On this morning’s Today Programme (Radio 4) there was a spokesperson for one of the UK banks (Stephen Hester of RBS), discussing the current economic turmoil in Europe and the US. Essentially the message from the contributor was that the banks are just innocent victims in all this! The gist of the claim is that …
Guest Post by Hawkeye – Banks: victims or perpetrators? Read More »
The UK taxpayer owns about 84% of RBS. We didn’t ask to own it we had that money forcibly taken from us. That 84 % is around 90.6 billion shares. We paid about 50 pence per share for them, meaning you and I had around £45 billion of our wealth expropriated for the sake of …
Our European leadership, the Eurobureau, is worried that the debt crisis ‘might’ spread from the nations they like to call peripheral, to those regarded as central – France, Spain, Italy and Germany. Please file that one under ‘No Shit Sherlock.’ Who would have guessed? But while attention is finally, months too late, finally focused on …
Two days of accelerating global sell off and the learned fools are once again falling over themselves to give us the benefit of their wisdom. I heard a BBC Radio Four interview with one monumental tool, Jonathan Portes, who is the Director of an independent think tank called the National Institute of Social and Economic Research. Which …
The financial propaganda war – summer ’11 offensive Read More »
So the ignoble wrangling over the American debt ceiling is over. An agreement is reached and the market reaction was to promptly sell everything. The Dow fell 2.19, the Nasdaq fell 2.75 and the S&P fell 2.56. So that’s what ‘victory’ over the debt ceiling looks like. Both sides were after all claiming a victory …
Fanfare of Failure – American debts and European contagion Read More »
The first casualty of war is the truth. The second – in our present war, the war of the financial elite and banks against nations and their citizens – seems to be the rule of law The robo signing scandal in America is like an efflorescence of fungus covering and rotting civil trust and accountability …
Guest Post – WhistleblowerIRL – The Show Must Go On. Read More »
The news of the last week or so has been full of Ratings Agencies downgrading banks, bonds, debts and even entire nations. So now seems like a good moment to look at what it is the Ratings Agencies, Moodys, S&P and Fitch, actually rate? What do they consider in coming to their conclusions and can they …
What the Ratings Agencies really do. Liars Lexicon – Support Uplift Read More »
The Bank of Ireland saga continues. Here is an article from the Irish Independent from Saturday. It begins, BANK of Ireland (BoI) yesterday raised €2.9bn in fresh short-term funding, believed to be from Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS), as the bank fights to stay out of state control. And of course RBS is owned by you …
This morning this from Reuters saying that “unidentified” investors have bought a €1.1 billion stake in BoI. Why unidentified? The bank is calling it a vote of confidence in the irish Economy. Unidentified investors have confidence in Ireland’s economy. Confidence that the Irish economy will what? Recover in a way that benefits the many or …
The plot thickens. This came in yesterday from Reuters and seems to have received almost no notice at all. Which I find strange as it looks to me that it confirms WhistleblowerIRL’s post. DUBLIN, July 22 | Fri Jul 22, 2011 6:48am EDT (Reuters) – The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) on Friday set …
