Being Quantitatively Eased sounds like something someone might do with a plunger for a very high colonic. Perhaps that is precisely what is happening to us in the British body economic?
Today the Bank of England announced that they are undertaking their first steps into the world of quantitative easing. OK, let’s put it another way that we can all understand, they have decided to print and put through the system an initial additional £75,000,000,000 and if that goes as they would like they will follow this with another £75,000,000,000 put that total into dollars and you are talking about printing $210,000,000 Well, like the nurse would say, “that should clear madam’s system nicely!”
I have taken to using the zeros so that we can truly grasp the size of these amounts of money being pumped into our economic systems. The reason for this money “printing” exercise is to allow the government to buy such things as corporate bonds from blue chip companies and possibly some toxic bank debts. As Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman said, “Quantitative easing is a dangerous game as it can quickly cause inflation. However, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.”
The sad and frightening truth is that none of us knows how this will work out. If the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee had done nothing today as we drift ever closer to another huge economic depression led by deflation they would stand forever accused of not acting decisively when they should have known better. Today we see the result, since at the same time as announcing this very substantial measure they also reduced the rate of interest down to the historic low of 0.5%. It has never been at this level in our economic history and remember it was only six months ago that the rate of interest was hovering along, seemingly set at 5% for the longer term.
I’ve heard descriptions of the months following the declaration of war by Britain against Germany in 1939. At first nothing much seemed to happen, and then all hell broke loose. Something similar is happening now; we all know that the flood waters of this huge recession is coming ever closer to the sandbags we have tried to build around our homes and businesses but we know that anything we do might not be enough. We see governments and central bankers who clearly don’t know more than us about how to rescue this situation and naturally we are terrified.
I am also an occasional academic and I use this analogy when dealing with students facing a potentially very difficult examination. Don’t see what’s coming at you as a tidal wave from which the only salvation is to grab hold of something in the hope that the water will wash over you and there’s a chance you’ll have survived the flood. It is much better to see the challenge ahead as a mountain trail you have to climb. Make sure you prepare as well as you can and then start taking short strides, one at a time, and you will not only survive but you can reach the summit.
The people that will get through this economic disaster will either be lucky enough to already have a steady job, which they can hold onto or they will be the kind of people who are ready to plan, adapt and plan again.
The one thing that is for sure now is that nothing will be for sure again for the foreseeable future. Be prepared to wake up to shocking news and still move forward. There has never been a situation like this one and there are no means to measure what will happen next. The best-case scenario is that the measures being adopted by our leaders will work quickly and effectively and the banks will unglue the lending pipes and this will happen without releasing us into a gigantic inflationary cycle. That would be a case of the medicine being worse than the potential of the deflationary disease.
The only country where anything similar did happen was Japan in the early to middle 1990’s and that country still hasn’t moved forward from its “stagflation” problems, despite having record exports and huge balance of payments surpluses. Our situation is immeasurably worse, but we, as individuals have to hope that our leaders are a whole lot brighter now than they were when they allowed this situation to develop.
It would be unwise and hopelessly optimistic to forget that Obama and Brown said nothing negative during the last decade about the banks and the regulators when everything seemed perfect and prosperous in our seemingly robust economies. Pointing their collective finger at others now does not distract me from reminding them of their own silence then.
As for you and I, let’s get our warm clothes and hiking boots on, we have a long way to climb out of this mess!
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
TheAfPakThreat
With all of the awful issues confronting our leaders it is not the huge economic mess that we’re in that is their biggest problem. In the same week that President Obama met Prime Minister Brown we saw the awful news pictures of the Sri Lankan cricket team being attacked by terrorists in Lahore, Pakistan on their way to play sport.
Masked men opened fire, killing six policemen escorting the Sri Lankans and a driver. In addition seven players and an assistant coach were wounded.
The team later flew back to Sri Lanka. There is no word on the identities or motives of the gunmen, who melted into the city and escaped.
Pakistani officials stated that the incident bore close similarities to deadly attacks in Mumbai in India last November.
This is another of those all too familiar attacks that we see, sigh then shake our heads. We have become totally anaesthetized about the sheer horror of such events. A bombing in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, a bus in London, a shooting in Mumbai, jets being flown into skyscrapers in New York, carnage in Malaysia, a Jewish community centre in Argentina being bombed, trains and hundreds of Spanish commuters in Madrid blown apart or thousands of other cowardly assaults on innocent civilians anywhere in the world.
What do all of these terrible attacks have in common? Militant Islamic terrorists conduct them all. Whatever name they use, the Taliban, Al Quada, Hamas, Hezbollah or a thousand other little known similar organizations, they are all the same and their aim is our destruction.
Whether you’re Nick Berg in Iraq or Daniel Pearl in Pakistan it doesn’t much matter what label your Islamic terrorist has when he is hacking your head from your body.
The current and recent attacks on the Indian sub-continent are especially worrying for a series of reasons that are both inescapable and very scary. It is clear that the insidious and evil reach of the Taliban has infected more than the lawless borderlands running between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In fact the Pakistani government recently allowed its own Swat valley to become Taliban territory although it is nominally still part of their country.
The Swat valley is an administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan located about 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. This once princely state with its high mountains, green meadows, and clear lakes, was once popular with tourists as "the Switzerland of Pakistan". In December last year most of the area was captured by the Taliban insurgency and Islamist militant leader Maulana Fazlullah and his group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi that have banned education for girls and bombed or burnt more hundreds of schools for girls and many other government-owned buildings.
The result is that there will be no education for the girls of that benighted place. The Taliban in Afghanistan continue to attack girls who still dare to go to school and recently threw acid in the faces of many of the girls who dared to want to be educated.
I have never understood the loony left wing liberals who espouse furiously against anyone they dislike but who think its cool and fun to wear T-shirts that say, “We are all Hamas now!” Now the Taliban are killing and maiming the women of their own nation where are the left wing protests against these acts of barbarism?
Instead we are urged to understand the plight of the various Islamist populations and their motivation for hating and killing us or anyone else that they take a dislike to. Personally I don’t think the world is helped by this attitude. The vast majority of Muslims in the world hate these terrorists as much as anyone else. But they must make this known not only by their words but also by their actions.
The current and festering danger is that the entire region of Afghanistan and Pakistan is being terminally destabilized and this will continue and escalate unless and until there is a clear strategy to combat and contain this menace emanating principally from the USA and supported by the EU, China and Russia. The reason for this being so vital is obvious, Pakistan is a nuclear state and there can be no more terrifying image than a Pakistan run by the Taliban having at their disposal weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world is severely threatened as this situation degenerates.
There are many sweetheart deals being done by various nation states to placate or mollify the growing terrorist menace I describe. There is no question that the aim is to “buy” a quiet life in the forlorn hope that their turn to be beheaded will never arrive.
This is not far fetched and cannot be allowed. There must not be any more bending of the knee to the world wide terrorist threat. You do not achieve peace by appeasement you achieve defeat.
We are fighting with one hand tied behind our back in Afghanistan whilst most of our allies with the noble exception of the Americans do little or no real fighting at all. This cannot continue. It is time we burned the poppy fields and attacked the Taliban where they live and where they hide, on the borders of Pakistan. If we have to pursue terrorists across borders we have to do so. There can be no safe havens for our deadly enemies.
Such Islamic holy warriors publicly state that their idea of compromise is the world’s surrender to an Islamic caliphate; failing which they want us dead. We must not allow such lunatics the levers of ultimate power and weapons of mass destruction. We must widen the fight against the terrorists now, while we are much stronger than they are, or we will live to regret our hesitation.
Masked men opened fire, killing six policemen escorting the Sri Lankans and a driver. In addition seven players and an assistant coach were wounded.
The team later flew back to Sri Lanka. There is no word on the identities or motives of the gunmen, who melted into the city and escaped.
Pakistani officials stated that the incident bore close similarities to deadly attacks in Mumbai in India last November.
This is another of those all too familiar attacks that we see, sigh then shake our heads. We have become totally anaesthetized about the sheer horror of such events. A bombing in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, a bus in London, a shooting in Mumbai, jets being flown into skyscrapers in New York, carnage in Malaysia, a Jewish community centre in Argentina being bombed, trains and hundreds of Spanish commuters in Madrid blown apart or thousands of other cowardly assaults on innocent civilians anywhere in the world.
What do all of these terrible attacks have in common? Militant Islamic terrorists conduct them all. Whatever name they use, the Taliban, Al Quada, Hamas, Hezbollah or a thousand other little known similar organizations, they are all the same and their aim is our destruction.
Whether you’re Nick Berg in Iraq or Daniel Pearl in Pakistan it doesn’t much matter what label your Islamic terrorist has when he is hacking your head from your body.
The current and recent attacks on the Indian sub-continent are especially worrying for a series of reasons that are both inescapable and very scary. It is clear that the insidious and evil reach of the Taliban has infected more than the lawless borderlands running between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In fact the Pakistani government recently allowed its own Swat valley to become Taliban territory although it is nominally still part of their country.
The Swat valley is an administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan located about 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. This once princely state with its high mountains, green meadows, and clear lakes, was once popular with tourists as "the Switzerland of Pakistan". In December last year most of the area was captured by the Taliban insurgency and Islamist militant leader Maulana Fazlullah and his group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi that have banned education for girls and bombed or burnt more hundreds of schools for girls and many other government-owned buildings.
The result is that there will be no education for the girls of that benighted place. The Taliban in Afghanistan continue to attack girls who still dare to go to school and recently threw acid in the faces of many of the girls who dared to want to be educated.
I have never understood the loony left wing liberals who espouse furiously against anyone they dislike but who think its cool and fun to wear T-shirts that say, “We are all Hamas now!” Now the Taliban are killing and maiming the women of their own nation where are the left wing protests against these acts of barbarism?
Instead we are urged to understand the plight of the various Islamist populations and their motivation for hating and killing us or anyone else that they take a dislike to. Personally I don’t think the world is helped by this attitude. The vast majority of Muslims in the world hate these terrorists as much as anyone else. But they must make this known not only by their words but also by their actions.
The current and festering danger is that the entire region of Afghanistan and Pakistan is being terminally destabilized and this will continue and escalate unless and until there is a clear strategy to combat and contain this menace emanating principally from the USA and supported by the EU, China and Russia. The reason for this being so vital is obvious, Pakistan is a nuclear state and there can be no more terrifying image than a Pakistan run by the Taliban having at their disposal weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world is severely threatened as this situation degenerates.
There are many sweetheart deals being done by various nation states to placate or mollify the growing terrorist menace I describe. There is no question that the aim is to “buy” a quiet life in the forlorn hope that their turn to be beheaded will never arrive.
This is not far fetched and cannot be allowed. There must not be any more bending of the knee to the world wide terrorist threat. You do not achieve peace by appeasement you achieve defeat.
We are fighting with one hand tied behind our back in Afghanistan whilst most of our allies with the noble exception of the Americans do little or no real fighting at all. This cannot continue. It is time we burned the poppy fields and attacked the Taliban where they live and where they hide, on the borders of Pakistan. If we have to pursue terrorists across borders we have to do so. There can be no safe havens for our deadly enemies.
Such Islamic holy warriors publicly state that their idea of compromise is the world’s surrender to an Islamic caliphate; failing which they want us dead. We must not allow such lunatics the levers of ultimate power and weapons of mass destruction. We must widen the fight against the terrorists now, while we are much stronger than they are, or we will live to regret our hesitation.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
GordonBrownDeadManWalking
Psst, heard the one about THE TEST?
A man is drowning in a torrent of floodwater.
He fights for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.
You move closer... the man looks familiar...
Suddenly you realize who it is... It's Prime Minister Gordon Brown!
You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.
You have two options:
Either save the life of Gordon Brown
Or shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, documenting the death of the country's most powerful man!
THE QUESTION
Here's the question, and please reply honestly...
Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?
The tipping point of a political leader comes not with their first hesitation or self-doubt; rather it arrives with the first titter of disdain. With the first joke about a leader comes the warning of their political demise being not too far distant.
Before Gordon Brown forcibly succeeded Tony Blair there was talk of his clunking great fist of authority. I addressed him as the man who thought he was the reincarnation of the Lord Protector, the leader of Britain’s brief Republicanism, Oliver Cromwell. Now I think of Brown as a bad joke. Sadly he’s about the only man who doesn’t get the humor.
We can imagine the day when Blair decided he had enough of Brown demanding his turn at the helm of the ship of state. It was precisely the moment when Blair calculated Brown was doomed not only to fail; but also to fail with ignominious and disastrous consequences. Brown reminds me of the character that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Blair’s reaction to this must be a good deal of schadenfreude as he watches his old political foe struggle with the political and financial storms swirling around his suddenly old, tired, gnarled and ravaged head.
The Prime Minister arrived in Washington today ready to create sound bites with President Obama who is a man with very sensitive political antennae. You can bet big money there will be limited photo opportunities and scant time afforded to Brown. He still seriously believes that he is the man who saved the world from the present financial crisis.
I have some bad news for Gordon; he hasn’t saved the UK from this crisis, let alone the world. No one knows how this is all going to be resolved but one thing is for sure, Mister Brown will be long gone from his Prime Ministerial role at that time.
Heard the one that sums it all up?
If the 'Midas touch' is defined as someone of good fortune, for whom everything they touch "turns to gold".
Gordon Brown must have the 'Toilet tissue touch.'
A man is drowning in a torrent of floodwater.
He fights for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.
You move closer... the man looks familiar...
Suddenly you realize who it is... It's Prime Minister Gordon Brown!
You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.
You have two options:
Either save the life of Gordon Brown
Or shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, documenting the death of the country's most powerful man!
THE QUESTION
Here's the question, and please reply honestly...
Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?
The tipping point of a political leader comes not with their first hesitation or self-doubt; rather it arrives with the first titter of disdain. With the first joke about a leader comes the warning of their political demise being not too far distant.
Before Gordon Brown forcibly succeeded Tony Blair there was talk of his clunking great fist of authority. I addressed him as the man who thought he was the reincarnation of the Lord Protector, the leader of Britain’s brief Republicanism, Oliver Cromwell. Now I think of Brown as a bad joke. Sadly he’s about the only man who doesn’t get the humor.
We can imagine the day when Blair decided he had enough of Brown demanding his turn at the helm of the ship of state. It was precisely the moment when Blair calculated Brown was doomed not only to fail; but also to fail with ignominious and disastrous consequences. Brown reminds me of the character that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Blair’s reaction to this must be a good deal of schadenfreude as he watches his old political foe struggle with the political and financial storms swirling around his suddenly old, tired, gnarled and ravaged head.
The Prime Minister arrived in Washington today ready to create sound bites with President Obama who is a man with very sensitive political antennae. You can bet big money there will be limited photo opportunities and scant time afforded to Brown. He still seriously believes that he is the man who saved the world from the present financial crisis.
I have some bad news for Gordon; he hasn’t saved the UK from this crisis, let alone the world. No one knows how this is all going to be resolved but one thing is for sure, Mister Brown will be long gone from his Prime Ministerial role at that time.
Heard the one that sums it all up?
If the 'Midas touch' is defined as someone of good fortune, for whom everything they touch "turns to gold".
Gordon Brown must have the 'Toilet tissue touch.'
Monday, March 2, 2009
FearForTheFuture
Sometimes you see something so scary that you can’t quite believe it. Yesterday was just such a moment. On Britain’s Andrew Marr show, broadcast Sunday morning on the BBC the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman was a principal guest.
Marr was questioning the senior parliamentarian about the huge pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, which we wrote about in this column a few days ago.
In that column I wrote:
“This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.
Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed”.
When I made that statement I was more than half joking. I never thought that a senior minister would seriously suggest that the government were prepared to enact a retroactive law to negate a contract it had supported, allowed and in fact rubber stamped just a few weeks ago. Andrew Marr gave Harman several opportunities to slide away from her assertion that her government, led by the Prime Minister, simply would not allow Goodwin to retain these payments. When Marr reiterated that they would be breaking the law to break this contract whatever they thought of the morality of the situation she persisted that this man would better understand that he should not plan his future taking this pension into account, as he would not be receiving it!
I repeat, for the record, that I don’t like Goodwin, and never did. But I didn’t work with him or negotiate his contract or his departure, the government and the almost totally state owned bank did that. But whatever I think of him or them, and for me it’s a curse on both of their houses, you can’t simply dishonor a contract or force anyone else to do so in a law abiding country which is run with our common acquiescence to the laws, rules and regulations that we all accept. This is especially the case when you represent the law as our elected representatives do.
I will fight for the right for that bastard Goodwin to get his pound of flesh, because that is his legal right and no one should be able to take away the selfish man’s money.
If this government does succeed in their Robert Mugabe like interpretation of laws and justice and stops Goodwin from getting his ill gotten pension then people like me, who treasure freedom and democracy will have to fight or leave the country; the time for silence is gone.
Marr was questioning the senior parliamentarian about the huge pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, which we wrote about in this column a few days ago.
In that column I wrote:
“This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.
Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed”.
When I made that statement I was more than half joking. I never thought that a senior minister would seriously suggest that the government were prepared to enact a retroactive law to negate a contract it had supported, allowed and in fact rubber stamped just a few weeks ago. Andrew Marr gave Harman several opportunities to slide away from her assertion that her government, led by the Prime Minister, simply would not allow Goodwin to retain these payments. When Marr reiterated that they would be breaking the law to break this contract whatever they thought of the morality of the situation she persisted that this man would better understand that he should not plan his future taking this pension into account, as he would not be receiving it!
I repeat, for the record, that I don’t like Goodwin, and never did. But I didn’t work with him or negotiate his contract or his departure, the government and the almost totally state owned bank did that. But whatever I think of him or them, and for me it’s a curse on both of their houses, you can’t simply dishonor a contract or force anyone else to do so in a law abiding country which is run with our common acquiescence to the laws, rules and regulations that we all accept. This is especially the case when you represent the law as our elected representatives do.
I will fight for the right for that bastard Goodwin to get his pound of flesh, because that is his legal right and no one should be able to take away the selfish man’s money.
If this government does succeed in their Robert Mugabe like interpretation of laws and justice and stops Goodwin from getting his ill gotten pension then people like me, who treasure freedom and democracy will have to fight or leave the country; the time for silence is gone.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
InvertedSnobbery
There is an inverted mental and sexist snobbery at work in the UK. We have a television quiz show called University Challenge. There are four representatives from each college and they answer, if they can, the tough questions asked. It’s first to the buzzer stuff and remember these are ultra tough questions.
Recently there has been a female contestant called Gail Trimble who led her team from Corpus Christie College to overall series victory. Gail has the misfortune to have scored more points than any other contestant in the shows very long history. The reasons for her being singled out for special criticism have varied to people pointing out they don’t like her teeth, eyes, clothes, hair and smile etc.
I don’t remember similar critiques being handed out to male contestants however poorly they looked or spoke or smiled whether they were clever or not. This is sexist behavior of the most obvious and odious kind. The woman in question is seriously clever and although I don’t know her I find a quick brain in a woman particularly attractive.
The only other excuse for criticism such as this is jealousy about her sheer mental capacity. Indirectly, and to a much lesser extent I can empathize with this. As a boy I was happily bungling along at school, drifting somewhere in the middle of the middle stream. Along came the United Nations and their international school IQ tests. I have since found out that their idea was to discover evidence of whether IQ scores around the globe were affected by nationality, race, and gender, social and economic background.
Not understanding this at age 11 I sat down in the school’s big assembly hall along with the rest of the boys of my age to sit the IQ test. On the front cover of this we were asked what our parents occupation was. Being a cheeky bugger I wrote (and may the Lord forgive me!) that my mother was a prostitute and my father a refuse collector. Needless to say this was not the case, as my mother was a respectable housewife and my father was, by then, in the film industry. I have no idea if this had any effect on my eventual score, which was to cause me never ending grief.
Some time later I was called in to chat with the school Principal a man I had been doing my best to avoid at all costs. He was all smiles as he indicated that as my score was in the top 2% of the country he expected me to do considerably better in all my future examinations.
That year I came 22nd in the B stream and questions were asked. Following this I did a little better but now everyone was pointing out that with my intellect I should clearly be top of the class. “Could do better” became the standard observation for whatever I did.
When I was 13 I was fed up with being told I could do better and I actually did a lot better. I came joint top of the year with a boy called Ruffhead who had total recall. I was very pleased with myself until I was told that I could still do better. This was despite my coming top!
From that point on I followed my own drumbeat as I came to realize that such crude measures, as IQ can be as much a burden as a plus. Although my brain and memory have stood me in good stead in certain circumstances such as winning at Trivial Pursuit, they don’t measure up to common sense, intuition or emotional intelligence as vital attributes with which I am not so blessed.
If a woman has all of these attributes they are blessed and if you’re the man who is fortunate enough to share them you are doubly blessed. Cute and sexy may be a plus but to really be sexy you need more than a nice smile.
Recently there has been a female contestant called Gail Trimble who led her team from Corpus Christie College to overall series victory. Gail has the misfortune to have scored more points than any other contestant in the shows very long history. The reasons for her being singled out for special criticism have varied to people pointing out they don’t like her teeth, eyes, clothes, hair and smile etc.
I don’t remember similar critiques being handed out to male contestants however poorly they looked or spoke or smiled whether they were clever or not. This is sexist behavior of the most obvious and odious kind. The woman in question is seriously clever and although I don’t know her I find a quick brain in a woman particularly attractive.
The only other excuse for criticism such as this is jealousy about her sheer mental capacity. Indirectly, and to a much lesser extent I can empathize with this. As a boy I was happily bungling along at school, drifting somewhere in the middle of the middle stream. Along came the United Nations and their international school IQ tests. I have since found out that their idea was to discover evidence of whether IQ scores around the globe were affected by nationality, race, and gender, social and economic background.
Not understanding this at age 11 I sat down in the school’s big assembly hall along with the rest of the boys of my age to sit the IQ test. On the front cover of this we were asked what our parents occupation was. Being a cheeky bugger I wrote (and may the Lord forgive me!) that my mother was a prostitute and my father a refuse collector. Needless to say this was not the case, as my mother was a respectable housewife and my father was, by then, in the film industry. I have no idea if this had any effect on my eventual score, which was to cause me never ending grief.
Some time later I was called in to chat with the school Principal a man I had been doing my best to avoid at all costs. He was all smiles as he indicated that as my score was in the top 2% of the country he expected me to do considerably better in all my future examinations.
That year I came 22nd in the B stream and questions were asked. Following this I did a little better but now everyone was pointing out that with my intellect I should clearly be top of the class. “Could do better” became the standard observation for whatever I did.
When I was 13 I was fed up with being told I could do better and I actually did a lot better. I came joint top of the year with a boy called Ruffhead who had total recall. I was very pleased with myself until I was told that I could still do better. This was despite my coming top!
From that point on I followed my own drumbeat as I came to realize that such crude measures, as IQ can be as much a burden as a plus. Although my brain and memory have stood me in good stead in certain circumstances such as winning at Trivial Pursuit, they don’t measure up to common sense, intuition or emotional intelligence as vital attributes with which I am not so blessed.
If a woman has all of these attributes they are blessed and if you’re the man who is fortunate enough to share them you are doubly blessed. Cute and sexy may be a plus but to really be sexy you need more than a nice smile.
Friday, February 27, 2009
FreddieShredded
There’s a saying that goes around media newsrooms, “you just couldn’t make this up!” and nothing sums this up better than the morality play of Sir Fred Goodwin, until very recently the CEO of The Royal Bank of Scotland.
Like many of his banking colleagues in the USA and UK he has earned a fortune during the fat years and we only really came to evaluate the morality of this system of reward when the house of cards came crashing down around our ears.
This man is the perfect example of the banking Gordon Gecko whose creed was “Greed is Good”.
Goodwin was known as Fred the Shred, because of his ruthless and supposedly successful style of management. He was rewarded with huge payments and dividends but unfortunately, and at the cost of us all, he wasn’t succeeding, in fact he was failing on a scale never before seen in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter.
This was not just failure, but epic disaster, the Perfect Storm of a financial cataclysm. It has resulted, lest we forget, in his bank posting the biggest single one-year corporate loss in the UK’s history. For the record ponder the numbers, he lost us £24 billion in the last twelve months.
There is, apparently, another £350 billion of questionable debt on the same bank’s books. We, the people, have underwritten all of it under the new loan guarantee scheme.
All of these facts were known to the government when the panic button was hit a couple of months back, when, to save our entire banking system, the government had to step in with just hours to spare.
When this quasi-forced nationalization was being consummated the men and women who run the nation’s Treasury had to quickly do some hiring and firing. They realized that the country could not countenance the survival of the senior management who had been, at best, inept, or at worst criminally liable for the disaster that had befallen us.
It transpires that the government ministers responsible for these transactions had sight of the relevant contracts and allowed certain pay offs to take place. Amongst these was the lifetime pension pot for Sir Fred Goodwin in which he was to receive nearly £650,000 (nearly $1 million) per year for the rest of his life with, commencing now, at the age of 50.
The Minister who allowed this is Lord Myners, who is now calling on Sir Fred to not take the money. Goodwin refuses to do this or pay any money back. The Prime Minister and many others in government have also insisted that Sir Fred must not get this money in these circumstances. Remember these are the same people who rubber-stamped his deal in the first place.
It seems as though the crime Goodwin is guilty of is not getting his hands on the money it is getting caught receiving the money while the cameras are aimed in his direction.
This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.
Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed.
On his own behalf Goodwin wrote to the City Minister Paul Myners arguing that in forgoing his 12-months notice pay when he resigned last October, he had made a sufficient “gesture.” Myners replied in a letter that his position was “unfortunate and unacceptable” and that the executive should think again.
“Such an act would be an appropriate recognition of the failings of RBS under your tenure and subsequent support the government has provided,” Myners wrote.
The Treasury has finally acknowledged that Myners did know all about the pension arrangement when Goodwin resigned last October although there had been some argument previously about the details. His understanding, according to the Treasury, was that the payout was Goodwin’s legal entitlement and unchangeable. Prime Minister Brown said it was only this week that he learned the RBS board had some discretion in awarding the pay.
The government has not yet made it clear what route it will take on this issue. Ministers have, so far, just applied maximum moral pressure on Goodwin to voluntarily give up his pension.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said, “Sir Fred could resolve this problem very quickly.” Brown said the payout wasn’t acceptable but offered no remedy.
“The anger the public has is the anger I have as well,” Brown told broadcasters. “This is unjustifiable and unacceptable, and I am going to clean up the banks so it doesn’t happen again.”
Or the government might apply pressure on Goodwin by threatening to have him stripped of his knighthood, but that makes the government look ever more like a petty Ruritania than it already does.
Surely of more importance, we must learn the lessons this debacle should teach us. We need people who understand business taking business decisions that have a commercial consequence. Government ministers are demonstrably incapable of this.
Our focus must be on the big issues; we cannot allow ourselves to get bogged down on these small but diverting side issues. Maintaining a relentless public focus on our huge problems will stop our leaders avoiding the big elephants in the room.
In the meantime Sir Fred, I hope you suffer the consequences of your actions and you don't get any pleasure from all our money.
Like many of his banking colleagues in the USA and UK he has earned a fortune during the fat years and we only really came to evaluate the morality of this system of reward when the house of cards came crashing down around our ears.
This man is the perfect example of the banking Gordon Gecko whose creed was “Greed is Good”.
Goodwin was known as Fred the Shred, because of his ruthless and supposedly successful style of management. He was rewarded with huge payments and dividends but unfortunately, and at the cost of us all, he wasn’t succeeding, in fact he was failing on a scale never before seen in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter.
This was not just failure, but epic disaster, the Perfect Storm of a financial cataclysm. It has resulted, lest we forget, in his bank posting the biggest single one-year corporate loss in the UK’s history. For the record ponder the numbers, he lost us £24 billion in the last twelve months.
There is, apparently, another £350 billion of questionable debt on the same bank’s books. We, the people, have underwritten all of it under the new loan guarantee scheme.
All of these facts were known to the government when the panic button was hit a couple of months back, when, to save our entire banking system, the government had to step in with just hours to spare.
When this quasi-forced nationalization was being consummated the men and women who run the nation’s Treasury had to quickly do some hiring and firing. They realized that the country could not countenance the survival of the senior management who had been, at best, inept, or at worst criminally liable for the disaster that had befallen us.
It transpires that the government ministers responsible for these transactions had sight of the relevant contracts and allowed certain pay offs to take place. Amongst these was the lifetime pension pot for Sir Fred Goodwin in which he was to receive nearly £650,000 (nearly $1 million) per year for the rest of his life with, commencing now, at the age of 50.
The Minister who allowed this is Lord Myners, who is now calling on Sir Fred to not take the money. Goodwin refuses to do this or pay any money back. The Prime Minister and many others in government have also insisted that Sir Fred must not get this money in these circumstances. Remember these are the same people who rubber-stamped his deal in the first place.
It seems as though the crime Goodwin is guilty of is not getting his hands on the money it is getting caught receiving the money while the cameras are aimed in his direction.
This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.
Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed.
On his own behalf Goodwin wrote to the City Minister Paul Myners arguing that in forgoing his 12-months notice pay when he resigned last October, he had made a sufficient “gesture.” Myners replied in a letter that his position was “unfortunate and unacceptable” and that the executive should think again.
“Such an act would be an appropriate recognition of the failings of RBS under your tenure and subsequent support the government has provided,” Myners wrote.
The Treasury has finally acknowledged that Myners did know all about the pension arrangement when Goodwin resigned last October although there had been some argument previously about the details. His understanding, according to the Treasury, was that the payout was Goodwin’s legal entitlement and unchangeable. Prime Minister Brown said it was only this week that he learned the RBS board had some discretion in awarding the pay.
The government has not yet made it clear what route it will take on this issue. Ministers have, so far, just applied maximum moral pressure on Goodwin to voluntarily give up his pension.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said, “Sir Fred could resolve this problem very quickly.” Brown said the payout wasn’t acceptable but offered no remedy.
“The anger the public has is the anger I have as well,” Brown told broadcasters. “This is unjustifiable and unacceptable, and I am going to clean up the banks so it doesn’t happen again.”
Or the government might apply pressure on Goodwin by threatening to have him stripped of his knighthood, but that makes the government look ever more like a petty Ruritania than it already does.
Surely of more importance, we must learn the lessons this debacle should teach us. We need people who understand business taking business decisions that have a commercial consequence. Government ministers are demonstrably incapable of this.
Our focus must be on the big issues; we cannot allow ourselves to get bogged down on these small but diverting side issues. Maintaining a relentless public focus on our huge problems will stop our leaders avoiding the big elephants in the room.
In the meantime Sir Fred, I hope you suffer the consequences of your actions and you don't get any pleasure from all our money.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
HowNottoGetBeatenUpByYourCreditCard
The good news is that the bad news was predicted to have been even worse. RBS bank in the UK has racked up losses of £24,000,000,000. (Twenty four billion pounds – approximately $35 billion). Losses like this has mean that the government will have to guarantee more toxic loans and fund the failing banks with even more of our money.
Another result of such huge holes in the accounts is that the credit card companies will act even more stringently to plug every gap in their financial dyke.
This is one of my occasional “GUEST” blogs that I hand over to another contributor. My good friend Neville Spiers, otherwise known as the Negotiator, has written this article. We first met when we were eight years old, and, as the saying goes, we’ve all passed a lot of water since then.
“How not to get beaten up by your credit card by Neville Spiers"
I heard a programme on BBC’s Radio 4 last week – not a new subject – the perennial issue of people who have offended Visa, Maestro and all the mighty Gods of credit. They have fallen behind with their payments and the slavering hounds of collection have been unleashed.
Some of the stories were extremely harrowing; elderly people suffering from terminal illnesses or recently bereaved; it made no difference. Many of them had had the good sense to phone up, explain the situation and make a revised payment plan; it made no difference.
The calls started coming four times a day, from different callers in the same debt-collection company – sometimes more than one company chasing the same debt! Each time, the caller would first put them through a process of “security questions”. Then they would ask when the debt wasgoing to be repaid. If the answer was anything but “right now”, the question would be repeated over and over again.
I listened to this and I thought, “Why are these people allowing themselves to be beaten up four times a day”. The truth is that there are very simple techniques, which can be used to prevent it.
1) Don’t answer the security questions. Tell them “I’m sorry but I don’t give out confidential information to anyone I don’t know and I don’t know you”. They may tell you that they cannot continue the conversation unless you do. Answer “O.K. thank you for calling. Have a nice day”. CLICK!
2) Insist on dealing with one caller only. When a different person calls, tell them to speak to the first one, in order to save them time. If a second company calls, tell them to battle it out with the first company, then come back and tell you who is handling the account.
3) If the same person calls you a second time on the same day, say, “I spoke to you two hours ago. Please refer to your notes. Now forgive me but I’m in a meeting.” Then ring off.
At all times remain polite but firm. Keep in your mind at all times that you don’t have to take it. If you have the confidence to take control,you won't have to.”
Another result of such huge holes in the accounts is that the credit card companies will act even more stringently to plug every gap in their financial dyke.
This is one of my occasional “GUEST” blogs that I hand over to another contributor. My good friend Neville Spiers, otherwise known as the Negotiator, has written this article. We first met when we were eight years old, and, as the saying goes, we’ve all passed a lot of water since then.
“How not to get beaten up by your credit card by Neville Spiers"
I heard a programme on BBC’s Radio 4 last week – not a new subject – the perennial issue of people who have offended Visa, Maestro and all the mighty Gods of credit. They have fallen behind with their payments and the slavering hounds of collection have been unleashed.
Some of the stories were extremely harrowing; elderly people suffering from terminal illnesses or recently bereaved; it made no difference. Many of them had had the good sense to phone up, explain the situation and make a revised payment plan; it made no difference.
The calls started coming four times a day, from different callers in the same debt-collection company – sometimes more than one company chasing the same debt! Each time, the caller would first put them through a process of “security questions”. Then they would ask when the debt wasgoing to be repaid. If the answer was anything but “right now”, the question would be repeated over and over again.
I listened to this and I thought, “Why are these people allowing themselves to be beaten up four times a day”. The truth is that there are very simple techniques, which can be used to prevent it.
1) Don’t answer the security questions. Tell them “I’m sorry but I don’t give out confidential information to anyone I don’t know and I don’t know you”. They may tell you that they cannot continue the conversation unless you do. Answer “O.K. thank you for calling. Have a nice day”. CLICK!
2) Insist on dealing with one caller only. When a different person calls, tell them to speak to the first one, in order to save them time. If a second company calls, tell them to battle it out with the first company, then come back and tell you who is handling the account.
3) If the same person calls you a second time on the same day, say, “I spoke to you two hours ago. Please refer to your notes. Now forgive me but I’m in a meeting.” Then ring off.
At all times remain polite but firm. Keep in your mind at all times that you don’t have to take it. If you have the confidence to take control,you won't have to.”
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