tenant447

I think your friend still has a good deal. For simplicity I assume an IO mortgage. At 7.5% p.a. on £180,000 he would pay £27,000 interest over two years. At 4.8% p.a. plus £5000 fee he would pay £( 2 x 8640 + 5000 ) = £22,280 in total. Don't forget that the (£5000) 2.77% fee is spread over two years, so is effectively about 1.385% p.a. BTW, I love your term arragement fee.

That's the spirit!

Don't mention the comedy clubs.

Long dated (those maturing in 2030 and 2035) Index-linked UK Treasury Gilts dropped significantly today. Some people must be thinking that the UK's longer term future is less inflationary than they thought previously. Interesting.

Initially money and debt are created by the banks in equal measure. Thereafter the debt grows faster than the money, due to the interest rate differential. Over time therefore the total debt will vastly exceed M4, as indeed it does. At present, very roughly, there is £1.6T of M4 and £2.5T total sterling debt (governmental, corporate and personal). (Also, I believe, total $US debt is now about three times the number of dollars in existence.)

There is always more total debt than M4 money supply in the banking system. The difference between them grows indefinitely due to the differentials between interest rates for borrowers and those for depositors. If interest rates are changed, but these differentials are not, then yes, the interest rate change is, to a first approximation, neutral and has no direct and imediate effect upon the money supply. As existing debt is serviced and paid down, money is co-annihilated with the debt and dissappears from circulation. Economic activity needs a means of exchange, so new money must continuously be borrowed into existence to replace that which continuously dissappears. Lower interest rates make this new borrowing cheaper and hence more attractive. Higher interest rates discourage borrowers. It is mainly the volume (per unit time) of this new borrowing which affects the money supply and hence inflation/deflation.

Rigged Price Index. Contrived Price Index. The difference is that the higher RPI is for (generally older) savers and pensioners and the lower CPI is for (generally younger) workers' wages.

My perception is that their remit is to deliver the UK to the NWO with an unmanageable National Debt and a thoroughly demoralised, disintegrated, confused, state-dependent and dumbed-down population. They are doing a pretty good job so far.

The OP has an investment horizon of less than one year. I think that neither HM Treasury nor LSE market makers will default on traded Gilts within that timescale. I consider HM Treasury to be safer than commercial banks or building societies for the next year. Longer term, if HM Treasury defaults, then we will already be in Mad Max territory.

Short-dated Treasury Index-linked Gilts might be worth considering. The issue maturing in August 2011, for example. Remember that any capital gain on Gilts is tax free. The short dated I-L Gilts seem now to be decoupling somewhat from the longer-dated I-L Gilts. The market seems to expect higher short-term inflation, which then declines.

Hey, a Jag was a Jag in the '60's! Ford's takeover was not until the 80's. It was the cops who had Fords in the 60's, e.g. The Sweeney http://www.thesweeney.info/motors/index.php That's why the villains could out-run them in a Jag.

The main automotive culprit, at least during the 1960's, was the 3.8 manual Mk2 Jag. When driving one you always wished you were a getaway driver for a gang of bank robbers.

Yes, comercial banks can be most beneficial provided that they do not themselves create money. They should be free to negotiate to borrow from the publicly owned central bank (at the base rate) and then conduct their business as they see fit, lending the money on to their clients at higher interest, and at their own risk. Inter-bank competition should be encouraged to promote a lean and efficient banking system. Each bank should be responsible for its own liquidity and solvency, though energetically aided in these obligations by stringent, independent and perhaps continuous auditing upon which depends the continuation of its banking licence. No publicly funded bailouts! Bank clients should diligently exercise caveat emptor and banks would be forced by commercial realities to be cautious in their lending and risk assessments. There is absolutely no fundamental reason for a civilised society to have the dominant, frenetic and bloated banking system and financial services industry that we endure today. Banking should be a relatively straightforward service industry. Far more of our best and brightest people could then gravitate towards genuine wealth producing activities, rather than dedicating themselves to thinking up ultra-clever ways to rip each other (and us) off.

Here is a fantasy money reform scenario which has been posted before. It will never happen without a corresponding political revolution since bankers control the government. However, it illustrates what is possible, at least in theory, if only we could free our minds from our current monetary beliefs and constraints and from the control of those who own the money system. Massive issue of new M0 by our government need not necessarily lead to (hyper)inflation. The trick is to make sure that it is used to pay off existing bank debt, together with which it is then co-annihilated. The money supply is thus unaffected in quantity, but it does change its nature from being debt-based to debt-free. I think that government issued fiat currency is quite workable and sustainable, but only if the population is educated to understand clearly the trust-and-tax nature of their fiat currency and if also the (now wholly public) money creation/issue processes are fully transparent, responsible and independently audited and scrutinised. If only … ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Following the revolutionary 2008 US Presidential Election in which Ron Paul was elected, the UK Money Reform Party wins a landslide victory in 2010. The £700bn National Debt is rapidly paid off with newly issued M0. All Gilts are redeemed at approximate market value for cash. Those previously holding the Gilts are matched with indebted corporations and they are obliged to use their new cash piles to buy new AAA-rated GGCBs (Government Guaranteed Corporate Bonds) from the companies. The bond-issuing companies use the cash received to pay off their bank debt, which fortuitously was also around £700bn. At a stroke (or two) both HM Government and UK Plc are now debt-free and, since all the new M0 has been used to repay debt, there is no increase in the money supply and so no additional inflation. HM Government assumes powers henceforth to issue as much new debt-free M0 as it sees fit (responsibly and in proportion to growing real wealth), thus consigning to history the absurdity of the sovereign nation UK having to borrow into existence its own means of exchange from commercial bankers. Legislation is passed which ensures that only HM Government is allowed to issue new money, both debt-free M0 and the new debt-based National Credit (M4). Banks become true intermediaries between depositors and borrowers of pre-existent money issued by HM Government. Henceforth commercial banks have no power to expand or contract the money supply. If they do not have the money either as reserves or deposits then they cannot lend it. A £2T line of new National Credit is opened and is accessible by anyone wishing to owe their mortgage to HM Government rather than to a commercial bank. The new M4 credit money is issued only to repay existing commercial mortgages. Terms and conditions ensure that there are hardly any evictions under these (immensely popular) nationalised mortgages, though many homes are “nationally conserved” (i.e. repossessed) by the Ministry of Housing and then rented back to their impoverished former owners at peppercorn rents. The UK economy recovers to achieve unsurpassed prosperity for all. http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/

Indeed it is, and symptomatic of the whole stinking mess that we are sliding into. For anyone who has not yet seen it, here again is the link to the excellent Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on the subject. http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=...h&plindex=0

A more accurate label would be the ignorance economy. Keep people ignorant and deluded about what is really going on. The old "mushroom culture" metaphor.

Are you confusing NS&I Index-linked Savings Certificates with HM Treasury Index-linked Gilts? The former are deflation proof and non-tradable. The latter are openly traded, e.g. on the LSE, and will rise and fall in price according to inflation/deflation expectations and market sentiment.

Because our money (means of exchange) is debt-based, somebody has to borrow it into existence. If we all refused to borrow, then soon we would have no money. Existing debt would annihilate existing money, though still leaving about £800,000,000,000 unpaid debt even after all M4 money had dissappeared. Not to worry though, in that case HM Government would borrow money for us, and our children would work to pay it back, and so on down the generations.

To see a heart warming story of how a dedicated maths teacher can inspire previously hopeless students see the movie Stand and Deliver. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094027/ It is reputedly based on a true story.

The set of all finite decimals (of arbitrary size both before and after the decimal point) is certainly countable. To see this simply interleave the digits to the right of the decimal point into those to the left. The result is a unique integer whose digits in places 1,3,5,7, etc. constitute the whole number part of the original decimal, and whose digits in places 2,4,6, etc, the fractional part. The integer is padded with zeroes as appropriate when the numbers of digits to the left and right of the decimal point are unequal. I presume that you mean above that "Fractions are not countably infinite". Again, they certainly are countable. Map the fraction n/m to the integer 2^n times 3^m, for example. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lastly, here is how I understand Cantor's diagonal argument: Imagine that the set of all decimals between 0 and 1 is countably infinite. Then arrange them in the order in which they map onto the integers. So it is meaningful to refer to the n th number. Now consider the decimal defined by: The n th decimal place is 9 minus the value of the n th decimal place of the n th decimal number. This new decimal number is certainly between 0 and 1 but it differs in at least one decimal place from all members of the supposedly countable set. By reductio ad adsurbum the set cannot be countable.

Non-mathematicians please ignore: Ah, I see now that you are considering only finite decimals, and there are indeed (infinitely many) fractions which have no finite decimal equivalent, e.g. 1/3. My previous post was about all decimals, including infinite expansions. The set of finite decimals is, like the set of fractions, countably infinite. Cantor's diagonal argument does not apply and, in the strict mathematical sense, the sets are of the same size (omega).

On the contrary, there are more decimals than fractions. Did you mean to say this? The fractions are countably infinite: they can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the integers. Decimals can not be put into one-to-one correspondence with the integers (Cantor's diagonal argument). They are uncountably infinite, and in that sense there are more of them. (Non-mathematicians, don't worry if all this is gobbledegook to you. I think A.steve will understand it.)

I thought that they had chosen them years ago at Bilderburger conferences.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JKCNZFJWiRc

The NWO has no role for strong individual nation states. The US and the UK are being humbled and weakened until their populations have no energy or will to resist. We will grow to welcome and to love Big Brother. Blair and Brown have done an excellent job for the NWO and they will be duly rewarded with wealth and power.