QE for the rest of us; and get fracking

Quantitative Easing (QE) is a fascinating thing. Printing money these days means typing a line on a Treasury computer, and praying the markets don't object too much.

June 30th 2013  (edit 7) Updated 19may22

#Oct23 - This blog is not dead, merely resting.

It is of course the same as a company issuing more shares without any covering payment or assets, and so dilutes the worth of each share accordingly. The UK's last round of QE was in order to prevent banks going bust after the casino asset bubble of the last Labour government finally expired in 2010. Not only had the government run out of other people's money to spend, the banks were completely over committed to loans to buy those bubble assets and RBS was apparently hours from failure.

So the government invented money with which to bale out RBS and the rest, and hoped that everyone accepted that the alternative was just too horrible to contemplate and that dissent would remain muted. Part of this handout was sweetened for the public with dishonest promises that banks would start to lend to small businesses, and the economy would wake up again.

All parties remained quiet about this ultimate evidence of Labour's economic failure because they did not want to inherit a completely destabilised economy - and frankly, all were guilty of stoking the stupidity that charged on with the "fairy money" policies that took a reasonably healthy 1997 economy and turned it into a global basket case as the result of ruthlessly spending other people's money in order to buy three elections.

The banks took every penny and used it to shore up their catastrophic balance sheets, and hardly any was loaned to businesses to create economic activity. Ironically, banks argued that the businesses were looking like bad risks - thanks to the economic climate brought about by their willingness to lend to bubble assets over the previous 13 years. And when failures occurred in companies starved of capital, they said "told you so".

So the net effect is no economic stimulus, just bankers able to look forward to fatter pensions for longer? Plus ça change, more of the same. So then, how about something truly radical? I offer you "QE for the rest of us" - it's the way ahead.

In a nutshell: every UK citizen over the age of 35 who has been resident for more than 20 years to get a one-off "payment" of £100,000. That's 35 million people, so a modest £3.5 trillion.

Which doesn't sound a lot if you say it quickly, does it? 

And perspective can be applied when you consider that £2 trillion is traded daily on Forex. The LSE daily trade volume is roughly £4bn, and approximately 2,494 companies are listed on the London Stock Exchange with a total market value of £3.8 trillion. The value of all homes in Britain grew by £57 billion last year, bringing the combined total of residential property stock to £5.963 trillion.

The devil is of course in the detail. Those receiving the cash will need to pay off all their personal debt first - in fact, this will need to be deducted at source to avoid temptation. Outstanding personal debt stood at £1.424 trillion at the end of April 2013, but that's still £2 trillion into the active economy, and with all that debt paid off, the banks will be so well funded that they can be fundamentally reorganised and returned to their proper roles as servants of the people and their businesses - and maybe told to open branches with devolved local responsibility once again.

We might as well take the opportunity to re-establish the Post Office and a UK-owned logistics industry properly once again, and tell them to devise a better PayPal.  Why let Fedex, UPS and TNT have it all to themselves now the world of commerce is almost entirely about fully integrated payment/warehouse/delivery coordination?

Those prudent folks who have been hammered recently with negligible interest rates on savings (especially the elderly)  will be big beneficiaries. The age break of 35 means that families are going to be big beneficiaries, and will be able to fund their kids' long term education. However, all private education would have to be brought into a new (superior) state system, and operated on merit, not ability to pay.

The 14m people over 60 will be encouraged and assisted to invest their windfall in establishing family businesses. And it also marks the opportunity to address the sacred cows of the NHS and deal with the cost implications of the elderly. As part of the duty of the "âgées riche", these folks can now be very reasonably expected to contribute in some way to their retirement care costs. Maybe some form of "health bond"?

The inflationary pressures of this process will be unprecedented, but I think the people of the UK have had enough of a salutary reckoning with reality in the past 5 years that they may be ready to accept  the rules necessary to make this work. Brace yourselves.

Eeek!  The value of £ will slide - at least initially until the brilliance of this plan emerges - so we had better get fracking to keep energy costs under control.  UK gas reserves are now estimated to be at least 1,300 trillion cubic feet. At $7 per 1000 cubic feet, that's $9 trillion, or £6 trillion. So it seems arguable that this "QE for the rest of us" project has more than adequate "asset backing".

But just think of the excitement and anticipation that such a bold strategy will engender - and it's up to politicians to harness the momentum and good will. Which may be the fatal flaw in the plan, since our present breed of "bubble bred" politicians does not seem to have a clue about building a good old-fashioned indigenous economy, instead preferring to smooze with the likes of Google and Bill Gates..

And what about the envy factor from those who miss the cut? Very tricky. Many under 35s will be expected to benefit from their parents' windfalls. However, EVERYONE will benefit from our utterly rejuvenated economy that will be the talk of the planet.

Abuses will need to be very carefully assessed and rules with severe penalties be devised for those who cheat the spirit of the plot. One obvious one will have to be VAT on luxury import purchases hiked to as much as 50% to discourage spending splurges. Maybe two classes of money are required - with the QE fund only being spendable/investable in the UK.

The adoption of globalisation, sold by its slick advocates to gullible politicians has been a demonstrable economic failure - if not a disaster. The UK has no viable "new economy" behemoth to match Google, Facebook, eBay, Paypal, Twitter or Amazon; and doesn't even get taxes on the profits the aforementioned contrive to keep offshore. So not a lot to lose, eh George?

The EU wouldn't like? Well, so what? The UK will do what it is best for the UK ... at last. Including leaving the EU to work out its own Euro issues.

The EU is now a colossal irrelevance that was contrived in an age before globalisation and pervasive networks. It provides handy markets for Germany in particular, but generally hangs like a millstone around the neck of the world in 2013. Moreover, the EU Commission only appears to be a combined rest home and fat sinecure for the failed quangoistas and compliant politicians of the "bubble economy age" like Peter Mandelson, Chris Patten, Cathy Ashton, plus of course, Neil and Glenys Kinnock.

And what if every other country likes what they see, and decides to follow suit? You know what, the US economy in the times of Clinton pretty much did what I am suggesting, but rather more "dishonestly". However, Clinton's great mortgage give-away ended up in the hands of manipulative bankers as toxic debt - and was largely handed to democrat voters who used it to buy over-valued property.

Could everyone follow our blueprint to regenerate their home economies - suitably adapted to local conditions? As long as the "eased money" stayed within the local country economies, why not? To some extent, this is how a number of economies (eg Egypt) operate with a black market with a very different "unofficial" exchange rate for US$, and a tightly controlled local currency.

Who would be the biggest losers from this scheme? Almost certainly the deeply vested interests of global economic manipulation that pull the levers behind the scenes (the so-called promoters of the New World Order) - and that are high on the list of targets of the anti-globalisation "occupy" protests.

Countries with "honest" wealth funds invested in our diluted assets like Norway might have an irritated sense of "prodigall son" if the UK is allowed to get away with it. But most such energy based wealth funds have arisen from accidents of birth, and are controlled by assorted despots that we are presently obliged to be nice to. So we had better get fracking, and also hope that the LHC in Cern produces an answer to creating cold fusion energy for when that runs out in 40 years; and then we are all home free.

However, all will soon enough understand the benefits for their investments in a UK economy growing at a healthy 10+%.

But if this all goes horribly pear shaped, there is the one remaining option. HM the Queen seems to own copyright on her English Language. Can you imagine American IPR lawyers allowing anyone to get away with the type of breach copyright that HM has suffered all this while? Neither can I. US behemoth Getty Images try and charge anyone inadvertently using one of their images on a web site as much as £4k, so maybe I am underpricing this deal.

Anyway, we'll charge the US $10 trillion in back royalties and penalties for having stolen (and mutilated) HM's intellectual property in 1776.  In fact let's do that as well as the QE. In for a penny, in for £135000000000000.


PS:

The 100 Euro note!!! It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one. The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher. The Butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower. The pig grower takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel. The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town's prostitute that in these hard times, gave her 'services' on credit. The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there. The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything. At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the British Government is doing business today.

I do believe it

I just found this as a parked draft started in 2015 (!). Let's not waste it...

I confess to being a grumpy old man.

 

I realise this is a traditional state of being after attaining a certain age, but sound reasons for being grumpy accumulate steadily as the world is being run by dangerous fools; and there is little sign of the foolishness relenting.

Once upon a time that didn't matter too much that the world was a tricky place, as the UK was run by sound chaps and chapesses who knew what to do, and managed our position in the world in the interests of the UK; but that is no longer the case, since recent UK governments have been lured into doing all manner of deals with unforeseen consequences with European states that we previously had the good sense to mostly distrust, and occasionally drop bombs on when things got out of hand.

The notion of globalisation has completely hypnotised politicians but especially businesses seeking  economies of scale and opportunities to manipulate locations and taxes. Whilst this means cheap consumer goods, it also means the inexorable path to the lowest common denominator. 

 

So what we have actually done is sleep walked into global "stealth" hive socialism by another route; but it is a dystopian version where the shots are being called by a High Command comprised of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Apple. All businesses that have been carelessly allowed to balloon and become considerably economically larger than many nation states.

Globalisation combined with the "immigrant crisis" is a massive own goal, resulting from a series of political deceptions in the past 30 years. It all began when the Common Market when what we all expected was cheap French wine and German cars - and what we actually got was all our fish nicked, and cheap workers combined with cheap imports that have effectively emasculated the earning capacity of the wealth producing sectors of the working class - whilst leaving those on the public payroll relatively unscathed. Especially those public service pensioners who took advantage of the Golden Age of public pensions that has only just started to come of the rails in the last decade.

The UK needs badly to recover its sovereignty and dignity - and start over as the keeper of the world's most successful language' (and dare I say "culture"?) for commerce, science and travel. Misguided and half-baked ideas like BLM and XR need to check in with us, and be corrected before they are able spread unhelpful subversion. All media claiming an international reach - other than a newly re-started BBC that is returned to the trusted standards of honesty and accuracy that prevailed before John Birt broke it - can be quietly retired.

Simple. www.commonwealthmarket.uk

It's been a while

I am redirecting this url to these locations for the time being:

www.newsscape.com and the experimental content development sandpit on Facebook -
https://www.facebook.com/newsscape/





WSP+++

Perfidious Facebook

Sorry - I have not been using blogger for some time while I have been on a mission to explore and understand every aspect of Facebook.

The way in which Facebook flatly refuses to engage in a discussion about any of its kangaroo court judgements means that it is impossible to regard it as a viable commercial partner.

"Restrictions such as a page being unpublished, reduced distribution and more." 

Wow. WOW... these folks make no attempt to conceal the arrogance with which they wield absolute power… this is also a confession of the granularity of their content "control" systems. They are The New Mafia.. ...a good title for my book...

The threats it makes when imposing one of its arbitrary notices reminds us that it can control every aspect of any Facebook presence to a degree which is beyond just dangerous. At the very least it is a threat to any society that is now infected by it.

I doubt if I will get much political support for this campaign in the run-up to an election, where the political parties are fully well aware of the pernicious and subversive value in using Facebook as an advertising platform. And Facebook almost certainly knows this.

After the upcoming UK election, hopefully, one party will emerge with a big enough majority to have the balls to conduct a root and branch review of all media, as it has evolved in the past 20 years with its unprecedented access to personal information to which it has become addicted. This will inevitably mean it is necessary to take Facebook apart and either ban it from this country or require it to operate in a much more transparent and responsive manner.

After a 12-month experiment in which I have immersed myself in the workings of Facebook, my NewsScape hobby project is reaching around 200,000 a week, which is nothing in the context of Facebook, but a reasonable circulation as far as specialist Media in the UK. The best post ended up reaching 12 million, and I'm embarrassed to admit it was very much along the lines of "duck on skateboard", rather than any sort of crucial cerebral commentary on a news story.

All part of the process of gathering evidence...

Halt! ...who goes there?

A LinkedIn request to connect with "Derrick Nathaniel" arrived and just seemed "MOST unlikely".

"I am Mr. Derrick and I have been working in the banking industry for many years and I am a man of my word and I make sure every work place on my table is well taking care of and make sure the customers in front of my desk are well satisfied as well as customers at home. I work very hard to actualise my dream and make sure anybody I work with, is well satisfied and will always want to work with me"

I barely knew the mutual contact, so I did an image search and was taken direct to what seem likely to be the real owner of that image (above). This reinforces my belief that you really should avoid any accurate photographic image appearing anywhere online - and never post your real birthday, but use a carefully noted "alternative" date (why not, HM The Queen has an "official" birthday as well as her "real" one?)

Then when the ID fraud starts, you can at least trace back to the source of the birthday used. Plus this looks like a bit of a clue, too... all the same name and bio!

I reported the user to LinkedIn - and it may be that I am doing Derrick Nathaniel a huge disservice, but I suspect not. I am more inclined to believe one of these returned by a simple google search.

I am sorry LinkedIn, and I am not sure what the simple solution is - or if there is one - but the time has come for some better provenance testing before you let anyone in off the street. You have achieved critical mass now, you can afford to make the verification process more tedious and raise the bar.

The "real" Duncan Lawrie private bank should clearly be all over this like a rash. I sent them a message after checking their website search returned no knowledge of Derrick Nathaniel - I shall look again later and if they have not posted a "Derrick Nathaniel" warning to others, I will be disappointed and concerned.

The worrying thing is that there are apparently 191 others who have connected - and more again on the repeat identities. Once LinkedIn confirms a case of fraud has taken place, does it contact all the connections of that fraudster to warn them to check any interactions they may have had? Or does that contact just "quietly disappear"..?

It is time to clean up Linked In - and ask the awkward questions. I just refreshed the Nathaniel page and his connections are still climbing steadily - now 206, 207, 208....

Facebook: an amoral terrorist drop box?

Daily Mail feature writer Steven Glover certainly thinks so, and addresses public concerns in this article.

"Do internet giants have a moral obligation to tell the authorities if they unearth terrorists planning an outrage? Almost everyone would say that of course they do...."

And so here’s a can of the very finest worms that technology can contrive to put together, that goes to the heart of the timeless debate on the nature of freedom: freedom of expression, or freedom to conspire to murder? Where and how are the lines to be drawn. It's intellectually very easy to end up in either camp with an air of self righteousness.

Many people are all too keen to exploit what's left of their freedoms to destroy themselves through there own wilful stupidity (and the Darwin awards are a wonderful journey through this topic) - but where is the point at which intervention is called for (and by whom)? Many would suggest the breaking point is when others are put in jeopardy by the selfish assumptions of the libertarian. And in the case of the UK's NHS, when the individual wilfully damages their own health and expects the public purse to repair the damage.

Should Facebook be taken to task for failing to report blatantly obvious terrorist conversations to the UK security services? Given the way Facebook advertising operates, no one is going to believe for a second that Facebook does not have the means to spot not just the keywords, but the context and surrounding circumstances that scream out - "hey, this person is clearly up to no good!"

So given that Facebook employs the most invasive and inquisitive analysis of every keystroke typed and picture posted on the site, Glover's seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction by the already highly regulated UK press as it faces further controls from misguided busybodies who are keen to assist all those who have something awkward to hide. The sophistication of the surveillance process being carried out is beyond extreme, and a long way beyond a simple keyword scan. It is fast approaching the full panoply of psycho-analytical techniques once featured as science fiction in movies like Minority Report. There is lots of advice out there from the Greats:

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. Abraham Lincoln"

I have long suspected that there is an unholy alliance between the tech behemoths and governments – a series of satanic deals and Mephistophelean arrangements that allows the online behemoths to carry on driving a coach and horses through monopoly, copyright, privacy and tax legislation in return for providing a level of snooping on private citizens' intelligence that all governments secretly crave, but that no democracy could possibly "sell" to the voters. I even suspect this story of being contrived to make it seem as if Facebook doesn't already shop its users as a matter of course.

Edward Snowden's intervention clumsily made an important point about confidentiality of information that applies equally at the personal level: unless you have been through some sort of "Stepford" conditioning and are the most boring person imaginable, we all going to say things in "private" (whatever that means these days) that we would be horrified to find exposed in the "media".

God help any politicians for actually speaking their mind and saying what they really think; it's bound to upset someone - although it should be welcomed as providing a window on the soul of the real person, that is usually hidden behind the spin and carefully managed messages. The complex task of managing expectations around "social mores" tries to define what that maelstrom of confused morality and hypocrisy known as "public opinion" regards is "appropriate" and "inappropriate" - and where and how to operate the ever shifting definitions.

So do you really want to vote for the real person - warts and all? Would you make allowances for candour that offset any uneasiness that you might feel as a result of insights into the inconvenient truth and character insights? Or would you prefer to continue to see only the carefully sanitised and spun version, that focus groups have defined as "safe and electable"? There is a clear implication in life that suggests those who speak candidly in the wrong place and time betray a fundamental flaw of judgement that can never be trusted with any important confidence. A loose canon in the organisation is becoming the greatest fear of our times, now that nothing is ever forgotten or can ever be undone. It means most people of character and opinion fail to make the cut of public life, Winston Churchill would not be electable in these newly puritanical times; mind you, Jimmy Savile would have not have latest very long, either. Swings and roundabouts.

Many celebs of the 60s and 70s bemoan the reality that bedding a 14 year old fan was the "done thing" and no one batted an eyelid; indeed it was expected - but doubtless someone reading this will be tutting that I should even approach the point of seeking to excuse or condone such behaviour. So please excuse me (victims of modern social engineering) if you have been excised of the ability to think and judge for yourselves by the endless propaganda of mind-controllers and nanny statists, who are determined to think for all of us.

Times change, all history in mostly bunk and always spun by the winners. All society moves on and adapts; it should be free to do this in the context of the realities and requirements of current times - and not under the cosh of the bullying political correction that causes people to be dishonest with themselves. Never mind dishonest with those around them - and nowhere is this duplicity more obvious than in the dreadful professional political class that has broken the world. This veil of contrived probity inevitably slips and we occasionally get a candid glimpse of the real person when an unguarded social media moment occurs. Ex cabinet-minister David Mellor's petulant tirade recorded (without his knowledge, of course) in the back of a London cab is a classic. The irony is that such moments of candour and truth then result in the "honest" politician being fired for giving a glimpse of their true selves!

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. Ronald Reagan"

Genuine freedom to be yourself - where being yourself involves a trip outside the presently fashionable mores of the moment - is definitely a thing of the past when every one carries a phone camera and digital recorder. The moment of madness when you mooned at the Queen will be around the world in seconds. Those worms in the Facebook can are really wriggling by now!

Facebook's crude invasion of my "privacy" really came home to me a couple of years back when within seconds of being tagged in a photo on someone’s feed, I got weight loss commercials. Bloody cheek. So I now block all tagging and use the magnificent Adblock software.

So does Facebook conflate the notion of freedom of the people and their right to express themselves with its own freedom to exploit every unwitting nuance in a user's interactions with the world for its shareholders' gain..? Yes, of course we know it's all there is small print somewhere, but small print is widely (but unwisely) regarded as joke and few users are ready to spend the same money on having their lawyer check it out that companies like Facebook and Apple spent on getting teams of duplicitous legal hacks to assemble documents of supreme ambiguity and one-sided benefit.

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. George Washington"

If you use Facebook you already are the product, not the customer. You already only have as much choice in the matter as those sheep in George's abattoir!

The matter of being in any way responsible for what Facebook users are saying boils down the The old idea of “common carrier” immunity was devised to absolve postal and other transport services of responsibility for transporting “unlawful” content and cargo by accepting that it would be impractical, impossible and unreasonable to do otherwise. It carried into the world of telecoms - no phone company could reasonably control what was said by its users. It is plainly evident that online companies have easy access to the content they carry and so the ancient defence of Common Carrier is not credible.

Meantime, in many countries the thought police have already transformed freedom of speech into freedom not to offend. And boy, there are a lot of people who are easily offended these days - race and religion and all manner of vociferous minorities have created sanctuaries where only comments that exude tolerance, sweetness and light are permitted. There is no progressively less scope for freedom of expression - but never in the history of human experience has any authority ever handed back or cancelled any ability to suppress any individual freedom, without a bloody struggle.

Automated surveillance of everyone and everything is out of hand, requiring all those engaging in it to pass their discoveries to "government" is probably the thin end of a very big wedge. Maybe the answer is not to require Facebook to pass on terrorist clues to security services, but to ask - then order - Facebook (and the rest!) to desist from any and all automated interception of its users and their content, and rely on the people to report the misdeeds as they are uncovered by real people in the course of real life. It's about being a responsible society, and that should be an opt-in mindset.

If that means they cannot fund from advertising based on stealing identities, then so be. They will have to charge for the services! Meantime, we are all paying for Facebook and Google's so-called "free services" with something that is far more precious than mere money.

"Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent. Mike Tyson"

Governments know this, and are scared of groups like survivalists who simply don't need them. They all want their citizens to have something to lose; it makes keeping them in line under the threat of losing that something, a lot simpler.

Great Myths of Our Time

"Technology gives us time to have fun, get educated etc..."

Only a lucky few.

The big challenge is that the world up to 1995 - managed by (relatively costly) “50 something” managers on the basis of ground-in experience, was progressively handed by “the big boards” over to the 20-something technorati with no baggage of traditional experience where “20 years experience” means one year repeated 20 times, to the new happening, connected, low cost online world with their exciting new techno ways where there was no relevant 20 years of experience to pay for. Instead, the brave new age of globalisation through cheap overseas call centres and manuals printed in 30 languages. And global PSU! Kids also meant lower costs of employment – and frequently obsessively on the job 12+ hours a day ...since they seem mostly have no lives and pesky families to interrupt their zeal for the shiny and new.

Thus we have arrived at a situation where the workers are treated like factory animals, beautifully admitted and illustrated by the desire for Google and Apple to offer to freeze staff embryos… how long before Google and Apple try and clone their outstanding employees? Maybe there's already a mini Steve Jobs or five, lurking in the wings.

The rush into self-service-online-everything (including by government) means everyone is assumed to have computer literacy skills that probably only 20% possess (one per household), and the rest are struggling. So importing kids from the EU (and all over) is helping.

Government expectations are probably that the demographic problem of age and technophobia will literally “die out”. And it’s true to say that if government actually tried to address them, by the time it did, we’ll all be dead anyway.

So meantime, it’s brutal for all those caught in the vortex. The UK struggles on with this transformation of reality in the form of “pseudo employment”, compressed salaries, disappearing pensions.

Challenging times. So for too many “normal people” outside the techno-bubble (of which LinkedIn is probably emblamatic) – which is just as dissonant as far as the punters are concerned as the much discussed and decried political-media bubble, for far too many, he dividend of technology means wondering where the next meal is coming from.

Us techno-bubble dwellers should not kid ourselves; the real people who hate the politicians have the handmaidens of globalisation in their sights as well, and that means us. It’s hardly surprising the excluded masses are now voting in droves for “none of the above”.