Friday, January 23, 2009
For Evan Davis
Evan Davis just had a row with Gordon Brown on Radio 4's Today that massively raised my estimation of the former and lowered even further my estimation of the latter. Davis seriously got in among Brown and exposed the implausible (and, maybe, deluded, it is hard to tell if he believes his own words) nature of his position. Stripping out the noise, Brown is saying he did all the right things as Chancellor and that he can't, therefore, be blamed for this unprecedented crisis. Everything is wrong with this in detail - he helped create the conditions that will now ensure that Britain will suffer more than most and he took his economic advice solely from the City - but it's the general point that matters as it implies that, along with his City buddies, he is refusing to learn any lessons. All crises are likely to be unprecedented. Crisis A will not be the same as Crisis B and it is probable that anything resembling Crisis A is very rare indeed, if not actually unprecedented. In short, all planning for specific crises is likely to be futile. What matters is ensuring your systems are robust and complex enough to survive the crises that will come. And they will, much more often than people think, come. Crisis A may be rare, but so are Crises B to Z. Brown failed to preserve a robust system. Evan Davis exposed his economic illiteracy - and, indeed, that of the City. Go, Evan.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I'm glad it was Davies interviewing Brown - he exposes cant far more effectively than the belligerent Humphries.
ReplyDeleteBut why did he call Brown and 'average' Chancellor? Even without the current crisis, he's ruined pensions for the private sector, loaded up off-balance sheet debt through PFI and sold our gold at the bottom of the market. He's poured cash into the public sector with a very poor return in terms of productivity.
A little like fail safe systems in Planes. You always have a backup system, and indeed planes crash, but air travel survives because it is safe as a result of the redundancy built into the physical system and the operating system.
ReplyDeleteBanks operating as one big bank by in effect pooling their risks together was in contrast to the above, BUT this is only applies to the physical part of the system.
Where was the redundancy built into the operating system? or the the imbalance brought about by the rise of developing nations, or China in short.
What happened in Banks is also happening in government. We are pooling risks into bigger organisations such as the Eu which are in effect in control of financial regulation here in the UK, (case in point Basel II), instead of keeping power as close to the centre as possible, where we can craft a backup plan. In short Crash Gordon also pooled the risk, by sidelining the national interest.
Dead man walking...
ReplyDeleteDear God I hope so, Ian Russell.
ReplyDeleteAny man with an ounce of honour (and without a 'personality disorder') would have resigned before now - or at least called a general election.
What on earth are the Tories doing?
What a horrible person Brown is and what a spineless regime he sits atop. This is what happens when something is conceived in lies.
ReplyDeleteLike Eric Morecambe, Broon did all the right things - but not necessarily in the right order.
ReplyDeleteI'm not normally this pessimistic but I don't hold much hope for the election and David ''Lightweight'' Cameron either.
ReplyDeleteWe're doooomed!
One of the golden rules of business used to be that you do not carry on trading when insolvent, put crudely when you can't pay your bills, it's illegal, shut up shop. This worked for years when businesses were privately owned or backed by a sensible group of shareholders, year on year sales increases were not the driving force, it was possible to sell fifteen percent less this year than the year before. Companies weren't ran by financial whizz kids but they had a strong sense of survival.
ReplyDeleteOn balance they survived. Then the downfall began, probably with Slater Walker, accomplished asset strippers.
Slowly but surely businesses, many of whom were poorly managed and needed either fine tuning or drastic alteration, were swallowed up by the financial behemoth, you are only as good as your last quaters results. Banks, once your supplier of mutually beneficial finance became dominated by the city ethos, normal relationships disappeared, the banks results mattered above all else, year on year growth, nothing else.
The media, none of whom understand business, only see it as the world of finance which as we know is parasitical, it takes everything, returns nothing.
It would appear that the entire rotting, gambling edifice has traded whilst insolvent for years, aided by useless regulators and politicians lining up their post politics gravy train.
Browns horizon is the city, that and nothing else, finance, as we all know, he thinks he understands, he understands nothing, knows nothing, has
zero powers of reasoning. Surrounded as he is by mainly fifth rate pieces of shit there are zero checks and balances on him.
Who will rid us of this troublesome moron ?
Our jails are full of petty criminal whose misdemeanour's are as nothing compared to the wholesale theft and fraud perpetrated by the financial world.
Why did Evan Davies allow Brown to say that he had to deal with inflation in 1997 ?. Kenneth Clarke had brought inflation under control by 1997. It was down to 2.5% and Kenneth Clarke was taunted by Labour that he had not reached 2.4%. This is fact but apparently Evan Davies allowed Brown to get away with it unchallenged.
ReplyDeleteBrown stayed with the Conservative financial programme for 2 years but then raided the Pension system for 5 billion Pounds each year and we are now seeing the collapse of the Pension system.
Unemployment had also been falling month on month for nearly the previous 2 years prior to 1997.
It is well known that Brown inherited what was called at the time "a golden scenario".
Should not Evan Davis have taken this up with Brown ?
I've been in London for the day. A lot of tired, anxious, unwell-looking, pasty-faced folks about. Shudder. You might as well diss one of London's pigeons as Brown, though. Perhaps one of those ones which still slithers around on stumps after its feet fell off. Shameless and desperate, the pair of them! And by refusing to admit he might have played a part in recent events, Broon has boxed himself in. He cannot now remove some of the other walking dead - King, Turner, Darlink et al. They are all in this together, it would seem. Come the Revolution ...
ReplyDelete'Go Evan' was exactly what I thought during that interview.
ReplyDeletePlease do not give us any more of Peston - what I think of him is unprintable.
I did not hear the whole interview because Mr Brown's steam roller repetition tactics drove me mad.
A point to consider: is Brown (double) counting our (saver's) deposits in banks as the money that will be paid back to other parties?