… all you can do is do what you must. You do what you must do, and you do it well.
For every occasion there’s a line or two from the one and only Bob Dylan to meet the needs of the hour. What I do best is write. But just now – 06:38 GMT, December 13, 2019 – words fail me.
Like many others I knew what was coming from the exit polls after ten pm. Seven hours later I was up again. Rather than turn to the duplicitous Guardian for confirmation, I went to Facebook to have allies and fellow travellers tell what my heart already knew. Not surprisingly, given the early hour here, it fell to Australian friends to spell it out.
This from my good friend and magnificent painter, Sydney based Anne Penman Sweet.
For her part Anne’s compatriot, the transcendental Caitlin Johnstone, had this to say. And with her words I’ll sign off, wishing one and all a happy if subdued Christmas.
Someone Interfered In The UK Election, And It Wasn’t Russia
Ladies and gentlemen I have here at my fingertips indisputable proof that egregious election meddling took place in the United Kingdom on Thursday.
Before you get all excited, no, it wasn’t the Russians. It wasn’t the Chinese, the Iranians, Cobra Command or the Legion of Doom. I’m not going to get any Rachel Maddow-sized paychecks for revealing this evidence to you, nor am I going to draw in millions of credulous viewers waiting with bated breath for a bombshell revelation of an international conspiracy that will invalidate the results of the election.
In fact, hardly anyone will even care.
Hardly anyone will care because this election interference has been happening right out in the open, and was perfectly legal. And nobody will suffer any consequences for it.
Nobody will suffer any consequences for interfering in the UK election because the ones doing the interfering were extremely powerful, and that’s who the system is built to serve.
As of this writing British exit polls are indicating a landslide victory for the Tories. Numerous other factors went into this result, including most notably a Labour Party ambivalently straddling an irreconcilable divide on the issue of Brexit, but it is also undeniable that the election was affected by a political smear campaign that was entirely unprecedented in scale and vitriol in the history of western democracy. This smear campaign was driven by billionaire-controlled media outlets, along with intelligence and military agencies, as well as state media like the BBC.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been described as the most smeared politician in history, and this is a fair description. Journalist Matt Kennard recently compiled documentation of dozens of incidents in which former and current spooks and military officials collaborated with plutocratic media institutions to portray Corbyn as a threat to national security. Journalistic accountability advocates like Media Lens and Jonathan Cook have been working for years to compile evidence of the mass media’s attempts to paint Corbyn as everything from a terrorist sympathizer to a Communist to a Russian asset to an IRA supporter to a closet antisemite. Just the other day The Grayzone documented how establishment narrative manager Ben Nimmo was enlisted to unilaterally target Corbyn with a fact-free Russiagate-style conspiracy theory in the lead-up to the election, a psyop that was uncritically circulated by both right-wing outlets like The Telegraph as well as ostensibly “left”-wing outlets like The Guardian.
Just as Corbyn’s advocacy for the many over the plutocratic few saw him targeted by billionaire media outlets, his view of Palestinians as human beings saw him targeted by the imperialist Israel lobby as shown in the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby. For a mountain of links refuting the bogus antisemitism smear directed at Corbyn, a lifelong opponent of antisemitism, check out the deluge of responses to this query I made on Twitter the other day.
This interference continued right up into the day before the election, with the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg flagrantly violating election rules by reporting that early postal votes had been illegally tallied and results were “looking very grim for Labour”.
The historically unprecedented smear campaign that was directed at Corbyn from the right, the far-right, and from within his own party had an effect. Of course it did. If you say this today on social media you’ll get a ton of comments telling you you’re wrong, telling you every vote against Labour was exclusively due to the British people not wanting to live in a Marxist dystopia, telling you it was exclusively because of Brexit, totally denying any possibility that the years of deceitful mass media narrative management that British consciousness was pummelled with day in and day out prior to the election had any impact whatsoever upon its results.
Right. Sure guys. Persistent campaigns to deliberately manipulate people’s minds using mass media has no effect on their decisions at all. I guess that’s why that whole “advertising” fad never made any money.
I am not claiming here that the billions of dollars worth of free mass media reporting that was devoted to smearing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party had a greater effect on the election results than Brexit and other strategic stumbles in the party. I’m just saying that it definitely had a much greater effect than the few thousand dollars Russian nationals spent on social media memes in the US, which the American political/media class has been relentlessly shrieking about for three years. To deny that a media smear campaign the size and scope of that directed at Corbyn had an effect is the same as denying that advertising, a trillion-dollar industry, has an effect.
Which means that plutocrats and government agencies indisputably interfered in the British election, to an exponentially greater extent than anything the Russians are even alleged to have done. Yet according to British law it was perfectly legal, and according to British society it was perfectly acceptable. It’s perfectly legal and acceptable for powerful individuals to have a vastly greater influence on a purportedly democratic election than any of the ordinary individuals voting in it.
A free and healthy society would not work this way. A free and healthy society would view all forms of manipulation as taboo and unacceptable. A free and healthy society would not allow the will of members of one small elite class to carry more weight than the will of anyone else. A free and healthy society would give everyone an equal voice at the table, and look after everyone’s concerns. It certainly wouldn’t tolerate a few individuals who already have far too much abusing their power and wealth to obtain even more.
* * *
It’s a bleak morning here in Sheffield Phil as yesterday’s Tory election day rain continues to pour out of the skies. I have always feared that the 2017 election had been the best chance of a Corbyn led Labour victory – one the party did not have the confidence to see . Another two years of Brexit stasis has pissed more and more people off and just made it easier to smear and discredit Corbyn.
I have been fortunate to have met and campaigned with so many activists of all ages and backgrounds in North East Derbyshire and Penistone and Stocksbridge over the last 6 weeks. Their positiveness and commitment gives me hope for the future as we must surely come again.
It’ll take a good few walks out in England’s shrouded hills to shake off this sadness, Bryan. You up for one of ’em any time soon?
I think a more appropriate Dylan quote might be:
“Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl”
You may be onto something George. Let’s hear Jimi’s version of that song.
And while we’re on the subject of music, the best call I made today was taking the woofers out for a long walk, with phone and headset. I played Faure’s Requiem, then Mozart’s and if I’d had Verdi’s I’d have played that too …
Two other candidates for the perfect musical comment: The Doors’ “The End” and Mahler’s 6th Symphony – 90 minutes of terror followed by absolute annihilation.
IMO that first Doors album, closing with The End, was their best. Though the second, Strange Days, comes close. The End made an eerily fitting sound track for the best of the American movies about the war on the Vietnamese people, Apocalypse Now.
Everything Bryan said. Stroud was alive with Labour supporters yesterday. Among them were quite a few first time door knockers like me, who joined or rejoined Labour because of Jeremy Corbyn.
There was barely a Tory placard on show throughout the five valleys. Why bark when you’ve got a Dom?
This is a dark day, Brecon.
Well done !!! Boris crushed the remain establishment. Their legitimacy is over. Britain voted to leave ! Twice ! The English people are not stupid, they don’t want Socialism nor Communism to take hold on their soil, they don’t want to be screwed like the French, the German and so on… the EU will now bend over and do whetever Boris wants. The EU rule over England is finally over !!!
I’ve never been a fan of the EU. But this is a crushing victory for the ruling class. I’m gutted, and fearful for all that is to come.
The idea that Boris is not “the establishment” is risible.
I said the “remain”establishment… I know I’m giving Boris far more than I should at this point in time but as long as this is going in the right direction, away from the sinking ship that is the UE, away from antiquated ideologies, I’m fine with it.
Like I said, words fail me.
Yeah let’s get away from the sinking ship that is the EU and join the sunk ship that is the US.
The sunk ship that is the US ? I don’t see it that way. Despite all its pitfalls, the US still is and in my opinion will remain the driving force for this entire century. Want to bet ? Let’s meet here in Dec. 2099 !
I would rephrase your sentiment thus:
US still is and in my opinion will remain the driving force for this entire century THROUGH its pitfalls.
or if that’s too subtle for you:
The US has been the most brutally regressive power on Earth for the last hundred years.
– With a legacy of a country wide crumbling and collapsing basic physical infrastructure -from bridges and roads through to utility assets and servic provision – arising directly from its own brand of privatised turbo- feudalism which doesn’t do basic maintenance as it eats into elite profit accumulation for the sake of it.
– With its in the region of $22 trillion debt and rising.
– With its incontinent and incompetent military over relient on pork barrel over charging; which cannot even produce a functional modern fighter jet; with a poor quality of personnel even when I was in BAOR forty odd years ago.
– With its reserve currency petro- dollar monopoly scam about to tank – which will finally sink it’s inefficient economy and the parasitic values upon which it is based – arising from already taking place challenges to that monopoly.
– With its corruption of its stated founding values.
– With its childish obsession fantasy with being the biggest, baddest and bestest.
– With its ever wideing and dysfunctional economic, social, and political inequality.
This is a dead empire barely crawling never mind walking.
Some of the reason for this (which also applies in equal spades to the wannabe UK sidekick) can be found here:
http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2018/01/31/in-the-eternal-inferno-fiends-torment-ronald-coase-with-the-fate-of-his-ideas/
So yeah, Alaine. I’ll have some of this.
The avarage lifespan of a UK male is around 79. I’m about 13-14 years away from that. So mate, a month of my State Pension says before I skip this mortal coil the USA will go the same way as the old Soviet Union.
And because I like you today (I might not like you tomorrow) in addition to catching up on rhe history it’s well worth investing some serious study time on how real world systems and organisation actually works. There are plenty of good systems courses still out there.
Oh! And stop taking that blue pill.
Is this an attempt at parody to inject some dark humour into the situation?
Most people on these islands (myself included) are only alive thanks to socialist concepts put into practice such a National Health Service, social housing, the common good etc.
The idea that some sort of sticking it to some sort of establishment has occurred or is justified is the sort of puerile nonsense one encounters from the twelve year old management Rupert’s in suits.
The practical reality is more complex when dealing with the real world systems in place delivering basics in terms of food, medicine, constituent materials for on going processes etc. Just considering the logistical realities impacting on JiT systems of what is about to happen is bad enough.
But ignorance is bliss apparently and only a purely reactive political puerilism would observe how real world practicalities and systems operate in such a simplistic way. Certainly no one schooled and experienced in real world practicalities would come out with such gibbering complacent nonsense.
When the realities of this start to bite, and it will because no amount of wishful thinking is going to make it go away, the biggest noise of wailing and gnashing of teeth will come from those empty vessels who have made the most noise on this and these matters.
Neatly summed up in this cartoon:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Image24.jpg
Meanwhile, the brave Brexiteers have already been out in our patch. What was for many years a local Indian restaurant (now a burger bar) has over the past twenty four hours been daubed with racist graffiti in the form of the word “rapists.”. A clear reference to the Rotherham child grooming scandal.
Expect more of this sort of childish nonsense and worse from the direction of numpties who shout and bawl in the street when canvassed about ‘cultural Marxism’ and not wanting ‘Socialism’ or ‘Communism’ (in reality Corbyns Labour policies were standard basic Social Democratic norms necessary to the practical functioning of any society and the idea commonly accepted that what we have with the Conservative Party is anywhere near what Adam Smith described as Capitalism rather than feudal rentierism with its attendant social relationships modelled around the approach taken in the 1352 Statute of Labourers is simply laughable).
Probably the most appropriate metaphor to hand which meets the current situation is contained in an incident which occurred on a High Street in this Parish one summer day over thirty years ago.
Two maintenance engineers were sent out mid-morning to change out a faulty length of copper telephone cable. On arrival on site the three man cable gang were still in attendance struggling to get the replacement length of cable in the ground.
This was due to the fact that the cable was faulty as a result of engineers from the recently privatised from Socialism and Communism Sid (remember him) having paid a new gas pipe which had smashed the BT duct and damaged the cable, putting people out of service.
Five men (with three vehicles) stood round a freshly cut excavation with no one having a duct repair kit to hand. So, as you do, in need cicumstances, you put the kettle on for a brew. And then, by chance, a local highly placed Tieir Four Rupert and member of the District Board just happens to be passing in his car on the way back to his plush office on the thirteenth floor of Telephone House.
Having had the situation explained to him as to why five mutineers are stood around ‘doing nothing’ the Rupert came out with the following instruction:
To teach the gas company a lesson the engineers on site should immediately remove the gas pipe from the vicinity of the BT duct and cable.
What happened next was this: No one said a word. With a bit of eye contact the third man on the cable gang went to the back of the Cabling vehicle, retrieved a shovel and a pick and handed them to the Rupert. The e finders got in their vans, moved them a couple hundred yards down Ecclesfield High Street, parked them up, got out whatever seats were to hand (stools, eco chairs, cable drum) poured out a brew and sat supping tea to see whether the highly paid Rupert would be dumb enough carry out his own instruction?
After a few minutes the penny dropped and a chastened Rupurt lad the tools against the wall and got in his car to go back to his plush little office leaving those who actually know their arse from elbow, those with practical father’s than theoretical knowledge and experience to get on with doing a proper job rather than a bodge job.
And you know what: If anything like that was repeated today I’m not convinced that the outcome would be the same rather than the exact opposite. There are too many people who should know better more than willing to go along with such nonsense for the sake of a quite, convenient life. Too many frightened to say that the Emperor has got no clothes on.
Those who do know their arse from a hole in ground are now in a position of having to sit on deckchair, supping whatever is to hand, at the safest possible distance from the one itable fall out that is certainly going to ensure rather than be a willing participant.
Watching this who Witter on about not wanting ‘Socialism’, “Communism” or “Cultural Marxism” counting the spiked railings and ending up impaled on them as they surely will.
Have a nice day mate, wherever you are. But please, stop bei g a bleedin’ Rupert.
Regards.
Dave Hansell. Dead horse and donkey buyer.
No Dave, not parody. I fear Alain is being serious. In this he is mirror opposite to those Remainers who think (or thought) the EU issue trumped all others.
You’re right to think that for me, as an external keen observer, the EU issue trumped (such a lovely word) all others in this election. For 3 years, the remain side has done everything it could to oppose and reverse the 2006 vote (mirror to the Dems failed attempts at destroying Trump during the same period)… those deplorables that dared to venture against the know it all establishment had to be crushed like they were previously in France & Netherlands (2005) or Ireland (2008). We’ve just had Brexit confirmation vote #2. Very Bullish England and extremely bearish France.
This foreshadows what I hope will take place in Nov 2020… a complete annihilation of the Dems in the US ! Degenerate ideologies must be destroyed and some sanity restored and hopefully the Kali Yuga will be reversed.
Ah Kali Yuga, Julia Evola and neofascism. Now I see.
Corbyn refuses to resign… what else to expect from such a man ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OQK1f06fvU
This video features a talking head who says, “I don’t think Corbyn will resign.” This becomes “Corbyn refuses to resign”?? Incidentally, Corbyn HAS resigned. But perhaps everything becomes distorted with the reversal of the Kali Yuga?
Thanks George. I couldn’t be arsed. Alain is a good man, even if he is French (:-) but without a class perspective we can all of us fall prey to nonsensical ideas!
Not so sure about the good man part 🙂 You’re right, my knowledge of history is unfortunately very shallow (I really wish I had paid more attention to this subject matter when I was young) and I do have to rely on the opinion of others more informed than I am and whom I’ve come to trust (this includes Carl Benjamin, the “talking head”). Relying on others, in the domain of trading (as in most domains I suppose) is a sure track to disaster. Speaking from experience here ! One has to learn to trade and stop relying on others for making one’s own decisions. Can one still attempt at learning history and political history at the age of 55 ? I wonder tough…
Relying on others is the essence of trading. Without others, trading would be impossible.
Sorry, I ment financial trading…
Making things up to suit your own prejudices is not only not a good look it’s an approach which always ends up in a dead end Alain.
Those who would rather stick to the comfort blanket of lying to themselves, as is clearly the case here, are sadly doomed to perpetual disappointment as they are unable to face practical realities nor offer any practical and workable solutions to anything.
Best those who take such an approach stick to counting the railings rather than
seeking to impose choices which are harmful to the majority.
This anti-EU thing – which I understand is legitimate since they are a shower of bastards – seems to play into that notion of American anti-socialism. The idea seems to be to get away from this EU at all costs whilst not paying attention to the fact that what you are going towards is the US which is more terrifying than anything else I can think of. Ah but the US is NOT socialism therefore it’s “good” because we all know that socialism is “bad”. This could be at the heart of the biggest con of them all. It says, “Throw off the chains of that centralised bureaucratic totalitarian – and of course SOCIALIST, if not COMMUNIST evil! Free yourself!” whilst not telling you that “freeing yourself” means opening yourself up to ferociously parasitical corporatist forces where you don’t have a chance of any protections. This even extends to organisations like the NHS denounced, by our fearless Yankee friends, as “socialised medicine” which will “enslave us”.
The essence of this capitalist con is to turn everyone against the state by presenting “capitalism” as something entirely natural and free. What they don’t tell you is that this state is actually needed to support capitalism itself which wouldn’t last a day without it. But here’s where the hypocrisy comes in. When the state funds public services, this funding is highlighted – indeed trumpeted, and it “reduces everyone to an unnatural dependency”. But when the state funds the military, surveillance systems, supports the farmers, bails out banks etc., this isn’t so much deemed “natural” as …simply not mentioned at all. “Freedom” is always freedom for capitalists to exploit.
Indeed George.
This mantra that capitalist enterprises stand on their own two feet is not what happens in practice.
In fact what actually exists is nothing more than the parasitical rentierism of the feudal era. Right now their is Government money being allocated to localities known as The Community Fund. In this neck of the woods (Stocksbridge) a local developer and former local LP member and good friend of the Angela Smith/Steve Wilson fiefdom who now endorses the newly elected Tory MP (who, I kid you not – check out the BBC money expert Paul Lewis on social media – is currently making money out of charities charging them for rental usage on an App which matches food bank donations to food bank requirements) will likely be recieving a big slice ( if not all) as a contribution to redeveloping the local High Street which then, like the Fox Valley development which I understand received a proportion of EU grant funding, will then provide further lucrative rental income for the local lord of manor.
It can only be a matter of time before they go the whole hog and make the developer an actual real life Baron.
Similarly, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Unconventional Oil and Gas (Fracking) which existed from 2014-17 received in the region of 340k in donations from interested parties including not only extractive companies but also Global level (in financial terms) legal forms, some based in the US.
The lobbying return on that sum has paid off handsomely – with billions of pounds in direct taxpayer subsidies as well additional tax breaks which would produce banner headlines and wall to wall screaming from the TV screen if it was used for the public good rather than rent free handouts to profit at no cost with no return to the Exchequer.
This is not what Adam Smith recognised as Capitalism. It merely feudal rentierism with a lock of paint.
Paul Mason (before he went do lally) wrote how this has actually derailed the Capitalist process of renewal – referencing the systems observations and research of the Soviet era economist Kondratiev (who Stalin sent to the Gulags and subsequently executed for coming up with an description of reality which did not measure up to official doctrine).
Today, it is a deep irony that any scratching below the surface observation reveals that the current official enemy of Airstrip One, Russia, does welfare capitalism (which is what the UK had from the post war settlement till Nixon buggered up the global economy by coming off the gold standard) better than the official Guardians of Capitalism in the US/UK.
Whilst we mimic the Soviet era tick in a box Taylorism – but this time on steroids given this eras ability afforded by computing technology.
Socialism does exist in the West, it’s just that it only operates for the 0.1% and those who pimp for them (though looking at Alain’ s comments above some people will pimp this bullshit for free).
What is deeply disturbing is the impact of the pace of the technological substitution of work. The automation which devestated traditional blue collar industries was merely the low hanging fruit stage. AI technology is now moving up the levels swapping more and more service, middle management and middle class employment which will, and is already, hollowing out the middle class.
Five or six years back we had automated machines which could lay 1,000 bricks an hour quickly replaced by 3D building technology. Meanwhile, robotics had reached a pricing level in which it was possible for small enterprises which, for example, might employ five or six teams of five making and assembling small items like double glazed windows and frames or doors or whatever to replace every worker except the team foreman/leader with a single automated machine for as little as $25k.
We then had decision making algorithms which could replace the first couple of tiers of organisational management. Banks and other service sector employment opportunities have gone the same way as the car factories in the eighties with closures and banks of so called “self help” machines which require onsite instruction for anyone over a certain age who would rather deal with a human being at a till.
Now we have AI algorithms set to replace higher ranking financial analysts and it can’t be too long before attempts are made to replace political decision making and representation with automated AI.
The point being that the 1%/feudal Lords have always had one key problem in that no matter how mean they are to the peasantry they have always needed us to provide the labour to service their needs. Whether it is to put food on the table, build a mansion/stately home/palace, or extract and process resources they need to satiate their never ending need to accumulate and be the biggest, baddest and bestest.
As a result there has always been a need to share out some the resources and the resultant value with the plebian masses. Limiting the scope for wealth accumulation.
From that point of view the only way out is find a means of satisfying those needs without the requirement for the human Labour to meet those needs. AI development and wholesale substitution offers the potential for such a possibility. The end process of which would be to make everyone else surplus to requirements.
How far we are down that line is open to interpretation. However, the speed and pace of substitution is not only not being matched in terms of lesser paying bullshit employment but is not matched by job replacement per se.
Whether we like it or not there exists a strong likelihood that what we have considered to be “traditional” common sense tying in of resource availability necessary to survive and live to paid employment may well be ending in the not too distant future as AI automation levels reduce to closer and closer to zero the need for paid work.
A lot of people are in for a major wake and smell the coffee shock before I (at 65) shuffle off this mortal coil.
Your comment that “what actually exists is nothing more than the parasitical rentierism of the feudal era” reminded me of this marvellous footnote from Guido Giacomo Preparata in his remarkable book “Conjuring Hitler”. It’s a long quote but worth giving in full:
“So-called ‘democracy’ is a sham, the ballot a travesty. In modern bureaucratized systems, whose birth dates from the mid-nineteenth century, the feudal organization has been carried to the next level, so to speak. A chief objective of what Thucydides referred to in his epoch as synomosiai (literally ‘exchanges of oaths’), that is, the out-of-sight fraternities acting behind the ruling clans, has been to make the process of the exaction of rents from the population (a ‘free income’ in the form of rents, financial charges and like thefts) as unfathomable and impenetrable as possible. The tremendous sophistication, and the propagandistic wall of artfully divulged misconceptions surrounding the banking system …., which is the chief instrument wherewith the hierarchs expropriate and control the wealth of their supporting community, is the limpid testimony of this essential transformation undergone by the feudal/oligarchic organization in the modern era. The West has moved from a low-tech agrarian establishment built upon the backs of disenfranchised serfs to a highly mechanized post-industrial hive that feeds off the strength of no less disenfranchised blue- and white-collar slaves, whose lives are mortgaged to buy into the vogue of modern consumption. The latter-day lords of the manor are no longer seen demanding tribute since they have relied on the mechanics of banking accounts for the purpose, whereas the sycophants of the median class, as academics and publicists, have consistently remained loyal to the synomosiai. The other concrete difference between yesterday and today is the immensely increased throughput of industrial production (whose potential level, however, has always been significantly higher than the actual one, to keep prices high). As for the ‘democratic participation’ of the ordinary citizens, these know in their hearts that they never decide anything of weight, and that politics consists in the art of swaying the mobs in one direction or another according to the wishes and anticipations of the few having the keys to information, intelligence and finance. These few may at a point in time be more or less divided into warring factions; the deeper the division, the bloodier the social strife. The electoral record of the West in the past century is a shining monument to the utter inconsequence of ‘democracy’: in spite of two cataclysmic wars and a late system of proportional representation that yielded a plethora of parties, Western Europe has seen no significant shift in her socio-economic constitution, whereas America has become, as time progressed, ever more identical to her late oligarchic self, having reduced the democratic pageant to a contest between two rival wings of an ideologically compact monopartite structure, which is in fact ‘lobbied’ by more or less hidden ‘clubs’: the degree of public participation in this flagrant mockery is, as known, understandably lowest: a third of the franchise at best.
Thanks George this is appreciated.
A further, stark and deeply disturbing, example of the mechanics of this can be found here:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/repo-market-turmoil-are-we-staring-financial-abyss?utm_campaign=&utm_content=ZeroHedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
*Note: Apparently the “Repo-Market” referred to here is some sort of instrument/facility/process for short term overnight parking of surplus liquid funds to make more money.
The key explanatory passage seems to be here near the end of he article:
“This leads us to another and potentially more worrying development: increased access to the repo-market by hedge funds to increase their leverage. They seem to have been getting short-term funding from the repo-market to buy U.S. T-bills, which they have then re-invested in the repo-market to obtain more short-term funding to buy T-bills, etc. Using this “leverage-loop” they have been able amass very high leverage ratios.
The behavior of hedge funds is also the end-result of massive central bank interference in the global capital markets. When the yields of practically every financial asset class are squeezed to near-zero (or less!) due to artificial liquidity from the central banks, leverage becomes the only way to obtain yield sufficient for fixed-income investors.”
What this is saying is that the Central Banks (possibly through political motives and the kind of links described in the quote above) have been keeping the financial system and associated institutions and enterprises afloat through printing money (QE). Effectively subsidising profit levels through public funding adding to public liability and rising further public debt when the system crashes again.
As described in the conclusion:
“Thus, in their efforts to “save” the world economy, central banks have created a monster: a dysfunctional, extremely-speculative and highly-leveraged financial sector. All that is needed for it to unravel are rising rates in an some important, if obscure, corner of the capital markets—just like the repo-markets.
The Fed has been engaged in a desperate battle to avert this through its repo and “Not QE” -programs since September. However, even if successful, it’s very likely that these programs, not to speak of an “actual QE”, will just further aggravate the distortions in the financial markets, until they become unbearable.”
Such an outcome would have massive repercussions. Even interest rate rises in the market will result in the collapse of some privately owned vital public service utilities in the UK. The privatised water companies for example are now financially structured in such a complex way – with debts running into tens of billions of pounds – that analysis reports suggest any rise in market interest rates will see them go under like Thomas Cook.
It will be interesting to see the reaction of the Brexiteer’s hero now ensconced in Downng Street with his Henry VIII Statute of Declarations powers to the need to renationalise the water industry in the UK with public money (just like with some of the train companies) to keep the taps running? Not to mention the reaction of the Brexiteers themselves.
Point being that this sort of socialising profits for the feudal overlords and privatising risk for the peasantry – which snake oil salesmen like Alain, above, is pushing (what was that song/track from the film Easy Rider about the “Pusher Man?”) cannot be described as “Capitalism.”
Kipling’s poem about the the God of the Copybook headings springs to mind. As does the observation of an old, now no longer with us workmate:
“It says Daz on the side of buses but they don’t sell soap powder.
Stay chill George.
Your deceased workmate has reached beyod the grave to make my morning. I love his Daz observation!
You should have been there at the time and in the context. Everyone else in the room was stood or sat mouth agape trying to find a response which ended up as a collective “you can’t say that!”
As I was always on the same plane and wavelength of “The Beast”, as he was known, I was rolling about on the floor slapping thighs and biting the carpet.
As Kryten, of Red Dwarf fame would say: “We won’t see the likes of those days again.”