Boris Loses It

[tomandlu]

What's important to his chances of becoming leader is the clout and depth of pockets of those who would back him to be 'their man' - nothing to do with what the public think. They are so sheep-like that they won't care if he's parachuted in and they can be manipulated over time by the mainstream media to think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Hence his cosying up to the banksters.

Possibly, but, if so, I think he's misjudged the situation. People may currently be at the stage where they just shrug their shoulders at the corruption and miss-management, but it would be a mistake to take this for indifference or acceptance IMHO. The grind continues.

[Si1]

What's important to his chances of becoming leader is the clout and depth of pockets of those who would back him to be 'their man' - nothing to do with what the public think. They are so sheep-like that they won't care if he's parachuted in and they can be manipulated over time by the mainstream media to think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Hence his cosying up to the banksters.

might not be like that - there aren't too many engines for economic growth right now and attracting more foreign banking operations to london might be very helpful - reducing the tax burden on the rest of the country and allowing, paradoxically, other non banking industries more freedom to thrive, hopefully

[AThirdWay]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10196280/German-and-Italian-banks-should-move-to-UK-if-FTT-introduced-says-Boris-Johnson.html

... and then we nuke it?

Hmmmm, would that create a deep water port for Trident then? Handy!

[tomandlu]

might not be like that - there aren't too many engines for economic growth right now and attracting more foreign banking operations to london might be very helpful - reducing the tax burden on the rest of the country and allowing, paradoxically, other non banking industries more freedom to thrive, hopefully

Really? So, basically, the solution is to stuff the country with a bunch of crooks who are trying to take larger and larger slices of everyone else's productivity, because then we can tax them? Good job they aren't skilled in avoiding taxes or anything...

Best case scenario is that steal off other countries, not us, which doesn't seem much of an improvement... I'll stop bashing bankers when the sector has shrunk to the size and influence that it deserves, which is about the same rank as hairdressers...

[Si1]

Really? So, basically, the solution is to stuff the country with a bunch of crooks who are trying to take larger and larger slices of everyone else's productivity, because then we can tax them? Good job they aren't skilled in avoiding taxes or anything...

Best case scenario is that steal off other countries, not us, which doesn't seem much of an improvement... I'll stop bashing bankers when the sector has shrunk to the size and influence that it deserves, which is about the same rank as hairdressers...

Right you are...

[wonderpup]

might not be like that - there aren't too many engines for economic growth right now and attracting more foreign banking operations to london might be very helpful - reducing the tax burden on the rest of the country and allowing, paradoxically, other non banking industries more freedom to thrive, hopefully

Banks as engines of growth? It's a novel idea I'll give you that- the problem is how would we persuade them to stop being the bloodsucking leeches they currently are- given how profitable this has been for them?

Even when they are bailed out directly there is no shame, no hint of genuine remorse or recognition of their own failure- just a sense of entitlement so vast it's clearly visible from outer space.

In theory bankers could deploy capital in a socially useful way- but in practice they will always take the shortest route to self enrichment- which is to create as much debt as they can as fast as they can by creating asset bubbles which they then profit from.

Look at them now- Goldman has it's tentacles all over the Aluminum supply;

Apparently the vampire squid also has an appetite for metal. Goldman Sachs is making an estimated $165 million per year though Detroit warehouses jam-packed with more than a million tons of industrial metal aluminum or about a "quarter of global reported inventories," reports Reuters.

The news service's fascinating investigation finds that by simply storing the metals in its warehouses, the investment bank reaps tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues every year. The warehousing business takes advantage of a regulation imposed by the London Metal Exchange that allows warehouses to release "only a tiny fraction of their inventories per day, much less than the metal that is regularly taken in for storage." The problem is, the metal's not going anywhere and it's raising the world price of aluminum, angering a vast array of companies from soft drink can makers to aircraft manufacturers. Robin Bhar, a metal analyst at Credit Agricole, says U.S.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/07/goldmans-secret-cash-cow-detroit-warehouses-full-metal/40525/

You cannot reason with these people- there is no morality or sense of social responsibility here- just fathomless greed compounded with a psychopathic insatiability.

[Habeas Domus]

OK which one would you vote for?

Boris-Kinnock

or Kinnock-Boris

[Si1]

or Kinnock-Boris

doppelganger?

[Harry Sacks]

doppelganger?

Bless, he's wearing his Jim'll Fix It badge.

[Guest eight]

Look at them now- Goldman has it's tentacles all over the Aluminum supply;

Heh, it's a free market. I mean, there's nothing to stop you attempting to throttle the World aluminium supply, if you so desire.

I will be pondering this story when I give my coke cans to the government tomorrow, under the guise of "recycling".

[Bland Unsight]

might not be like that - there aren't too many engines for economic growth right now and attracting more foreign banking operations to london might be very helpful - reducing the tax burden on the rest of the country and allowing, paradoxically, other non banking industries more freedom to thrive, hopefully

Interesting piece in The Economist the other day discussing how the growth of the Eurobond market in London reflected broader tides that didn't have their roots in London.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the City. We face a conundrum in the UK. In order to manage the government's insolvency, we need to put a stop to all accounting shenanigans that allow multinationals like Amazon to recognise billions of pounds of turnover in the UK and yet pay no tax. However, that will require collaboration with other nations to shut down the machinery which facilitates the 'off-shoring' of all these profits. I'll buy Shaxson's argument that one aspect of what the City of London is that it is an off-shore centre with the added advantages of with the rule of law administered by courts that are in relative terms free of corruption and in a cosmopolitan city to boot. The most important part of that three part package is the off-shore bit. As we don't like to think of the City like this, the politicians might fail to recognise how important this off-shore role may be, and set in chain a set of reforms that will seriously reduce London's appeal as an off-shore centre.

Related to this is the role of subsidiaries of foreign financial companies. AIG set up AIG Financial Products in London in order to benefit from lax regulation. Before Joe Cassano blew up AIG FP we lived in a world where subsidiaries like AIG FP didn't blow up so nobody cared why AIG FP was in London not New York, but maybe that's not true as it once was? Surely in a world where investors have been reminded that banks and insurance companies do fail, and senior bondholders do take losses, even when lending to governments, the appeal of lending to people who set up in London so that they can do their dirt in private loses its appeal a little?

I also think that an enormous amount of the explosion of the City since Thatcher has really just been an artefact of the credit boom, and now the boom is a bust the fortunes of the City will go the same way. Again, this was not the story that was told on the way up, but it's pretty clear that the story that was told on the way up was horse shit, so other explanatory factors can be entertained, .

London has been running with tides that have their causes in global trends that are decades in duration. Pretty confident its fortunes will go wherever they go next because of those tides not in spite of them, (and it doesn't look good).

[happy_renting]

Really? So, basically, the solution is to stuff the country with a bunch of crooks who are trying to take larger and larger slices of everyone else's productivity, because then we can tax them? Good job they aren't skilled in avoiding taxes or anything...

Best case scenario is that steal off other countries, not us, which doesn't seem much of an improvement... I'll stop bashing bankers when the sector has shrunk to the size and influence that it deserves, which is about the same rank as hairdressers...

^ This.

Though the reason they are cultivated by governments is that they do pay some taxes on the money they steal from us. And, being an international centre, on money they steal from other countries too.

Governments have become addicted to this tax revenue, and so have the population.

It's sick, really.

Bankers produce nothing of value whatsoever. Every trade has a winner and a loser and in banking, financiers on both sides of the trade deduct a fat fee.

[wonderpup]

Heh, it's a free market. I mean, there's nothing to stop you attempting to throttle the World aluminium supply, if you so desire.

I will be pondering this story when I give my coke cans to the government tomorrow, under the guise of "recycling".

That's the best part- Goldman have access to all that lovely free money from the Fed- so they don't even have to compete fairly in the physical universe- who can compete with a squid armed with infinite free money?

[Bland Unsight]

^ This.

Though the reason they are cultivated by governments is that they do pay some taxes on the money they steal from us. And, being an international centre, on money they steal from other countries too.

Governments have become addicted to this tax revenue, and so have the population.

It's sick, really.

Bankers produce nothing of value whatsoever. Every trade has a winner and a loser and in banking, financiers on both sides of the trade deduct a fat fee.

I don't think that this is right at all.

Firstly governments (and before them Kings and Emperors) invented the game, which is simply printing money and accepting inflation as a consequence.

The birth of private banking and credit money in England was a result of private individuals (goldsmiths) getting in on the game of creating money, (and the Crown realising once it was already too late that this had happened and then deciding that it would be easier to permit the inflation that followed from honouring these bogus promises than it would be to face the chaos that might ensue when it was admitted that the proverbial shit ton of bogus paper promises had been made).

Modern bankers produce nothing? Yes and no. They don't make any widgets, but there'd be a great deal less credit money without their labours, .

Credit to the other posters who have informed my thinking on this (mostly Injin!) but the problem is not bankers, or even banking - it's the fact that money is an impossible object.

What did we learn from the Great Depression? Perhaps there is no lesson to be learned from a depression. Perhaps inflation and deflation are indications that money is no longer working as we had naively hoped and presumed it would work, and perhaps it is an essential part of the fiction of money that periodically it will stop working as we would wish it to work. Perhaps the illusion is not that banking is possible (in the sense of a system of banking that is stable and predictable can be designed and maintained), but the illusion is the suggestion that money is possible. Perhaps the financial crises that we must endure from time to time are just the inevitable consequence of pretending that there could be such a thing as money in a complex system that admits the existence of no such thing. We just live our lives in such small areas and over such small spans of economic time that it appears plausible that there is such a thing as an object that is a means of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. The fiction is good enough most of the time that most people never even notice the problem...

Even hyperinflation can't kill the idea of money, which in its simplest terms is just a means of facilitating indirect exchange. Debt arises when we allow tokens to facilitate exchange of something that exists now for something that is presumed to exist in the future. Money is a way of saying that this is worth that - an apple is worth a celery heart. But isn't even that a fiction? What if I like apples and hate celery hearts? Debt is just as bad, I'll give you what I owe you in exchange for the apple, but I'll do that tomorrow, (but tomorrow is a promise to no-one).