Just going to home in on a gap in understanding for a few brief minutes.
Countless are the tweets declaring austerity as a war on the poor. However...
Walk with me in my twilight, unpopular thinking mode for a while.
It seems to me that what's happening is more of a readjustment. We understand now that money itself isn't behaving that well. It seems that those in wealthy positions of power tend to extort the system, often beyond the point of criminality to retain and gain wealth. It seems avenues of legal or potentially problematic but virtually untraceable tax avoidance are openly available for the £150k+ earning of the world, and often used.
That accounts for some of the individual abuses of the monetary system. Now lets layer on top corporate abuse. The scope is stunning. From insider & high frequency trading, to thousands of offshore tax havens. from the lowly picking up unpaid workers struggling to get off welfare, via the rent inflating landlords coining it in from the welfare state and blaming the soul that had to claim housing benefit, all the way up to government scale manipulation of currency markets, bond prices and lets not forget the power of political lobbying in cash for gain.
The vast array of abuses of money are laid out. So what's with this "War on the poor" thing? Well ... If only.
I see it more as the results of the system attempting to balance what a £ or $ is worth against the world but still within the terms of reference that nobody really cheats that much. It's a bogus assumption, but it's not a war on the poor in strict terms. It's a huge unsustainable cloud of debt and expectation for cash returns that hangs over all of us. At the moment it's adjustment time, and the huge hole in world finances is being adjusted by demolishing any and all support that was provided to the poor and ill. That all vanished. The heads full of money (breadheads?) will see it as simply unsustainable without question of why. The bottom line counts. Cut the deficits by cutting welfare. It's simple. But.
Yes ok, I can see that simplistic interpretation and why the money of the world protects it's interests that way, but it's simplistic and lives in a world of denial.
The system isn't working because it's being abused at any level you care to look at. Money in effect is being syphoned out towards large corporations and the rich list tax avoidance schemes faster than Mr & Ms Jones on the Clapham Omnibus can keep up. If you keep punishing Mr & Ms Jones for it ... disaster happens.
Ok. So I was wrong about expecting a market crash in 2010-11. I still think it would have happened i it wasn't for massive central bank / ECB intervention, but that's beside the point. We're here now. And here's what I'll cast out for now in my own limited sphere of knowledge.
The UK is going to be hit in April with cuts it didn't even know were coming. A huge number of people probably won't even realise where all the spare money has gone until June or July. Austerity cuts have been scheduled on a scale and depth beyond which even fairly switched on readers and observers will expect. I'm a cynical bugger, and even I'm caught out by finding new implications for the cuts about to start biting. Even smug little me is going to get a bigger bill or two come April, despite my best efforts.
So here's how I see it ...
The UK is in for a horrific 2013. The extent of which probably won't begin to bite home till late summer. By the time autumn swings around and official statistics have caught up, Britain will be already staring the kind of recession people have muttered about in the face. It won't just be a theoretical "As bad as the great depression" problem. It'll be here. Now. In pretty much everyone's face.
The British though are a docile race. It's fair to say the probability of civil disobedience on a massive scale will be much higher, but then again, the chances of the British getting of their arse's and doing anything about it are also reasonably slim. At this point though, we'll be diving back past "Poll Tax" riot potential in to new, uncharted realms.
The bad news is. Some of you will die as a result. I might be one of them. Cuts in healthcare will reduce life expectancy. The homeless can expect significantly shorter lifespans. Some of us will even commit suicide in the face of impossible odds. I'm afraid that all comes with the territory ... but .. while you die ..
Relax.
Smile.
It's not a war on the poor. It's simply a religious faith in money and it's protection taking precedence over life and humanity. The banks will be fine. Most the hedge funds will somehow survive. The core will survive. And .. that's all that matters ... right?
31 Jan 2013
24 Jan 2013
Ramble On
Today has had something rattling round my brain. It won't fit on twitter, so here, with my audience of zero, I'll log it instead.
Last night, Apple's share price fell around 10%, through the day there was no bounce at all, last I looked it was down around 12%. Everyone and his mothers brother has been ranting about $APPL on my slightly fiscal slanted twitter timeline for months. It's the saviour of America, responsible for a chunk of the GDP, a sure winner, tipped to reach over 1,000 share value. So I've heard. Well tonight it's around the 450-460 mark.
In theory, there should be a bunch of hedge funds and investors fantastically out of pocket. Confidence in America's entire stock market should have felt a bit of a tremor. But no. Something weird has happened. In general stocks have surged again. The dollar has barely felt any pain from it at all. It's almost as if nobody had any money in Apple at all, and nobody has suffered a loss.
It's nailed home to me the level of ... I don't whether to call it cognitive dissonance or double-think. In the world today. Lets call it double-think. Nicely Orwellian.
The markets are surging higher, finance ministers and politicians are proclaiming we are over the worst, that 2013 will see a return to expansion in Europe and America. Everything is fine. Europe is fixed. America doesn't have a debt problem. The world is fine.
Except it isn't. I only have my own perception of reality to go on, same as any of us. But I don't see the good times rolling. For the last 3 or 4 years in the UK, I've heard of countless employers laying off workers, the people I know are either trying to find better than temporary work (and failing), or stuck in low paid jobs with no hope of finding a better one. I also know of people who aren't technically unemployed, they either can't claim, or claiming and being forced in to a poverty job is less appealing than the cash in hand jobs they can get. I'm know I'm finding it harder to find new work to keep me going. I'm spending less than I was and caring more about finding a good deal than I was two or three years ago.
Town centres have slowly gained more vacant shops or pound stores where large chain stores used to be. I've suffered more crime against me in the last two years than I have for my entire lifespan before. People are talking about moving to much smaller housing because they can't afford where they are, one of them even to the point of only having bedrooms for the kids and sleeping on the sofa.
Of course some of this is my distorted perception. Maybe I've just been unlucky with the recent crime spree. But overall, I can't help get the feeling things are getting a lot worse on the ground ... from the plebs eye view.
Now I look back to the soaring stock markets and vast profits made by the banking sector ... and I ask ...
"From what?"
The system seems to be living in a dream. Like a cartoon coyote who doesn't realise it's run out of cliff yet. Today's schizophrenic reaction to Apple's loss in share price has really nailed it home to me. Either my perception of reality is horribly depressing and unfortunate, or the eventual crash is going to be totally horrific. Tonight I don't know which of those it is, but something is wrong somewhere.
Last night, Apple's share price fell around 10%, through the day there was no bounce at all, last I looked it was down around 12%. Everyone and his mothers brother has been ranting about $APPL on my slightly fiscal slanted twitter timeline for months. It's the saviour of America, responsible for a chunk of the GDP, a sure winner, tipped to reach over 1,000 share value. So I've heard. Well tonight it's around the 450-460 mark.
In theory, there should be a bunch of hedge funds and investors fantastically out of pocket. Confidence in America's entire stock market should have felt a bit of a tremor. But no. Something weird has happened. In general stocks have surged again. The dollar has barely felt any pain from it at all. It's almost as if nobody had any money in Apple at all, and nobody has suffered a loss.
It's nailed home to me the level of ... I don't whether to call it cognitive dissonance or double-think. In the world today. Lets call it double-think. Nicely Orwellian.
The markets are surging higher, finance ministers and politicians are proclaiming we are over the worst, that 2013 will see a return to expansion in Europe and America. Everything is fine. Europe is fixed. America doesn't have a debt problem. The world is fine.
Except it isn't. I only have my own perception of reality to go on, same as any of us. But I don't see the good times rolling. For the last 3 or 4 years in the UK, I've heard of countless employers laying off workers, the people I know are either trying to find better than temporary work (and failing), or stuck in low paid jobs with no hope of finding a better one. I also know of people who aren't technically unemployed, they either can't claim, or claiming and being forced in to a poverty job is less appealing than the cash in hand jobs they can get. I'm know I'm finding it harder to find new work to keep me going. I'm spending less than I was and caring more about finding a good deal than I was two or three years ago.
Town centres have slowly gained more vacant shops or pound stores where large chain stores used to be. I've suffered more crime against me in the last two years than I have for my entire lifespan before. People are talking about moving to much smaller housing because they can't afford where they are, one of them even to the point of only having bedrooms for the kids and sleeping on the sofa.
Of course some of this is my distorted perception. Maybe I've just been unlucky with the recent crime spree. But overall, I can't help get the feeling things are getting a lot worse on the ground ... from the plebs eye view.
Now I look back to the soaring stock markets and vast profits made by the banking sector ... and I ask ...
"From what?"
The system seems to be living in a dream. Like a cartoon coyote who doesn't realise it's run out of cliff yet. Today's schizophrenic reaction to Apple's loss in share price has really nailed it home to me. Either my perception of reality is horribly depressing and unfortunate, or the eventual crash is going to be totally horrific. Tonight I don't know which of those it is, but something is wrong somewhere.
21 Jan 2013
Games games games
A few quieter days have passed. A bit of time for reflection. This time thought experiments in game playing.
This one at least in part prompted by the few measures Obama did manage to implement regarding gun control. First lets appreciate the extremes of emotion and potential solutions.
On one extreme we have the "no guns at all" lobby, at the other is the "arm everyone" brigade, in between of course a myriad of combinations and choices including indifference. For once, lets not dwell on who's right and who's wrong. The first point worth considering is that any person selected at random across that entire spectrum will agree they don't want another massacre of children. That's a pretty major revelation if you can disengage from your own passionate viewpoint for long enough. All parties agree on a final desirable result, the problem is consensus on how to get there.
So there's your game set up. Common desire to prevent atrocities. Wide range of view points. So ... what happens? A compromise deal is produced by Obama. It doesn't satisfy those wanting much tighter gun control, and it doesn't satisfy those that want to arm everyone. This is a recurring pattern and is a leading cause of "kicking the can" on all sorts of problems.
In a pseudo game theory sense. The legislation produced is a result of multiple conflicting pressures for different solutions to a common problem. In game theory, this happens fairly often. Rather than an optimal outcome, a fudged or sometimes even worse possible outcome is the result.
Does this matter?
Well, in many instances. No. Humankind has been muddling along with fudged middle ground solutions for a long long time, and is likely to for the foreseeable future. In most cases, compromise solutions will sort of work for long enough for the next crisis to be averted a few years, then we can repeat the process once more.
The times when it does matter, are when the compromise solution is still harmful to a significant population.
All good clean fun, and it's a handy framework to have. Enables one to sit back and take a wider view of many issues in the world ... but just before that smug feeling takes hold...
There's a problem. Compromise is achieved due to conflicting pressures. It's not ideal, but that tends to be the result. Now if you sit back comfortable in the knowledge that another mediocre solution will appear, a source of pressure is removed and the end result will be skewed towards the side that shouted loudest.
Knowing all of the above doesn't remove the need to campaign, educate and shout for what you believe is right. It just makes it feel a little more like being a hamster stuck on a never ending treadmill. Keep running hamsters. It's frustrating, often pointless and the end result is almost never what you wanted ... but that's the way it works.
This one at least in part prompted by the few measures Obama did manage to implement regarding gun control. First lets appreciate the extremes of emotion and potential solutions.
On one extreme we have the "no guns at all" lobby, at the other is the "arm everyone" brigade, in between of course a myriad of combinations and choices including indifference. For once, lets not dwell on who's right and who's wrong. The first point worth considering is that any person selected at random across that entire spectrum will agree they don't want another massacre of children. That's a pretty major revelation if you can disengage from your own passionate viewpoint for long enough. All parties agree on a final desirable result, the problem is consensus on how to get there.
So there's your game set up. Common desire to prevent atrocities. Wide range of view points. So ... what happens? A compromise deal is produced by Obama. It doesn't satisfy those wanting much tighter gun control, and it doesn't satisfy those that want to arm everyone. This is a recurring pattern and is a leading cause of "kicking the can" on all sorts of problems.
In a pseudo game theory sense. The legislation produced is a result of multiple conflicting pressures for different solutions to a common problem. In game theory, this happens fairly often. Rather than an optimal outcome, a fudged or sometimes even worse possible outcome is the result.
Does this matter?
Well, in many instances. No. Humankind has been muddling along with fudged middle ground solutions for a long long time, and is likely to for the foreseeable future. In most cases, compromise solutions will sort of work for long enough for the next crisis to be averted a few years, then we can repeat the process once more.
The times when it does matter, are when the compromise solution is still harmful to a significant population.
All good clean fun, and it's a handy framework to have. Enables one to sit back and take a wider view of many issues in the world ... but just before that smug feeling takes hold...
There's a problem. Compromise is achieved due to conflicting pressures. It's not ideal, but that tends to be the result. Now if you sit back comfortable in the knowledge that another mediocre solution will appear, a source of pressure is removed and the end result will be skewed towards the side that shouted loudest.
Knowing all of the above doesn't remove the need to campaign, educate and shout for what you believe is right. It just makes it feel a little more like being a hamster stuck on a never ending treadmill. Keep running hamsters. It's frustrating, often pointless and the end result is almost never what you wanted ... but that's the way it works.
7 Jan 2013
Further down the sprial
Thoughts on crumbling empires.
This started from a bit of a thought experiment I've been tinkering with. I wondered if for a change, I'd have the guts to announce future predictions on what happens next in Europe and America. After batting the ideas around for a while, I realised I couldn't, but ... I could narrow it down.
I'm basing this on the concept of de-leveraging that's occurring in the world. It's not the banks rebalancing books to safe levels in particular, and the upper say 20% of America and Europe certainly aren't loosing much in the way of creature comforts. All the correction of unsustainable debt appears to be falling on the poorer end of society through tax hikes, food inflation, welfare and healthcare cuts. This is where the missing billions of correction to the system appear to be coming from.
Now I tried to guess how this would play out. A fair number of analysts are predicting a turn around for national finances in 2013. "We're through the worst" sort of thing. I don't buy that so much. In the UK cuts are only just starting to bite, in Spain and Greece lost tax revenue from the oceans of unemployed and an increasing unwillingness or inability to pay tax are undermining any recovery, and it's just beginning. As I see it, 2013 is the year when all the Austerity talked about in 2011 & 2012 is finally going to bite for millions.
There's a disconnect to contend with though. I'm not in the grand conspiracy theory set. I tend to think the elites, rich list, 1%, 10%, 20%, whatever you want to call them act more though two things. Greed and a lack of empathy. From earlier scribbles, you'll know I see greed as a human problem that covers the entire spectrum from those in poverty, right to the top. The lack of empathy is more of a kicker. The end result is that top say 15% of wealth in any country doesn't really have a clue what all the tax cuts and care cuts mean in real terms for millions of less well off people.
But... It's not only the 15% that will politically support and maintain any measures that preserve the status quo of the top, it's anyone who believes they are near that bracket (even when demonstrably the intended cuts will leave them or very close relatives worse off), and the lovely Mass Media. The likes of Fox News and the putrid Murdoch's of this world are in with the top percentile. Far too many uncritical thinkers just go along with the political spin, and at time down right lies from low grade media aimed at them. They won't even notice huge stories being skipped entirely by the press and media. When things get bad later, they'll blame Muslim's or the Polish or the Socialists, or the unemployed. Whatever Fox News and Co. aim the cross hairs at.
So we have a system of inequality that is trying very hard to maintain equilibrium, and *that's* why I can't predict much. Logically, you'd expect things to fall apart in to fiscal defaults, companies going bankrupt and social unrest. However, with the vast majority of money in the world selfishly protecting it's own interests, and a big chunk of the population blindly following the resulting rhetoric ...?
I see two options ... That's as good as I can get it.
Either the interests of the money effectively win. That is, the poor are ground further and further in to debt slavery and ill health. Inequality soars, but the state puts in place increasingly draconian policing and social control. Eventually it wouldn't matter if three major banks all did fail, or if every pension pot in the land got emptied. Once the oppression reaches a certain state, what's the public going to do about it even if the main stream media is kind enough to let them know about it?
Or! The more optimistic version. Things break before we find ourselves living as slaves in police states. Major losses are sustained by the financial sector and hit a big chunk of the 15% top end. I say optimistic. Actually it's almost as miserable as the other option. You could reasonably expect major social unrest and a period of huge political and financial uncertainty before things get any better.
Fun huh? Yup. That's how I see the two main potential outcomes of the current situation.
Oh wait.
Except...
War.
But who is brave enough to predict the next war in scale, location, involvement or scope?
Not me. But it is the other option.
This started from a bit of a thought experiment I've been tinkering with. I wondered if for a change, I'd have the guts to announce future predictions on what happens next in Europe and America. After batting the ideas around for a while, I realised I couldn't, but ... I could narrow it down.
I'm basing this on the concept of de-leveraging that's occurring in the world. It's not the banks rebalancing books to safe levels in particular, and the upper say 20% of America and Europe certainly aren't loosing much in the way of creature comforts. All the correction of unsustainable debt appears to be falling on the poorer end of society through tax hikes, food inflation, welfare and healthcare cuts. This is where the missing billions of correction to the system appear to be coming from.
Now I tried to guess how this would play out. A fair number of analysts are predicting a turn around for national finances in 2013. "We're through the worst" sort of thing. I don't buy that so much. In the UK cuts are only just starting to bite, in Spain and Greece lost tax revenue from the oceans of unemployed and an increasing unwillingness or inability to pay tax are undermining any recovery, and it's just beginning. As I see it, 2013 is the year when all the Austerity talked about in 2011 & 2012 is finally going to bite for millions.
There's a disconnect to contend with though. I'm not in the grand conspiracy theory set. I tend to think the elites, rich list, 1%, 10%, 20%, whatever you want to call them act more though two things. Greed and a lack of empathy. From earlier scribbles, you'll know I see greed as a human problem that covers the entire spectrum from those in poverty, right to the top. The lack of empathy is more of a kicker. The end result is that top say 15% of wealth in any country doesn't really have a clue what all the tax cuts and care cuts mean in real terms for millions of less well off people.
But... It's not only the 15% that will politically support and maintain any measures that preserve the status quo of the top, it's anyone who believes they are near that bracket (even when demonstrably the intended cuts will leave them or very close relatives worse off), and the lovely Mass Media. The likes of Fox News and the putrid Murdoch's of this world are in with the top percentile. Far too many uncritical thinkers just go along with the political spin, and at time down right lies from low grade media aimed at them. They won't even notice huge stories being skipped entirely by the press and media. When things get bad later, they'll blame Muslim's or the Polish or the Socialists, or the unemployed. Whatever Fox News and Co. aim the cross hairs at.
So we have a system of inequality that is trying very hard to maintain equilibrium, and *that's* why I can't predict much. Logically, you'd expect things to fall apart in to fiscal defaults, companies going bankrupt and social unrest. However, with the vast majority of money in the world selfishly protecting it's own interests, and a big chunk of the population blindly following the resulting rhetoric ...?
I see two options ... That's as good as I can get it.
Either the interests of the money effectively win. That is, the poor are ground further and further in to debt slavery and ill health. Inequality soars, but the state puts in place increasingly draconian policing and social control. Eventually it wouldn't matter if three major banks all did fail, or if every pension pot in the land got emptied. Once the oppression reaches a certain state, what's the public going to do about it even if the main stream media is kind enough to let them know about it?
Or! The more optimistic version. Things break before we find ourselves living as slaves in police states. Major losses are sustained by the financial sector and hit a big chunk of the 15% top end. I say optimistic. Actually it's almost as miserable as the other option. You could reasonably expect major social unrest and a period of huge political and financial uncertainty before things get any better.
Fun huh? Yup. That's how I see the two main potential outcomes of the current situation.
Oh wait.
Except...
War.
But who is brave enough to predict the next war in scale, location, involvement or scope?
Not me. But it is the other option.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)