blimey – thanks !

You are a research one man army!

I am glad you too feel something has shifted. Something deep and general I would say. One of those buried butn techtonic changes that cannot be put back. I am more hopeful now than I have even been, that real change, radical change is possible. And we are standing at its centre.

as I got round to reading the comments there and your and Ian's and Chris's interchange on what are the possibilities of Change that may come out of all this situation. It seems to me that your more hopeful view of how cultural revolution is achieved is seeming by the end of the year a little closer.
Its not just the student protests or the inspired UKUncut actions against the tax avoiders but the little item I noticed today in the Social Attitudes annual Report… despite the depressing headline in the Guardian ….
At the end is the timely fact that in 1983 90% of people believed banks were well run. it is now down to 19%! So 81% dont. that is a major fall alright. Just think how much unthinking trust used to be given to the Financial Industry. Perhaps after all that has happened this is only to be expected but I think it has also created a seedbed on which much more radical thinking and questioning will be able to take hold. Something has shifted.

This one (click here) has a lot of information on the mortgage frauds in the US. A crucial point made in the videos is that even if Congress retrospectively legalises the incomplete mortgage paperwork and overlooks the missing promissory notes, they cannot ratify the fake AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities. These simply will not go away. Bankers may not be jailed, but they will be pursued through the courts by hundreds of companies that bought up the CDO and CDS packages.

Not to be missed out – HERE – is one for JP Morgan.

This one I've included because it made me laugh: greedy bastards.com

Leni – good to see you!

Sean – with all due respect your business is obviously not a huge biz – it is an SME right? And if so you are being totally screwed by the system you support? If the banks are bailed out but then not made to lend to SME's you guys get an important source of funding cut off. If big businesses are just allowed to build up monopoly's and eat up the little guys that is bad for you? If Phillip Green and others don't pay taxes on what they earn in the UK but you and other SME's have to – you are not operating in a level playing field.

I cannot understand for the life of me anyone who is not the CEO of a huge international corporation, a banker, trader, or one of their lickspittles in place in politics and the media – being in favour of the current status quo.

I get that you don't want things to be so bad your business collapses and it must be a big worry. My other half is a manager in an SME and it has been a really tough couple of years. However that doesn't change the fact that the way we are heading is for a crisis of even bigger proportions if we don't stop flailing around trying to save banks that are literally finished as a viable business, and letting big businesses act in a fraudulent and illegal manner much of the time.

If you are a capitalist you should be just as against the current state of affairs and bank bailouts as a socialist.

Friedman himself was against big business bail outs and tax systems that let big business get away with not paying taxes or paying less than smaller enterprises. I do not agree with Friedmanite economics but most people in power only apply the bits of what he preaches that they like (small state, low taxes etc) and don't apply the bits they don't like (no government support for the private sector, no special treatment for big corps etc). He would for example have been against the extension of the Bush tax cuts saying that tax cuts when you are in deficit are a tax rise on your children. Half assed monetarism has bought us to the edge. I don't think putting our foot on the peddle now and carrying on with it will do anything other than drive us over the cliff.

I came across this page, which should provide the data you need by merging a number of spreadsheets together: click here.

While looking around for this information I mutated in to a wild-eyed archivist with rampant RSI and an insatiable urge to open up all the boxes and strew their contents around. Below is a list of the more interesting artifacts:

Links to links to links: HERE
Various Bank of England statistics: HERE
The UK 'public ledger': HERE
Investment by insurance companies in the UK: HERE
The future of public debt: HERE
Stats on the London derivatives market: HERE
Stats on European derivatives: HERE
Report on world bond market (with lots of graphs): HERE
Report on derivatives (with more graphs): HERE
Report on European securitisation: HERE
Report on debt reduction (with pictures): HERE
Annual review of the UK Debt Management Office: HERE
Statistical mania (yawn!): HERE
This one is for people who understand integral calculus (probably the only part of economics that requires a PhD): HERE

There is more data on the UK than most people realise; it's just not in a form that is easily understood outside the financial sector.

"At the end of 2004, the larger sectors of this market are credit card-backed securities (21 percent), home-equity backed securities (25 percent), automobile-backed securities (13 percent), and collateralized debt obligations (15 percent). Among the other market segments are student loan-backed securities (6 percent), equipment leases (4 percent), manufactured housing (2 percent), small business loans, and aircraft leases. More recently an attempt to securitise excess energy generated by renewable energy resources is being attempted by Joseph Brant Arseneau and his team."

It would be good to see a more up to date breakdown of this.

it seems the answer to your question re potential $ securitization of student debts…"And could that be a factor behind the impetus behind them?" is " yes".

@ Golem – another fascinating post – thanks.

I would like to know more about the relationship between sovereign debt and bond market debt, i.e. to what extent are soveriegn debts being used as guarantor or capital for loans inside the banks /private securities markets ? Is the Central Bank debt laundering circle you describe not the private banks greatest asset ? Doesn't Bank Bailout money partly serve to guarantee value of soveriegn bonds?

It seems like the relation of sovereign ( public) debt to bank (private) debt is why Governments force themselves (or are forced by the IMF/central banks ) to take charge of the rotten banks rather than let them go to the wall- – which of course is simply another statement of that relation.
I mean that's the argument against, isn't it ? That X country would go down the pan if the banks werent bailed out.

Who owes what to who is the puzzling and complicated accounting procedure for who owns what. That Irish Bondholders list, for instance was a beautifully simple snapshot of a nations wealth being moved overseas into private hands, and replaced by sovereign borrowing.
When soveriegnty plays second fiddle to the banks, as in Ireland recently, then, as you argued in earlier posts,a government can no longer be said to represent ( let alone to be acting in the interests of) its people.

I always took caution r.e.sovereignty as to be why Japan borrowed from itself / ran this 200% GDP debt rate ….that they prefer self sufficiency or hari kiri to selling their own country to the highest bidder like the rest of the world….

Beyond that, what your post above seems to imply is that the Japanese 200% of GDP is the REAL underlying rate of debt that most other developed countries run at, and that the debt laundering circle between central banks that you describe exists to disguise this, by fixing the figures.

been reading for a while. Economic dumbo I'm afraid but very aware of social damage and the ever worsening conditions we can expect.

I am wondering which particular retail sectors will suffer the most as families cut back. The increasing utilities prices are also going to take money out of some sectors to help pay the bills.