Balls of STEEL.

[herosrest]

[herosrest]

Fear not, we’ll have ultra-low interest rates for years to come. The world’s leading central bankers just said so. No need to save, then – we Brits can borrow and spend our way out of trouble. Again. While desperately wanting to believe the “green shoots” brigade, ordinary households are struggling to remortgage and otherwise viable firms still can’t access working capital. Amid the City’s summer euphoria, the wider economy continues to haemorrhage jobs — with all the associated fiscal fall-out, to say nothing of the human misery. Having enjoyed a six-day rally, UK shares have just hit their highest level since Lehman Brothers’ collapse last September. This latest price surge is the centrepiece of claims we’ll soon return to the sunlit economic uplands. Yet this stock market upswing is based on little more than hype. Shares have risen in part due to firms imposing one-off cost savings — such as cutting their head count — but mainly because of unprecedented Government intervention. Any beneficial impact of our wildly expansionary fiscal and monetary stance will soon be over. Once the sugar rush fades, and global investors are back from their summer break, asset prices will start reflecting the far more significant downsides of the UK’s reckless policy of printing money and racking up ever more Government debt. Banks continue to hold the rest of the country to ransom, refusing to extend credit on reasonable terms, despite replenishing their balance sheets off the back of taxpayer largesse. They remain unwilling to lend normally, even to each other. That gums up the wheels of finance, starving credit-worthy firms and households of badly needed cash. A braver government, a wiser government, would have forced the banks to fess up to these losses before splashing the bail-out cash, so purging the system and allowing a genuinely restructured banking sector to dust itself down and start again.Our banks are feasting on a diet of taxpayer cash, while charging usurious rates on extremely limited lending books. Britain, meanwhile, sleepwalks towards a lost decade. Oil prices just hit $75 a barrel, their highest level this year. Given that crude plunged below $40 last autumn, continued high oil prices will add mightily to inflation in the coming months. And that’s on top of unprecedented monetary expansion. Higher inflation will make it even harder to sell the hundreds of billions of pounds of gilts set to be issued over the next 18 to 24 months. Higher inflation will also make it impossible for the Bank to keep rates low. Meanwhile, our decade-long borrowing binge means that, for years to come, the UK will fritter away a huge chunk of our national income in debt-service, rather than productive investment.But unless we face reality, and end the stop-gap measures that are making our predicament even worse, genuine recovery will be pushed further into the future.

So enjoy the economic summer sunshine while it lasts. It could well be the lull before yet another storm.

The government’s borrowing figures for July were much worse than expected - and needless to say, expectations weren’t healthy to start with. The scale of the battering that the public finances have taken in the recession is unprecedented in peacetime and is putting strain on Britain’s top-ranked AAA credit rating.

In May, the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s put the UK on ‘negative watch’ indicating that a future downgrade was a reasonable possibility. The further decline in the state of the public finances will have brought that possibility even more into play.

To put it into context, the government’s budget forecast was for it to put at least £3,000 on the nation’s credit card for every man, woman and child in the country this year, and similar amounts next year and the year after. That number may well now be low. In three years’ time, a family of four will in effect owe the money markets getting on for £40,000 more than they did before the credit crunch. Admittedly, that’s a simplistic analysis but not a wholly inaccurate one.

Were the UK to be downgraded, it would not be the end of the world by any means. Many countries have lesser ratings, including some very large and advanced economies, Japan being the most obvious (and for the same reason - the level of public debt is very high). Even so, the symbolic impact might be of more import than the economic one in terms of how it plays politically.

Britain has always enjoyed the top credit rating available and were the country to lose that centuries-old standing there would be a degree of humiliation that went with it, which could affect perceptions of Labour for a generation

It would surely also make any election campaign Labour might have been planning based on ‘Tory cuts’ less plausible as while those cuts would surely come, the public would be less likely to believe that Labour could stave them off either or that if they could, the price in taxes would be heavy. By the same token, the rather less likely (and less dramatic) removal of the negative outlook for Britain’s rating would bolster the government’s claims as to their handling of the crisis.

As yet, a downgrade is not an imminent prospect. Only one agency has issued a negative outlook and the election due within the next year means there’s enough political uncertainty to hold off medium-term judgements. That said, there are still the autumn statement and 2010 budget to come and one or both could change the agencies’ minds, elections notwithstanding. Likewise, a few more months of deficits being so much over projections could result in the same event.

I’m not an economist but my guess is that the chances of at least one agency issuing a downgrade before the election are odds-against but not heavily so and were it to happen, who knows how long it would hurt Brown’s party?

A very interesting thing is going to happen, eventually and it will be before the sooner of if & when. Our banks are going bust - all of them will go phttttt! Now that is actually a very good thing - it is what should have happened 18 months ago and will happene eventually because they actually are bust. No one knows that because they still have cash flow - which is called capital.. hehe...... there is no one left to con. No one else. Pure GREED, take, take, take.... ah, poor, poor you. So sad, 83 in US so far this year, UK's going about it in slightly different fashion.

[herosrest]

Fear not, we’ll have ultra-low interest rates for years to come. The world’s leading central bankers just said so.

That does not mean, what 99.999999991% of the worlds population think it means.

[herosrest]

ANALYSIS FROM ONE END OF A PUDDLE -looking inwards.

The fundamental economic reality fails still to register with those struggling forth solutions to eco-woes. Put the money back in ordinary peoples pockets, this cannot be done through price rise - therefore only the inviolate remains - profits and profligacy - the legalised theft that largesses every corner of sophisticated finance MUST GO! It is theft - overcharging by anyother name, taking too much and being allowed to so do. IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE.

looking outwards, outside the puddle meanwhile - increasing commitment and resources to the struggle for democracy in Afghalalaland seems, from afar, to be subject of a maturing and increasingly sophisticated response by the hill top terrorist gangsters and drug runners beyond perhaps the ability of their own limited drug phased intellects.

[herosrest]

The current economic system is a way of doing business and running finance, there is sense and method if a firm hand is at the tiller. The draw backs and pitfalls of abuse were argued as far back as Franklin. The underlying issues being justice, abuse and pandering and lobbies for greed.

It took some 8-10 years to generate the mess that exists now - That was understood as soon as things began ungluing and hence the perceived wisdom of those in the know that that, will be how long it takes to unwind, protecting the 'special' people.

It all came about because value was undermined by being grossly inflated. 'Grossly' was the problem - growing the pot 25% a year in finance and the Sludge (Hedge) Funds et al. That is doubling balance sheets every 3 or so years and funding everything from current earnings. That is how it is supposed to work - but not at those rates of growth. Instead of a technology bubble or housing bubble or agriculture bubble, there is a dollar bubble, and Sterling and quite a few more.

The idea of the 'special people' is that they will be all right what ever happens but the fixes in place maintain the continuing problem, the 10 years of valuation growth (doubling every 3+ years) has been compounded by devaluing currency. The problem will accelerate rather than what is required, that being the opposite. It is all because crooks, that is what they are, make their money in percentages so greed says grow the pot.

You cannot let 'Market Forces' control Money Supply. It does not work - those who believe it does, are crooks or idiots under the crooks influence. Recipe for disaster and look what we've got. Currency, and balance sheets, are the bubble. It will burst unless a wave of real wealth, CAPITAL, is liquidated back into the economy. The entire system is constipated with capital growth that cannot be sustained from earnings.

There will be a huge reward investing in Dust masks.
Despite stabilising property prices (values) - more value is being lost from the system than added - which is what began in 2nd qtr 2007. Value is depreciating faster than it is created, and by orders of magnitude. Actually maintaining earnings and profit in this circumstance is deflation. The mad dogs are chasing their tails and digging big holes in the lawn. The next shot of adrealin required to pump things up is beyond any governments means to sustain. The situation grows by orders of magnitude of time frames that accelerate. Yup, time accelerates. Financial X-lax, anyone?

If you tell these high flying Finance types they are crooked and twisted and evil - they laugh at you as insane and or dangerous. That is what crooks and con men do - try to get away with it.

[herosrest]

A very neat way to solve a problem that exists is negative interest rates.

ie a loan that diminshes at negative interest during repayment. PURE GENIUS is hard to find.


Go on............... smile.

[herosrest]

Capital Profit Reduction plinc.(plinc. phizz)
Borrow all you can spend, diminishing capital repayments over very short terms
combined with our very competitive -29.7729% interest rates
guarantee you will benefit from spending your self stupid.
You want it, have IT.
We'll help you rebuild your world.

CPR for the worlds economy.
Your money is worthless - our smiles - priceless.
HAVE IT ON US.

[herosrest]