weren't any.
edit: actually, Gerald Celente got reamed, so make that two silver linings, and a nice sweary wrap-up to his account of his reaming...
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Michael Hudson gives me the horn pt.328
Curiously for a conspiraloon economician, Michael Hudson does not promote precious metals with every waking breath, he clearly believes that the megarich vs poor paradigm isn't a false one and he does not appear to be focused on engendering a sense of collapsafarian despair in his listeners...
Hudson isn't going to sell very many Krugerands or water filters with talk like that
-
Listening to this latest dose of Hudson I was reminded, as I usually am when listening to Georgists, of the land ownership systems adopted during the Gold Rushes of the 19th Century.
Because the mining camps were set up in wilderness areas, beyond the reach of established governing systems or landlords, the miners got together and made up the rules for themselves.
The rules were simple enough; one person, or small group, could stake only one claim and the claim was no bigger than that person or group could work. If claimants did not work the claim they lost it
Whilst not a perfect system, it did restrict the scope for rent, speculation and generally poncing off people who actually worked for a living
Anyone who tried accumulating claims so that they could rent out or speculate with them, whilst sitting on their arse, ran a real risk of being hit repeatedly on the head with pick axe handles
Of course, this kind of thinking was suppressed as soon as the camps got properly civilised
-
It always baffles me when people 'of the right' dismiss the very notion of social welfare as being an unworkable utopian fantasy because they believe it results in a system where people are paid to do nothing
As if spongers being paid to do nothing is somehow a pitfall unique to left wing systems
Whenever anyone plays that card I find myself thinking of people like this twunt...
He left school with only one O Level, in spite of the best education money could buy, has done nothing especially productive or clever in his adult life and yet is one of the richest land-owners in the country. He lives entirely off the labour of others and has done absolutely nothing to deserve that privilege. Thanks largely to the fact that he'll pay fuck all tax, in life and death, he and his progeny will continue to accumulate capital and increase the amount they leach off everyone else in a way that simply isn't possible for us paeons
Whatever your political persuasion, I believe it's pretty difficult to make a case for parasitism of this nature. Those who have 'left wing' sensibilities will see it as unfair. Those with a 'right wing' point of view should see it as a pretty shit way of allocating scarce resources or stimulating productivity. The fact that many ordinary people with right wing views don't get what's going on is one of the triumphs of the plutocratic class
Though, for the life of me, it's sometimes hard to put my finger on which of the members of that class are the ones who are actually smart enough to keep this charade going
.
Hudson isn't going to sell very many Krugerands or water filters with talk like that
-
Listening to this latest dose of Hudson I was reminded, as I usually am when listening to Georgists, of the land ownership systems adopted during the Gold Rushes of the 19th Century.
Because the mining camps were set up in wilderness areas, beyond the reach of established governing systems or landlords, the miners got together and made up the rules for themselves.
The rules were simple enough; one person, or small group, could stake only one claim and the claim was no bigger than that person or group could work. If claimants did not work the claim they lost it
Whilst not a perfect system, it did restrict the scope for rent, speculation and generally poncing off people who actually worked for a living
Anyone who tried accumulating claims so that they could rent out or speculate with them, whilst sitting on their arse, ran a real risk of being hit repeatedly on the head with pick axe handles
Of course, this kind of thinking was suppressed as soon as the camps got properly civilised
-
It always baffles me when people 'of the right' dismiss the very notion of social welfare as being an unworkable utopian fantasy because they believe it results in a system where people are paid to do nothing
As if spongers being paid to do nothing is somehow a pitfall unique to left wing systems
Whenever anyone plays that card I find myself thinking of people like this twunt...
He left school with only one O Level, in spite of the best education money could buy, has done nothing especially productive or clever in his adult life and yet is one of the richest land-owners in the country. He lives entirely off the labour of others and has done absolutely nothing to deserve that privilege. Thanks largely to the fact that he'll pay fuck all tax, in life and death, he and his progeny will continue to accumulate capital and increase the amount they leach off everyone else in a way that simply isn't possible for us paeons
Whatever your political persuasion, I believe it's pretty difficult to make a case for parasitism of this nature. Those who have 'left wing' sensibilities will see it as unfair. Those with a 'right wing' point of view should see it as a pretty shit way of allocating scarce resources or stimulating productivity. The fact that many ordinary people with right wing views don't get what's going on is one of the triumphs of the plutocratic class
Though, for the life of me, it's sometimes hard to put my finger on which of the members of that class are the ones who are actually smart enough to keep this charade going
.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Conspiraloon Round Up December 2010 pt1
So much going on in the conspirasphere, so little time to vent fully, but just enough time to place a few bets on some on-going stories...
Wikileaks
Such is Julian Assange's new found fame, even my pensioner Mum who never reads newspapers and only watches Italian gameshows on TV asked me the other day if I thought Assange waskosher on the level a straight shooter or not
The fact that she was even asking me the question pretty much answers it
Aangirfan has put together a much more detailed list of reasons to have little faith in Wikileaks
He could have saved himself a lot of time by trying to come up with a list of reasons to actually have faith in Assange
The countless debates about whether Assange is what he claims to be or not remind me of the past antics of the Shayler Being. Fans of Shayler's work will recall that he bought credibility in certain Truther circles by revealing the startling news that, shock fucking horror, MI6 planned to murder Gaddafi at one point in the 1990s. In return for this completely underwhelming revelation he was given a free pass to trample all over UK Conspiraloondom for the better part of a decade. I was still debating with people who wanted to give Shayler the benefit of the doubt even when he started claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus AND King Arthur. Mercifully, the low cut blouse and lipstick was the final straw for all but the most open-minded and tolerant of folk. However, Shayler's ex girlfriend/ handler, who bought into Truther status at the same low low price, is still out there hard at work, playing a much longer game and with a slightly better hairdresser
To be honest, I'm a little nonplussed that so many on-line folk are willing to give Assange so much benefit of the doubt, given the nature of the official narrative friendly bullshit he's pumping out, the stuff he isn't pumping out, and the fact that he's getting so much coverage from the mainstream media.
In comparison, it's worth remembering how hard the mainstream press worked at trying to ignore, then downplay, the Climategate story last year. A leak which genuinely did piss in The Establishment's chips, a lot
When in doubt, it's always worth remembering the Golden Rule of State Broadcasting Portraiture. If someone is covered by the BBC and they're not lit, or otherwise presented, like Baltar from Battlestar Galactica they ain't threatening anyone of any importance
Eric Cantona's bank run
Fair play to Eric for calling for the collapse of the banking cartel...
...but a planned bank run ain't going to do it
Even if a mass protest did take place, managed to overcome daily cash withdrawal limits and actually killed a bank or two, how exactly would that beat the system?
The Fed in the US and other central banks around the world were actually created in the wake of staged bank crises
More dead banks and more chaos equals more consolidation and more centralised control
Sorry
Cantona strikes me as a decent man but one who doesn't fully understand how money works
Unlike a certain indecent man who does...
Max Keiser
Max, and his new best buddy and fellow precious metal salesmen Alex Jones, have been trying to whip up a viral campaign with the claimed objective of destroying JP Morgan by buying up physical silver. The story goes that JP Morgan has been selling lots of paper silver, so if Max's followers buy lots of physical silver they'll reduce physical supply, drive up the price and JP Morgan won't be able to honour its paper contracts
Curiously, in spite of all his ranting on the subject in recent years, Max seems to have forgotten what happens every time the finances of large banks go tits up, and who ends up covering all the losses. Buying a few poxy coins isn't even going to scratch a power structure that's been crafted over centuries and any immediate losses inflicted on that structure will be recouped, with interest
Max also seems to forget who controls most of the production and stockpiles of precious metals around the world. The last time I looked, I don't recall identfying many silver mines or bullion depositories that were owned and operated by anarcho-syndicalist cooperatives
Max also seems to have forgotten that there isn't actually that much physical gold or silver to go round and that if ordinary people did actually drive the price of gold or silver up to astronomical highs by buying a couple of coins each they wouldn't benefit themselves by very much but would benefit anyone who's already sitting on a few thousand coins to start with enormously
There again, maybe Max hasn't forgotten any of this
On reflection, I think he probably hasn't. I think it's more likely that he's trying to succeed where others have failed; through the power of the internet, lots and lots of bullshit and total and utter contempt for anyone who'll listen to him...
.
Wikileaks
Such is Julian Assange's new found fame, even my pensioner Mum who never reads newspapers and only watches Italian gameshows on TV asked me the other day if I thought Assange was
The fact that she was even asking me the question pretty much answers it
Aangirfan has put together a much more detailed list of reasons to have little faith in Wikileaks
He could have saved himself a lot of time by trying to come up with a list of reasons to actually have faith in Assange
The countless debates about whether Assange is what he claims to be or not remind me of the past antics of the Shayler Being. Fans of Shayler's work will recall that he bought credibility in certain Truther circles by revealing the startling news that, shock fucking horror, MI6 planned to murder Gaddafi at one point in the 1990s. In return for this completely underwhelming revelation he was given a free pass to trample all over UK Conspiraloondom for the better part of a decade. I was still debating with people who wanted to give Shayler the benefit of the doubt even when he started claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus AND King Arthur. Mercifully, the low cut blouse and lipstick was the final straw for all but the most open-minded and tolerant of folk. However, Shayler's ex girlfriend/ handler, who bought into Truther status at the same low low price, is still out there hard at work, playing a much longer game and with a slightly better hairdresser
To be honest, I'm a little nonplussed that so many on-line folk are willing to give Assange so much benefit of the doubt, given the nature of the official narrative friendly bullshit he's pumping out, the stuff he isn't pumping out, and the fact that he's getting so much coverage from the mainstream media.
In comparison, it's worth remembering how hard the mainstream press worked at trying to ignore, then downplay, the Climategate story last year. A leak which genuinely did piss in The Establishment's chips, a lot
When in doubt, it's always worth remembering the Golden Rule of State Broadcasting Portraiture. If someone is covered by the BBC and they're not lit, or otherwise presented, like Baltar from Battlestar Galactica they ain't threatening anyone of any importance
Eric Cantona's bank run
Fair play to Eric for calling for the collapse of the banking cartel...
...but a planned bank run ain't going to do it
Even if a mass protest did take place, managed to overcome daily cash withdrawal limits and actually killed a bank or two, how exactly would that beat the system?
The Fed in the US and other central banks around the world were actually created in the wake of staged bank crises
More dead banks and more chaos equals more consolidation and more centralised control
Sorry
Cantona strikes me as a decent man but one who doesn't fully understand how money works
Unlike a certain indecent man who does...
Max Keiser
Max, and his new best buddy and fellow precious metal salesmen Alex Jones, have been trying to whip up a viral campaign with the claimed objective of destroying JP Morgan by buying up physical silver. The story goes that JP Morgan has been selling lots of paper silver, so if Max's followers buy lots of physical silver they'll reduce physical supply, drive up the price and JP Morgan won't be able to honour its paper contracts
Curiously, in spite of all his ranting on the subject in recent years, Max seems to have forgotten what happens every time the finances of large banks go tits up, and who ends up covering all the losses. Buying a few poxy coins isn't even going to scratch a power structure that's been crafted over centuries and any immediate losses inflicted on that structure will be recouped, with interest
Max also seems to forget who controls most of the production and stockpiles of precious metals around the world. The last time I looked, I don't recall identfying many silver mines or bullion depositories that were owned and operated by anarcho-syndicalist cooperatives
Max also seems to have forgotten that there isn't actually that much physical gold or silver to go round and that if ordinary people did actually drive the price of gold or silver up to astronomical highs by buying a couple of coins each they wouldn't benefit themselves by very much but would benefit anyone who's already sitting on a few thousand coins to start with enormously
There again, maybe Max hasn't forgotten any of this
On reflection, I think he probably hasn't. I think it's more likely that he's trying to succeed where others have failed; through the power of the internet, lots and lots of bullshit and total and utter contempt for anyone who'll listen to him...
.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Time to go away now pt2
Cheers to Anon for the link to this series of presentations by Damon Vrabel entitled 'Debunking Money'
So far, I've watched the first in the series...
...and whilst it doesn't offer much in the way of new material for veteran Loons, Vrabel's delivery is 'concise and easy to understand'
Which might be handy, as we're now getting to the stage where those of us who have been grazing the Net for some time have a pretty good idea of what's going on with the Money thing and, rather than preaching to the choir and discussing this material amongst ourselves, we probably should be thinking about reaching out to the majority of people who are waking up to the fact that they are being rogered senseless but don't quite understand how*
Naturally, I reserve the right to pull the link to Vrabel's videos if and when I discover that he starts talking about Space Newts, dons white robes or instructs viewers to send otherwise worthless money to some bearded Loon and his followers in a compound in the Mojave Desert. That is, after all, a vaguely suspicious haircut he's sporting there
* = Something must be in the air/ water. Otherwise, how else could you account for a once unthinkable headline such as this...
NB Don't be holding your breath now
.
So far, I've watched the first in the series...
...and whilst it doesn't offer much in the way of new material for veteran Loons, Vrabel's delivery is 'concise and easy to understand'
Which might be handy, as we're now getting to the stage where those of us who have been grazing the Net for some time have a pretty good idea of what's going on with the Money thing and, rather than preaching to the choir and discussing this material amongst ourselves, we probably should be thinking about reaching out to the majority of people who are waking up to the fact that they are being rogered senseless but don't quite understand how*
Naturally, I reserve the right to pull the link to Vrabel's videos if and when I discover that he starts talking about Space Newts, dons white robes or instructs viewers to send otherwise worthless money to some bearded Loon and his followers in a compound in the Mojave Desert. That is, after all, a vaguely suspicious haircut he's sporting there
* = Something must be in the air/ water. Otherwise, how else could you account for a once unthinkable headline such as this...
NB Don't be holding your breath now
.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
It's cartoon time
GI Joe c. 1985 -
I've been looking for a fair copy of this episode, without the additional titles and comments, for a little while but no joy. So, the edited version it'll have to be...
It's a damned shame that Cobra Commander isn't a regular commentator on Newsnight
.
I've been looking for a fair copy of this episode, without the additional titles and comments, for a little while but no joy. So, the edited version it'll have to be...
It's a damned shame that Cobra Commander isn't a regular commentator on Newsnight
.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Still Bill
Great news for people who enjoy watching videos that explain Fiat Currency and Fractional Reserve Banking for the umpteenth time
Not one, but two new video presentations of monetary truthiness are now available on-line
The Secret Oz
Not so much a sequel as a reworking of Bill Still’s Conspiraloon classic, The Money Masters.
Bill has stopped fiddling endlessly with his biro whilst explaining how we’re all being shafted by the Hidden Overlords of Finance Capital but the shonky camera work and Stillted delivery style we’ve all grown to know and love remain
Bill does a nice job of explaining why reverting to a Gold Standard would be playing into the hands of the Shadowy Overlords (They control its supply) but doesn’t half talk some bollocks when romanticising periods of history when people weren’t subjects of the bankers
I also particularly enjoyed the part where Bill makes reference to the eradication of mutual, non-profit savings institutions across the Western World in the 80s and 90s (which helped pave the way for the current upsurge in global financial larceny) as if it were something that ‘just happened’, like rain
The Money Fix
(I haven’t found out how to view this off-line, short of forking out some hard-earned Fiat to buy a copy, which is a pain)
Featuring the usual run through of the principles of Fractional Reserve Banking and the increasingly mandatory praise for the creation of local currencies.
This film does include a nice touch of drawing parallels between the exchange of goods and services between people and natural ecosystems of mutually supporting organisms. As such, the result is just a teensy wee bit Marxist in its analysis of why our current financial system is fucked
Marx, as I keep reading on the Internet, was a paid tool of the Zionist Bankers. I am also frequently being informed by the same sources that the current financial crisis and associated bail-outs (thefts) are nothing less than part of a Communist plot to finally secure world domination once and for all
I have one or two problems with this particular world view
There are many competing definitions of what constitutes ‘true’ Communism, or Free Market Capitalism, and the ones that seem to have been adopted by right wing loons go something like...
Personally speaking, I think this is misguided, ever so self-centred, and plain wrong.
Just because the same kleptocratic system which bought the acquiescence of the Middle Classes with a little bit of illusory wealth creation and 3rd world rape is now evaporating that ‘wealth’ that does not mean that this kleptocracy was somehow magically and seamlessly transformed into a Communist system
If it’s Communism today then it was Communism back when Reagan and Thatcher were doing their thing and beyond. The fact that the previously unreamed are now being reamed does not mean that the system has changed, just its victims.
As for the Marx thing, all I can say is that the more I learn about Marx the more I find myself agreeing with his analyses. The people who make connections between Marx and the Banksters generally leave their criticisms at the fact that, yes, there were connections but they don’t actually tackle the meat of what Marx had to say
That’s not good enough
This may come as news to people who push the ‘Marx was a tool of the Banksters’ meme but every idea that looks like it is going somewhere is, with varying degrees of success, co-opted and turned into a tool of the plutocrats
and that most certainly includes Free Market Capitalism
as well as Communism
and Environmentalism
and Secularism
and Theism
and pretty much any kind of ism that looks like it’s going to make its mark on the world
The give-away moment normally comes when non-compliance with a particular ‘ism’ results in state-sanctioned theft and violence against the individual. It's about then that you can be pretty sure a bunch of fuckers has hijacked a decent or interesting idea with a view to robbing you at gunpoint
.
Not one, but two new video presentations of monetary truthiness are now available on-line
The Secret Oz
(Keepvid is your friend)
Not so much a sequel as a reworking of Bill Still’s Conspiraloon classic, The Money Masters.
Bill has stopped fiddling endlessly with his biro whilst explaining how we’re all being shafted by the Hidden Overlords of Finance Capital but the shonky camera work and Stillted delivery style we’ve all grown to know and love remain
Bill does a nice job of explaining why reverting to a Gold Standard would be playing into the hands of the Shadowy Overlords (They control its supply) but doesn’t half talk some bollocks when romanticising periods of history when people weren’t subjects of the bankers
I also particularly enjoyed the part where Bill makes reference to the eradication of mutual, non-profit savings institutions across the Western World in the 80s and 90s (which helped pave the way for the current upsurge in global financial larceny) as if it were something that ‘just happened’, like rain
The Money Fix
(I haven’t found out how to view this off-line, short of forking out some hard-earned Fiat to buy a copy, which is a pain)
Featuring the usual run through of the principles of Fractional Reserve Banking and the increasingly mandatory praise for the creation of local currencies.
This film does include a nice touch of drawing parallels between the exchange of goods and services between people and natural ecosystems of mutually supporting organisms. As such, the result is just a teensy wee bit Marxist in its analysis of why our current financial system is fucked
Marx, as I keep reading on the Internet, was a paid tool of the Zionist Bankers. I am also frequently being informed by the same sources that the current financial crisis and associated bail-outs (thefts) are nothing less than part of a Communist plot to finally secure world domination once and for all
I have one or two problems with this particular world view
There are many competing definitions of what constitutes ‘true’ Communism, or Free Market Capitalism, and the ones that seem to have been adopted by right wing loons go something like...
- Free Market Capitalism = A system under which I personally make money
- Communism = A system under which I personally lose money
Personally speaking, I think this is misguided, ever so self-centred, and plain wrong.
Just because the same kleptocratic system which bought the acquiescence of the Middle Classes with a little bit of illusory wealth creation and 3rd world rape is now evaporating that ‘wealth’ that does not mean that this kleptocracy was somehow magically and seamlessly transformed into a Communist system
If it’s Communism today then it was Communism back when Reagan and Thatcher were doing their thing and beyond. The fact that the previously unreamed are now being reamed does not mean that the system has changed, just its victims.
As for the Marx thing, all I can say is that the more I learn about Marx the more I find myself agreeing with his analyses. The people who make connections between Marx and the Banksters generally leave their criticisms at the fact that, yes, there were connections but they don’t actually tackle the meat of what Marx had to say
That’s not good enough
This may come as news to people who push the ‘Marx was a tool of the Banksters’ meme but every idea that looks like it is going somewhere is, with varying degrees of success, co-opted and turned into a tool of the plutocrats
and that most certainly includes Free Market Capitalism
as well as Communism
and Environmentalism
and Secularism
and Theism
and pretty much any kind of ism that looks like it’s going to make its mark on the world
The give-away moment normally comes when non-compliance with a particular ‘ism’ results in state-sanctioned theft and violence against the individual. It's about then that you can be pretty sure a bunch of fuckers has hijacked a decent or interesting idea with a view to robbing you at gunpoint
.
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Financial Con Of The Decade Explained So Simply Even A Congressman Will Get It
Essential Reading from Zero Hedge if you still don't get what's been happening with the bank bailouts and subsequent austerity narrative...
The amounts that are being stolen are so huge, the timescale so rapid and the eventual likely impact so pervasive that I cannot believe the plutocrats behind this think they can get away with it indefnitely
Unless they've got something quite nasty up their collective sleeve
And if anyone has the cheek to tell me that there isn't an enormous conspiracy to keep Joe Public in the dark about this enormous scam they can go fuck themselves
.
The amounts that are being stolen are so huge, the timescale so rapid and the eventual likely impact so pervasive that I cannot believe the plutocrats behind this think they can get away with it indefnitely
Unless they've got something quite nasty up their collective sleeve
And if anyone has the cheek to tell me that there isn't an enormous conspiracy to keep Joe Public in the dark about this enormous scam they can go fuck themselves
.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Announcing FF15MP's new Property and Investment supplement
One thing this blog has always lacked is its own Property feature.
I'm going to rectify that right now and inaugurate my new UK Property supplement with a high quality investment opportunity that's only just come to the market...
Ordinarily, I wouldn't publicise the existence of such a screaming bargain and would hope to quietly snap it up for myself but a) I do not have 250 Large to spend on a cell, and b) I am not insane
In its favour, as well as being in a desirable (sic.) part of North London and close to a railway station, when the time comes, anyone shrewd enough to invest in this compact and bijou residence can have their executor shovel a few spadefuls of earth on it and have it double as their grave
Only the chances are that whoever buys this place will die still owing money on it. So, their corpse would have to turfed out and dumped on a tip and the property put back on the market for the next smart cookie to buy it
Assuming a 10% deposit, a loan of £225,000 at a 5% mortgage rate, this slave hutch can be yours for £1,350 (repayment) or £950 (interest only) per month. When the banking industry decides it wants to take some more money out of your pocket and mortgage interest rates go up to 8% that will be £1,750 and £1,500 respectively. At 10% that will be £2,050 and £1,850
The really insane thing is that I know people who will tell me how much sense this makes. People who have made a *lot* of money flipping properties in the same area that are even more ghastly than this one
The trick is the flipping part
Millions of people in the UK have been playing a nationwide game of financial pass the parcel and as long as they're not the ones left holding the over-priced property with the eye-watering mortgage when the music stops they've won
Only they won't have won, because the economic lives of millions of people left holding over-priced properties with eye-watering mortgages are going to go tits up and everyone is going to have to bear the cost. People who played the property game and those who stayed out of it, all of them.
(As an aside, I understand typical mortgage rates in the UK to be currently in the region of 5% to 6% whereas the savings rate on a typical bog standard deposit account is 0.25%. That's a 20 fold gross profit on the banks' cost of funds. An absolutely eye-watering level of usury by any measure. I suspect that there isn't much outcry over that as most people don't have much in the way of savings and those who do made them off the back of property inflation. However, the banks are getting a lot of that 0.25% money from the government (i.e. the citizens of the UK) and then charging people 5%+ to borrow it back. So, one way or another, people are funding their own debt slavery, whether they are conscious of it or not)
And whether you smell the whiff of conspiracy, or plain stupidity, it's worth asking yourself why virtually no-one, actually I believe no-one, in the mainstream press or government ever questioned the sustainability of house prices rising three, four, five times faster than wages indefinitely. The insane and ruinous inflation of the cost of a fundamental requirement of life, as necessary as food or water, was trumpeted to the heavens
Why are all of those fuckers claiming the Crunch was an unpredictable surprise?
How dumb would you have to be not to see it coming? At the very least this demonstrates that the entire existing system of financial regulation and education needs razing to the ground and rebuilding from scratch
That is if you assume our system of financial regulation and education was put in place to protect and nuture the ordinary muppet on the street.
I've worked in finance so I don't
So, we can't afford our own homes, mum and dad are both working to pay the bills, mum and dad are also maxed out on debt, deposit interest rates have been reduced to virtually zero, most of our shit is manufactured by 3rd world slaves, the UK's sold all its oil, most of the infrastructure has been sold off, the financial future of the next few generations has been mortgaged to the hilt, a bugger load of spend has been hidden temporarily in PFI deals and the government has written a lot of bad cheques. Like a junkie or a gambler with an incurable addiction the UK, and the rest of the West, has sold, pawned, borrowed or stolen everything it can just to get through each day, with no thought of tomorrow
Now what?
.
I'm going to rectify that right now and inaugurate my new UK Property supplement with a high quality investment opportunity that's only just come to the market...
Ordinarily, I wouldn't publicise the existence of such a screaming bargain and would hope to quietly snap it up for myself but a) I do not have 250 Large to spend on a cell, and b) I am not insane
In its favour, as well as being in a desirable (sic.) part of North London and close to a railway station, when the time comes, anyone shrewd enough to invest in this compact and bijou residence can have their executor shovel a few spadefuls of earth on it and have it double as their grave
Only the chances are that whoever buys this place will die still owing money on it. So, their corpse would have to turfed out and dumped on a tip and the property put back on the market for the next smart cookie to buy it
Assuming a 10% deposit, a loan of £225,000 at a 5% mortgage rate, this slave hutch can be yours for £1,350 (repayment) or £950 (interest only) per month. When the banking industry decides it wants to take some more money out of your pocket and mortgage interest rates go up to 8% that will be £1,750 and £1,500 respectively. At 10% that will be £2,050 and £1,850
The really insane thing is that I know people who will tell me how much sense this makes. People who have made a *lot* of money flipping properties in the same area that are even more ghastly than this one
The trick is the flipping part
Millions of people in the UK have been playing a nationwide game of financial pass the parcel and as long as they're not the ones left holding the over-priced property with the eye-watering mortgage when the music stops they've won
Only they won't have won, because the economic lives of millions of people left holding over-priced properties with eye-watering mortgages are going to go tits up and everyone is going to have to bear the cost. People who played the property game and those who stayed out of it, all of them.
(As an aside, I understand typical mortgage rates in the UK to be currently in the region of 5% to 6% whereas the savings rate on a typical bog standard deposit account is 0.25%. That's a 20 fold gross profit on the banks' cost of funds. An absolutely eye-watering level of usury by any measure. I suspect that there isn't much outcry over that as most people don't have much in the way of savings and those who do made them off the back of property inflation. However, the banks are getting a lot of that 0.25% money from the government (i.e. the citizens of the UK) and then charging people 5%+ to borrow it back. So, one way or another, people are funding their own debt slavery, whether they are conscious of it or not)
And whether you smell the whiff of conspiracy, or plain stupidity, it's worth asking yourself why virtually no-one, actually I believe no-one, in the mainstream press or government ever questioned the sustainability of house prices rising three, four, five times faster than wages indefinitely. The insane and ruinous inflation of the cost of a fundamental requirement of life, as necessary as food or water, was trumpeted to the heavens
Why are all of those fuckers claiming the Crunch was an unpredictable surprise?
How dumb would you have to be not to see it coming? At the very least this demonstrates that the entire existing system of financial regulation and education needs razing to the ground and rebuilding from scratch
That is if you assume our system of financial regulation and education was put in place to protect and nuture the ordinary muppet on the street.
I've worked in finance so I don't
So, we can't afford our own homes, mum and dad are both working to pay the bills, mum and dad are also maxed out on debt, deposit interest rates have been reduced to virtually zero, most of our shit is manufactured by 3rd world slaves, the UK's sold all its oil, most of the infrastructure has been sold off, the financial future of the next few generations has been mortgaged to the hilt, a bugger load of spend has been hidden temporarily in PFI deals and the government has written a lot of bad cheques. Like a junkie or a gambler with an incurable addiction the UK, and the rest of the West, has sold, pawned, borrowed or stolen everything it can just to get through each day, with no thought of tomorrow
Now what?
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Friday, July 16, 2010
The Death of the Middle Class Proletariat
a (slightly) oldie but a goodie...
Elizabeth Warren gets a lot less coverage in the Conspirosphere than Catherine Austin Fitts but I think she does a pretty good job of documenting the death of the American and, by extension, the British, middle class
Because her presentation is based on US demographics it does include elements, such as health insurance, that aren't directly relevant to the UK but the core of her analysis is sound and relevant to people on the other side of The Pond
Another weakness in Warren's presentation is the lack of any analysis of the reasons why the changes she's identified have come to pass. She does an excellent job of demonstrating the size of the hole a typical double-income family finds itself in in 2005, compared to a single income family in 1970, but she doesn't even start to explain where that hole comes from (edit: she does a slightly better job here)
You could, of course, simply shrug your shoulders and say 'shit just happens' but then you probably wouldn't be reading this blog...
(I'd love to claim the expression 'Middle Class Proletariat' as my own but we have the Ministry of Defence to thank for that little pearl)
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edit: of course, as a commentator pointed out underneath one of my posts a little while back, James Goldsmith nailed this subject years ago...
Goldsmith was a peculiar chap. The analysis he presents in this video is perceptive and essentially anti-elitist. Yet, this same man was a robber baron who looked more like a Bond villain (complete with a Bond villain's multi-zillion dollar tropical fortress lair) than anyone else alive and whose family has bumped uglies with the Rothschilds and who are now leading players in the ongoing eugenic global eco-scam
I'm fucked if I know what he was playing at
He doesn't seem to be taking the piss in that video
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edit#2:
and, on the subject of the Fucked Middle Class Consumer, this warms up nicely towards the end...
Hmmm, the Power of Nightmares...
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Elizabeth Warren gets a lot less coverage in the Conspirosphere than Catherine Austin Fitts but I think she does a pretty good job of documenting the death of the American and, by extension, the British, middle class
Because her presentation is based on US demographics it does include elements, such as health insurance, that aren't directly relevant to the UK but the core of her analysis is sound and relevant to people on the other side of The Pond
Another weakness in Warren's presentation is the lack of any analysis of the reasons why the changes she's identified have come to pass. She does an excellent job of demonstrating the size of the hole a typical double-income family finds itself in in 2005, compared to a single income family in 1970, but she doesn't even start to explain where that hole comes from (edit: she does a slightly better job here)
You could, of course, simply shrug your shoulders and say 'shit just happens' but then you probably wouldn't be reading this blog...
(I'd love to claim the expression 'Middle Class Proletariat' as my own but we have the Ministry of Defence to thank for that little pearl)
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edit: of course, as a commentator pointed out underneath one of my posts a little while back, James Goldsmith nailed this subject years ago...
Goldsmith was a peculiar chap. The analysis he presents in this video is perceptive and essentially anti-elitist. Yet, this same man was a robber baron who looked more like a Bond villain (complete with a Bond villain's multi-zillion dollar tropical fortress lair) than anyone else alive and whose family has bumped uglies with the Rothschilds and who are now leading players in the ongoing eugenic global eco-scam
I'm fucked if I know what he was playing at
He doesn't seem to be taking the piss in that video
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edit#2:
and, on the subject of the Fucked Middle Class Consumer, this warms up nicely towards the end...
Hmmm, the Power of Nightmares...
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Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
It's business as usual and full steam ahead
I got excited for a minute there and thought that the new government was going to give everyone a house.
Unfortunately, the State's definition of home-ownership is a little different from mine and involves a huge fucking mortgage, tailored to meet the full extent of what you can afford; provided you don't get sick, lose your job, have a kid, get married, get divorced...
There again, 'Renting directly from a bank - not renting indirectly from a bank via a landlord - at heart of government housing strategy!!' doesn't have quite the same ring to it
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edit: some of the commenting underneath that Grauniad article is awesome. I particularly enjoyed
It warms the cockles of my heart it does
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Michael Hudson explains Neo-serfdom pt27
Scroll forward to 13:30 and sit back whilst Prof. Hudson lets rip with his smooth, easy-listening, duck-like tones...
IMHO it's worth spending a little time switching onto what Hudson has been saying all these years because the explanatory and, more importantly, the predictive power of his model of how economics works is solid. If you want to know how things are expected, by the powers that be, to play out in Austerity UK he most definitely is worth listening to
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IMHO it's worth spending a little time switching onto what Hudson has been saying all these years because the explanatory and, more importantly, the predictive power of his model of how economics works is solid. If you want to know how things are expected, by the powers that be, to play out in Austerity UK he most definitely is worth listening to
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Austerity
...Meanwhile, back in the UK, non conspiraloon acquaintances of mine who over the years have endured my predictions of financial and social Armageddon with long-suffering, and occasionally amused patience, have lately taken to conceding that yes I may have been onto something. A little over-the-top maybe but there was a kernel of prescience hidden in my, and a relatively small number of like-minded souls’, OTT ramblings
Fuck it, even the David Ickes and Alex Jones of this world have had to modify their speil to acknowledge the pre-eminent role that manipulation of finance capital plays in the world’s ills (an observation that was singularly absent earlier in their careers)
The Bank of England - just swarming with neo-liberal, pan-dimensional, alien space lizards ...apparentlyThe growing awareness that something is very wrong with the world of money is now mirrored in the Official Narrative of what the future holds for the UK and other similarly fucked-up countries
Without so much as an apology for all the horseshit they've been shovelling for the last decade, the mainstream UK media have quietly binned the 'No More Boom and Bust' Official Narrative and replaced it with the ‘Austerity’ Official Narrative
As far as I can glean from reading the UK press and chatting with people in the UK, Austerity is supposedly going to take the form of some kind of wifi-enabled rerun of the 1970s. Fuck it, some of the older folks even get nostalgic about the prospect and talk of a Golden Age when people made do, all mucked in together and were better off for it
Hmmm, music and cinema were definitely better back then
1970s 2.0 will, however, not play out quite the same way in the UK for one or two small reasons...
- One billion more competing workers from India and the Far East
- Computers
- No North Sea oil
- No coal
- Bugger all in the way of productive industry
- No organised labour worth its name to keep ordinary people's wages up with inflation when all that money printing really kicks in in earnest
- A lot less social cohesion
...for starters
Things could easily get very nasty indeed, for a generation or more
Unless, that is, people get together and seriously overhaul the way they go about their lives
(On the positive side, the UK is still a world-leading producer of weapons, mercenaries, unnecessary, arguably harmful, drugs, Ponzi schemes and money laundering. So, fingers crossed, if by some chance there happen to be a few really tasty wars, global pandemics and colossal financial frauds in the near future the outlook for UK plc isn't entirely bleak)
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Now, as it happens, I have been and continue to be optimistic about the UK’s, and other countries', long term future. The only fly in the ointment is that I believed and continue to believe that life is going to get really, really unpleasant in the UK, and other countries, in the short to medium term
Whilst chatting about this stuff with a chum the other day, she shared with me a favourite Engels quote...
'The state, therefore, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.'
Personally, I think that vision of the future needs updating a little to reflect the huge advances in technology that have been made since Engels' time.
Some anarchists would argue, as I referenced in my previous post, that you can view the countries of the world as a collection of human farms and the citizens of those countries as livestock...
and, if you pursue that analogy, it's an interesting exercise to ask yourself what do farmers do with their beasts of burden when they get their hands on tractors and other machinery?
Do the farmers let those animals graze and frolic in a quiet field somewhere or do they send them off for glue?
For that Engels' style vision of the future to work a lot of people are going to have to make, and demand, useful products that cannot be mass produced. There's a premium attached to labour-intensive produce, for sure, but if the benefits of mass production were more fairly shared people could afford it and would be happier and healthier for it
Now would be a very good time indeed for people to start digging a veggie patch and learning a honest, genuinely productive craft
...and not borrowing money to spank on tat, that would help as well
Though I'm not sure that I can see the State just sitting idly by if hordes of the newly unemployed start growing and making their own stuff and swapping it without any reference to paper money
Where’s the margin in that?
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thursday, July 09, 2009
...and back to Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti - the quintessential pinko commie subversiveAs an antidote to all that bullcrap from the BBC I've been linking to recently, here's me re-linking to a couple of talks by Michael Parenti which I consider to be absolutely essential listening for any budding Conspiraloons out there...
Parenti is essential listening because his ideas break out from the narrow confines of what currently constitutes 'permissable' political discourse
Parenti is a very robust and articulate spokesperson for those of us who believe that...
- there is such a thing as an elitist class
- there is such a thing as an elitist class interest
- that elitist interest is pursued with sometimes deliberate, sometimes covert, intent
...very often by newspapers and television stations that are owned or controlled by that non-existent elitist class which has no vested elitist class interest and which pursues its non-existent interests completely in the open with total respect for all human life.
Sad to say, I'm unaware of any heavyweight British academics of Parenti's quality. Come to think of it, there aren't many North American ones either. Peter Dale Scott comes to mind
None of the above constitues an unqualified endorsement of Parenti. He advocates some views and solutions I personally disagree with but his analysis of the socio-economic structure of our current system is bang on the money imho
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And whilst bigging up pinko commie subversives it's also worth mentioning a particular meme that's been doing the rounds on the conspirasphere since the current economic crisis entered a more overt stage...
That is the idea that, through the banking bailouts, the British and US governments are imposing Communism on their people via the back door
Hmmmmmmmmm, I'll just scratch my chin pensively for a second or two there
Maybe if the British and US governments were nationalising profitable businesses and putting them completely under state control then, yes, that could be a form of Communism
But what is actually happening is that the British and US governments are handing over stonking amounts of public cash, cash that will take generations to tax back off people, to the bankers in exchange for absolutely fuck all, and certainly no publicly-accountable control
That's as good an expression of Corporate Fascism*, not Communism, as you're ever likely to see
What's going on here is an awful lot of middle-class conservatives can see that they're getting buttfucked but cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that it's the very system they've endorsed all these years that is being harnessed to do the buttfucking
ergo, it must be communist in some way
yeah, right
hmmm, much cognitive dissonance
We didn't have genuinely free markets before the current crash got under way and they are not being replaced by communism. We lived under a oligarchical kleptocracy before the crash and we still live under a oligarchical kleptocracy after. The New World Order is the just the same as the Old One. It's just a tad more overt these days, that's all
I'd be the first person to acknowledge that populist concepts such as socialism, or environmentalism, or even religion get hijacked and subverted to suit elitist, totalitarian ends but that doesn't mean that ideals such as enviromental awareness, a desire for social justice or the natural human tendency for spirituality are intrinsically evil; even if some right evil bastards take control of them sometimes
There is, unfortunately, plenty of scope to get downhearted and depressed about the apparent power of the interests that would screw us all over and the flaws in the infilitrated movements which claim to oppose them but, fuck it, it's how we respond to the challenges in Life which define and shape who we are.
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* = of course, according to some right wing loons, Fascism doesn't actually exist and all Bad Things that have been attributed to Fascism in the past are, in truth, Socialist. Take this comment recently seen on The Antagonist's blog for example...
"Talking of 'fascism' (a term you throw around with the abandon of a child with a toy) do a little research, comrade, and you'll discover that both Mussolini and Hitler were socialists. Not to mention Stalin, Mao and all the other squalid little regimes around the world that have caused the world so much suffering. They've probably notched up a good 250 million murders at least between them. Talk about state oppression!"
Yup, neither Mussolini nor Hitler were fascists. An outstanding expose of Real™ History
here's another fucking commie to add to the list.
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Saturday, June 13, 2009
Green Shoots of Recovery, Yay!!
Some debt porn nerd over at House Price Crash forum has put together a lovely little graph of average UK house prices as a multiple of average UK annual wages, based on data from the Nationwide Building Society going back to 1953...
Average property prices peaked a couple of years ago at over six times average wages. Every property crash in the last 50 years has seen property prices fall back to at least 3.5 times average wages. Which, if history repeats itself, would be a fucking excellent thing - unless anyone really thinks shackling future generations to a historically unsustainable ratio of housing costs to wages is a remotely sensible idea
Wages are either going to have to go up, lots.
Or house prices are going to have to fall further, lots
And I know which of the two options I think is most likely
That's it. That's the story
And no amount of bollocks peddled by vested interests from the mainstream media, politics or business will change that
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Average property prices peaked a couple of years ago at over six times average wages. Every property crash in the last 50 years has seen property prices fall back to at least 3.5 times average wages. Which, if history repeats itself, would be a fucking excellent thing - unless anyone really thinks shackling future generations to a historically unsustainable ratio of housing costs to wages is a remotely sensible idea
Wages are either going to have to go up, lots.
Or house prices are going to have to fall further, lots
And I know which of the two options I think is most likely
That's it. That's the story
And no amount of bollocks peddled by vested interests from the mainstream media, politics or business will change that
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Tuesday, February 03, 2009
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"Brilliant, we could do part-time ownership as well.
For example people who do a night shift could share with people on the dayshift.
This way we can double the returns on housing.
Another way to sort out the house market could be renting out shops
on a part-time shop/ part time accommodation basis.
Workers could live in the factories where they work and cab drivers could
live in their cars.
This way we can assure that there will be enough space for some more
Russian billionaires in London."