Tower Hamlets Labour AM thinks hedge funds ‘add value’

Saturday’s Progressive London conference was peppered with Labour politicians. They did their best to stretch the word Progressive to breaking point.
John Biggs, the Labour Assembly Member (and Tower Hamlets stalwart) astounded the audience with his comments.
On a Saturday, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie, he highlighted his credentials of working in the City of London.
He told us that hedge funds added value to our economy (while the Chinese economists in the main hall were saying the opposite)…. how we had to ‘work with the City’… how it was a nostalgic dream for manufacturing to return to London………
This was a performance of an unreconstructed New Labour politician in thrall to the City and the banks.
Northern Rock, the collapse of the banks all seemed to pass by…..
He also came out against any EU regulation of the City…. which rather says it all. He made a comment that we don;t need Europeans to regulate us.. well, we wouldn’t if the UK Labour Government had the guts to do something (Darling’s speech last week was widely derided as Labour’s final capitulation to Finance)
If Singapore can operate as a financial centre, a manufacturing centre and a magnet for tourism why not London?
In any case his old boss, Ken Livingstone, told the main meeting that indeed we need to bring back manufacturing to the Thames Estuary….

Incredible..

Get into more debt

I wonder if you can help me out on this one….
BA has just arm-twisted 7,000 people to work for free for a month – in effect take a 8% pay cut.
The message from the top is: take pay cuts, reduce your pay expectations or lose your job.
How does that square up with the government encouraging us to go shopping, to ’save the economy?
How are we going to do with that if we get less money in our hands?

Ah, now I get it…. we are meant to borrow more.. on credit cards.. to make up for the drop in income.
So that’s it.. the problem and the solution are the same!

When the executives decide to return their bonuses from, say the last three years when they were running their businesses in to the ground …… and energy bills for example halve, then we can consider ‘helping out’.
Meanwhile, we could ask the Trade Union Leaders to work for nothing -since they are standing at the sidelines, totally bemused and ineffective.

Farid Bakht
Parliamentary Candidate, Bethnal Green & Bow

French want nuclear subsidy

French giant, EDF, owned mostly by their government now says that it will not invest in a new range of nuclear plants unless the British government offers generous subsidies.
Yet again, new labour is found out. Ed Miliband recently said nuclear would receive no subsidies and would be the answer to our low carbon energy sector.
Wrong.
Nuclear always costs much more than they first day and is a gift to suppliers.
EDF fears that wind generators will outflank it.
Isn’t that a turn around ?

farid Bakht

Source : Ft.com

After the election: savage cuts

The Daily Mail creates the slogans.
The Telegraph reveals more what the elite really think.
This month Telegraph has taken to tell David Cameron to forget about the centre ground and go back to being a Thatcherite. Pretty certain that the Tories will win the election, the Telegraph wants Cameron to spell out what he is going to do for the City of London and international financiers.
The economic scenario is scary (forget the green shoot nonsense which is all about us lulling us into spending again). Have a look at some of these right-wing quotes.
“The UK will soon have a budget deficit of 15pc of GDP. The Government will be selling gilts equivalent to 20pc of our national income for at least three successive years. To say this is the worst fiscal crisis in this country’s peace-time history is an understatement.”

“The importance to our tax base of financial services and housing meant the bursting of the credit bubble was bound to hammer government revenues. Combine that with the retirement of millions of baby-boomers and 2010-14 was always going to be difficult.”

“If Cameron doesn’t say (he will make massve cuts) ……. the UK will soon lose its Triple-A credit rating. Big institutions will then be forced to dump UK gilts – leading to a disastrous spike in yields. Interest rates right across the economy will balloon, whatever the Bank of England does. “
“For international debt markets, the name of the game is supply – how many gilts will be issued, and when. So if the Tories don’t show how they’ll issue fewer gilts, the Government will have to pay much more for credit, leading to even deeper spending cuts.”

“Unless Cameron starts building the political consensus now, getting the country squarely behind the need to spend less, the markets simply won’t believe he’ll actually will cut spending when he gets into office.”
“The stark truth is that the UK’s ability to roll over its debts is in grave danger”.
According to the Telegraph, by not talking about this subject, the political classes are out of touch.
“The country knows full well we’ve long lived beyond our means. The public is screaming for someone to take control.”
David Davis says there should be a debate about how to cut public spending
For a Tory then to talk about cutting Trident and renegotiate PFI contracts (which have fattened many a private company) is extraordinary. He also made the familiar call to cut public sector pensions.
” During the coming few years, our fiscal meltdown will make it tougher than under Thatcher, tougher than the IMF debacle of the mid-1970s.”

In case this makes you think it best to vote for New Labour, forget it. It will be worse with them. The last twelve years have shown how Brown (Chancellor and PM) has bent over backwards to prove his credentials and gain some brownie (no pun intended) points from the money-men. They would cut even more than the Tories to show they meant business and retain Britain’s credit rating..
Nick Clegg, in trying to get into bed with either party in government, will ask Vince Cable to persuade us that There Is No Alternative.
TINA makes a comeback …… a few months after all the banks went under………..

Now do you understand why they are diverting everyone with red herrings (H1N1, MPs pay…. Bankers’ bonuses)……. ?
Somehow I think the people aren’t that easily fooled. The problem is they are not sure who provides an alternative…………….

Farid Bakht

Who controls the money? (4)

“The modern banking process manufactures currency out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented…….If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the banks create currency”

Lord Josiah Stemp, former director of the Bank of England (1937)

Who controls the Money? (3)

“By this means (fractional reserve banking) government may, secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft”

John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920)

Who controls the Money? (2)

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before morning”
Henry Ford

Who controls the Money? (1)

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws”
Amschel Rothschild

House prices fall back to 2004 levels

The average house price has fallen to less than £155,000, a level last seen five years ago, according to the Halifax house price index.
The lender said average property prices fell by 1.7% during April, a drop of 17.7% over the past year.
They expect the falls to continue.
The house price to earnings ratio stands 4.26 in April.
This compares with a peak of 5.84 in July 2007. Unfortunately for all those trying to talk up the market, the average ratio of house prices to income is less than 3.5.
Moreover, incomes are not going up – have a look at how employers are taking the opportunity to demand pay freezes and even cuts. Then, there is the case of unemployment continuing to rise for a few years more. So we should not expect incomes to remain static and a ‘bottom of the market’ when the ratio hits 3.5. Instead, prices will follow incomes further down, in a negative spiral.
Finally, it’s still very difficult to actually obtain a mortgage or avoid some hefty fees charged by supposedly ‘nationalised’ banks.
Analyst Howard Archer believes prices will fall to an average of less than £135,000 – a fall of 33% from the 2007 peak of £199,612.

“Cuts” is a four letter word

The budget has come and gone. The same cannot be said for the worst recession since World War Two.
Both New Labour and the Conservatives are playing games. They are not being straight with us. With both eyes on the election, they think they can continue to patronise us and take the public for fools.
People are deeply worried. They are hanging on their jobs and juggling their bills. What they need in times of trouble is for political leaders to level with them.
Brown and Darling have become fiction writers, with their absurd claim that the economy will grow at 3.5% in the year after next. They also would have us believe that the UK economy will resume growth in 2010. The IMF (itself too slow) says the UK will shrink by more than 4% this year.
So why are Brown and Darling doing this? They need to get the bond traders to buy a few hundred billion pounds worth of Government Bonds (IOUs) because with unemployment set to rocket and businesses go to the wall, the government will receive less money. To fund their spending programmes, they will need to borrow.
Unfortunately, the Bankers and Bond Traders are back in the driving seat. They will demand higher interest rates on the IOUs. If not,they will “go on strike”.
To avoid this catastrophe, two things will happen:
a) the government will cave in and pay higher rates (the other side of the election)
b) they will make breath-taking cuts in public expenditure (again after amay 2010)

Both the Conservatives and New Labour are playing a game – instead of CUTs they prefer to say “efficiency savings without touching frontline services”.
In real terms government sdepartment pending will fall by around 3% every year over the next decade.
This means hammering education and health – the first to suffer will be the public sector workers with pay freezes or worse (the propaganda is that only the private sector is under the cosh while nurses and teachers are apparently up their with bankers in terms of pay and benefits!)
In 1976, the IMF and the City of London forced Old Labour to make dramatic cuts .. “as a sign of intent”.
In 2010, both will insist on the new Conservative government to do the same. Brown would do the same in the unlikely event of returning.
Meanwhile, voters are going to have a think about this one – if you shift your vote from Brown to Cameron or back, what will be the point of you putting your ‘X’ against either party?
The recession is going to get a lot worse by election time. And the main political parties will continue to spin and fabricate.

Farid Bakht