I am worried by the financial settlement for Greece.
Although I think it is grossly unfair for Greeks to present the German Chancellor as Hitler there is an uncomfortable similarity between the position that we put Germany in after the First World War and what we are doing to the Greeks now. A nation and a people have to have hope and asking the Greeks to take this amount of pain until 2020 is asking an awful lot.
I also think that the EU is setting itself on a course of continuing deflation – I hope I am not right.
We had thirteen years of continuous expansion as Gordon Brown so proudly trumpeted, now for the rest of the continuous contraction which always comes after it. The Biblical 7 years of feast and famine is a usual rule of thumb but unusually 13 was/is the length of this one. It is only reasonable to expect that this contraction will last until 2020.
For a country as intrinsically poor as Greece their Good years were quite extraordinary; may their Lean ones not be too difficult, but meanwhile Angela Merkel will ensure that they pay their bills, ready for a recovery at the turn of this decade.
If the noble lord is in any doubt about the cycles of activity, the city publication BZW
has historic data back to the early 19thc, with graphic accounts of the cycle, which will allow him to understand precisely what has happened over the last 15 years, and, consequently,know like all good politicians, what is likely to happen over the next 10.
Borrow a copy of BZW. It costs about £200 or more to buy, so that is not on!
Anybody got a copy of BZW to lend to the former Labour member for Ealing(?) ?
Never heard of either of them.
This issue has to be looked at in the round. You cannot compartmentalize, because in so doing you will not arrive at a solution or answer to the conundrum.
It has to beign with how did Europe get into this mess in the first place? It appears to an outsider, me, that the ideology of the single currency and Europe as a solid entity of nations was so important to those pushing it, they decided to turn a blind eye to the realities of the financial unworthiness presented at the time.
This led to the con man mentality taking over the accounting. Companies, and those backing them, wanted to manipulate the finances in their favour. So they came up with a strategy the ‘buyer’ wanted them to at all costs. They lied about the worthiness of the countries that were asset low in order for an ill thought out ideology to move forward ‘regardless of consequences.’
This took two levels of control from the Euro pushers away from them. It left them open to sabotage or in the very least, exploitation. So, you have to ask, why did Europe allow this to happen? Why did they choose to have the countries, who are now in difficulty, assessed by those they chose to do so? And more importantly, why are they continuing to go down that same path with the same bunch? To return to the con man, after he has fleeced you already to go back for a second bleaching makes you wonder who made money out of it the first round? Follow the real money. Who really did alright out of the misery of those caught up in it at the bottom? And it isn’t over yet.
Now go over to the news we heard this morning, the shifty Mr Fox is back on the bus already and calling for, yes, ‘tax cuts and special deals for those with money.’ Do you hear the warning ring of Greece in his mantra somewhere? Lets reduce taxation in every way on the money makers, at the same time, de-regulate the system that is holding back growth, in respect of them. The balls of it tells you how they really detest their fellow man and see themselves poised for yet and even bigger swipe at the coffers before the pressure rises to the point where they will have to wait another decade or two before they can hve another go.
What this really exposes is the dearth of brain power in those who have clawed their way to the centre of our so called movers and shakers. Back room boys taking the lead as the rest are frozen in the headlights.
Fox is asking for the lowering of taxes across the board as this, he claimes, will set the economy alight. Yet, we have Greece as an example of this theory, along with a totally bankrupt California to show you exactly where that leads. However, the Fox still thinks he will find the chickens with the same old tactic. Well it worked the first time didn’t it? Or did it?
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/california-bankrupt
So, although the Greek people are truly in dire straits, we have to ask this question, should Germany and the rest have to consider bailing out an irresponsible uncontrolled, tax evading or avoiding, country on the back of their hard working and dilligent people who are tired of it? As much as I love the Greek people, and the European political movement as one force, unless they are truly prepared to clean out the barrel of rotten apples, they and the rest of the funders, will be wasting their time. Nothing has changed from the original downfall. Those who brought this about are still in on the act.
Germany has to deal with the rot before it can float this boat. And are we part of that rot? If Fox is anything to go by, I would have to say yes, loudly.
The problem Maude is that the crooks are in Westminster.
I challenge you to a little test. Find out how much the government owes for the civil service pension, and how much it owes for the state pension for starters. Two large numbers that will appear in the accounts, won’t they?
They are debts, that have to be paid or defaulted on, so they will appear in the debt figures.
Simple challenge you might think, but you would be wrong.
Both are off balance sheet items that are hidden from the liabilities of the UK government, because they are so large along with lots of other debts.
@Lord Blagger:
Mmm, you are right I could find nothing so far.
However, did you hear the programme yesterday at 9pm, Analysis – Radio 4. Why have wages not kept up with profits? An eye opener.
Here it is.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01c7nd5
Ok. let me give you some figures for starters.
1. The debt. Here you need to go to the DMO, debt management office. http://www.dmo.gov.uk/ for starters. Then you have to hunt around and download csv file or spreadsheet, then add up the numbers. Not particularly easily accessible, and its deliberate.
However, last time I checked and did the sums, around 1,050 bn.
2. Civil service pensions. This is even bigger. Even the government admits to 1,132 bn but again this figure is a complete distortion.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/psr_government_accounts.htm
The reason its a fiction is that they have assumed the have assets, and discounted the liabilities with assets rates, and assumed no default. ie. AA corporates never default. Also AA corporate rates are much higher than the liability rate, which is CPI. The result of this is to make the number smaller ie. 1,132 bn is a huge underestimate.
See point 3.53 for the fiddle.
3.76 is also interesting. It defines the debts and the assets that should appear in the accounts. More on that latter.
So what’s missing? Well public sector pensions that are ‘fully funded’. ‘Fully funded’ doesn’t mean what you or I or any accountant would define fully funded. It means ‘should be fully funded’. They aren’t. Another black hole that we’re on the hook for.
3. PFI. Whole of government accounts 30.6 bn.
See note 14.2
However, the real figure is very different.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9072573/PFI-costing-13000-per-taxpaying-household.html
239 billion.
Now try finding the figure for the really big debts.
State pension – unfunded.
State second pension – unfunded.
The black hole in the local government schemes.
…
Against taxation of 550 bn.
That is just the past debts, see the link to the whole of government accounts which is clear about what should be included.
However, they then go and say, we’re not including all the things that meet the criteria such as the big items above.
It’s a straightforward fraud. Pure and simple. The reason is that its a Ponzi. For a ponzi you need more mugs to pay in, and you need to hide the debts. Ask Bernie Maddoff because its the same.
The World’s, Human-Race’s, and Civilisations’,
“leaders”
(or should this be “commanders” ?)
having got both the Earth-Lifesupports and Human-Financial Equation(s) wrong,
such that the Shortfall between ‘Resources’ on the one hand and ‘Raking-In-The-Profits’ on the other is still on the increase
(experts say at least since the Industrial Revolution took-root)
what is the going-relationship between Resources (lifesupports) and Monies (our civilisational tokens for managing those resources)
[that has us ‘consuming’ including destroying-and-extincting lifesupports at the present rate of Two(2) Earthsworth planned to increase to Three(3) Earthsworth by 2050] ?
and (does any-one or any-body have any idea ?)
what our equation(s) Should be ?
———
Simply put:
Since inflation has us believing & behaving in expectancy of ever-more, and many-infinite, Resources (Lifesupports) than there actually and finitely are or ever will be,
then the greater the Shortfall between the “goods” and the “money”
the greater the ‘Corrective-Deflation’ must eventually become
(innit ?)
———–
PS :
standard WW1 history has as one of the prime causes of WW2 the blindly-spendthrift “Noble-Establishments”,
‘in their own right’ in USA, France, Russia, the UK & Commonwealth, and ‘the whole non-German free-world’
being ‘intrinsicly-malfeasant’ ;
as well as the punitive and life-deprivational “Damages repayments” we (our fathers’ fathers’ Governments) exacted from the defeated Kaiser Germany in ‘extrinsic malfeasance’.
————
In other prescriptive-definition words, Governance then viz Germany and Governance now viz Greece, evidences the same Fault as every Doctor (at least) should be capable, willing, and able to avoid, namely
“iatrogenic communication”
(meaning “injury or illness actually caused by the doctor”)..
What makes you think they are going for deflation?
Deflation makes it hard to pay debts.
If you have very low interest rates you get inflation. They have very low interest rates, like the UK, and inflation is high.
You think wrong.
As for the Greeks, they are being shafted.
Just as you as a politician are shafting us.
7,000 bn of government debt in the UK. It grew by 500 bn last year alone.
Tax revenues in contrast were 550 bn.
you get inflation.
You get a very different kind of inflation if you include things as large as house values in the basket of prices.
Whether it is a Europe wide practice, I don’t know, and even then the incidence of house ownership is different in various European countries.
Whether international economists include them in a basket of prices for worldwide correlation, in for example Argentina or Brazil, I would not know either.
We are getting to the point of not presuming to question the wisdom of S American economists, on the basis of Brazil being a world power, at no 5 in the world, a dynamic economy.
Those historic statistics are almost certainly what the ECB, and other country lenders, are basing their repayment requirements on. It would be very surprising if they were not.
The Greeks know how they have had it far too good for far too long using euro-foreigners spending cash from all other parts of europe and the world. I think that whatever the anarchic press will try to do to current thinking and contract, things will quieten down in Greece while they eat plenty of homity pie.
They will enjoy it, and sell it at more moderate prices to overseas visitors for a few years now. They must be darned glad not to have been involved in any nasty Balkan “business” over the last few years, and thankful now that they will not be in the near future either.
Let’s not forget that those marvellous maritime people, the Greeks, live in the Balkans too.
The Euro was always a political fetish and never based on sound economics.
Now any chance of a Greek recovery is being sacrificed purely to keep the doomed Euro project alive.
It sickens me to witness it.
Since “sound economics”
is consuming, including wantonly destroying non-renewable and blasphemously extincting renewable lifesupports (‘Resources’) to the extent of two(2) Earthsworth of such finite lifesupportive-resources just to keep the human World marking-time where we all were back in 2009,
and has already entrenched further “sound economic” plans to increase that over-killing to three(3) Earthsworth by 2050,
it is false that there has yet been achieved by this human race any such sustainworthy skillbase as “sound economics”
nor does it appear that “God” or any possible “More-Advanced Extra-Terrestrial Visitors” have such a skillbase, perhaps on “Heaven’s drawing board” or hastening Earthwards on board an ET Spaceship, already)
—————-
nor, since the Economists are unable to factor-in the Earth-Lifesupports’ ecological needs-&-how-to-non-destructively (sacramentally, skilfully) meet those needs,
is there any likelihood that any other civilised sector (such as Democratic-Governance, or Farming, or the Alternative-Self-Sufficiency Comunities ‘worldwide network’) will come up with the necessary “sound-equation” for conserving both Earth’s Lifesupports and those of this Human Race
(in which we note our ‘Europe’,
and its ‘Euros’, and other currencies, that stand token for Europe’s responsible-ownership of our minor-part of the Overall Global (?Sound?)-Economy,
is reported to be as concerned and clued-up as any other ‘economic’-organisation, in this ultimate Survival Task of somehow planning for all of us Humans to start living-within-our-longest-term-survival/thrival means,
and this Europe is reasonably fully participative and proactive
isn’t it –
and aren’t we ?).
———-
Is it not possible that it is the Lifesupports, materially on the ground, that need the nurturing,
not the corruptible coinage of any single country, union-of-countries, or Global-Body ?
Isn’t it possible that when our civilizational-money shows up ’in-the-red’, the Lifesupports it represents are the ones in the Real trouble ?
The usual site/blog sabotage by Milesjsd.
No-one’s found any means of translation yet?
Shame.
The now habitual inability and unwillingness of Gareth Howell
to honour any of the three principles of good-communication & honest-argumentation
[1. Be clear (state your argument, validly if it is a deductive one, strongly if it is an inductive one)
2. Be charitable (comprehend the other-participant’s submission, and identify the good-intention therein)
3. Be self-corrigible (show that you are willing and able to learn and retract or stand-corrected when shown to be misinformed, uninformed, otherwise missing-something, mistaken, or ‘wrong’]
is much more real and damaging sabotage,
to the whole human-race and its survival-thrival needs,
not merely to this House of Lords “site/blog”
than are submissions showing relevant and influential factors that ‘overshadow’ the published topic;
such as milesjsd’s above submissions pointing to unresolved primary key-needs and issues which, if not tackled first will undermine and waste the human-energies, timeframes, materials, and monies being called for by secondary matters (such as the Greek drachma, Italian lire, and British pound ‘versus’ the EU euro, the Chinese yuan, the USA dollar and all the other ‘token’-currencies around the world).
————–
One of the salient requirements for participatively-cooperative problem-solving, and especially for conflict-resolution, is to
“Tackle the Problem; Do not attack the person”.
To that can be stapled
“Nobody nor I myself need you to believe me;
But any serious reader,
[and this means you yourself in public on such a site as the Lords of the Blog, Gareth Howell],
has a collective-duty to check known and proven experts and facts, and also matters of some serious concern, such as I and many others continually put forward with worthwhile References to the subject matter at hand”.
———
In the absence of cognitively-clear critiques and of reasoned content-rebuttal, I am prepared to say of all of my previous submissions, ‘stet’.
———
When one thinks hat the topic given by the posting peer is
‘the be-all- and-end-all Matter’
one still needsto scrutinise what may appear to be a ‘minor or even irrelevant matter’, and one needs to have done sufficient Information-gathering and Thinking, before allowing one’s Emotions to get-the-bit-between-their-teeth
(with acknowledgements to “Edward de Bono’s Thinking Course”,
among other constructive leaders such as the teams of scientists on-screen with David Attenborough in “How Many People Can Live On Planet Earth?”,
and those many people who informed Nobel prizewinning scientist Professor Kammel, for the TV documentary series “Ecopolis”,
and Professor David Smith “somebody has to tell the Economists they have the Equation wrong somewhere” and his internationally acclaimed environmental-studies standard universities reading “Continent In Crisis”,
all, and many others, put forward both knowledge and reasoning much more soundly, factually, and believably than any mere ‘milesjsd’ can).
Even more blog sabotage from Miles jsd.
The Euro was always a political fetish and never based on sound economics.
Like biker leathers to ride a push bike?
Like using a 1500cc Harley to go to the shops?
But the phrase used in the Lords, “Austerity macht frei” is not hyperbole, but just drawing the correct parallel with what happens when you corner people and put them in a desperate situation with no means of escape.
Our hands are just as dirty as those people at the ‘payday loans’ companies who are being exposed daily in the press.
What a wide ranging debate!
Like using a 1500cc Harley to go to the shops?
Or sit in a parliamentary debate wearing sub aqua gear like my good friend Mohamed Nasheed,
former Chairman of the South Asian Economic Community, a cabinet meeting beneath the sea!
I am sure the noble lord Soley wished he could have given some advice there! Heh! heh!
Whether he is standing again for re-election
to Maldivian presidency I have not yet heard.
He was considering becoming a criminal again
on the run, but they could not muster enough evidence against him!
Wot I say is, if you are goin’ to do politix, ENJOY THEM! Heh! Heh!