Radiation releases now begin to look like a business plan if they reduce pension payouts….

Thanks for the heads up Hawkeye – I seem to have slipped off the NEF mailing list.

I'll be there – I would also like to draw attention to this UKuncut action:

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/490

sadly the pension funds would end up buying the stuff. Albeit the AAA senior tranche. Which would be fine because it would be…AAA. Feeding cows to cows and pension securities to pension funds. It's all good.

Thanks for your excellent contribution and I think it is true the USA has already done the pensions, although there is still room for expansion. If the UK and EU followed suit it would keep up the ponzai scheme for another 30-40 years… Unless the SA collapsed then we'd all go down with it.

@ richard in norway

The market would be enourmous. They would sell to each other,hedge funds,other countries,rich individuals,corporations…. get in at the start and the pickings are rich.

But as we learned with mortgages when the game of pass the toxic parcel ceases we get the bill.

Please do not do yourself down. I have just read two risable articles in the Telegraph (surely from the same press release) about HSBC and Barclays leaving the UK.

Exactly as you predicted in July 2010 in the toxic debt wasteland. I knew you'd done i just took a few minutes to find it. The only financial suprises I have is when it has been so long since you ptredicted it I have ogotten it.

Keep telling the truth, their world is tumbling down. God alone knows what further damage they will do before violent uprisings occur.

http://www.neweconomics.org/press-releases/uk-holding-back-progress-on-global-financial-stability-says-nef

"The risk is that by engaging in a race-to-the-bottom on financial reform, the UK undermines global financial stability with potentially devastating consequences for the global economy."

Also, a bit of notice this time for those who can make another NEF event in London on Monday 4th April:

http://www.neweconomics.org/events/2011/03/25/where-did-our-money-go-and-what-can-we-do-about-it

Securitisation is just a means for extracting income in fees for the banks, whilst transferring the long term risk issues to gullible counter parties and the tax payer.

A key test for the UK is which way the Independent Commission on Banking leans. They are producing their interim report on the 11th April.

So far, the mood music from the ICB and Mervyn King is towards separation of retail & investment banking.

But the argument is not so much about whether institutions are primarily Retail or Investment bank (this distinction is currently irrelevant), as the issue is actually about the way that they operate. My ICB submission chose to analyse banking through a functional perspective (i.e. what banks actualy do), not their notional institutional form.

Flaws in modern banking

"To accept that securitisation is necessary for modern banking is to implicitly condone the continued growth of debt levels of potentially deteriorating quality. Not only are they a risk in themselves to banking stability but it is clear that they pose a more substantial systemic risk to the nation by providing the means for even further debt expansion as well as the obfuscation of risk ownership and exposure levels."

A mass media and general public that is ignorant of the way banks function will just let the debate descend into lazy rhetoric and bickering.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1371286/The-100-billion-inflation-trick-New-way-counting-cost-hundreds-pounds.html