threesixty

I'm not believing this story. Its not making sense. The bank are trying to make out there was a criminal element in this, just as the Societe General did with their one. I cannot see a criminal element because where was the motive? He would not personally gain from any of trading. Everyone breaks rules in jobs, whether its installing software you shouldn't, or not signing certain documents. Does that make us all "criminals" as well? And this suggestion that because of he's back office knowledge he started changing things on the system to cover his tracks... like some super sleuth.. you must be joking! How can you enter a "fictitious" trade? Either the system allows you to buy something or not. If there are no limits set on your trade then your ok. How can this be fraud? The reality is there is no motive other than to be a star player in a highly competitive environment which UBS have created. UBS have insufficient compliance in place that seems to suggest that anyone could commit "fraudulent" activity by simply entering numbers in a trading system that they have security clearance on. Thats not criminal, thats just incompetent management. Hopefully he is acquitted and then it will become blatantly obvious that its the investment banking system that is criminal and not the employees.

I understand the concept of land banking. However that is not the reason for the rise in property prices over the last 10 years. Especially in places like London where land has always been scarce. What I'm getting at is that the price difference between a victorian property in Chiswick in 1999 and then in 2011 has nothing to do with people witholding landing and not building on it till the price goes up (where on earth does that happen in London?). The price difference is created by the banks which extend credit which forces up house price inflation and then is paid back to the banks over the duration of the mortgage. the game is rigged and we the public pay the price.

Hang on a minute. Why are we talking about land owners etc.. thats alot of old tosh. 10 yrs ago 1 bedroom flat in North London cost 100 grand. Now it costs 200 +. That's 100 grand in ten years. None of that rise is due to "land owners". Its due to low interest rates and increased access to credit. Those two policies were introduced to mass affect under the last labour government. Period. This has nothing to do with the Tories (even if they are beneficiaries of a flawed economic policy), Osborne or the Duke of Westminister! Lets stop diverting blame and lay it at the feet of who did it. Brown + Blair and the Labour government. All this while doing the city a favour by keeping salaries low, removing house price inflation from the main Inflation stats and letting even corpses borrow money by splitting the FSA from the BOE. Divide and conquer was how they did it, and it took those pesky medling kids (i.e. the subprime ninja borrowers from the poorest areas of the USA) for them to be found out.

I agree there needs to be balance. Extremes never work. It seems that the "left" are saying that we need to maintain the public sector jobs we have and surge our way through to recovery by taking tax payers money and using it to pay for this bloated public sector we have. The idea is that the money paid by the government in salaries will move through the economy in retail and services and in turn circulate creating growth. The problem with that concept is that we have an economy the imports practically all the goods we use to survive. Even the largest retailers apart from M+S/Top Shop are foreign (Zara, H+M etc...) and of the ones that are British many of them have huge amounts of foreign ownership. The money is LEAKING out of our shores and NEVER coming back because we dont export anything worthwhile unless its financial services. Thats one of the reasons our deficit is so big. So the idea is to cut or cloth according to our size and reduce the leakage. Some of the leakage is an unproductive public sector that doesnt give much back in the way of wealth generation. Hospitals and schools help generate wealth because they keep people alive and educate people to create wealth. They are in reality factors of production for UK ltd. Maybe my politics is a bit mixed because there are some things I believe the state should run (or have a huge say in) because they're benefit to society goes beyond providing dividends to a few share holders. Things like transport and energy need to be owned by the state. They are "factors of production" for UK plc as well. They provide the framework for other businesses and employees to be successful and are necessities for any economy. It is crazy that a countries government should not be in charge of its core facilities. I understand that there are traditionally inefficiencies when governments run companies. But I would rather see situations like the BBC where they are autonomous but don't have a revenue driven model. but rather a service driven model. Does anyone think that we would have the BBC iplayer if the BBC was spun off into the private world? We need sensible, balance. Things that state should keep an eye on an organize for the greater good of UK plc we should do.Things that dont make any money and are "nice things to have" should be looked at as luxuries and need to be cut back in lean times. Above all, government expenditure should be a factor of the revenue from private business through taxes. We should only borrow for wars where we might all die or something. We just spend far too much on crap in this country.

There doesn't need to be a credible plan right now. They just need to remove the artificial barriers that labour put in place. Silly thing like paying someone crazy money to be a consultant in the public sector when they would be getting far less for the equivalent job in the private sector. When the incentives are to under perform and get guaranteed good money working for an organisation that will never go bankrupt (I.e. The state) that is an obstacle to private companies competing for staff. Public sector jobs DO NOT GENERATE REVENUE! That's the issue. That's why labour governments always run out of money. Public sector expenditure comes AFTER private sector wealth generation, not the other way around. Labour are like alchemists , claiming they can make gold out of anything. No you damn well can't! Your public sector has to be a smaller percentage of your private sector. It's like saying your house should could more a month than your salary because it's fair that you live a nice place! It's not about what's fair, it's about what's affordable and sustainable. Ultimately, people, especially westerners are very good at making something from nothing. Time and time again we have proven we can build when things go bad. More often than not it inspires us to create and we build even better business, buildings etc.. That's human nature. But you have to give them the freedom and framework to do it. That is conservative ideology. The last government just couldn't let go of the hand holding. The need to interfere by design because in all honesty, socialists think they are BETTER than you! They think you need them to solve your problems and will never give you credit to solve your own lives. That is there ideology. Look in history at very major socialist ruler / government and they all think the same way. The tonybee crap thats talked in the media is so annoying. Always about how vulnerable the poorest in society are. What the poor kids on camberwell estate who despite their poverty still own PS3's and xboxes!! Or the people sleeping rough who know full well than can live in a government hostel but would rather roam the streets because they love their alcohol too much! Come to Nigeria , Seria Leonne, south America etc.. And present those "vulnerable" British people and they'd laugh their heads off. The left annoy me so much with the "mothering" ... Let us grow up and face reality by ourselves...

The cuts were/are being made primarily to show to the world(IMF) that we are in control of our finances. They will mean there is no chance of us default on our debts because we are willing to make unpopular decisions. This will allow us to keep our AAA rating and keep our interest rates down. Meaning we will be paying less over the next few years. Where we make cuts is all ideological and is about long term strategy. All political parties are obliged by their voters to put implement there ideolgies, otherwise why would they be Tories / Libs / labour etc.. That is the point of politics. Why is anyone surprised? The real issue is whether you agree with the underlying ideology. Thats all the debate is about. The conservatives are doing what they have been dying to do for the last 10 yrs. Stop the absolute madness of a bloated state that needs to borrow to infinity because it cannot survive in any other way. For anyone who has not spent their life working in the private sector, where you negotiate your salary privately, there are no "bandings" and no job for life mentality.. welcome to the real world! What has been annoying me so much is the lack of basic mathematics and logic from the left (Tonybee et al).. Its pretty simple: We have an economy that finds itself importing far more than it exports (some 80/20 I think..). So most of any retail expenditure goes abroad. Yet we are trying to rely on the movement of money around the economy to keep our world afloat. So lets get this straight... The state, takes money from the private sector, to pay for public sector jobs that produce no wealth at all. But the wages paid to the public sector workers from tax payers money end up going out of the economy eventually since we basically import to survive. So in reality, whatever the private sector has been producing for the last 10yrs has been bleeding out slowly to other countries and rarely coming back (since we produce very little that anyone abroad wants to buy unless its financial products). So the governemnt of the last 10yrs has been borrowing increasingly more money to pick up the slack and investing (I use that term loosely) in the public sector to keep this party running. Surely, a child would realize that we need the country to start consuming what it produces and importing less in order to survive? That would mean re-organizing our priorities by taking the "dead" investments in the public sector and reversing this trend towards more support for the private sector. After all, only the private sector can produce goods and services that we can export and consume ourselves. Also, Re: education. We produce far more grads than we need. What good is education if we cant produce the jobs and industries to make use of this education. We dont need 50% grads. Its was always a political move to make poor people feel good about themselves yet these extra grads are earning the same if not less money than previous generations, with the privilege of being 30k in debt. Another political scam by the left. Disgusting.. Finally, we (and I hope this is the Tory master stroke) need to bleed the money out of property (especially in London) and in to private sector industrial investment. We need to make it unattractive to invest in property and far more attractive to use that money to generate businesses. Property is easy.. you buy something, do nothing to it for 5 yrs and make 200 grand. That needs to stop. We need to increase taxes on BTL properties, limits on private renting prices, and really try to force people to sell and release their equity back into the economy. The economy is all ideological, always has been, always will be.. you just need to pick a side and live by the consequences...

The deficit wasnt directly caused by the banks. Thats correct, the US and the UK have been running unusually high deficits for years and have been warned about the consequences (there was even a bbc doc about it a few years back). However the deficit is a symptom of the expansion of credit for which the US and American Goverments of the last 10 yrs are completely to blame. We only have a deficit because governments have been able to borrow so cheaply that it (at the time) didnt make sense to them to save because it was the "velocity" of money and the expansion of the money supply (monetarism) that they felt kept everything going. They never envisaged that sentiment could get so low that money just stopped moving around as it did. Its the emperors new clothes all over again. Even now with the cuts Labour are still spouting the same flawed economic principles that belong in a laboratory and not in the real world. The theory of monetarism doesnt work under the extreme pressure of reality. Its like you continuingly lending money to a friend who has shown you his bank statements that say he's got zero money in the bank and been signed off work for the next 10 yrs. Its absolute madness to expect confidence not to buckle in the way it did. We spend hundreds of years building sound business principals that are proven to work and then throw them out the window when the latest fad theory comes in. The credit situation is like the Atkins diet of money. It works for a bit but its unsustainable. I find the morality of the left on this issue absolutely sickening at the moment. There's nothing worse than a man who cannot admit when he is wrong. I dont know if they are just evil or dillusional.. I just cant tell anymore..

btw, A top tier company will check all your credentials. It's easy now that there is a database that holds everyone University grades nowadays (well everyone from 2000 onwards I suppose). Or they will call the Uni etc.. Anyway, I had this discussion 5-6 yrs ago with my cousin about how labours obsession with getting more grads through the system was destroying the prospects of everyone but the richest people. Now the climate is so cut throat that if you didnt got to private school or an amazing state school in a good area your pretty much stuffed for life. We live in a "computer says no" society nowadays and it's going to be incredibly difficult for all these kids that are going to get "filtered". I really feel sorry for them, because they weren't to know how terrible the adults that control the system were treating them. A more cynical person would say that these kids have all been set up to be indebted for life and paying extortionate interest fees for ever. It's as if labour wanted to rig the system to create debt slaves. It's like a strange science fiction film... :-(

It is an idealogical issue yes. Do we allow for what I would call the "modern capitalist algorithim" to preform it's duty of transferring wealth/assets from poor to rich? I believe that because not all "work" is equal in effort we cannot pay people equally so communism is out of the picture. But we do need better regulation / balancing of the systems in place to prevent the capitalist alogrithim running to it's fullest extent. Thats the job of governments, thats what a a real socialist government should be doing. Carefully massaging the system to keep things from overheating. Small incremental changes to the system rather than huge politically motivated changes in policy. Strangely, the conservatives (after Thatcher) and now seem to be showing far more "socialsim" than any labour government. They seem to understand that socialism actually means being "fair" to everyone.. what a novell approach!

No! Don't you get it? The socialist utopia is that there is less difference between the rich and the poor. The rich have created a system where they get to take the real assets produced by the poor in return for cash they didn't have in the first place. The poor think they are wealthier because they have access to credit. When the rich stop the credit line (which they are doing now) suddenly the poor start to realise that don't really own anything! They realise that their real salaries can't even buy them a garage let alone a house to live in. It was all an elaborate illussion. It matters who you consider yourself to be in this game. Are you 5 per cent of the rich or are you in the 95 that is giving away your labour And assets for peanuts? The gap between the 5 and 95 is wider than ever before according to official studies and the only reason you don't see it is because you've borrowed the money to make up for the fact they are robbing you! An equivalent scenario is the "house negro" who thinks he is in a better position than the slave in the field. On a micro level, he may feel better but the reality is he is still a slave. He can still be sold, killed or mutilated at will by his owner but is a fool because he can't see what his real status is. I can see that some of you guys have fallen for the same trick.

I don't follow? My understanding is that if the bank has a seed capital of 100 pounds it can lend 900 pounds out. Because they are only required to have 1/10 of their money liquid. So in real terms it has 1000 pounds on its balance sheet as an asset and has to keep 100 because the initial depositor might ask for it back. If it lends the 900 pounds out to various other people with interest it will not only get back the 900 in say 1 months time, but 900 + 100 pounds of interest. The trick is, the new loans are seen as assets so the banks asset base becomes not 100 pounds, but 1100 * 9. That is 100 pound seed + 900 pound loan + 100 pound interest * 9 (the fraction it needs to keep liquid). Essentially the bank is now good for 9,900 pounds worth of loans from a seed of 100 pounds. And it doesnt have to get the money in first to loan since they are a trusted institution. Remember there was only ever 100 pounds of real money in the first place. So everyone else is working/producing/digging up real assets and work to pay back debts to an institution that never had anything real in the first place. Just a lot of promises to pay and an initial seed of 100 pounds. When everyone pays back everyone as they say they will then everythings fine. But 2 things can happen. The depositors could ask for all their money back and that adds up to more than they actually have on them (e.g. Northern Rock). Or people default on their loans and the asset that the bank had to back its loans dissapears. There assets are basically devalued and they are in breach of covenants because even if they sold all their assets the bank couldnt cover their liabilities. Finally, the interest added means that even if they liquidised all their assets they still couldnt cover the total amount they owe to everyone because they had been adding interest to it. Exponentially the figure gets out of hand. So everyone needs to make more money to cover this extra interest. Its not an option to not "grow" in capitalism because you need to cover the interest which was just invented out of thin air.

Thats the thing I find difficult to handle. We all know the rules of capitalism. Some of us knew how the pyramid property scheme worked. We all understood that in a free market, if you get caught with your trousers down, you lose and someone else takes over your assets. Thats why when Woolworths went down, Justin King of Sainsburys made the point that bailing Woolworths out was bad for the market. Sainsburys should be rewarded for it business acumen by picking off the best Woolworths assets. If Sainsbury's failed in the future then the same thing could happen to them. Thats what drives a company to preform well i.e. the need to survive. The bailout changed the rules so spectacularly that my jaw hit the floor! I just don't believe in the whole thing anymore. I dont have any respect for asset managers (I used to work for one), Investment banks, government etc... I just dont want to play by the rules anymore. Bankruptcy, defaults etc.. it's all utter BS to me. That one move crystalized the way I think from now on. It's not fair so why should I play fair? The powers that be really dont know what they've unleashed with this move..

Bravo! I've been telling my friends this for the last 3 yrs and they just dont get it! They think I'm nuts. Hopefully, this year they'll start to see the reality of the games the government and the banks have been playing. Everyone is stuck on the micro view of the economy because we are all about "us" at then end of the day. So as long as they get the new credit card, the new loan, the opportunity to buy in to the pyramid scheme that is housing, their fine! They've never sat down and asked themselves why does the house that was made for 20k, cost 250 in year 1 and goes up 50k each each year? They think it's there astute business sense, their plucky entrepenuerial skills or just good fortune.. utter ********! You only have to look at the emprical data and see that the Brown/Greenspan miracle is macro economic fraud at the highest level. Whether its by design or incompetence the results are the same. It has created the largest difference in wealth between the rich and poor that the world has ever seen. Labours own study after 12 yrs in government admitted that they had made the problem worse rather than better! Can you believe that? The Guardian backed, left wing .. so called "socialists" have actually made people relatively poorer than any right wing governement has in history! And the USA is now publicly admitting the same thing. It;s just disgusting. Seriously disgusting. The facts are we have a fractional reserve system that feeds off credit like a crazed animal. The system needs new debt because it's not backed by anything with a fixed value (i.e. not Gold, Silver etc..). It prices in a return for the debt (interest) which can NEVER EVER be repayed because the system creates money at of thin air. There is NEVER enough money in the system to cover the total debt + interest. The system is ALWAYS INSOLVENT! Subsequently, the owners of the system (the rich 1% with goverment backed powers to create money out of nothing) get to take ALL THE ASSETS as repayment for money they loned which they never had. Therefore capitalism using the fractional reserve system will ALWAYS produce a mass transfer of wealth from poor to rich. It's like a perfect mathmatical equation that always produces that result no matter how you spin it. It's what Castro fought against (whether you agree with his methods or not), it's the great scam of the last 200yrs. The system works until all the assets are dried up and no one trusts that the majority of debt out there can be repayed. Then the system shuts down (like a car overheating) and it needs to cool down and start again. Thats what happened in 1930, and this was what was happening now.. until the governments in all the countries decided to make one last heist and rob whatever was left in the poors coffers with the bailout. Rather than have a cool down recession period they would rather make sure all your children/granchildrens money goes to proping up their assets! Make no mistake. The bailout wasn't about the banks. It was about the newly rich property flipping politicians realising that their assets were going to half in value and deciding to rob the poor further, rather than lose money. Disgusting! The whole process is so "see-through" it would be hilarious if it wasnt so cruel. "My people perish through lack of knowledge" - never a truer word said!

They DID force people to take it. That is what social engineering is. It is presenting the options to the people in such a way that the government get the outcome they desire. For example, if you give massive amounts of tax relief to people who get married. What do you think the majority of people are going to want to do? In the same way if you give huge amounts of credit to your average joe who is being bombarded by Sony Bravia adverts every day, what do you think he is more likely to do? Remember, no matter how smart you think you are. Society controls you, not the other way around. You cant fight that. It's like fighting a tidal wave, you cant stop it. Better to ride the wave than to get die getting sucked in.

The thing everyone seems to forget is how things were before. The BTL phenomenon is the product of social engineering by the government. In the early 90's you could not get BTL mortgages. You could not get the level of credit that this government has allowed. This is the root of the problem. You cannot buy 500k houses if no one lends you the money. But the government were using the bi-products of all this increased credit to create the nu-labour illusion. They used the increased stamp duty, the increased taxes from banking (the only growing sector because they got their hands on all the increased credit first). And they used it to buy the public vote, trying to show that the Conservatives were just cruel people who didn't want to fix hospitals or help the poor. The reality is the conservatives were not prepared to bend the rules so much in terms of finance that would put the UK economy permanently to death. They were not prepared to risk that. But Nu-Labour were.. The upshot of all of this is that we have assets that people actually need (houses) that were used as trading stock bought with crazy amounts of credit that are now far to pricey for practically everyone. We have no public housing policy to address this (because for 12 yrs, no one in government thought this could ever happen). So the state is paying private landlord prices to house people on benefits who would have an even poorer life if they actually worked because the government allowed property prices to get out of control .. just so they could get votes and play social engineering games.. The only way out is to allow property prices to fall. This is the equivalent of taxing all the home owners who have been investing in this credit orgy and effectively forcing them to give up their savings (i.e. the cash in their houses). Lower housing costs would improve far more people lives than it would destroy. That is true socialism not this rubbish that Nu-Labour have decided to give us. Lower housing costs will allow more people to get off benefits and feel like working for a living actually makes sense. Inspiration is what these people need, they need to believe their effort is worthwhile and going some where. That's why so many of them cant be bothered to work. No one should be spending half or 2 thirds of the money they earn just sleep in a house! Finally, Brown waiting to the last minute to call an election is just prolonging the agony of this crisis. For political reasons he can not do the above now, so we are digging ourselves deeper in a whole. Both parties are going to have to raise interest rates after the election and kill the property market. That's what I believe will happen. Possibly, Jan 2011. To me it's a done deal. Property price is the root problem of every issue this country has. It needs to to be sorted out. There is no other choice.

Exactly!! It's effectively a state sponsored fleecing of citizens. I would pay 10 pounds a month for an "organization" that never ever leveraged any money. All it did was take money from my employers. Allow me to add money or take money out, no overdrafts etc.. Just holding my money. The "organization" would have to have a capital-adequacy ratio of 100%. Therefore there could never be a run on the bank. It could make loans/investments only from it's profits gained from running the service, not from leveraging my savings or my debts. Why isn't there anything like this now? I'm sure it would be really popular ( a bit like an organic/fair trade bank brand).

One mans meat is another mans poison! If your young/hip etc... Living around Angel is a cool place to be in. I'm sure it would be fun and the lack of other rooms wont bother you too much. The real issue is the financial implications and your future life expectations. A one bed room flat is ALWAYS a stepping stone property for a couple. You will want and NEED to sell at some point in the future. Whether you split up/stay together or get married and have children that property WILL be sold in the near future (probably under 5yrs). If your paying top wack for a depreciating property that your gonna have to sell anyway then your are almost certainly setting yourself up for what could be the biggest upset of your life. To have to find 10/20/30K plus if your property depreciates in 3-5yrs is going to be 10x harder than trying to borrow an extra 10/20/30K for a mortgage to buy the property! For me, unless you get an amazing price on a one bedroom flat its too much risk in a falling/stagnant market because it offers absolutely NO FLEXIBILITY to you. At least a 2/3 bedroom flat or a house can allow you to cope with any unexpected issues should you find yourself in a bad way financially. With the economy looking bad for the next 3yr+ this purchase would feel more like a noose around your neck than an asset when it comes time to sell/remortgage etc..

When the US and the UK spent 5+ yrs stuck in green zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, too scared to actually fight because they didnt know who was going to blow themselves up in front of them.. Without suicide bombers do you think Iraq or Afghanistan would be as much of a problem? But I digress....

Very cool thread. To me it looks like the west (UK/US) have everyone by nuts because like the old saying goes.. if you owe the bank 1 million it's your problem, but if you owe the bank 1billion pounds it's the banks problem! The UK has been such a big consumer of product using credit from the producer countries that a collapse of the UK means a collapse of the standard of living in the producer countries. The two sides cannot exist without the other. Which is why the UK appears to have a "cunning plan" in this disaster. All the other emerging economies (India, China etc..) cannot pick up the slack if the UK and US stop buying products at inflated prices. They cant afford £30,000 pound BMW's. The funny thing is , neither could we but we somehow convinced the manafcturing ecomies (i.e china) to lend us the money to buy the stuff they produce.. what an amazing scam! It seems like the UK will win the battle on this technicality.. but for one small problem.. The emerging economies are used to being poor, but the UK isnt! In a war of attrition where the credit lines of the western big spenders are cut, and therefore the prrofit margins of the manufacturing economies decline sharpley, who will scream first? Whereas the Chinese, Mexicans and Indians can all cut back and live fairly cheaply and are used to it, the majority of the West would commit suicide without there PS3's, 2 holidays a year and 30k volvo's! Furthermore the UK imports 80% of its goods and doesnt produce alot of the products it needs to survive. We could turn into Cuba, driving around 2001 Mondeo's in 2030 because we cant afford the latest cars! My point is that we cannot underestimate what the other side is prepared to do to get out of this downturn. If the chinese are prepared to cut the credit lines and live poor for a decade just to win, they could easily do that. This is a bluff of extremely high proportions by the UK. The reason why the US and Germany will fare better is because they could in the event of China doing the nuclear option (cutting credit) survive in a subsistance way (i.e. they build cars, chemicals, plastics etc..) and just live poorly for a while. I liken the scenario to how modern warfare has changed forever when you realise the enemy is prepared to blow themselves up just to kill you. It's a game changer! I fear the UK has neither the will or the ability to survive if (or when) our bluff is called.

From what I see, everything that was fake is being unwound. The money from 2001 - 2007 is not real. It has no basis, no backing, no product that underpins it's value. When all that "funny money" has been unwound then prices will stablize. The problem is the Government have borrowed money to try and avoid a major crash but that's just going to make the "purge" take longer. So realistically, whether they let the world crash now, or crash in slow motion (like it's doing now), prices will get back to the place they were before the artficially cheap money was flooding the market after 2001. That means a 1 bedroom flat in Walthamstow should cost about £80-100k, and a house about £170K + etc.. When prices reach those levels I think the bottom will have been reached. It looks like jumping in before that could mean you lose a lot of money. The bottom line is there is just not the money around to support these inflated prices, no matter what the sellers think their properties are worth. Too many high earners have lost their jobs for ever. I've just heard that they are going to shut down the tax havens like monaco etc.. That means even LESS money available to buy these homes. 2001 prices dude...

Maybe I'm going nuts but ... if the UK imports 80% of it's goods from abroad and the UK then decides to inject more money into the economy, the result HAS to be a general rise in inflation. Since more sterling in the economy makes sterling lose value against other currencies, thus making imported goods more expensive. So why are the majority of newspapers talking about a deflationary spiral that just isn't going to happen? The only goods that will become cheaper are goods that are produced here that have no foreign alternative. e.g. housing, or a service (e.g. how much a cleaner charges) , since those goods/products can be repriced because they are not sourced from abroad. It seems we are in for a period of wage/services/housing deflation (i.e. money that we as citizens take home, whether it be MEW'd or salaried). However, even as our income declines dramatically most of us will experience heavy inflationary costs in our everyday goods. Squeezed at both ends I suppose...

The problem with that theory is that it ALWAYS means less than full employment in the long run therefore great sections of countries suffer irreparably and a few get richer beyond their wildest dreams. Witness the (well documented) GROWING disparity between rich and poor in this country since the 60's as specialization in one area (Finance) has meant the total destruction of whole communities in various parts of the country. Since there is not an infinite amount of resource anywhere there always will be a natural limit to the amount of a product that can be produced and who can work in the production of that product. If a country can not find other ways of making money that keep the WHOLE population in employment they risk severe social and economic issues. If the vast amount of money being made is concentrated only in the "specialized" area the chance of this benefiting the whole economy is lower. Globilization unchecked ALWAYS means that the disparity between rich and poor gets larger. I am not advocating communism, nor out and out capitalism. I think that there has to be a managed economy which takes into account the downside of letting markets run riot destroying countries and leaving whole sections of the population stuffed. Nearly every popular people uprising from Latin America to Russia has been down to this exact behavior. Governments who think they've found the formula to eternal supply of wealth when really they just serve themselves and their cronies, always forgetting what matters.. the people!

That's precisely the point. You CANT have wars over trade like that anymore because every major trading partner is nuclear. The EASY option was to go to war. Now a country is stuck with what ever crappy decision their previous governments lumbered them with. That's why you have countries like Portugal.. On a global scale it does not work. EU protectionism is designed to bring developing countries to their knees due to making them specialize in certain products. Once your country has been "specialized" you lose the ablity to survive without trading with the big protection rackets (EU etc..). Now a country that could produce thousands of different crops only produces coffee! (which they dont even use). The EU version of protectionism has been designed to bring developing countries to there knees.. Phase 2 is to practise this crap within the EU. EU countries are "specializing" (i.e. UK in Finance). When the chips are down and you cant eat/wear or drive finanical products the memeber country is stuffed. If you use the Euro your even more stuffed because you change the value of your currency to pay off your debts. Ultimately, globilization just like the credit/debt system taken to it's extremes just means you lose control. The IMF (or whoever is conspiracy organization of the day) has designed this system to strip countries of their soveriegnty and ultimately ensure the people/government of a country are not in control of there country. It is a game that you choose to play at your peril, because if you take the bait (IMF bailouts) you will lose ... All I'm saying is that anyone who thinks it's a good situation (or that it is inevitable) that we import 80% of our goods and have a nation of 60 million that cannot build a decent car/computer/tv or hi-fi is absolutely nuts!

The problem here is that everyone is so "absolute" about each option rather than finding a comfortable middle ground. Obviously protectionism taken to it's fullest extent is suicidal. Unless you want to live like Cubans you do have to trade. However, just like all good things in life "globalization" has been allowed to go to it's extreme as well. And on the whole it doesnt work when taken to the extremes that the British government have taken it. Global trade to obtain goods that your country can never produce is not a bad thing. We want bananas but cant produce them, so we give a country with a better climate some goods that we make that they dont have and swap for the bananas that they produce. No problems there. The problem is when both countries make the same product. Tactically it might make sense to buy that good from another country (maybe they make it cheaper, better, who knows..). You can now use the saving of money/resource/time and focus on something else that you do make better. Great so far... But what about the country's long term strategic position? What if the goods that other countries make are the core goods that a modern nation needs to survive? Cars, Machinery, electronics, medical goods etc.. What about energy? What if there ever becomes a situation where these "core" products dont actually get delivered to your country. There could be political/economic/military type issues that prevent country "A" from recieving these core products from country "B". Strategically a country with any common sense would have a contingency in place. They would not allow a situation where say .. 80% of the goods it consumes comes from outside of it's shores. Surely, no modern powerful country would ever let that happen! :-) Japan is an example of an economy that even in a heavy reccession has enjoyed far better living standards than most countries. The Japanese have a "culturaly" closed of economy and prefer to support their own manafacturing efforts. Even when foreign products are technically better (e.g. iphone. xbox 360 etc..) Balanced protecionism is essential to protect the interests of British citzens. It doesn't have to be a statute of law either. Just that Britain should have invested in making industries like cars and electronics successful and more competetive than foreign products. Instead of lending children 20K to do a history degree and then work as bankers, shuffling psuedo money around whilst wearing Jimmy Choo's! Finally, morally the government cannot take public money, my money, and then spend it in a way where foreign companies benefit and not us. That is inherently evil in my opinion. They have a duty to make sure that the vast majority of money that they have borrowed from me and my childern (and their children) is used to buy products designed and manufactured in the UK. I dont give a monkeys whether the shareholders (vast majority foreign) are not getting value for money, we should be looking to have full employment in this country. Not just a rich few saying how rich they have become because they employ programmers from overseas. In the old days countries would just invade each other over trade issues. Who had the biggest guns won the wars and eventually the trade. We live in a different era now, countries should be far more long term about the hazards of not having the vast amount of core products they need produced at home. You cant just go an rob some other poor sap's country to get what you want anymore.. well at least no officially!!! :-) Can the UK stop being the "worlds filthiest whore" and start showing some decorum? Are there any more "wholes" to penetrate Miss UK? Can she start selling her core assets to the highest bidder? Answers on a post card please...

"The Prime Minister is the equivalent of a doctor asked to save the same life several times. At first the relatives are grateful but then they wonder why his services are required so often" Gordon is the political equivalent of Dr Harold Shipman...