Student protester has a point...

Banking Reform Debate

Notwithstanding the talking out of the Financial Services (Regulation of Deposits and Lending) Bill on Friday as predicted here, it appears that a new 3 hour debate on banking reform has been scheduled for Monday, 29th November 2010.

Michael Meacher MP (Labour, Oldham West & Royton) has prompted the debate with this motion:

"That this House, concerned that no action has so far been taken which would prevent a recurrence of the financial crash, calls upon the Government to establish a clearing house for approval of all financial derivatives and to set in place alternative mechanisms to remove the implicit taxpayer guarantee, other than to purely deposit-taking banks, in the event of any future banking collapse."

We understand that the two Tory sponsors of the above Bill, Douglas Carswell (Conservative, Harwich & Clacton) and Steve Baker (Conservative, Wycombe), will be contributing to the debate.

How deliciously apolitical of them all!

Posted by C for Apolitical Dave.

Irish Banking Crisis

Three days of wall to wall coverage of Ireland’s debt crisis, and still the banks hold onto power.

On Monday morning I heard a contributor on the BBC’s 5Live, speaking of the events over the weekend, in which he reminded us that this whole global financial crisis started with American Sub-prime Mortgages. Where he claimed, “mortgages where sold to people who couldn’t really afford them”. Convenient as it is to blame the little man, this isn’t entirely true.

Maybe it’s a bit late in the day to be going on about this particular subject, but I’m not convinced that everyone gets it yet. The underlying flaw of the American Sub-prime Market was greed on the part of the bankers. Let’s look at the whole process.

The Current Irish Banking Crisis explained

A good story has just landed in the apolitical inbox....

Young Paddy bought a donkey from a farmer for £100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day he drove up and said, 'Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey's died.'

Paddy replied, 'Well then just give me my money back.'

The farmer said, 'Can't do that. I've already spent it.'

Paddy said, 'OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.'

The farmer asked, 'What are you going to do with him?'

Paddy said, 'I'm going to raffle him off.'

The farmer said, 'You can't raffle a dead donkey!'

Paddy said, 'Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead.'

A month later, the farmer met up with Paddy and asked, 'What happened with that dead donkey?'

Paddy said, 'I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at £2 each and made a profit of £898'

The farmer said, 'Didn't anyone complain?'

Paddy said, 'Just the guy who won. So I gave him his £2 back.'

Paddy now works for the AIB.

Financial Services (Regulation of Deposits and Lending) Bill 2010-11

Surprise, surprise! No time today for the 2nd reading of the Financial Services (Regulation of Deposits and Lending) Bill 2010-11. Don't say I didn't tell you!

Time for Monopoly Money

The last few weeks have been a living nightmare! I am becoming over whelmed by a growing sense of despair. The banks are going to get away with it!

The Hayek Lecture at the LSE, where Professor Huerta de Soto shamelessly promoted his books, Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship and Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cyclesbut told us little we didn’t already know.(Although he did have the good grace to acknowledge to the audience that there was nothing stopping us as a nation from paying off our debts simply by handing back the money we owe, once we had pulled our fingers out and printed it.) Lecture transcript.

Then last week the Channel 4 documentary “Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story” about the monstrous size of the national debt, in which I counted four previous Chancellors, none of whom said anything about who has the power to create money in this country. Indeed Geoffrey Howe’s only worthwhile contribution was to claim to have read Adam Fergusson’s book When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-Inflation.  An hour and a half of prime time television which wasted 45 minutes looking at the philanthropic building works of 19^th century industrialists in the north east of England. The presenter asked us to marvel at what had been achieved when the cost of the public sector only accounted for around 15% of the national economy. One wonders if the “1947 Town and Country Planning Act” might have been a better choice of subject for this program.

Radio 4 programme 31st October 2010

In a week when I have had a letter published in the Newbury Weekly News expressing my concern that the press is doing nothing to inform the people of this country about the issues surrounding monetary reform, the BBC has broadcast a very interesting program about Quantitative Easing.

The program was on Radio 4 on Sunday 31 October at 02:30 Hrs GMT, half an hour after the clocks had gone back, so in effect half past three in real money. I am sure that the Beeb will consider its duty to the listening public to be fulfilled, and that it is informing us all of the issues of the day, but who in their right mind is going to be listening to radio 4 at that time of the night? (Obviously I was, but you can draw your own conclusions from that.)

The issuing of billions of “printed” pounds by the Treasury is no small matter, and one wonders whether such a topic shouldn’t have attracted a more prominent slot in the radio schedule. Whose agenda is the BCC working towards?