Thursday, January 22, 2009
Time to be a Warlord
I wonder what 'Sir' Fred - 'Fred the Shred' - Goodwin is up to these days. He is, of course, the world's worst banker, the man who destroyed RBS. One would like to think that, wracked with remorse, he is either sitting in a darkened room with a bottle of cheap (obviously) whisky and a service revolver or doing good work among the poor, cleaning toilets etc.. But I guess not. Thanks to him and his friends, I shall be a pauper next time I leave the country. You see, the UK, says Jim Rogers, has nothing to sell so, even at its present levels, the pound is, like Wile E. Coyote, running on air. Oh I don't know, we can sell a few used bankers and there's all this stuff lying around - lamp posts, garages, wheelie bins, trees, giant baby buggies, aluminium picnic tables with plastic, gingham-patterned surfaces, probiotic yoghurt - we could flog off cheap. Of course, Rogers is an 'investment guru' so there is no reason whatsoever to believe a word he says. But it's hard not to feel a touch edgy. Are we, in fact, broke? I think we should be told. If everything collapses and the country is about to descend into barbaric tribalism, then I should be signing on for the warlord course at LSE.
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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.
The University of East London might be a bit more hands on. Still, it depends on your risk management strategy as to how soon you believe you will need it.
ReplyDeleteRumour has it Fred's gone to ground in a van, abandoned in one of those prime parking places at Edinburgh airport reserved for the RBS, after changing his name to Cyril Badloss. Someone I know who works for the bank and who over the past 5 years gained more edge than a broken bottle now skulks around with his tail between his legs, awaiting the coup de grace.
ReplyDeleteBring it all on baby, Alistair has the answer, print the stuff by the truckload, loadsamoney.
That'll be the same Jim Rogers who told us all this time last year that oil would go to $500 a barrel. That commodities where the only worthwhile asset to invest in, and China the only worthwhile country.
ReplyDelete'Investment guru' indeed!
Go on holiday in Poland instead: the zloty's looking equally peaky.
You're very wide of the mark there Bryan. According to Adair Turner on the Today programme this morning, our current crisis is more the fault of middle ranking, moderately paid economists at the likes of the IMF and the Treasury and not highly remunerated directors such as Goodwin with their fiduciary rsponsibilties to investors and shareholders etc etc. And, the day after Obama imposes a wage freeze at the White House, Northern Rock staff getting £9m of taxpayer subsidised bonuses is neither here nor there to Adair. After all, it's only like spitting on a red hot shovel to Lord Turner.
ReplyDeleteA year ago, Gordon Brown was in "Sir" Fred's position, but his "I'm in charge" routine rescued him from a crash in his share price. I suppose it's now seeping into public awareness that behind the scenes Brown, Darlink and the rest of them may well be in a complete funk, having seen the figures they dare not show us, and haven't much of a clue what to do. Maybe Brown should take a tip from "Sir" Fred and commission a composer and an orchestra to produce some music to celebrate his arrival at conferences.
ReplyDeleteAs for leaving the country, we'll soon all be so poor we won't be able to afford to leave anyway. The only way we'll be able to get out is by doing a reverse Afghani and hiding in trucks on their way back to points east.
This from Adair Turner, chair of the Financial services Authority:
ReplyDelete"The key problem was not that the supervision of Northern Rock was insufficient, but that we failed to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of a large UK current account deficit, rapid credit extension and house price rises, the purchase of UK mortgage-backed securities by institutions in the US performing a new form of maturity transformation, and the potential for irrational exuberance in the market price of credit."
These guys are really not terribly bright then, are they? My mother, who once clobbered me because a debt collector came to our house for an unpaid bill I incurred while I was at University, might have been able to see through that one.
And she left school when she was 14.
Don't worry Bryan - our future income will come from foreigners spending their euros and dollars over here while going to watch Manchester City. I suggest you invest in a burger bar outside the City of Manchester stadium.
ReplyDelete"Shred" has a lot to answer for Bryan, but dealing with China's mercantilism is not one of them.
ReplyDeleteOr indeed dealing with the inherently inflationary fractional reserved banking system, or the social construction of "fiat" currency.
That job is one for our so called politicians who seem to have been equally as stupid as "Shred"
PROBABLY THE BEST BLOG ON THE CRASH,HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
It was a joke on this blog a few months ago, and I dont want to panic anyone, but Ive been buying in and filling my cellar up with provisions.
Its just an insurance but I think now we are at a 1 in 5 chance of hyper inflation and large parts of Govt and business closing down, with maybe 2 lives left out of the 9....this is all getting a bit close for my liking.
Up in Glasgow we won't even notice as Britain descends into mass warfare.
ReplyDelete