Bearwatch

Greek debt: talks continue

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:37:00 +0000

Hercules slaying Augeas for non-payment of debt - the promised fee for cleaning the Augean stables. The statue, by Lorenzo Mattielli, stands outside the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

At least Hercules had an excuse, having done some honest work, though to my eyes this particular depiction makes him seem simply a violent fat thug. What, by contrast, have the EU, international banking and the lucrative intermediation of Goldman Sachs done for Greece, aside from shoehorn the country into a club it should never have been allowed to join?

Euro MP and UKIP leader Nigel Farage has just told it straight yet again, to a parliament in which notable figures pointedly chat to each other while he berates them: the EU has driven poor Hellas to desperation and worse is to follow.

This chaos was foreseeable; my wife and I were in Corfu in May 2010 - the month in which three innocent Athenian bank employees were burned to death - and the goldsmith at Roda told us there would be a revolution within a year. Now, a whole government has been removed by outsiders and democracy is, apparently, merely an optional extra for peripheral nations.

Anyone who know the Greeks knows they have a historical memory like the Irish. This will go deep and will not be forgiven.

Loathing corner

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:27:00 +0000

The Daily Mail reports its libel victory over the Lizard People. But looking at them, why are our politicians and financiers so unimpressive?

There is Oleg Deripaska, reminiscent of a toxic marmot, flanked (left) by millionaire Nat Rothschild looking like one of the people who stand behind John McCririck on Channel 4 Racing and seemingly nerving himself up to raise his thumb at the camera, and (right) by Peter Mandelson, rigidly relaxed and posing as a wannabe extra for a Blue Oyster club scene from "Police Academy".

If you must be star-struck, boys, at least don't worship a dark star.

I'm holding out for the Hollywood version, it'll be so much more credible. To quote Sir Philip Sidney, these people's "world is brazen, the poets only [i.e. only artists] deliver a golden".

Libertarians should consider commercial tyranny as well as political

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:07:00 +0000

I've just happened on a documentary screened on Russia TV (Freeview here in the UK), about the battle between a small Canadian farmer and Monsanto.

I think the fight for freedom is no longer solely against Big Brother. Libertarians should consider Big MD/Big CEO as a major threat, especially since multinational corporations are more powerful than many governments.

And I don't think I'm alone in feeling that patenting life itself is in some way an outrage.

The Royal Yacht and the pig-ignorant commentariat

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:49:00 +0000

Even Sunday Times journalists can be stunningly ignorant and stupid, it seems. Camilla Long ("never 'eard of 'er", as Harry Hill would say) opines - well, no, read the crap yourself, if you can stand it. The arch title is pretty much a précis of the whole article: "A yacht? Wouldn’t the Queen prefer a really nice soap?"

Perhaps it's the Murdoch connection, I don't know. But this anti-monarchical drivel is of a piece with the sniggering on Radio 4's News Quiz, which I heard driving home yesterday. The panel are usually OK making funnies about animals and human foibles, but when it comes to politics and economics they don't know sh*t.

Has it not occurred to all the pseudo-sophisticates in the media that

(a) The Queen is the Head of State (something Tony Blair was liable to forget).

(b) Show matters. If you don't understand the importance of symbol and pageantry, get out of the commenting game. The soi-disant Labourites understand, all right - why else would TB attempt to get himself a "Blair Force One", and Brown find a way to refuse it him?

(c) When the Royal Yacht was operational, before the Inglorious Revolution of 1997, it was not only a status symbol for our country, but a roving, floating venue for discreet diplomacy and business dealing - and may I suggest, rather less demimondaine than Oleg Deripaska's (the Queen K). Or Murdoch's own Rosehearty.

F****** idiots.

The trouble with economics

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:31:00 +0000

It's not a machine, model or mechanism. It's a game of Calvinball.

Sack all teachers who can't answer this

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:41:00 +0000

"Supergravity theories are often said to be the only consistent theories of interacting massless spin 3/2 fields.

Discuss."

There. That should sort out those baaaaad teachers. Did you know only 17 were struck off for "professional incompetence" in 10 years? (Shame about the Lord Charles-like pic of Michael Gove in that article.)

Erm, how many bad teachers SHOULD there be, then?

Or is this really about the naughty larrikins not wanting a second scything of their pension rights, "at a time when the whole country is suffering"? In prosperous times, they could've switched to a different career, if they were any good, which by definition they're not; in bad times, we simply can't afford to treat them decently.

Much easier to make them keep their heads down with a steady fusillade of criticism, threats and insults. Serve them right, they forgot they were below stairs people.

Fred Goodwin is 53.

Pip pip!

Why history should be part of the core curriculum

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:39:00 +0000

The poisoned environment, the EU and the need for a more radical revision of democracy

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 07:46:00 +0000

"Endocrine disruptors can accentuate or inhibit the response to hormonal signals. They have been
implicated as one of the potential causes of the significant drop in male fertility observed in Europe over the last 50 years and as having negative impacts on the environment."

I'm not fond of being bossed-about, but clearly there are some matters that have to be addressed at a collective level and it seems that the EU has added this to the 2012 agenda (htp: Ian Parker-Joseph). If the science is right, then yes, I support action.

And while I also support those (especially UKIP) who resist our regional tryout of the New World Order, has anyone considered that if we did successfully disconnect from the EU political machine, we'd be left with the domestic dictators of Westminster and Whitehall, freshly energized and unshackled?

The democracy project has a lot more to do than tweak Rompuy's nose.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, Alastair Smith has just published an article in The Economist, explaining why those in power are never acting in our best interest. After an amusingly cynical analysis, he concludes:

It’s not possible to reform a system by imploring people to do the right thing. You have to know how it works. Dictators already know how to be dictators—they are very good at it. We want to point out how they do it so that it’s possible to think about reforms that can actually have meaningful consequences.

A mild defense of Dawkins

noreply@blogger.com (Paddington) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 02:54:00 +0000

This is in response to Sackerson’s piece on Richard Dawkins. It is probably not my best work, given my lack of sleep.

I have read ‘The God Delusion’, and Anthony Flew’s review of it. Most of the former is concerned with the science of why religion appears to exist, based on the scientific evidence available. In his first major point, Flew chooses to focus on Dawkins’ discussion of Einstein, in which he says:

“But (I find it hard to write with restraint about this obscurantist refusal on the part of Dawkins) he makes no mention of Einstein’s most relevant report: namely, that the integrated complexity of the world of physics has led him to believe that there must be a Divine Intelligence behind it.”

The problem for Flew is that I have read Einstein’s writings and comments on the subject. The latter explicitly said that he did not believe in a deity, and that the most that could be said is to deify the structure of the Universe itself. This is not quite what Flew implies. The rest of his review does not address the science presented.

That being dealt with, I have far more interest in the reasons for the outspoken anti-religious tactics of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, P.Z. Myers and Christopher Hitchens.

It is my claim that they are a product of the current social forces.
Since I moved to the US in 1978, I have seen a rise in the loudness and power of the Religious Right, who have supplanted the fiscal conservatives as the core of the Republican Party. These people are not the pleasant vicars and church-goers of my youth. For my UK readers, I note that Ian Paisley was educated at Bob Jones University, a font of wisdom for the fundamentalist community. His style is representative of many in the movement.

This rise in power can be explained in part by the political and economic uncertainty from the gradual decline in the power of the US, and from the many scientific discoveries which show that emotionally-charged deeply-held beliefs (especially ‘no evolution’) are simply not supported by reality. As any psychologist will tell you, this conflict between the frontal lobe and amygdala results in anger, directed firmly at anyone who rejects their ‘correct’ beliefs. Some have coined this the Ameritaliban.

A few people, such as Pope John Paul II and Stephen Jay Gould, tried to make peace, by showing that religion and science could live in harmony. This has also been tried by the Templeton Foundation. These efforts were roundly rejected by the anti-science crowd, who continue to vilify the former two after death, and use every tactic possible to neuter science education and research.

Faced with a call of ‘no quarter’, is it any wonder that voices like these arose on the pro-science side?

Professor Richard Dawkins and questionable standards of scholarship

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:51:00 +0000

It has long been my impression that Professor Dawkins' emotions override his commitment to the highest standards of scholarly argument and research, and this is stated as a clear accusation by a victim of one of his attacks, the distinguished academic philosopher and former atheist Anthony Flew:

Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such but is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise of The God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God but rather an attempt – an extremely successful one – to spread the author’s own convictions in this area.

For the rest of Professor Flew's article, please see here.

I am not concerned to argue the case either for or against atheism here. There are honourable people on both sides of the argument.

But I am concerned that an eminent scientist long associated with my university should lose his professional compass so grossly on a matter that deeply interests and affects millions of people.

It is also worth noting, as perhaps many do not realise, that Professor Dawkins was, in effect, sponsored by an American billionaire to ride his hobby horse. The University's website openly admits:

Simonyi Professorship was set up with the express intention that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.

I should like to know who is (and was then) on the appointments board for the Simonyi Professorship, and the interconnexions among them and others including the successful candidate and Mr Simonyi himself. I fear that the more I come to know about this, the more I may possibly feel that the Chair and its surrounding issues might serve to lessen respect for the University and its work.

If there is any reader of this post who teaches or is attending, or has taught or attended at Oxford University and would care to join me in a letter to the University inquiring into the Simonyi Professorship, I should be obliged if he/she would get in touch with me.

How Western civilisation will fall

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:18:00 +0000

Special Educational Needs and Inequality

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:09:00 +0000

One might (perhaps) expect that less wealthy areas of England would have a higher proportion of children identified as having Special Educational Needs (SEN). Not so, according to this graph on page 103 of the NHS Atlas of Variation in Healthcare (November 2011 edition):

Using a measure called Indices of Multiple Deprivation and correlating it with the proportion of primary age children with a SEN Statement, it seems that children from poorer areas are less likely to be so diagnosed.

I don't think that's a true reflection of underlying need. There's loads of children with EBD (emotional and behavioural difficulties) and pace Mr Clegg the modern pattern of disrupted family structure really doesn't tend to help them. Perhaps schools that have more such children accept the situation as "normal"; or maybe their SENCOs (Special Educational Needs Coordinators) are simply overwhelmed. It's notable that primary age children are more likely to get excluded in Year 6, as the dreaded teacher-damning SATS exams draw near and the school finally decides that it can't afford to have a severely disruptive child in the group - was there really no such difficulty in the years before that?

But there are other kinds of need. Autism is an interesting case, and incidence of diagnosis is seemingly influenced by the social class of the family - an ASD (autistic spectrum diagnosis) expert in Birmingham LEA told us a year or two ago that the better-off quarters of Birmingham were yielding an ASD diagnosis rate some five times higher than in poorer areas. Perhaps it's because ASD doesn't carry the same potential stigma for the parent - it's genetic rather than a consequence of poor parenting skills - and perhaps also it's because it's a good way to attract extra attention and resources for your child (autism is a lifelong condition, unlike, er, "naughtiness").

Not that autism isn't real - I have taught autistic children all the way from mild cases down to the ones that can't or don't speak at all. But middle-class parents are (naturally) better at fighting their child's corner to get the diagnosis. And it strengthens their arm that the techniques and resources specifications in SEN statements are legally enforceable - such fun, as Miranda Hart's on-screen mum likes to say.

So in some ways the graph above is inadequate - it needs to be broken down into types of disability, and further into economic sub-divisions of the LEA (there is a world of difference between, say, Nechells and Hall Green). But even with the data aggregated in the way it is, there seem to be more questions to ask about inequalities in diagnosis and provision.

How to become incredibly rich in the coming total economic collapse

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:55:00 +0000

You can't. And I don't want to read any more articles promising something like this.

Even bankers are hoarding food

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:27:00 +0000

Extract from an article in today's Daily Mail:

‘It is not “crazies” buying this,’ says James Blake, whose company Emergency Food Storage specialises in freeze-dried foods. ‘We get a lot of high-powered business people as customers. Most people buy insurance for their health, their house or their life — this is food insurance.
‘Of course, we hope it never happens, but if there is a major catastrophe, then money is not going to be worth much after a couple of days. It will be food that becomes the most needed thing.’
Dave Hannah and his company B-Prep sell similar products. He says a number of his customers are bankers. Their average spend is £3,000.

Down with France, says Chinese rating agency

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:55:00 +0000

Dagong has re-rated France's debt from AA- to A+ on 8th December. This anticipates the Reuters report that France can expect to lose her AAA rating next year, and goes much further than the view of some commentators in the latter article that perhaps the rating should drop to AA.

Why David Cameron deserves no credit whatever for his EU veto

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:26:00 +0000

It is quite clear that Cameron's veto was not down to his growing a pair of balls, or a spine, heart or brain, come to that: it was the inevitable result of overreaching by Sarkozy and Merkel.

Blinded by their doctrinaire EU-federalism, they failed to see that they were pushing the British PM into a place where he simply cannot go. His Party has been split for decades on the Europe issue and even the Opposition Labour Party is divided (though at pains to conceal this so as to increase the Conservatives' fratricidal anguish), much of the electorate that has sufficient education and intelligence to take an interest is in favour of leaving the EU altogether, and thanks to the financialisation of our economy, we need the City because taxing its thieves is what is keeping our gunwales above the waterline.

When the French and German Sir Humphreys are finally allowed to talk some sense into their masters' hot heads, there will be another deal offered. My guess is a temporary derogation for the City from the proposed tighter regulations - perhaps five years, or until some round-figure year such as 2020.

Or, if the French wish to get in another dig, 18th June 2015. The rationalists of the Revolution are more superstitious than the religious they despise, and the bicentenary of Waterloo would afford them a satisfying symbolic revenge. It would be like Hitler's decision to have the French sign the second armistice at Compiègne in 1940, in the same railway carriage where the Germans had to sign their surrender in 1918.

This regulostice would allow time for our pinstriped crooks either to filch what's needed for a comfortable early retirement, or to find positions on the Bourse, the Börse and (of course) the Far Eastern (and maybe Australian) exchanges where all the exciting action of the future will be centred. And the British politicians and their placemen will doubtless reap their Quisling rewards in Brussels and Strasbourg.

At any rate, cancel the flags, bunting and bands.

CONFIRMED: America turns fascist, 200 years of history is tipped into the harbour - UPDATED

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:44:00 +0000

FURTHER UPDATE: It's happened. Now it's the US Government vs the US Constitution.

UPDATE: looks like it's really going to happen.

Congress seems set to do what King George would dearly have loved to be able to do.

If "government of the people, by the people, for the people" shall "perish from the earth", then never mind Britain becoming the 51st State, let the US become Britain's 87th county - its largest, but who cares, neither of us has been a democracy for a while now, so it's not as though your puny vote makes a difference. And you don't understand tea any more, so the tax shouldn't matter, either.

You are now ruled by a wealthy aristocracy who regard most of you as servants, mendicants or gallows-fodder. Whenever you look like causing trouble you are sent overseas to busy yourselves in armed conflict. The rich delegate the running of their estates to ruthless managers and spend their time in fashionable salons close to power, where they lobby for yet more liberty for themselves and the enslavement of all others.

Just like us. And just like the eighteenth century.

Esau, you fool.

Gender, obedience and the education system

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:25:00 +0000

I know a couple who decided to educate all their children at home, because schools teach conformity. (The children all did very well, in different ways.)

There is a famous experiment by the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, who wanted to test whether the Holocaust criminals' excuse "I was only obeying orders" was a true reflection of their feelings at the time. In 1961, he got volunteers to administer what they believed to be electric shocks of increasing intensity, to a human victim (who was merely acting). Disturbingly, some two-thirds of volunteers ultimately inflicted the highest-voltage "shock", despite misgivings, when reassured or ordered by an authority figure wearing a white coat.

I knew about that, but not until tonight, reading Richard Wiseman's "Quirkology", did I learn of a follow-up experiment, conducted some 10 years later. A flaw in the first test was that some participants may have correctly suspected that the man being given shocks was an actor; so researchers Charles Sheridan and Richard King repeated the experiment, using a live puppy. The results, reported in 1972 in a paper entitled "Obedience to authority with an authentic victim", were equally disturbing, with a fresh twist: slightly over half the male volunteers had been willing to use the maximum voltage, but 100% of the women complied, even though some of the latter burst into tears.

Back to schools. Primary schoolchildren have long been taught mostly by female teachers, but now women make up 87.5% of the staff, and 28% of state primaries have no men teachers at all; and though when I started teaching men were the majority in secondaries, by 2008 the balance had shifted so that 59% the teaching staff there were women.

Some questions:

How valid was the 1971 experiment, bearing in mind the small sample (26 people)?
Has society changed since, so that the results would be very different if the same experiment were carried out today?
Would it now make a difference depending on the gender of the white-coated superior? And would the results be affected by the whether or not the "boss" was the same gender as the volunteer?
If women are indeed more obedient to authority than men, does this affect their expectations of obedience from the children, and how they react to a child's disobedience (or initiative)?
Are male children equally obedient as female children? Should they be expected to be?
Is men teachers' approach to obedience and conformity different from that of women teachers?
Should the gender of the teacher be matched (or opposite) to the gender of the pupils, in single-sex classes?
Is one gender better than another for teaching mixed-sex classes? And how about age groups?
Do you, too, think it's better to keep your children from the hidden curriculum of schools?

What exactly is freedom?

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 09:27:00 +0000

It seems libertarians are mostly concerned about the right to get stoned. Question that, and you'll get hoary old stuff about alcohol and tobacco, and especially about how Prohibition didn't work.

I had a look at the US Prohibition story some time ago and it told quite a different story from what I'd always thought. I absolutely condemn these attempts at enforcement, but that's a story about the wickedness of power generally. As (I think) Charles Lamb said, "Governments are as bad as they dare to be."

But we are between Scylla and Charybdis. There is the power of government, and in resisting its excesses we may be tempted to assist the power of large corporations (which now appear to be growing mightier than the State and the People). The enemy of your enemy is not your friend - and in any case, corporations and the government are not mutually inimical after all: a career in politics often seems to be followed (if not accompanied at the time) by very lucrative dealings with the commercial sector.

And I have some doubts about Sartre-type definitions of freedom (he was very upset by Freud's theory of the unconscious). So here's some questions I want to repeat, from my comments over at the fine and idealistic people (no irony) at Orphans of Liberty:

Is it freedom to fall victim to addictions?
Or to allow powerful vested commercial interests to increase temptation and opportunity?
Are we free if we merely act out compulsions, and other scripts written into our subconscious?

And bearing in mind that, as I said there, black people I know reckon the Establishment’s soft on drugs because it keeps the blacks down:

4. Is freedom just freedom for me, me, me or should Robinson Crusoe respect Man Friday, too?

Sartre thought there was no such thing as collective freedom, until the Paris student riots of 1968, and then suddenly he did think it. But that's what happens when a first-class brain is faced with more than one thing it wants to believe.

Sir Philip Green and homing chickens

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:10:00 +0000

Two years ago, I wondered why BBC econpundit Robert Peston made so little of Sir Philip Green's debt-funded £1.2 billion dividend extraction from the Arcadia Group. I said then:

However, if, in the economic downturn, turnover and profits are savaged, and tangible assets decline sharply in value, and Arcadia becomes very weak, or even goes bust, what will Peston say then? Arcadia Group employs 27,000 people; was it really OK, other than in a strictly legal sense, to put such a heavy yoke around its neck? Had the dividend not been paid - and especially, not been funded by humungous bank loans - what more might the group have achieved?

This "value-skimming" was the subject of adverse comment at the time, by The Independent newspaper.

Now, S'Philip threatens to close up to 260 shops and throw thousands out of work. He ascribes the problems to a number of factors, including "the climate". Richard Littlejohn is sceptical; anyone else feel the same way?

Where could Arcadia have got to today, without all those rocks in its panniers? It's still carrying £444.5 million of debts, according to the last accounts (which were reported in so upbeat a manner).

And as ever in our modern financial world, what A does, B suffers for. When the chickens come home to roost, it's not Sir Philip's head they'll be pooping on.

Nice place, Jersey (where wife Tina's Taveta Investments holding company is based); not so sure about Monaco, whose Monte Carlo district is described by AA Gill as "the sort of slum that rich people build when they lack for nothing except taste and a sense of the collective good" and where Tina is, technically, "domiciled". Where the physical Tina and her husband actually spend most of their time I can't say, but when it all turns sour I'm sure they won't be able to smell it.

An interesting graphic

noreply@blogger.com (Paddington) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:54:00 +0000

Click here for details on how our economic activity is distributed.

Spang! (MF Global's 9-month period as a Primary Dealer)

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:01:00 +0000

Feb 2, 2011:

Oct 31, 2011:

Why I've been holding cash, for years - UPDATED - AGAIN... AND AGAIN!

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:47:00 +0000

“You can’t trust anybody and the entire system is collapsing. What’s the takeaway from this? It’s to make sure you have every penny in your pocket.”

Gerald Celente, Trends Research Institute founder, following the disappearance of his six-figure holdings at MF Global shortly before he was due to take delivery of physical gold. More here.

Update: and the chorus swells...

"It is up to you to decide how much you're willing to risk losing to a crook. If the answer is "none" or you cannot reduce the at-risk portion of your assets to what you're willing to lose to fraud then you can no longer participate in the market at all, in any form, nor even do business with a bank." - Karl Denninger.

"Now may be the time to exit all arrangements not specifically guaranteed directly by the government, and bring your money home. And better yet if no guarantees are required, and no parties standing between you and your wealth." - Jesse.

... and swells...

"Ultimately, I will not be at all surprised to see Europe’s banking system shut for days while the losses and payments issues are worked out. People forget that the term “bank holiday” was invented in the 1930’s when the banks were shut for exactly the same reason." - Dr Pippa Malmgren

"The whole system is going down. Pull your money out your Fidelity account, your Schwab account, and your ETFs." - Gerald Celente (again)

- both quoted here.

"Odds of a big market breakdown are both high and rising." - Mish.

... and balloons...

"The bottom line is that apparently some warehouses and bullion dealers are not a safe place to store your gold and silver, even if you hold a specific warehouse receipt." - Jesse (17 Dec 2011)

This gels with a recent post by David Malone, where he discusses a little-known rider to the (US) Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. The amendment concerned overrides bankruptcy protection protocols that are designed to treat creditors equally, such that if Bank A has "repo" or derivatives contract business with Bank B, and Bank B fails (or is forced into failure...), Bank A can grab the collateral straight away, not waiting for the trustee to sort out who gets what.

And if some of that collateral is money or other valuables you (an innocent third party) deposited with Bank B, hard luck, it seems.

Ostensibly, this legislation was to prevent systemic collapse as Bank B's failure could make Bank A insolvent, then subsequently Banks C and D etc. But, as Malone points out, it's also potentially an invitation to stronger (or at least, public-money-supported) banks to tip weaker ones into insolvency and grab assets, leaving other creditors to sue for their return (if they can afford to do so). Possession is nine points of the law, as the adage goes. Apparently, this deadly revision is written into banking legislation beyond America's shores.

In turn, that reminds me of something Malone wrote back in October, reporting what a top Irish banker said to him, off the record:

"According to this very senior banker it was now known that the plan was all but agreed to re-capitalize all the banks but to the very minimum degree. France and Germany were agreed on this. As I wrote before I left, there has been a bidding war looking for the lowest amount.

"The horse trading and arguing is of a quite different nature.What is being thrashed out is a list, for use after this across the board, minimum bail out, of which banks will be saved and which will be left to die when they next have a problem. The horse trading is over who will be saved and who damned.

"In other words the decision has been reached that this is the last pan-Europe, all bank bail out attempt. After this it is recognized that Europe and the IMF cannot save all the banks. And so only the most systemically vital are going to be saved and the rest will be allowed to save themselves if they can or die if they cannot."

It's possible that a vicious internecine cannibalism is about to commence in the international banking industry, and plenty of innocent bystanders could suddenly find they're hurt.

Little wonder, then that even bankers have started to hoard food.

Three cheers for Western democracy - CORRECTED

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:55:00 +0000

A naughty trespasser gets what's coming to her.http://www.newser.com/story/133682/police-pepper-spray-occupy-portland-protester-elizabeth-nichols.html

CORRECTION: ... is offered a sample of a "food product"

43 years earlier...

But we have made progress. So many more channels these days. X Factor or Strictly, love?

Farage's latest - heading for 200,000 views

noreply@blogger.com (Sackerson) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:49:00 +0000