In defence of The City. First, your ill-informed rant: < Say Jay, I never finished my rant on the poor old City getting hosed by those nasty Krauts. Here goes.
So you guys ran out of people to rape and now the whole stinking mess is about to come crashing down? Boo hoo. That's the problem with Ponzi schemes, bud, eventually you don't have enough new meat to pile on top of the fetid carcasses.
And why the hell do we need London anyway? Asian finance is maturing, and they've got the money over there. You can't handle some competition? Other banking centers are popping up, and maybe a few of them will be smart enough to not allow leverage to infinity.
The whole world is eventually going to find out why rehypothecation is bad for them, and let's hope there isn't a new invention like the guillotine by the time it happens.
I'm a peaceable guy, but I sure would enjoy seeing some of you guys scratching carrot fields. You guys have no idea how awful it is for most people.
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First a handy link for you to study first principles of Mindless Zombies who borrow too much money: Subject 53236
Nobody was raped. People who borrow money are not raped. They hope to profit from the borrowed money and hope to enjoy a consumer surplus as well.
You are misusing the word "Ponzi scheme" which specifically refers to a similar scheme as pyramid schemes were people who are in early are paid off with money coming in from later suckers, with the last ones in losing their money, and hopefully [from the scamster's point of view] it's a huge number of suckers [an inverted pyramid].
What has happened is that governments have borrowed and spent on wastrel ideas and outright bribery of electorates all the money they can. They have taxed producers all that they can. As Margaret Thatcher [and others] have pointed out, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of opm. That is what has happened. The assets, debts, incomes and demands no longer can be made to match. Something more is going to give. Creditors, as always, will lose their money. Debtors [some of them] will lose "their" assets.
You are focusing on banks. I have a daughter and son in law who work in London in The City for two big banks. I have spent time hanging around Canary Wharf and in the old City [this year]. I also worked [for BP Oil International] in The City in the mid 1980s before Canary Wharf was going. London very badly needs The City in all its glory. I have dealt with London banks and have invested in the London stock market.
Do you really think I am going to send my money to the thieves in China? Hong Kong is good, for now, until it isn't. I nearly invested in a luxury apartment downtown Beijing in the early 1990s but at the last minute did not. It would have been a great deal [assuming the concrete actually had reinforcing steel in it and foundations fit for purpose]. There were too many risks and the language was too unintelligible for me [despite paying $1000 for translation services]. We need The City. You will know when we don't need The City because it will be like BP Solar = it will close for lack of business and lack of profits.
We guys do in fact have a very good idea of how bad it is for most people. I also visited my ancestral homeland of Peckham before the riots of 2011 en.wikipedia.org I visited my great grandparents grave in Old Camberwell cemetery. They died in their mid 30s from tuberculosis, leaving 4 orphans who were sent to NZ, one of whom died from tuberculosis. One of them married by grandmother, one of three brought to NZ by their mother after escaping the Franco Prussian war. They lived desperately poor lives. Life is a battle for survival, made better and successful by Virtuous Victorian Values, which are NOT in evidence in Peckham these days.
It was obvious to me that there was almost nobody in Peckham who was also a descendant of my ancestors. I could not see a mechanism for their survival and assumed the cash flow sustaining the immigrants is from The City via welfare and then passed around. It did not have a good tone. I was not at all surprised that that was an area of riot. Without The City cash flow via electorate bludging, they would be in trouble and poorer still. Enoch Powell was right - swarms of British Empire migrants escaping their independent horror countries into England was a recipe for disaster.
My English grandson's other grandfather swam for freedom from Mao's maelstrom. Life was quite desperate enough there. He married a Kiwi Chinese and they lived near us in Mangere. Our son in law is well enough aware of what life is like for your "most people" having lived the life. He didn't get to go to university, having to work. But now he's a network engineer for one of your hated banks. He develops integrated systems across the world, such as to Dubai, where money flows from the oil fields back to the The City for recycling. You might be old enough to remember the worries about "recycling the petrodollars" from the late 1970s after the second oil crisis when it went to $40 a barrel. It seemed to me to not be a problem and sure enough, it turned out to not be a problem. Piles of money always find somewhere to go.
Our daughter works in a bank too in the communications field - informing people about the bank's activities.
You mentioned Kublai Khan and gold. I guess our English grandson [born not far from Peckham] is also a descendant of Genghis. His living is not from gold but from managing money - network engineer salary. Gold has had its day. Gold, food, fighting and bullets - we should not be seeing that again, though it seems you are interested in revisiting that nightmare and if there are enough like-minded people, you will indeed learn again why there is a better way of living than gold, food, fighting and bullets. Virtuous Victorian Values is the name of the game. They are free for the taking and using. There is no limit in the supply, just as there is no limit to pixelated phragmented photons in Cyberspace.
It was interesting to spend time in London this year. My old haunt was Britannic House, on Moorgate, along the road from the end of the City Line [which was an experience in itself]. That part of London was the heart of The City at the time. It was abuzz. That buzz has now migrated to Canary Wharf. Around Britannic House and the old City, it's now a quieter, elderly environment, still going of course, but more like a utility quietly churning out production. Down at Canary Wharf, hordes of young people are seething by the thousand, with whirlwinds of money surging through Cyberspace and around the planet. It's also an order of magnitude bigger and shinier than the old City, which is a dowdy leftover of a bygone era.
The world needs London and The City very badly, and even more so it needs Virtuous Victorian Values, which does not mean rehypothecated hyperinflated fiat fantasy debt splattered across the landscape with no visible means of support. The problem is in the political sphere with hordes voting to take opm. Unfortunately, the people of Peckham, and you, seem to think the fault lies with the tradesman who simply move the money around.
I'm a peaceable guy, but seem to be very good at firing bullets if needs be. So if you come for me or mine with your guillotine, I'll be ready and waiting. Our family did not survive various carnages around the world, working for centuries to make things better, to be blamed by Mindless Zombies who borrowed too much money and who bludged on opm.
Think more carefully next time about what you vote for.
Mqurice |
