Waiting for Something bad to happen

I think Friday saw a power-shift from the central banks to the global private banks. I think the global banks served notice that the Central bank plan of 1) reining in the risk-taking of the TBTF banks and 2) stimulating growth in the real economy is now dead in the water. There is a new plan.  (Let me apologise now for this video being too long. I really did try half a dozen times to make it shorter. I failed. )

Couple of things I forgot to mention in the video.

Lobbying in the US by the financial/Insurance and Real Estate sector in 2014 stands at $249,342,399.   Its been above $450 million every year since 2008.

According to the Sunlight Foundation, Mr Melvin L. Watt, head of the FHFA,  had received some 45 percent of his total campaign funds in 2009 from donors in the finance and real estate sector.

 Waiting for Something Bad to Happen

Beneath are the links I used in the video roughly in the order I used them.

ECB bond buying

Blackstone quote and their $70 billion

Junk Bond market and Derivatives market

The FHFA and the new sub-prime housing push

Changes to Buy-backs and mortgage laws

UK housing – new mortgage rates

Frank Keating – Frank Dodd hurting the recovery  Look up Frank Keating and Bloomberg to see how often he is on lobbying against regulations.

C. Boyden Grey – Regulatory overreach

Leveraged buy-outs –  ignoring the regulators

Return of Synthetic CDOs

What are Synthetic CDOs and how they work/don’t work.   A really good but technical piece by the always good Janet Tavakoli

152 thoughts on “Waiting for Something bad to happen”

  1. 20 odd minutes isn’t long in my book – nice vid but not sure it will take 2 years to pop, the market has been in need of a correction for a while now.

  2. On my new smart phone today came through an email called, A Waiting Game, which I now find was written on the 16th of August 2008. I don’t know why it came through today. Anyway, I read it and thought, wow, that wasn’t that hard to understand. In ‘The Next Crisis: part 3′, I clicked on most of the links given and there was a lot of technical banking stuff written in legal jargon which was pretty heavy going.

    Thanks David for going through all this stuff and making it so much easier for people like me to understand. Now I am now armed to the teeth with some terrific cast iron info and so I will be able to leave my critics for dust on the Guardian CIF site.

    No one knows this stuff, even The Guardian financial section doesn’t tell us anything like this.

    One of the things I do on CIF is to try to appeal to the Conservatives because if they knew this they should be just as outraged as the rest of us. I tell them about the fractional reserve system and I will even put out stuff by the American right (who hate the Federal Reserve) but it doesn’t seem to get through to them because they are so authoritarian and always believe what the establishment tells them (look up on line Bob Altemeyer’s – The Authoritarians – a great book which is a free PDF).

    I often put this out on CIF:

    The late Sheldon Emry was a pastor and was a conservative (with some rather dated illiberal conservative views), but on the whole he seemed to be fairly moderate and was not against welfare or social security.

    From the back cover of, Billions For the Bankers And Debts For The People, by Sheldon Emry:

    What if?

    .What if you were no longer required to pay income tax on your salary, profit on the sale of your private residence or inheritance tax.

    .What if all Americans’ living standards could be increased 25-30% without any increase in man hours worked or increased taxes.

    .What if Medicare and Social Security were completely funded with no increase in taxes.

    .What if the possibility of going to war could be reduced by 80-90%.

    .What if unemployment dropped to near zero.

    All these claims are achievable if you and a majority of Americans understood our monetary system and insisted that our government adopt sound monetary policies that are beneficial to the public rather than the bankers.

    1. With all due respect, the ‘sound money’ school is plain wrong about the money creation process and the banking system.

      We don’t have fractional reserve banking for a start. And banks do not lend reserves created by the central banks.

      Our problem is that the neoclassicals who believe the myths of sound money dominate the economic/media/political sphere and continue to misuse and distort the system that we actually have.

      They create unemployment and poverty where none needs to be by limiting spending where it is needed.

      1. We most certainly do have fractional reserve banking, and no banks do not lend central bank reserves, they lend based on their own reserves. Of course the reserves are based on assets (which they acquire when they make a collateralized loan). The bank of England makes this very clear in a recent note released in the last year. Also economist Steve Keen shows very clearly how private bank lending actually creates the majority of the money supply. The money supply is not controlled by either the US Treasury nor the Bank of England, but by private banks and their lending.

        Poverty is hardly caused by a lack of deficit spending, nor is it “fixed” in any long term sense by more deficit spending. Only through productive activities can poverty by lastingly addressed. Of course productive actions must coincide with non-fraudulent behavior and an equitable distribution of the wealth created by the productive activities between Capital, Labor, and Finance. Presently Finance takes too much of the wealth creation, and additional deficit spending will only increase the outsize percentage of wealth being channeled to the financial sector.

  3. There is a good financial journalist who sometimes writes in the Guardian but I forget his name right now. A few years back he wrote about pension funds. He said the pension fund managers were just investing in the property market causing house price booms. As the housing market took off they would make themselves huge bonuses, but when the busts came they kept their bounty. Then they will start the whole thing all over again.

    What they should be investing in, he said, was new companies with new Hi Tec products building industries that supplied good jobs for young people many of whom would have science and technical degrees. These jobs would offer good wages and the profits and would pay for our pensions. This just makes such good sense so how is it that I never read about it again?

    Our mainstream newspapers don’t give any real information to people and it makes me so angry. We could have such a vibrant healthy economy here, which both those the Right and Left would be happy with (with good wages, good profits, and vibrant communities), but no, the 1% prefer to ruin capitalism as it makes a tiny fraction, the 0.0001%, mega profits.

  4. So when these companies go bankrupt who loses all the money? Well, I guess private investors will lose out, most of whom probably vote Conservative. But people with ISAs may lose as well, which ordinary people like my brother have invested in. And the pension funds could lose loads as well, making pensions very insecure so we might not have much of a pension when we retire and so we might have to carry on working.

    So what sort of capitalist system is this? One that just takes all the wealth away that true entrepreneurs and capitalists had so worked hard to build up in the past. We are told that we must compete otherwise other countries like China will outpace us. But we have a capitalist system that stymie’s our industrial economy, stymie’s our innovation, stymie’s our inventors, and stymie’s young people who may have worked very hard to get the best degrees.

  5. Presumably, this is where the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) being secretly negotiated in Geneva comes in – locking in governments via international law:

    Financial services are defined by a broad and non-exclusive list, which ranges from life and non-life insurance, reinsurance, retrocession, banking, trading derivatives and foreign exchange to funds management, credit ratings, financial advice and data processing (see Art X.2).

    The rules apply to measures that ‘affect’ the supply of financial services through foreign direct investment (commercial establishment) or offshore provision by remote delivery or services purchased in another country (cross-border). They also aim to ‘discipline’ governments in favour of a light handed and self-regulatory model of financial regulation. The substantive rules target what the financial services industry sees as obstacles to its seamless global operations, including:

    limits on the size of financial institutions (too big to fail);
    restrictions on activities (eg deposit taking banks that also trade on their own account);
    requiring foreign investment through subsidiaries (regulated by the host) rather than branches (regulated from their parent state);
    requiring that financial data is held onshore;
    limits on funds transfers for cross-border transactions (e-finance);
    authorisation of cross-border providers;
    state monopolies on pension funds or disaster insurance;
    disclosure requirements on offshore operations in tax havens;
    certain transactions must be conducted through public exchanges, rather than invisible over-the counter operations;
    approval for sale of ‘innovative’ (potentially toxic) financial products;
    regulation of credit rating agencies or financial advisers;
    controls on hot money inflows and outflows of capital;
    requirements that a majority of directors are locally domiciled;
    authorisation and regulation of hedge funds; etc.

    https://wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/analysis.html

    1. Hello Jonathan,

      I’m sorry I can’t post transcripts. I don’t speak from a script and just haven’t the time to transcribe it . But these videos are not going to replace the written posts. I will keep writing. The idea was simply to see if I could reach an audience who prefer watching over reading.

      Like you, I prefer to read but other people much prefer to watch so I thought to branch out. It’s an experiment. If people don;t like it I’ll stop. But for the moment I will give it a try.

      1. harold wilson's pipe

        Hello David, and thank you.

        I like the idea of attracting a wider audience via video/Youtube, I see no reason to stop, but I think transcripts are helpful. Not only do they save watching a screen, they are also much easier to look things up on afterwards (and, if appropriate, very easy for search engines to index).

        I entirely understand you may not have the time for transcripts.

        How about if some of your readers volunteered to transcribe the video and you just checked it for sanity before release?

        I can’t volunteer right now, but give it a few months and that may change…

        Also due in a few months: UK general election, with the scenery perhaps a little different than at the last one. Any thoughts (maybe not here, but separately)?

        For those that keep referring to capitalism: the US and UK no longer have capitalism, and haven’t had for some time. They (we) have corporatism. Not the same thing. It may sometimes help to make the distinction.

    2. @ Jonathan:
      You are confusing the TV with video on the internet? And you have no time to watch, but time to criticize content that is not made to your personal specifications? Crikey.

      Anyway – I saw with great pleasure that the issue of money creation was finally discussed in the House very recently, thanks to Positive Money.

      “After 170 years of silence from the House of Commons on the subject of money creation, there was finally a debate in the Main Chamber at the House of Commons on the subject of ‘Money Creation and Society’ on 20th Nov 2014.”

      http://www.positivemoney.org/2014/11/mps-debated-money-creation/

      Presumably Jonathan will have to read Hansard to get with this one, but everyone else can head over to youtube. 🙂

  6. Hello David, vids are OK if one can just listen to them while doing something else, in my case the washing up with the laptop on the kitchen table ! The links can be followed up later . All the best, Dave (frog2 at CiF)

    PS it’s exactly 27 years since that Black Tuesday in Europe when I awoke at 5 to see NY had gone down 500 points. A memorable day’s money-broking followed .

  7. Very good video blog David 🙂

    And, if you’re right, it looks like an identical strategy to the ‘control fraud’ system that Bill Black talks about.

    Far from being remotely chastened, never mind prosecuted, jailed & downsized, the banksters are behaving in exactly the same way. Sure, why wouldn’t they? There were no consequences 6/7 yrs ago.

    Here’s what Bill Black had to say about this failure to act, in a useful summary writen in response to the ever more useless & self serving Paul Krugman:

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/10/william-r-black-krugmans-bashes-progressives-criticizing-obama-grounds-criticizes-obama.html

  8. I liked the video blog – with my bluetooth earpiece and the screen minimised, it almost looks like I am working !

  9. Enjoyed the video – well done! Your written commentaries have always given a sense of your level-headed insight…but the video confirms it. You’re a natural on camera.

    One superficial request: When the cold weather sets in, please re-frame the view to include the roaring fire in the BG…

  10. Great video!

    There is no economic growth occurring in real terms. Consequently, there is no opportunity for productive investment. Therefore, all that is going on is betting. And the financial bettors want their bets backstopped by their governments…

  11. I agree with everything you had to say. I would like to add to the Real estate agenda part of your video. Ask yourself this question: Who is the biggest Real estate owner in America? It is the Federal Reserve.Who is second? The Hedge funds are. What better way for the Fed to remove garbage from their balance sheet than cheap money and softened qualifying formulas. Same for the Hedge funds. Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac is about to give a pass to Banks for more fraud and once again creating this moral hazard atmosphere. Racketeering is a business model in Washington and Wall street.

  12. David, I think you and others here will this video’d and subtitled discussion very interesting, about Russia’s economy, the sanctions, and especially finance, with Putin’s advisor & other Russian economics & finance experts:

    Sergey Glazyev (S.G)

    Khazin Mikhail Leonidovich (M.L)

    Vladimir Yuryevich Levchenko (V.Y)

    It’s 1hr 20mins, fairly technical and detailed. A must watch imho.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CH4Pcgoi3eE

    1. I will certainly have a look. I have a quite different view of what is going on in Russia from what I keep seeing reported. So it will be good to see if my thoughts align at all, or not at all, with this interview.

      1. I again endorse the continued production of your videos. They are a nice break from the written posts, and you carry them off well.

        I generally agree with your assessments, but am extremely skeptical of your two year time frame. It is possible, of course, but I’ll be very surprised if the balls remain in the air that long.

        Finally, here’s a link to a good (IMV), recent overview of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Russia from Dmitry Orlov:

        http://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/10/21/how-to-start-a-war-and-lose-an-empire/

        1. One more useful link for those interested in a potent antidote to MSM “reporting” on Russia. The Saker’s blog is indispensable, and, in stark contrast to those (no matter how well informed) who only express their own opinions, he is doing much more. For example, he is currently accepting questions, the best of which will be presented to the Russian economist Mikhail Khazin, who will answer them (and they will be translated to English) next week.

          Here’s a link:

          http://www.thesaker.net/russia/exclusive-mikhail-khazin-qa-with-saker-blog-readers/

          1. Yes, thanks David, I’ll be very interested to hear your thoughts on the video, I believe you have a good grasp on International Finance and I’m keen to extend my understanding of this area of economics 🙂

            It is ‘thesaker’ who has done the translation work for it. Their analysis on Ukraine has rapidly become highly respected among non-mainstream circles (for want of a better term) and is very balanced imho.

      2. Thanks to you for the video, and Mike for the link.

        I have listened to Mr Glazyev before and both he and the others ‘get it!’ as is said.

        They understand that the real culprits are the Central Bank and the other banks, both state and commercial Banks.

        With foreign capital markets closed to their companies,the banks are not lending and are causing a credit crunch.
        The Central Bank is not doing it’s job,and is named as subversive! Mr Khazin names the CB head and three others
        as being basically working for the west!

        They have not stopped the flow of capital leaving,tax free etc etc.The banks are just speculating in Forex markets
        and are not working for the benefit of the country.They all agree the CB is not working for Russia.

        What the ‘Saker’ refers to as ‘Atlantic Integrationists’ are working against the interests of Russia and it’s people.
        The government seems to be inefective and Mr Glazyev said they asked ten years ago for an alternative to SWIFT
        and the CB said “no need” !.

        It is not stated, but they surely must understand that the central banking system is set up for the .01% and have no
        loyalty to any country.

        The US and NATO best watch out, russians are serious players and have a concept of ‘Narod’ [+a]as spoken.
        Kruschev would have just shot them like Lavrenti Beria died in the Lubyanka,but now they seem to need respect.
        [sigh]

        These same people chewed up three million men of the Wermacht and took a further 2.5 million prisoners of the best soldiers
        probably ever seen until the Red Army,certainly the toy soldiers of the US & Nato are no match for them,wedding parties sure !women and children fine! …just as long as they are unarmed!

        Being a Global Dollar system everything is geared to that in Russia,it is not simply a matter of flicking a switch.
        Mr Glazyev said we can set up an alternative to Visa and Mastercard,we have the programmers to do it.

        We do not have this quality of debate in the so called west.
        I thoroughly enjoyed it, also excellent subtitles,the Q&A I felt needed more time…but then they must feed the people slowly
        to this new reality.They know they are at war,but the people must be re-programmed,they saddle slow but ride fast.

        One comment Mr Glazyev made was very significant: The USA has trashed the WTO and lost all credibility
        not respecting international treaties or law, as V V Putin said at Valdai… New rules or No rules

        One thing is for sure,neither Russia or China will be taken over by the USSA,with its TPP & TTIP or any other
        corporate dominance strategy.

        Cheers.
        .

  13. In reference to Russia, someone is getting their silk underwear in a twist – It seems that the EU should be prepared to go to war in order to protect those ‘ Good ‘Ol Boys ‘ fighting for freedom & democracy in Ukraine. Apparently it has nothing to do with the investments he made in helping to put them into power :

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/wake-up-europe/

    Lowdown on the man who received the ‘ Globalist of the year award ‘ In 2010.

    http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/17843-george-soros-s-giant-globalist-footprint-in-ukraine-s-turmoil

  14. I wonder is Camerons showboating on the 2 billion bill from the EU is a stage managed start to the something Bad?Barosso chimed in all to readily and it seems a pretty stupid way to do politics, via Twitter ´´It isn’t going to happen´´to quote the British PM. I am just not buying the mock outrage on all sides ,all really rather to convenient. Wagging the Dog, a page out of the Washington play book.

  15. Just want to say I really like the video format. Its like having a cup of tea with someone who is as obsessed with this unfolding car crash as I am.

    I hope I’m wrong too.

  16. I’m with Sparkylab and others in appreciating the video format. I don’t have much time to read and write these days, so the odd 15 mins listening whilst cooking dinner is something to treasure!

  17. The video blog is a great idea. I really like it. Regarding the time, 20 min is not long. It could be 30 min and still not be stretching it. I actually would prefer longer more in depth episodes.

    And instead of saying “it is to technical”, take your time and discuss it.

    Dangerous Knowledge was a good documentary, something similar about modern finance would be great.

    1. I’m really glad you like the video blog. I will do as many as I can. As for a longer documentary like Dangerous Knowledge. I would really love to do one looking at the origins of the neoliberal globalisation – in economics, politics and in theories of human nature – and then showing how it all fails. All I need is someone to help me fund it.

      1. David

        Have you looked into crowd funding options? I’m not sure how much you need to raise, but sites like Kickstarter have been able to raise six figure sums for all sorts of projects including films:

        https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/film%20&%20video?ref=home_potd

        I know that Steve Keen managed to raise a sizeable amount for developing his Minsky software.

        And there shouldn’t be any shortage of publicity and contributions from your readers!

    1. Hello Joe,

      Well I am certainly glad junker sees teh danger of teh ISDS and sees how it does indeed make a mockery of equality before teh law – by giving corporations their own law and own provate ‘court’. BUT if they remove the ISDS clause from the TTIP I do not think it will not change much, because the UK, for example, has already signed over 80 other Bilateral Investment Treaties all of which contain ISDS clauses. So an unhappy corporation could well use any of those to sue a European nation over something covered in the TTIP. The ISDS does’t need to be in the TTIP itself.

    1. Reminds me of the so called ‘ War to end all Wars ‘ Christmas truce of almost exactly a century ago where it seems the maxim fodder got an insight into the fact that the evil other side was made up of men not really much different than themselves. TPTB soon put a stop to of course & the worsening of the slaughter led to a brutalisation of all sides which reinforced the preferred establishment view that the other side’s victims were all evil incarnate.

      These guys though, are of a much higher status & on the Ukrainian side have realised that basically they are the pawns used to further the ends of oligarchs & other financial interests & in that highly fluid situation where things are only likely to worsen for the Ukraine – who knows where it could lead ?There also appears to be a war weariness in the West, particularly in the US, which might suppress the hawks & Neo-Cons lust for perpetual war, but in light of the coming financial shitstorm – who knows what will happen & after all, there was only a 21 year gap between the 2 world wars for what must have been a very war weary Europe.

      Time for something completely different – Here’s a link picked up from NC which I havn’t watched yet that you might be interested in – on long term capital management – it includes a BBC 1999 documentary entitled ‘ The Midas stockmarket formula ‘ :

      http://www.distressedvolatility.com/2012/07/the-trillion-dollar-bet-documentary-on.html

  18. There is a lot of “money” invested or ready to be invested. Be nice if it could generate a nice return. All of it. Pension funds. Mutual funds.

    But there is nowhere to invest it except in “financial” stuff, because nothing else is growing. So if the general return is 5%, next year there wil be 5% more money to invest and, without recovery, still nowhere to invest it.

    ROI becomes (not for real investments but for all this “money” a/k/a money) a charade, with an upward spiral (amount of “money” in the world in year N,
    MiWN = MiW2014(1.05)**N. with nothing real behind it.

    Anything wrong with this analysis? Is it preciesly a bank-implemented inflation at the rate of 5%?

  19. I thought this was a terrific video and so I sent it out on social media to my friends. Following this up later not one person had bothered to watch it.

    Sad to say Golem but It looks like nobody I know cares about the coming crash.

    I do appreciate your efforts to wake people up. I just wish at least one person I know cared.

    1. Thank you for trying. They all will care when it hits them and they want to blame someone and claim they weren’t told. Then we will have to swollow hard and try to help them as best we can. Twas ever thus.

      On a brighter note so many new people turned up to our local green party meeting we ran out of chairs and space. People leaving the main parties and coming to one that isn’t mired in the bottomless mud of the political “centre ground”.

      There is hope and I think its growing.

      1. Enjoyed the video and agree with the contents. Will the status quo last another 2 years? Impossible to predict. I recently joined the Green Party two. Lots of new faces turning up at meetings seeking an alternative to the usual corporate sponsored options. Could the Green Party become the next Syriza party of the UK? They are the only party that offers a real alternative to the mainstream parties.

      2. Can’t help asking how many swollows make a sommer mate. Long Labour shifted Green here. The current financial system has our pensions in Ponzis and hollow companies (even Tesco may be an example), so a big and widespread hit is coming.

        Deep in this is that we don’t have any right to money and it is only a control system. The shock of this is too much for nearly all of us. We know our main parties are hapless, but a substantial Plan B is still electoral poison. We seem to be forgetting even if we burned all the money away there is still ‘capital’ that could be re-apportioned under a positive money holding plan.

    1. I’m a member and I donate to them. Ben Dyson was knocked out by the book, The Grip of Death, by Michael Rowbotham, which also knocked me out. I thought I was reading something from the left, but it went beyond left and right. Because if all you wanted to do was just a little bit of work (like me) then you would have enough to get by without any problems, but if you wanted to become richer, well, that’s up to you.

      Rowbotham painted a world where we would be able to give up work for a few months at a time where we could learn something new, or just relax, and not get penalised. I would love a three day week.

      His style of writing was so unusual and yet casual but it was still heavy going in places as it turned my world up-side-down. But I got it: we live in a fake competitive environment that it doesn’t have to be like. The 1% are using the market (and the banking system) to turn us into virtual slaves where our lives just evolve around work.

      He states how absurd it is that we buy fridges from Germany but then we sell UK made fridges back to them, or to France, etc., and so there are loads of boats all over the world passing each other with the same kinds of goods on board and so the waste is astromical.

      Anyway, I came across this amazing video today by Prof Richard Wolff. What I like about him is that he is an amazing orator but he comes across as just a regular American guy although he is a Marxist. I really like him. His message is very similar to that of Michael Rowbotham’s.

      ‘Richard D. Wolff – “Our Economic Futures: Can Democracy Cure Capitalism?” – Otterbein University’.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQZ1Ad0-rU

    2. We have notes & coin which is all debt based money,issued as Sovereign Debt by the treasury via the CB via Global Bond Market, [Currency = Principal+ Interest ] goverment spending funded by debt, is the same, bank credit however is something else, entirely different.

      If you go to buy a house or car, no money changes hands!…only a digital/book keeping entry in an account,credited with currency,
      this sum is simply transferred to the vendor at interest!.

      ALL governments are complicit in this!, they get Paid!,if you tried it you would be imprisoned like Carlos Ponzi ! or
      Bernie Madoff..

      before you get this so called ‘loan’ ,you must sign on the ‘dotted line’ ,this signature makes you the ‘debtor’ responsible for both the debt & the ‘underlying asset’.

      The creditor has no responsibility,if the market price of this ‘underlying asset’ falls… they[bankers] are left with a loss on their books…this is why they hate ‘asset deflation’, asset deflation’ = insolvency, enter QE…….

      however price inflation taxes us, by reducing purchasing power,real inflation is seen with product re-sizing,hedonic adjustments
      or simply not counting price increases.

      Although I have voted, do not expect anything, it is a total fraud pretending to be democratic!.

      They will all just take the money and run!!!

      Cheers

  20. Fair statement of the problem David – my students not only got it but also into some heated discussion afterwards, Transcripts might have been useful for the blind student’s text reader, but I’d guess she was the only one who heard my pre-brief anyway and who instigated much of the after-discussion.

    Osbourne and Cameron have been ably demonstrating economic and financial illiteracy of late, bartering for the already granted rebate on the £1.7 billion – this amounts to you owing me £100 for widgets and me owing you £100 for video editing. We agree not to pay each other, but I still want 50 quid from you for the cashflow advice that saved you £100!

    We need, somehow, to break into newsrooms with this kind of material. I have built an AI device that surveys them in great detail, but some months in it merely reports the question ‘why are these called news rooms’? The presence of the presstitute insanestream (it all looks like undergraduate wing and a prayer presentation) is a major problem – any ideas on how we might break through the gatekeepers?

    1. >any ideas on how we might break through the gatekeepers?

      That’s a tough one. I decided to try another tactic, putting pressure on my MP in the form of an online open letter.

      I asked about money creation, the worry that there is no difference between the major parties and her views on TTIP.

      It’s something we all might like to try – nothing lost by using any democratic tool we still posses.

      See here and please feel free to leave a polite, intelligent comment.
      http://joetaylor41.wordpress.com/

  21. I am outraged by this yawning gap in posts! Yes, I’m kidding, however, I am genuinely surprised, given all that has happened over the past couple of weeks.

    I hope that all is well on the home front, David.

    1. Hello Tinky,

      Thanks for asking. Happily all is well.

      I do want to do more on the blog – and as you say there is a lot going on. But I find myself watching and waiting. It feels like the quiet before the storm.

      I am doing some things. I’m doing a series of public talks as my way of asking for people to vote Green and for me personally. I gave the second one last week. They take a lot of research. This one was about what UK health services and food standards will look like if the TTIP corpoarte agenda get the Tory go-ahead. I am trying to do politics the old fashioned way – face to face, in person ready to answer any questions. Not hiding away behind spin.

      I have a further 4 TTIP talks around the country. Plus I start work on a new film series in January – For which I am most grateful.

      I will write more and do some more video blogs. Sorry to leave such gaps.

      1. Hi David

        The best possible outcome we could have from the upcoming election could well be a hung parliament, with the Greens in coalition and you being an elected member.

        So, how can your blog followers like me contribute in some way to your election campaign, financially and/or as foot-soldiers?

        1. Hello Mate,

          Generous of you to ask. Several of you have for which I am really grateful. To be honest I am not sure. Those close enough with teh time and willing to come herecould help canvassing nearer teh time. We can put up in our house as many as want to come.

          Beyond that I think there is really valuable work to be done in social media just getting voters to know I exist. The public talks are good and I will do as many more as I can. The same goes for the videos I have put up on my FB page. They are short and designed to takle one issue voters care about. Letting people know about those would also be a real help.

          1. Oh don’t worry, lots of people are going to know who you are…it’s going to be seen to.

            I know it’s highly unlikely anyone will read this in time but on the 21st November there will be a vote by UK MPs on some stuff to do with the Health and Social Care act. If the vote goes the right way it could result in the NHS being protected from TTIP.

            It is a hard vote to win, so 38 Degrees and the World Development Movement both have last minute petitions.

            The 38 Degrees one is:

            https://you.38degrees.org.uk/efforts…r-nhs/near/new

            The WDM one has a link on this page:

            http://www.wdm.org.uk/trade/ttip-letters-pages

            just go to where it says: contact your MP to support this bill.

            Kind Regards

      2. Thanks David. No need to apologize – I admire your commitment and efforts to change the current system. I am from the U.S., but am in Europe and planning to relocate. I believe that the U.S. will be particularly hard hit by the coming (economic) storm, and see little hope in changing the current, utterly corrupt system, until after it occurs.

        Good luck with your efforts, and I look forward to seeing and reading more of your thoughts.

      3. I noticed David Cameron, in his warning about the economy, was pushing the need for trade deals. I am guessing he has received orders to start pushing through TTIP.

        1. Morning Homer,

          I think they really, really don’t want to have to cut the ISDS out of the agreement which they might consider IF that is what it would take to pacify the public.

          So I think you are right, they are on a major push to say 1) the TTIP will bring hige benefits (using old models and not mentioning hewer ones which say it will benefit ONLY the corporations) and 2) Unless we stick to ‘the plan’ everything will get much worse because another down-trun is coming and only we and our Trade Deal can save you.

          The rank smell of so many lies makes me gag.

          1. Baffled Popperian

            Readers (if they haven’t done so already) can sign the Self-Organised European Citizens Initiative against TTIP and CETA.

            It is a special petition that needs 1 million signatures – might get the European Commission taken to court over some of this if it reaches a million. It currently has:

            912,964 , getting close.

            The link to the site is:

            https://stop-ttip.org/

            There is also another related sneaky piece of shenanigans called TISA. A German professor has his own petition on change.org against this one.

            Here’s the link

            http://www.change.org/p/dr-angela-merkel-tisa-abkommen-stoppen

            Regards

    1. Baffled Popperian

      You are quite welcome Steviefinn.

      Yes I have just noticed that my screen initials are rather ironic given the context.

      Regards.

      1. UPDATE: NHS and TTIP

        for those who don’t already know, the vote on 21/11/2014 was in the NHS’s favor. It still needs another vote later on. That will be more difficult to pull off, but the good guys have won the first round.

        My thanks to all who signed the petition

        Regards

        1. Baffled Popperian

          UPDATE: STOP TTIP ECI

          I am happy to report that a blizzard of signatures have been amassed in the last 10 days and that both Slovenia and Finland have exceeded the thresholds, so we now have 5 out of the required 7.

          I am also happy to report that France and Spain have each received thousands of signatures.

          France in particular are now at 63% of their threshold with 35354 signatures (10 days ago they were at a mere 20705)

          The total number collected so far is 982, 604

          It’s now a question of when rather than if.

          Regards

    2. Oh yes I forgot to add some interesting statistics..well I think they are interesting but I am a mathematician. Don’t look at me like that. The Self-Organised ECI petition is aiming for a million signatures, but also wants a certain threshold number from at least 7 nations. (I think I have missed a country in the below list but I can’t figure out which one, but anyway). The following are correct as of 21/11/2014 at 21:25:

      S.O ECI Petition Statistics:

      Total Signatures obtained: 927246

      National Breakdown

      MOST SUCCESSFUL SO FAR

      Austria
      37285 – minimum threshold crossed

      Germany
      605631 – minimum threshold crossed

      United Kingdom
      177610 – minimum threshold crossed

      ALMOST THERE:

      Finland
      6373 – less than 3350 more required for threshold

      Luxemburg
      2953 – less than 1600 more required for threshold

      Netherlands
      15969 – less than 4000 more required for threshold

      Slovenia
      4706 – less than 1500 more required for threshold

      MORE AWARENESS NEEDED BUT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE

      Denmark
      2522 – threshold is 9750

      Ireland
      3705 – threshold is 9000

      Slovakia
      2846 – threshold is 9750

      THESE NEED A LOT MORE SIGNATURES

      Bulgaria
      1811 – threshold 13500

      Croatia
      452 – threshold is 9000

      Czech Republic
      5411 – threshold is 16500

      Estonia
      236 – threshold is 4500

      France
      20705 – threshold is 55500

      (Come on France!!! One of the world’s great republics doesn’t want its laws decided by Corporate America does it???)

      Italy
      4802 – threshold is 54750

      (oh for goodness sake Italy that is just sad.)

      Greece
      1100 – threshold is 16500

      Hungary
      1238 – threshold is 16500

      Latvia
      217 – threshold is 6750

      Lithuania
      284 – Threshold is 9000

      Poland
      1694 – threshold is 38250

      Portugal
      2681 – threshold is 16500

      Romania
      1368 – threshold 24750

      Spain
      16207 – threshold is 40500

      (That’s better!! Still a lot more needed though)

      Sweden
      3402 – threshold is 15000

      Regards

      1. I think what troubled some people about this documentary, based on feedback received, is that it posited the desire of the BOJ to create a crisis to promote ‘structural reform’ but then never really defined what that structural reform was to be. I do think it was implied to be the IMF model.

        But what I sense bothered some is that the documentary does not come down clearly on what it thinks the ‘solution’ to the Japanese stagnation should be.

        Werner is a monetary stimulus guy, coining the term ‘quantitative easing’ and promoting that approach early in the 2000’s.

        I didn’t care so much. We are used to documentaries that strike a theme, and then beat on that for the duration, with a nice blow to wrap up the punchline.

        I tended to view this as a somewhat scholarly ‘expository’ documentary that exposed the internecine struggles in Japan, the implied corruption in its structures, and the active experimentation of the central banks in the real economy, without a clear idea of what they were doing.

        People can make many of these conclusions for themselves, or other ones, based on the rather valuable information that is provided.

        So, I think that the documentary has a somewhat out of focus approach in the tastes of modern viewers of documentaries who are more used to polemics.

        But that is just my opinion and I could be wrong. I was quite enthusiastic about it because it shone a light on the Japanese economic situation and its roots quite nicely, and was grateful for that as my own takeaway.

        Perhaps as scholars, Werner and Oswald present the data, but not enough predigested red meat in a nice shrink wrap for the consuming public in the manner of the mainstream tabloids. They make us think, and who wants to expend that kind of energy.

        1. I meant to add that I would be interested in David Malone’s opinions, as well as others of course, but particularly David since he is the professional documentarian that I know best.

      2. Joe

        You are quite right to pick up on the BoJ’s ‘Window Guidance’, (I was hoping that would be noticed here!) which the video explains was simply a program of insisting their commercial banks create credit money (loans), not for productive purposes but simply to create their property asset bubble, which, inevitably, bust by the 90s.

        As Japan’s commercial banks themselves queried these targets for new credit creation, stating that the real economy had no productive use for such an extent of new money creation, their is no doubt whatever that the BoJ chiefs knew exactly what they were doing and what the effects would be.

        It also follows, as central banking is a pretty small ‘club’, that other central bankers globally also knew what was going on. Yet in both the US and Europe, thru’ outright banking fraud (cf Bill Black etc) their central banks reproduced precisely the same credit creation for property asset bubbles. It is simply not credible that the Fed, ECB and BoE did not know what would result. Both they and the BIS had the data to know precisely where the new credit money was going and the fact that it wasn’t going to capital formation in the real economy.

        Whether you call that a conspiracy or simply a game where bankers could win big regardless of whether it created the inevitable bust is an open question. What is certain is that it was clearly bankers & central bankers operating in their interests and directly against those of economic stability in the real economy.

        It should also be obvious from this that the real power to set national macro economic policy has long sat with Central Banks, with their control over the money supply and banking. That is, as MMT makes obvious, monetary policy drives the framework within which Fiscal policy can be made. As we see, on steroids, with the Euro system straightjacket. Whether the Euro system was designed for that purpose, or not, it does represent a de facto economic coup d’etat by banking and finance over the governments of member countries.

        Further, whilst bankers have obviously spent fortunes on ensuring that mainstream economics, including academe, has been a complete pile of theological crap for 4 decades (as well described by Steve Keen, MMT and others), the BoJ episode makes it clear that the top echelons of banking and central banking have always had the correct (MMT) understanding of fiat money operations and the macro economics that flow from that.

        It’s not entirely clear to me what Werner was suggesting as regards QE in the clips from the 90s. But Werner is co-author of positivemoney documents that advocate using money issuance to finance net fiscal spending. (Indeed, without either crediting it, or using the term, PM does adopt Abba Lerner’s ‘Functional Finance’ approach, as explicitly advocated by MMT.) So whether Werner had previously accepted the bullshit of QE, loanable funds, money multiplier drivel, I doubt he does now. As the data of the last decade shows, QE has certainly no effect in stimulating or getting (credit) money into a recessionary real economy. As Warren Mosler argues, any effect is slightly toward the negative if anything.

        Other recent interesting economics stuff….

        Whilst not in the MMT paradigm, John Weeks nicely explains the intellectual fraud of Gov deficit obssessions…. even where UK Gov pretends some need to ‘borrow’ in a currency it is monopoly issuer of in order to net spend…

        http://www.primeeconomics.org/?p=3383

        Also, mainstream political moves against the Euro that is crippling their economy… with a strategy for exit from it that includes introducing a new Lira in parallel… (a workable idea, imo, that I’ve seen proposed before)

        http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/12/some-mainstream-italian-parties-now-advocating-euro-exit.html

        1. I would label the Yen video as a must watch Mike – for me it brought all the loose strands in my addled brain together – it’s nothing less than wholesale looting & my take on it is that the Eurocrats are fully cognitive of this fact.

          Viking raiders were hard to miss, unlike these stealth looters who without even having to turn up, cause widespread misery like a deadly, invisible, slow working virus, whose existence the vast majority of people are totally unaware of.

        2. Thanks Mike.

          Here’s a snip from a post from one of the Positive Money supporters, which seems about right to me. What do you make of it?

          Joe

          >The chancellor’s further austerity measures mean the banks are going to further rein in lending to business as they cannot see a prospect of growth to facilitate repayment. So according to the the financial experts and forecasters their will have to be additional personal borrowing of approx £375bn unsecured and £600bn mortgage lending for the chancellors targets to be achieved. In other words the money supply needs to increase by nearly £1trillion. Because of the crazy monetary system Joe Public has to provide this extra money by borrowing so we can spend. But there is no prospect of wages increasing any where near fast enough to meet this borrowing. Here we go again!!
          Isn’t this all the proof we need that there has to be a change in the way money is created so the the supply helps the recovery from recession instead of exacerbating it like the present system does. We must pursue the drive for a return to Sovereign Money.<

          1. Joe

            Osborne’s plans for massive austerity are for after the election next year, but they are bound to give business pause in making any new investment decisions (you would think).

            The UK private sector debt is still very high, and even without the prospect of more austerity to come, it would surely curtail much expansion to stimulate the economy.

            But Labour are not offering anything except possibly a slightly moderated version of the same neo liberal agenda. Last time I looked, the apparently upbeat Greens were no better, still peddling the nonsense of Gov debt & deficit targetting.

            As a sovereign currency issuer UK Gov has no financial constraint in applying a fiscal stimulus of any sufficient size. A Job Guarantee and infrastructure spending would be good policies. Pretty much as former FSA head Lord Adair Turner has proposed.

            One would assume that positivemoney would advocate exactly something like this, tho’ they don’t propose any Job Guarantee.

            But it seems there are few, if any, main stream voices calling for this obvious solution.

            If the Tories get back in, I would that UK will be heading back to the 19th century levels of inequality and relative poverty, with decimated public services and possibly the final putsch to privatise much of the NHS, with windfall profits to Big Finance in health insurance skim offs.

            UK desparately needs an MMT approach (with some serious banking regulation reform). Positivemoney would be a step in the right direction imo, but it’s unclear if their banks as intermediaries model would not stifle growth, as most MMT economists believe.

            I don’t think it’s any accident that the neo liberal agenda is being brutally stepped up. The elites driving it are judging rightly that their capture of macro economics thinking is virtually complete and still largely unchallenged.

            The biggest push back is happening in the Eurozone, with major economies like Italy and France in trouble besides Spain, Greece and others. Some major Italian opposition parties are calling for Euro exit, or the parallel introduction of a Gov backed new Lira.

            Draghi has proposed a €1 trillion QE program, but he may end up resigning if Germany blocks it as they trying to do. Draghi has also recently made it plain that monetary union needs political union to work. A pretty plain statement that existing arrangements are dysfunctional and require radical political action. Of course, QE won’t solve anything, and it could be Draghi knows that too, but from the ECB perspective, they can be seen to be responding to the below target inflation that is their single mandate.

            One can only see things getting a lot worse before a serious rethink and or public uprising occurs.

            The 5+ decades of intellectual fraud in mainstream macro economics has a lot to answer for 🙁

  22. I am really sorry to have been absent again! A series of unfortunate family events culminating with my better half taken to hospital. She’s back now for which I am very grateful – she’s still far from well.

    I feel I should write something of a more personal nature. You may all feel this is unwanted and perhaps even an imposition. Please tell me is this is so. I won’t be at all offended. Writing a blog can be a funny thing and has become so for me.

    I have come to feel that people here are not just readers or commenters but some at least have become friends and as such deserve an explanation or at least a conversation when their friend (me) seems to ignore them.

    I do feel we are approaching an historic moment and watch with wonder as our old system defaces everything that was once good about it.

    1. David,
      Love to you and yours from our band of Vikings here in Southern Sweden. Take your time to do what you need to do for you and your family.
      Mikes Film will take some time to watch and then digest for this regular, others to I am sure.
      Skype is on if you want a chat at any time.
      Love
      Rog

    2. Very sorry to hear that David & I hope things improve for you all. I can certainly understand health problems stopping someone from being where they would like to be & I for one would welcome you having a writing holiday away from the parasitic forces that plague us all.

      This is something you know, that I try to hang on to when feeling adrift:

      “I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never by conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”
      ― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

    3. David,

      Thanks for the explanation, but no apologies are necessary. Your priorities are, of course, well in order.

      I hope that your wife recovers quickly, and look forward to your thoughts on recent events whenever you feel ready to share them.

      Regards,

      Tink

    4. Baffled Popperian

      Goodness, so sorry to hear.

      As for your blog, I am more recent here than your regulars but I think I learn more from reading half a dozen of the entries than I would have learned watching BBC ‘news’ for a year.

      You should take as long as you want, quality is more important than quantity anyway :-).

      Have a nice Christmas Sir.

    5. Dear David,

      I am a latecomer to your blog but I find it very informative and interesting. I am sending this comment, however, because I see that there have been some family health issues and I hope that the time you have spent away from the blog is not due to that. If there continues to be health issues, please know that even over here in the seemingly heartless US, there are those who continue to wish you and your family well, and look forward to the day when you are once again able to blog. We miss you!

      Best wishes to you and yours and thanks for all you do.
      SJB

    1. Glad to hear that your better half has so far pulled through this difficult ordeal David.
      I too shall keep you both in my prayers for a full recovery.
      Hopefully you will not take this the wrong way, but this Yank was quite fond of your regular posts and started to go through withdrawal symptoms for cry out loud, and given the title of your latest post, I was becoming convinced that you were bloody well determined to wait until the defecation actually hits the oscillation before ever posting again : (

      Cheers, S. Rex

  23. Best wishes David, and get well soon to your wife 🙂

    Somewhat off topic, but for me personally, and I suspect others here, is ultimately completely related to everything discussed here…. but so well expressed, I feel this deserves to be shared..

    http://things-that-matter.net/2014/12/01/how-hallucinogens-can-help-create-a-different-type-of-progressive-movement/

    Also slightly related, another must watch imho, film that has not been able to get distribution but can be watched online (free) by emailing the producers for a password. (They gave me which may still work..

    I am Fishead.

    “What’s wrong with our world? This a film for people who want to know.”

    http://www.fisheadmovie.com/

    Click the ‘where to see’ link on the left, then the ‘online’ link in the text…

      1. That’s a brilliant speech by John Pilger, Stevie. Probably still a minority, but I think ever more people have been waking up to the realty of MSM propaganda, esp this last year.

        1. Here’s something that you might also like – an inspirational poem from Ireland, which at it’s core applies to all those suffering under the yoke of austerity, inequality & injustice :

          A little bit of Seamus to start you off:

          “Walk on air against your better judgement.”

          http://nblo.gs/11SfqC

  24. Well, it’s official (for me at least), Paul Mason is just another self serving prick peddling the mainstream narrative. Ignorant in economics & the monetary system and no clue on Geopolitics either.

    http://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/world-real-life-game-global-domination

    Russia has apparently invaded Ukraine… totally ignoring the US driven right wing elites coup in Kiev and has no clue whatever that QE is +not+ printing and has no stimulus effect.

    And you will notice that no counter arguing comments of any significance will appear on Mason’s C4 news blog site, only sycophancy is allowed, anything critical of his opinion, he deletes.

    For all his hand wringing over the decimation of Greece in earlier times at the BBC, he’s beginning to clearly show his subservience to the global elites. Albeit in slightly faux ‘balance’ form, where his time at the BBC would have been a perfect training ground. Yet another stenographer to power.

    1. Have to agree with you Mike – very disappointing & matching the schizophrenic nature of the Guardian when it comes to geopolitics as opposed to excellent stuf from Monbiot for instance.

      In order to maintain balance here’s Michael Hudson’s most recent take, which is refreshing in comparison to the mudslinging articles from the west that I keep coming across.

      http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/12/michael-hudson-u-s-new-cold-war-policy-backfired.html

        1. You are very welcome.

          Unfortunately Citi won the the battle, but as this article points out it might not mean they have won the war. Looking at the US in particular it seems to me that it might end up that hubris will be their undoing. It’s so bleeding obvious that all the forces sitting at he high table are totally out of control, & are acting as though they are beyond restraint, that hopefully & eventually they might piss off enough people, which might lead to change.

          I don’t know a lot about Russia so cannot really compare, but looking at the US, with it’s license to kill paramilitary cops, Wall street mafia, warmongering, corrupt courts & government, Big Brother surveillance, torturers,faux democracy, prison population, crime rate, & so on – you would think anyone in there right mind would not want to be part of this so called American exceptionalism, but as elsewhere the reality has to be forced down people’s throats, before they fully realise the truth. It seems as though it is increasingly the monster itself that will finally through it’s own actions, combined with voices such as David’s, that will cause the reaction that might destroy it.

          I have noticed recently that the trickle of people copping on is turning into a stream, as within my own family in Ireland, due to the water charge issue. My daughter has suddenly become very radical, which makes me smile while I resist the temptation to say ‘ I told you so ‘. Perhaps this was a ‘ Tipping Point ‘ & maybe in lesser or greater degrees they are developing everywhere which is something that gives me hope – it’s such a fucking shame that it only occurs after massive damage has been done.

          http://www.americanbanker.com/news/law-regulation/why-citi-may-soon-regret-its-big-victory-on-capitol-hill-1071636-1.html?utm_campaign=abla%20daily%20briefing-dec%2012%202014&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&ET=americanbanker%3Ae3481010%3A652887a%3A&st=email

          1. Yeah sorry everyone, I hadn’t had much sleep and didn’t see the date deadline on the petition. Fudge.

    1. Baffled Popperian

      HOW TO DEFEND THE NHS FROM PRIVATISATION – A SUGGESTION
      (suggestions from readers are most welcome)

      Obviously the coalition needs to be sacked, but based on some of the things I have read on this blog there are far more effective things that can be done by readers here that don’t cost money, don’t take much effort and don’t require you to rely on politicians.

      The private sector consists of companies and companies cannot force you to either buy their products or remain loyal as customers. You can however FORCE them to back off from the NHS.

      Take Virgin for example, which in some form, from what I have heard, is pursuing large NHS contracts. If you are a customer of any of their services, whether its broad band, digital television or banking, you could choose to send them an email explaining that you are changing providers either immediately or when it is time for contract renewal, because of the involvement with NHS privatisation.

      If you are not a customer you can STILL send such an email explaining that when the time comes for contract renewals with your own provider you will not be switching to Virgin or any of its subsidiaries because of the role in NHS privatisation.

      If, say, 10,000 people were to send such an email, the company might back off. Remember, the company can invest anywhere, if it thinks the NHS is poison because of such an email campaign, then it will just go to a different sector.

      Enough publicity would also act as a deterrent to other companies. Not all perhaps, but it would still help.

      There are plenty of websites that give price comparisons, list smaller providers that don’t have their eyes set on your health care and even (sometimes) offer advice about how to change providers if the process sounds a bit daunting (it shouldn’t the complexity is an illusion).

      Take banking for example. The following Facebook page lists alternative banking providers in the UK and gives ethical assessments of a large number of them:

      https://www.facebook.com/MoveYourMoneyUK?fref=ts

      In fact banking is one of the best choices here for the following reason which Golem I belive has explained in the past; large corporations (such as ones that might be interested in bidding for NHS contracts) depend on the large mainstream banks to handle their loan and debt requirements. As such a lot of the big banks wealth is tied up in investment etc.

      Thus their actual reserves are largely dependent on the current accounts of ordinary people like you and me. So it would only take a small percentage of us to switch elsewhere to get their attention.

      As long as you email them letting them know why you are changing (they usually ask anyway), that could provoke them into action (or rather withdrawal of action in this case), especially if you spread the word on social media.

      Any other Ideas?

      Could an online petition to Mr. Branson not be organised around this sort of thing? I am not an expert on petitions, does anyone else know?

      Sorry for being off topic – it’s a good cause.

  25. I’m helping to organise a series of four ‘Assemblies for Democracy’ in the new year, to be held in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff.

    The one in Manchester is of particular interest to me as I live in Greater Manchester.

    Below is a link for a proposed structure for that event.
    http://bit.ly/1BDBV3F

    I would very much appreciate any constructive criticism and any suggestions for suitable guest speakers to address any of the proposed themes.

    Democracy is all we have to bring about positive change in an ethical manner, is it not?.

    Cheers, Joe

  26. “Riddles” Surround 36th Dead Banker Of The Year

    52-year-old Belgian Geert Tack – a private banker for ING who managed portfolios for wealthy individuals – was described as ‘impeccable’, ‘sporty’, ‘cared-for’, and ‘successful’ and so as Vermist reports, after disappearing a month ago, the appearance of his body off the coast of Ostend is surrounded by riddles …

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-07/riddles-surround-36th-dead-banker-year

    The link also contains a list of the other 35 mainly youngish men, who were bankers or connected to banking who have died in odd circumstances.

  27. Hi David,
    I hope you had a Happy Christmas and I wish you all the best for 2015. My thoughts are also with your family, stay strong.

  28. David,

    Reader from the US here.

    I hope you are wrong about the bank’s taking control although I am sure that is exactly what they would like. The US Federal Reserve “appears” to be tapering if you hold their money supply info as “factual”. People will be looking for a scape goat at the next crash, If I were the FR I would not want to give the politicians the option to redirect. Bringing back subprime will not help housing in the US because they have and continue to hollow out the middle and working classes.

    Kind Regards and the best to your family.

  29. Happy New Year to one and all

    Following on from the themes of international and sovereign debt, I have just come across this upcoming lecture by Felix Salmon:

    http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2015/01/20150127t1830vHKT.aspx

    Not sure what sort of angle he is going to take on this, but could help add some background insight to the elite’s machinations.

    – Hawkeye

    P.S. Thanks to various people for the links & vids on this thread (especially hywel for the Adam Curtis piece where he doesn’t pull any punches).

  30. I’m guessing your long silence is related to family health issues. We won’t be disappointed if you simply post an announcement to let us know how things are going.

    In the meantime, everything you said in that last video blog is coming about. The Republicans are gutting Dodd/Frank so that the banks will be insured by taxpayers. The Fed has told the large banks “your turn” and they have cranked up the mortgage backed securities again. Endless “cccash cccall” commercials are back on the radio offering easy money for car collateral, and the president has pushed 3% down mortgages at the lowest interest rates in years.

    Just hoping this fiasco doesn’t take as many years to play out as the last one.

  31. Your video blog is excellent. More please. I really enjoyed the Debt Generation too. Is there anything the public can do to stop this corruption and greed??

  32. I’m posting this message here to get some feedback from my fellow travellers in this alternate Universe we live in.

    My daughter and her friend own a web based jewellery business and have some quality clients. They have been in business for less than a year but their business model shows good growth.

    They have a short term funding issue so went to their bank to ask for a business loan.

    They were offered a loan of £20,000 at 19.99% interest!

    When the Business Manager was asked why the interest charge was so high they were told that Barclays only lend out clients deposited funds. I wish I’d have been there.

    WTF This is wrong on so many levels.

    1. Banks’ main business long ago left small business behind – their main interest is in lending for asset purchase, or to larger, well established businesses.

      It’s very likely, the ‘Business Manager’ at your branch is quite clueless about how commercial banking works – he’s just giving any old excuse he thinks you’ll swallow to conceal the fact they couldn’t care less about lending to you, except at a rate that amounts to loan sharking usury.

    2. I had a small business a few years ago with a Barclay’s account. I’ll never use them again. It was a very stressful experience. Some of the shit the business manager used to say still makes me laugh.

  33. In essence – Establishment Inc: Career Opportunities.

    Opportunities exist for clever but short sighted – and preferably measurably demented executives allied to low conscience quotas – to run multi faceted asylums under the quantum surreality method.
    Applications and CV must be submitted through Apple Ip6 for them to be considered.
    to -wwww. infgfoundation.com – Ignore the Need Feed the Greed Foundation – New York, Davos & Ecclefechan.

  34. Looks like Syriza is the real deal 🙂

    I’ve been following Yanis Varoufakis (the new Finance Minister) for a few years. He’s a pretty good economist broadly in the Post Keynesian camp, quite close to MMT (with the same correct understanding of money & banking), personal friend of Steve Keen & Jamie Galbraith among others.

    Not just showing the Euro crowd how to do economics, but tricky political negotiations as well.

    Really showing up the Irish and other mainstream political classes (and economics advisers) for the self-serving scumbags, in thrall to Capital interests, as they are.

    Let’s see Podemos in power next… pity there’s no coherent ‘left’ force in Ireland as yet…

  35. Could not access the site at all during the weekend and I really panicked. There is so much valuable information here and I thought that I would never be able to access it again. Given that I live in Greece, and we are in at the least, a very interesting situation, little wonder that I was worried (all my information about the crook Latsis came from this website, and it looks as if the newly elected government is trying to do something about the corrusption with regard to the privatisation of the old Olympic airport site).
    And on another level, I was really worried about the implications of this from the point of view of David Malone. Perhaps he is not aware of how much his view has contributed to the understanding of many people who visit this blog but do not contribute.
    I am sure that I speak for many people when I say that we truly value your insights, your hard work in uncovering the lies that we are peddled on a daily basis. But above all, we value your humanity and your priorities. May all go well with you and yours. I don’t know how to say in in any other way.

    1. Sorry I haven’t contributed anything to this thread but a big thankyou to you all for keeping it going.

      ‘Waiting for Something bad happen’

      it’s a bit like ‘There’s Something nasty in the woodshed’

      Perhaps the Elephant is where subsistence farming in a marginal desert is a rational economic choice in the 21st Cent for anybody.

      My thoughts are with David and family.

      Hawkeye, have you got any thought provoking links ?

      1. Sorry to Bob (and others) for being so quiet lately. Home life has been busy, work is hectic and I’ve embarked on evening classes too. So blogging has taken bit of back seat.

        Here are a few threads I can suggest. I’ve not listened to this podcast yet, but the subject matter seems along the lines of David’s recent posts about the murky world of Sovereign debt from former Reuters financial journalist Felix Salmon:

        http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=2844

        And this recent article on Zerohedge refers to an interview with Pippa Malmgren about financial repression and the endgame of the financial crisis!!

        http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/ex-plunge-protection-team-whistleblower-governments-control-markets-there-no-price-d

        No spoiler alerts from me, as I haven’t watched / listened to either of them yet, but they could reveal how former mainstream insiders are starting to get all “truthy” on us.

  36. I have no inside track on why or where David is, or why the silence….

    But i would like to say, never has the Green Party needed a better leader, David, you would be perfect.

  37. backwardsevolution

    If you haven’t already seen this documentary video, it’s a good watch – “Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve”. This was posted to YouTube in December of 2014.

    I haven’t watched it all yet, but from what I’ve seen, the Federal Reserve seems to be using the excuse of providing jobs for the economy when they go about creating their intentional bubbles (even though Greenspan proclaims that you can’t see bubbles until they burst – yeah, right!).

    Hey, guys, perhaps if most of the good jobs hadn’t been shipped overseas to countries with low wages and little environmental controls (in order to provide increasing profits for corporations), we wouldn’t need to be creating artificial bubbles to create jobs. I mean, it seems ridiculous that everyone needs to suffer crippling inflation, fear, prices increasing everywhere, too much debt taken on, and then it’s ripped away when the artificial bubble bursts. How stupid is that? What an absolute waste of time and lives.

    Everyone keeps saying that this is what happens when you let “the market” dictate things, but tell me, after watching this video, where “the market” was in control. I have no money in the market, so I’m not trying to defend it because I have something at stake, but to me it seems that the problems we continue to have are caused because central banks and politicians are constantly meddling and intervening. And it appears that most of the meddling and policy is solely to aid and abet bankers and corporations. If it helps the public, it’s merely a coincidence.

    Had the market been allowed to work, interest rates would have gone way up (instead of being held down by Greenspan), stopping the carnage before it got worse. From my perspective, the market is rarely allowed to work at all. It is constantly being manipulated by vested interests.

    If politicians and central bankers are really so worried about providing jobs, then they ought to make it tougher for corporations to move them offshore. Bring your jobs back to your own country, providing jobs for your own citizens, and then we won’t need to be held hostage by central bankers who pretend they are trying to help, all the while they’re really helping their banker buddies (their owners) out.

    Enjoy the documentary.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAYNW_vunfI&t=3364

  38. backwardsevolution

    frog2 from CiF – that article on prosecutions of bankers and company directors in the second half of the Nineteenth Century is a very good read. Thanks for posting it. It appears that what we are presently lacking is the “political will” to take these bankers to court. Again, it comes down to our governments not doing what’s right. Fines levied against these bankers for outright fraud or willful negligence does not bring back the public’s trust. As one blogger put it: if bank robbers knew that all they’d get for robbing a bank was a fine, there’d be a line-up from here to Africa to get in on the robbing.

  39. “Waiting for Something bad to happen”…

    Part 1.

    “Independent science & independent reporting in Japan outlawed”

    http://permaculturenews.org/2014/09/25/tokyo-contaminated-fit-habitation-doctor-says/

    Part 2.

    “The Manga “Oishinbo” Controversy: Radiation and Nose Bleeding in the Wake of 3.11”

    http://www.japanfocus.org/-Eiichiro-Ochiai/4138

    Part 3.

    “Radiation from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has for the first time been detected along a North American shoreline, though at levels too low to pose a significant threat to human or marine life, scientists said on Monday.”

    http://geab.eu/en/radiation-from-fukushima-disaster-newly-detected-off-canadas-coast/

    1. We certainly appear to be doing our best to destroy the host & in a world that accoding to this article, is run by parasites – we as the most powerful are actually the most stupid. Even flukes who live what would be in our terms a disgusting existence instinctively have the sense to keep thier hosts at least functioning, & in any case there are many more potential hosts.for them to feed off in order to sustain their species. Kind of ironic that the evolution of intelligence might turn out to have not been very intelligent & that we could learn from flukes, who actually have a positive influence on the wetland eco systems that is their larger universe.

      http://discovermagazine.com/2000/aug/cover

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.