CURRENT ACCOUNT DEFICIT SHOCKER

4 July 2022

LEVELLING UP SHOULD INCLUDE THE SOUTH-EAST

Ref the UK government's decision to take £100 million from the devolved budgets of Scotland and Wales for military aid to the American war in Ukraine.

First of all, we will make sure that we understand what the news article is talking about. Then we will define "devolution" and we will consider whether this re-purposing by the UK government of assistance it had previously given is morally ok or not. Then ask what the the subordinate governments can do about it if anything and what Westminster government could or should have done instead.

So here's the news article:

Looks like Boris' Westminster govt has simply reallocated the money previously given to the two devolved governments of Scotland and Wales, without even informing them or seeking their opinion.

This is an example of the difference between "consult" and "inform", or the difference between asking permission before the fact and apologising after for what you've done.

Devolution - "Delegation of authority or duties to a subordinate or substitute." - is implemented through block grants or budgets. But it seems that the Westminster govt can "repurpose" ie take with the left hand what it has given with the right.

I'd imagine that the warmongering - the West provoking Russia into war in Ukraine - comes out of Westminster exclusively, and Scotland and Wales are not much interested in fighting foreign wars, so this money - purposed originally for levelling up for "development" of local economies and social infrastructure - if it had to go to Ukraine, could have gone to Ukraine for humanitarian purposes, but is unlikely to get support from the Scottish and Welsh peoples if it's for military purposes. 

What is the sentiment in Scotland and Wales towards this war? What do the polls tell us?

Overall it looks like an outrageous abuse of devolution and a disrespect of the wishes of the local representatives of the people, a high-handed way to treat these two countries as "client states".

The devolved governments are not in much of a position to fight back as they both take more from the UK deal than they put in... but then again the whole of the UK is in hock to its foreign lenders and the printing presses, as we saw yesterday the 22Q1 current account deficit is an astonishing 8.3% of GDP, the highest it's ever been and for comparison purposes India's in 2021 was 1.5%.

Isn't really the best idea to include the southeast itself in "levelling up"?! The UK has plenty of problems but as to economic, it comes down to poor productivity and lack of competitivity....another devaluation anyone?

I wouldn't have thought it was worth it politically, for the sake of 100 million quid, to alienate Scotland and Wales, with already a breakup of the kingdom on the cards. Boris have rolled the worn out, tired old, counterfeiting printing presses again. 

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WAS GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE DURING COVID EFFECTIVE?

30 June 2030

Reader's question:

"During covid, the government pour many scheme to help pour people to survive with money. But there is question about : is that effective?"

For example, Government gave money for those who are eligible, an amount of money to live but in real life, they spend money on new clothes.. remember this is poor people….

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The governments faced four challenges in dealing with the covid pandemic. The first was to develop medicines and treatments against the virus itself.

The second was to take care of the health of the people affected by Covid and this was their physical health as well as their mental health. The third was to deal with the economic consequences, both to businesses and to the individual. And the last challenge was to deal with security issues that might arise when groups of people, who resist the lengthy confinement and isolation required to control the virus, become disaffcted and challenge the authority of the state.

At the beginning of the outbreak, there was no vaccine to counter the virus. Covid was believed to be a highly contagious and lethal disease. The health of the nation was under threat.There was also a risk that the very large numbers of people in need of hospitalisation would overwhelm and shut down the National Health Service.

Pending a vaccine therefore, people had to be kept apart and very often were forced to stay at home. This meant businesses could not operate, would go banktupt and close, and people would lose their source of income.

An economy is made up of many many businesses that employ people to transform resources into saleable goods and services. Businesses make profits, out of which they pay taxes to their government. Thus, there was a problem for governments who wished to give financial assistance because with income from taxes, they would have to borrow money.

When a business has to close, for lack of profits, its assets are sold off and its employees are made redundant. If people have no income, they face starvation and the state faces the possibility of serious and widespread social disorder. To avoid starvation and disorder, most states chose to give social assistance to citizens, in place of their salaries, and in addition to medical care. But not only that.

If a pandemic is allowed to dissolve large swathes of business, at the end of the pandemic, it would be almost impossible to restart the economy from nothing. Therefore, because businesses could not pay the salaries of their employees, the government stepped in and began to pay the salaries, just to keep the businesses open, although not trading, ready for restart.

Citizens were taken care of financially and medically - although there was a lot of mental illness that was impossible to deal with, caused through isolation and disruption of social routines.

So this is why governments poured money into schemes to help poor people to survive when, through the pandemic, they had lost their livelihoods.

But there remains a question. While these government schemes were effective in dealing with the problems of citizens and business, were they too generous?

Many people think that the cause of the high inflation that is the scourge of economies today, lies in the enormous demand from people coming out of covid with large surpluses in their bank accounts. A demand that could not be met because there was no supply because businesses had closed. This created a large imbalance in supply and demand and as as we know, excess demand  leads to a high inflation.

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EVERYDAY THE WEST LOSES MORE GROUND

I guess you'll have read that Sweden has agreed to send its poor bloody Kurdish refugees to Turkey for presumably torture and execution, in the order that Turkey can lift its veto on their joining NATO. Predictable.

And after America went trying to drag Iran and Argentina out of purdah in order to take their oil, they have effectively as I understand it told him to F off and are applying to join the club of BRICS.

Every day the west loses more ground.

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EVERY DAY THE WEST LOSES MORE GROUND. DECOMPOSING FRENCH MACARONI

29 June 2022

Have you seen those pictures of Emmanuel Macron running after Joe Biden like a schoolboy and pulling at his sleeve?

Since doing so very badly in the legislative macron has lost a great deal of kudos in the country. it has come to be realised that he was always trying to do things and always restarting his initiatives and talking but without getting results. It's pretty easy to criticise Macron, but are Johnson and Scholtz doing any better? I don't think so I just wish that there was a plan for Europe to "take back control" and kick out the Americans.

I do follow affairs in France, which may be of less interest to you, but here's a few shared subjects I noticed: the heads of commonwealth meeting held in Rwanda -  Rwanda is french-speaking, from its days as a colony of Belgium - Johnson chose the meeting there to show off his French and humiliate Macron? 

And also at that same meeting, they welcomed two new members, both former French Protectorates: Togo and Gabon (ex Senegal, Senegambia). 

And then there was Mali where a few months back, the French army was replaced by Wagner, a humiliation by a bunch of gangsters that seize power in a coup.

Macron, big big problems right at the start of his 5-year term, lame duck president already, not good for Europe. He was supposed to be making a special push into Africa and yet these four countries that were in Frances backyard I have now switched to Anglo-Saxon. 

We are witnessing decomposing French macaroni.

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WW3 IS IN THE OVEN. GONNA BE A REAL HOT WAR

It's all about debt and resources. What we want is to pay off the debt using someone else's resources and war is the best way to achieve that.

The debt can only be repaid through a massive asset deflation which will push the world into recession, or else by a hyperinflation which will completely burn off the currency, possibly a combination of deflation and hyperflation.

It seems that the American government's interest payments are around 120% of its tax receipts. That means it's printing money just to pay the interest, nevermind all its other commitments (consider by Dept of State, Health, Social, Veterans, DoD...).

If the US Govt puts up interest rates to deal with inflation, asset prices will crash and the economy will go into a probably long recession.

If instead it prints money in order to bridge that gap and remain solvent, then inflation will go through the roof and the debased currency will be attacked by those lending America money - they will lose all faith in the Central Bank and the economy and demand higher compensation for the raised risk of holding US bonds.

Don't you think it would be a fantastic scam-solution if the bank could scrap the US dollar, à la Weimarch - and go for some digital crypro-currency, going back onto a standard equivalent the gold standard it came off back in 1973.

And it will simply restore its balance sheet by stealing the resources of those it defeats militarily, notably Russia.

According to past form no doubt America will get Britain and France together to do the fighting and Germany will buy the weapons off the States

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WHAT IS "THE GREAT REPLACEMENT"?

25 June 2022

You see in France that Eric Zemmour made a great start in the Presidential election and got 18% and then dropped down through the floor through 7 to 4% in the second round and failed to win a single seat in the legislative elections.

He made many mistakes in his campaign, but the mainstream media are trying to get him to apologise for his saying that the greatest issue facing France is an identity issue and is not a cost of living issue.

His party is called Reconquest and his issue is called The Great Replacement. What is it about?

It is not some conspiracy theory where there are plotters who are moving in their people from south of the Mediterranean and the Sahel to take our places in France. No.

It is an observation. An observation that there are more and more women in the streets wearing the hijab and men dressed in jelabas. That if you look at the Register of births marriages and deaths, you see that those dying are called Pierre and Lucette and those being born are called Mohammed and Fatihah. That the average number of births to Muslim families is greater than to classic French families.

There's also a regret or sadness at the cultural loss that can be epitomised in the replacement of boeuf bourguignon by couscous.

And then there's that disgraceful story of the Stade de France where the English got blamed for Arab scum misbehaviour. They live off welfare and get poor results at school and in the workforce. They threaten our security. We are heading for civil war.

This is more than simple political manipulation: it indicates that politicians are afraid of reality. That's a very good point.

So Eric zemmour is projecting these trends into a future 5 or 10 years away and that's what the great replacement is about.

But why didn't the French share his opinion? The answer is that the short-term drove out the long-term in the shape of a) the war in Ukraine (prior to the Invasion, Zemmour was sympathetic to Putin's arguments and he also did not think it right that France take in refugees); and b) the cost of living crisis (that resulted from the war as well as from covid). 

And that seems like a very good point to me, and this is the problem with democracy. You have the technocrats - efficient, fair, emotionless - who assure continuity and maturity of direction from one electoral term to the next. Then you have the politicians who are prisoners really of increasingly diverse groupuscules of public opinion and powerless against global forces for change.  And finally, you have a public who can only think of their short-term troubles. But politicians overwhelmed by powerful global and domestic forces are powerless to represent them, they system loses credibility, winning your case becomes more important than preserving the system by respecting the majority.

That is how civilisations collapse - they crumble from the inside out.

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THIS PROVOKED INVASION

Very clear how America provoked Russia into this invasion, leaving Russia no alternative possibly trapping Russia and tricking it into invading.

It is very plain that this war is the result of: 

- NATO advances, breaking 1991 US promises & naturally perceived by Russia as threats to its security

- Failure of esp Fr and Ge to uphold the Minsk agreements devolving powers to the Eastern regions and

Kiev, armed continuously by the West since 2014, shelling Donbas since that time and esp heavy shelling in the days and weeks prior to Russia's "SMO", the final provocation.

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UKRAINE: THE AIMS, THE OPTIONS

22 June 2022

America seeks to weaken Russia, ok, that's published fact. We have your RAND_RR3063 and more.

But Europe too - as a potential rival, esp Ge with Ru, America wants to be sure it's Master of the Universe.

 Also :

make Europe dependent on NATO (run by the DoD - they silenced Fr n Ge at Budapest) and on Am arms; 

and as a middle-ranker, without a military in reality, and heavily pressured by America, Eu is unable to think and develop a strategy of its own, in its own interests; 

you could argue this is all  America's answer to the rise of China, don't you think?, Europe will follow America into the ultimate fires of rhe last conflagration!!!

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FORWARD EARNINGS AND STOCK RETURNS

MY favourite SUS has really let me down. It's a small company, probably little or no access to capital markets, attracting customers for its loans through attractive rates, great service and superior debt portfolio management.

Most commentators are convinced we are heading into a recession.  A recession stemming from the enormous debt levels resulting fromsuccessive QE cycles, each lesssuccessful than the last.

To which must be added infltion, coming out of covid, and this war.

Central Banks are raising rates to reduce demand to kerb inflation. And at the same time, they are not renewing QE, reducing public debt and private liquidity.

So consumers and companies are hit by rising costs, falling real wages and bottom line, and recessions reduce revenues.

I'm just wondering if forward earnings estimates need to be quite radically revised.

And whether more emphasis should be given to the future as earnings are key to dividends and share prices and future earnings are likely significantly different from the past.

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RUSSIA, THE INTERNATIONAL PARIAH - REALLY?

16 June 2022

Many of the commentators on the situation in Ukraine seem to think that Russia has been kicked out of the international system, that it's a pariah and that it will never be re-admitted.

Fact is, the Russian and European economies have been very closely integrated for decades and the proof is the squealing you can hear from France and Germany now that they have to kow-tow to American sanctions.

But reality is that the entrepreneurs in the small and medium-sized Russian companies and the managers in the larger companies have, by their frontier positions, got this international outlook - why, they even send their kids for schooling in top British and European universities, they own real estate on the Côte d'Azur - they have got this international outlook and are in contact with their European counterparts, and once the political side of this conflict has quietened down, the economic and social sides will come back to the fore.

On a related point of some interest, it's worth noting that where Western countries have pulled out of Russia, this has presented a golden opportunity for Russians with a bit of money to take over. For example, the well known case of the McDonald's chain. This will only serve to make them richer and if Russians have money to spend then Europeans' and Americans' ears prick up and tills open and trade resumes.

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PROPAGANDA, THE WAY IT WORKS, THE HARM IT DOES US

16 June 1022

They say that truth is the first victim of war, and nuance the second. So from one or two starting points, we adopt a whole position which can be very black and white - they are the monsters, we are the saviours. A few words can set off many automatic reflexes that might evade our capacity to think rationally from raw facts about a subject and develop a different, even opposite to our feelings, point of view. This would be a good thing because we must see reality if we want to change it or adapt to it. It's no good accepting unthinkingly the narratives of others because if we do we risk being hung out to dry.

Some of those starting points, or triggers, may be untrue, yet if repeated often enough, they become accepted. And behind these leading ideas, each time we hear them we reinforce a whole coherent narrative with "the latest from the battle front". So we are pushed into the short term and into agreeing with ourselves, where we could re-consider in the light of new data (difficult to obtain true, new, data, granted).

For example, "this unprovoked invasion". Or "Russia is a great power", "world's second most powerful army", "atrocities", "genocide", "Russian interests", "recreate its former empire", "Russia must be de-integrated", "plucky little Ukraine"... these are all trigger words that can lead us to misread real-world events, build a tale based on the hopes of others. We become "biaised". 

This is how propaganda works. Key words trigger reflexes that inhibit thought and lead us to analyses and positions that may not correspond to reality on the ground. This is how decision-makers who need our cooperation can exert control over us. Oftentimes, these decion-makers are not acting in our interests, or "the national interest, but in their own.

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