Bankers: Chancellor to turn screws?

By tomtom

 Is that a Thumbscrew I hear squeaking, from lack of use?

Hardly, it’s probably just another sop to hard pressed UK subjects, for if they think the bankers are squealing, then the government must be doing something right.

  The big problem here is the fact that all this government debt is created for the Banks, by the Government as its Debt Office issues interest bearing bonds. But it does not have to be this way. For centuries the Roman Empire traded with nothing more than coins made from copper and bronze. It was not till Julius Caesar decided to switch to gold that problems emerged which culminated in ‘Et Tu Brute’ and the senators bumped him off.

  After Henry I ascended the English throne in August 1100AD, Tally Sticks were introduced and they were used extensively till the early nineteenth century. Only since then, as the guinea and the sovereign took over did problems arise.

  The barbarous relic it’s often been dubbed and it opened up all kinds of chicanery from clipping to dipping. Dipping was the practice of making similar coins from a base metal and gold plating them. Clipping involved trimming slivers of gold from the edges to save enough for another coin and a devaluation that was extremely difficult to spot. This led to unforeseen consequences for those who fell for it and that included most of  Continental of Europe.

  Isaac Newton as Master of the Mint in 1717 wanted to value the golden guinea at £1-0s-8½d in order to mint 89 guineas from a troy lb of 22carat gold. He was overruled by parliament who decided it had to be £1-1s-0d. This changed the silver/gold ratio from 15/1 to 15.5/1. and it allowed the British merchants to exchange silver for gold in Europe for less than its value in England and so they transferred most of the Continental gold and gold coinage to London.

  Napolean realised what was going on, but his defeat at Waterloo in 1815 meant this scam continued to be perpetrated throughout the Victorian Period as they built an Empire.  While Tally Sticks continued here in England till they were finally retired in the early part of the nineteenth century. They had been legal tender for over seven hundred years and it was decided to burn them, which resulted in a fire that razed the Houses of Parliament to the ground.

  Other seminal moments in the history of gold are well known and the fact that it will never again be adopted as regular coinage exists to this day. For the strictures it applies are too draconian for today’s world. Though if the government were to re-introduce the gold standard it would require a mammoth revaluation of the value of gold in the order of several tens of thousands of US$ / troy ounce. to cover the all the $IoUs they have printed since August 15th 1971. When President Nixon ended the US$ link to gold. The French and Swiss were threatening to swap all their US$ for gold. 

  So we can take it as read that the gold standard is indeed a barbarous relic, it  is not going to happen, though it could be an entirely different matter for Tally Sticks. Bring ‘em on George, issue their equivalent as debt free money and see what a difference it makes. After all it worked OK for over seven hundred years. 

  

  The Chancellor will back plans for a fundamental overhaul of the UK’s banks on Monday, as the Daily Telegraph reveals City fears, (that now is not the time to hamstring the industry). Is there ever a good time to hamstring the bankers? To hear them talk, you would have to conclude NO.

  Will there ever be a good time? Possibly not, but something needs to be done for there is no merit in pandering to their whims as they fill their boots and slip off the radar to salivate over their booty.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

 

Whew! Another Loch Ness Monster

By tomtom

Anglo/French  relations Plummet

While the ‘City’ gears up to fight off challenges to its Global dominance of Worldwide Finance. What did Sarko and his good buddies expect, a kiss on each cheek? These upstarts trying to pretend they were players in the Big Game. But for France, it looks like the Big Game is over, as it reels from the perception that anyone involved in the Euro, other than possibly Holland and Germany, are doomed. The rest? Well they’re heading down the ‘Road to Nowhere’.

  In the end it is the broad socialist sweep of their policies that is doing for France. They missed the bus, for the time when they should have re-organised their subsistence farming is long past. It hangs like an Albatross around the collective Gallic Neck or as recently reported, it’s a new ‘Loch Ness Monster’. Something most people have heard about, but few had caught a glimpse of. Until that is, the Eurocrats unveiled fresh details of their latest ‘Lead Ballon Masterplan’  to save the Euro.

  Way back in the mists of time when the USSR collapsed and Germany was re-united, France sailed blithely on, thinking they were on a roll. They reckoned they had the measure of Perfidious Albion and it was just a matter of time before we came crawling.

  The Germans and French between them shoe-horned BAE Systems out of Airbus, as the Germans moved to restart commercial airline building after various attempts to get things moving forward. They were anxious to be more than just a component builder. So they cosied up to the Anglo/French Airbus consortium for permission to create a production line for construction of Airbus A319s. It was to be the thin end of a wedge, as they reckoned it could be a way of regaining self interest in aircraft construction.

In much the same way Chancellor Kohl stood atop the Berlin wall waving his handfuls of ‘Begrussengeld’, to end his Chancellorship as the man who re-united East & West Germany. That it worked there can be no doubt, though whether the full ramifications of exchanging the Ostmark one for one with the Dmark have yet worked through, are still not fully accounted for.
Germany has huge borrowings, over €2trn at the last count and all this debt needs at some time, to be repaid or refinanced. This at a time when export markets around the globe are set to retract and one of re-united Germany’s main planks of economic activity, engineering exports are key. For the mighty German industrial machine is the engine of their economy. Equivalent it might be said to the importance of the UK’s Financial Services sector in the City of London to our own economy.

It’s not certain what exact parallels there are in the French economy, it could Airbus, though it’s doubtful if it makes any real contribution other than maintaining a degree of employment. No one can say for sure if it makes a profit, probably the main reason BAE systems flogged off its wing building operations in the UK.  So they’re left with cheese, wine and horsemeat as their main exports and there’s not a lot more you can say about that, as British expats desert in droves. In the sure and certain understanding that the party’s over.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

Isolation is a Beautiful Thing

By tomtom

From this Freedom, Responsibility of the person flows

‘By this sacredness of individuals’ wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1803/82. ‘The English have in seven hundred years, evolved the principles of freedom.’

   To have it snatched away by unelected, unaccountable Eurocrats appointed by Dictat is something you would expect any Red-Blooded Anglo-Saxon to rail against, without further discussion or thought. Except of course the Socialist apparatchiks seated on the Opposition’s Front Bench.

   But see it happen  we did in a welter of  Fabian Socialist Gradualism, in the  thirteen years of Socialist domination of our Mother of all Parliaments.

   Now there are people claiming Dave was outwitted by Sarko. The only person outwitted by Sarko and his legion of subsistence farmers, relying on the CAP, was Angie. But in the end it’s the Moneymen who will decide.

   If the Shylocks sense their juice is in danger of default. Italy, Spain and France will be playing catch up with Greece, when it comes to selling their bonds. The blithering idiots and their Flim-Flam Treaty, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard explained it.

   January, February and March will decide the fate of the Euro when the Italy, France and Germany have to refinance huge loans in the order of €33bn+ and there’ll be no paying for Xmas with plastic for them. It should be interesting and Dave could well turn out be a Super Hero.

   So in the words of a Parliamentarian: “Will the Prime Minister agree with me that, Isolation is a Beautiful Thing.”

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

Ranting Miliband and his Milibandido advisors. Bang 'em up in the Tower

By tomtom

Isolation is a beautiful thing Dave!

The Milibandidos have no conception of what is in the National Interest, all they want is another spell in power and they don’t give a damn how they try to make it happen. They leap on the nearest bandwagon to flail about, castigating everybody and everything that does not accord with their Fabian Socialist Mandate. Their Impossible Dream.

  They want to see the ‘City of London Corporation’ on its knees subjugated to faceless, unelected, unaccountable Eurocrats singing from their Fabian Socialist Hymnsheet.  So the minute Dave has the audacity to stand up for Great Britain, their outpourings of disbelief have to be seen for what they are. An end to the Fabian Socialist Impossible Dream, of creating the ultimate Police State.

  That they were but a whisker away from this, lacking only the introduction of Identity Cards, is something these Socialist junkies find almost impossible to digest. We are thankful that the British Establishment woke up to what they were about, just in time to put in their boy – ‘Call me Dave’.

  Whilst many of us may not be perfectly in tune with a lot of what was suggested, but has not implemented following the establishment of the Coalition. The one thing it did do was satisfy the International Shylocks of the Money Market, that their juice was safe. So when you look at what is happening to the rest of the so-called Euro wunderkinds at risk from contagion. Italy, Spain and now France there was no other way they could proceed than to try to assuage the fears of the Shylocks with this ‘FiskalUnion’ gimmick.

  Yes a gimmick it is and now the chips are down and the wheel is spinning, it’s a gamble of unquantifiable risk. But fortunately Great Britain is isolated and that is exactly where we need to be. Standing on our own feet, making our own laws, fishing our own seas, farming our own food, maintaining our financial status as the Clearing Bank for the rest of the World and trading with whosoever we please on our own terms.

Long live Perfidious Albion.

Watch this space. I’ll be back!

Tom