Monday 9 November 2009

Building up a bigger crash


Whilst the Bank of England continues to print money to service Government debt, Banks are busy stoking up the next crash via another pyramid scheme (rewarding themselves huge bonuses in the process too) ... for instance, take a look this US article (as it also applies/relates to the UK too), as well some of the key additional points I've summarised below:

“Interest rates are close to zero; in effect the Federal Reserve is subsidizing the risk-taking and bond trading that has allowed Goldman Sachs to produce billions in profits and that infamous $16 billion bonus pool (analysts say it could grow as high as $20 billion). The Treasury has lent banks money, guaranteed Wall Street’s debt and declared every firm to be a commercial bank … They are all ‘too big to fail’ and so free to trade as they please—on the taxpayer dime.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Morgan Stanley has concluded that the amount of cash circulating in the global economy is at its highest level by far since the firm began tracking it 30 years ago. This vast wave of hot money can find no profitable outlet in production, so it is being pumped into stock markets and speculation on commodity prices and currencies. The result of a colossal global asset bubble that must sooner or later burst."

If the money taxpayers had provided to banks was steered into traditional banking only, and commercial banking separated from speculative trading (e.g. by Government's re-instating a Glass-Steagall type act), this type of behaviour would not be possible. Bankers would not be able to use government cash to underwrite short-term speculation to fuel their massive bonuses again, and they wouldn't be able to call upon taxpayers to fund their failure again either (i.e. once their current pyramid scheme collapses).

Commercial banks focus on lending to real 'wealth creators', to enterprises/institutions adding real value for others as well as to the well-being of the economy. Creating real wealth takes time, energy and resources, and is not a short term decision/investment/gamble. On the other hand, 'wealth manipulation', adds no real value, except to the bankers, traders and the already wealthy (who benefit further from this manipulation of wealth - particularly when it's taxpayers money being used to pay for all the failure). 'Wealth manipulation' takes very little effort in terms of time, energy and resources (e.g. beyond the passing on of 'pieces of paper') so banks see it a much easier (and 'profitable' way) of 'making money' from money (i.e. the velocity, and profit, from money is much greater), particularly when all the risk (i.e. failure) is taken on by someone else (the taxpayer).

... and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work this out, so why have UK/US Government's chose not to heed such advice, and done absolutely nothing about splitting the banks up in this way? ... why have mainstream economists identified the fundamental flaws in the economic model? ... and why have the media been 'absent' in investigating this properly ... well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work all these out either ...

and fail again it will ... but wow - decades more misery to sell news* ... and as the crisis deepens ... an attempt to create more wars to deflect people's attention away from the immoral/guilty ... so they can continue to quietly profit from the system ... and so the newspapers can sell more news ...

For this to change, Ignoromics needs to reduce quickly ... and Poweromics needs to be challenged too ... if apathy prevails for much longer, the outcome is pretty clear ... 'war'


* NB Good news/success doesn't sell (only bad news and celebrity does).