FinancialSurvival

Hold the presses, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized. This is not something anyone can remember, and it was a little frightening.

This might well be the beginning of the end game for the Prime Minister’s loosening grip on his seal of office. Looking more relaxed than has been the case in the recent past he even smiled at some of the forceful questioning he was confronted with during several tough interview sessions over the last couple of days.

I think he’s smiling because he knows how desperate his political situation has become and realizing that the game is up has at last relaxed with the shrug of the shoulders a person about to get executed might display.

Perversely Brown is much more likeable when he relaxes and has a script he’s happy with. That script is based around the hypothesis that his government has done a great, solid, dependable job, that the problems are global and therefore the solution has to also be global but that the UK is singularly well placed to recover.

The British Labour Party is holding its annual conference in Manchester, England this week. It is sandwiched between the Liberal-Democrats and the Conservatives and usually it heralds the announcement of new initiatives, fresh beginnings and re-launches. This time around Gordon Brown will be thrilled to come out in one piece.

“I want to do better”, Gordon Brown said; admittedly he couldn’t do much worse in the eyes of most of the population. He went on to say, “I always want to do better. My school motto was, I must try my utmost”. This is the first time many of us can remember Mister Brown ever admitting that he is fallible so openly.

This is a testing time and no one yet knows whether Gordon Brown is made of the right stuff to pass that test. He is going to find it very difficult to convince the country that he will pull the nation through,

The crisis is in the Labour leadership according to Charles Clarke, a former Senior Minister, and no friend of his old adversary, is Brown himself. Clarke’s view is that he believes the leader must resign to give the party and the nation a leadership it will believe in. Or put it another way; give Labour a chance to recover in time for the election after next, as he has already written off his Party’s chances for the next contest.

The doubters will have their say, but at the conference there are more that will back him this week than not. Brown is clearly correct about one thing, this is a global crisis, not of his or Britain’s making. He will make it though this week, and to be honest the nation and the world needs stolid men like this right now.

Within the Labour Party there is no credible threat to Brown’s leadership, but this doesn’t mean there won’t be a threat to it after the conference. Right now no one is going to put his or her head over the parapet; but the time will come.

Next on the firing line was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling who appeared on this morning’s breakfast television. He still hasn’t worked out that his cause would be better served by his acquiring rudimentary communication skills. He is awful at the most basic question and answer technique without which modern politicians cannot survive.

The rather gentle interviewer on GMTV asked Darling 4 times whether he would rule out tax increases to pay for the present difficulties and he would not utter the words, “Yes” or “No”.

Quite clearly he cannot give an absolute reply right now, and he would be wrong to do so, but couldn’t he just say, “We have a problem, and I’ll do my best to keep taxes down but honestly no one knows the answer to that question just yet.”

I am not sure whether Brown and Darling’s recent pronouncements mean that they were not aware of the kinds of trades being undertaken and consequential bonuses given over the last few years in the City of London, or whether they were aware, and simply thought them OK. Either way they are culpable, probably to a greater extent if they knew and did nothing and are hypocritically now blaming their former City cronies.

Watching these two men, who run our country you are not filled with confidence and this is ironic since their performance improved since the Northern Rock fiasco. They seem to have been consistently in advance of their American colleagues reaction, which has been a bit too slow at times.

The economic and political price of the actions being taken at both edges of the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon financial world are yet to be known, but the price for inaction would have been catastrophic and unthinkable. The end game is still cloudy and undecided but there might be a glimmer of light if everyone now remembers the route to financial survival is to hold his or her nerve.

PakistanTerrorism

Last night in Islamabad, Pakistan there was another horrendous bombing. This time the target for the terrorists is the Marriott hotel that managed to kill more than fifty people and injure hundreds more, many of them critically.

There were security barriers in operation at this hotel, favorite of the rich and powerful of Pakistan and foreign visitors. This is the third major attack of Marriott hotels in the city.

It is no accident that this attack happened in the same period when the new Pakistani government was pledging itself to combating terrorism in the country.

Neither the local Taliban or Al Qaeda have yet claimed responsibility for this evil and cowardly attack on civilians but surely incidents like this will cause Pakistan to get off the fence and decide how they see their future.

It’s a probability that attacks like this one will cause one of two results in this blighted country. Either there will be a craven caving in to the terrorist organizations or they will choose to fight so that they are not swallowed by events. But this would be a huge mistake; for if they do give in they will eventually lose control of their own country and destiny.

It is legitimate to question whether everyone in each department of the government and its agencies shared the Pakistani government’s avowed combative stance against terrorist organizations. There are many question marks over some of the actions of the Pakistani intelligence agencies when dealing with these groups.

The relationship of the Western powers with Pakistan remains somewhat ambiguous and will do so until it is believed that they are a trustworthy regime. At the moment question marks remain over their underlying attitude to the terrorist groups, how they handle their nuclear weapons and how they act towards the combatants from the Afghanistan war who they allow to simply slip across their border for training, supplies and rest and recreation.

There has long been an official Pakistani blind eye turned to the regions running through the blurred lines of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, peopled on both side by the Pathan people. The Pakistani authorities would do well to remember that you can’t dine with the devil, the price is poisonous and will kill.

WheretheMoneyWillComeFrom

This is a very brief but pointed blog. The US Federal government yesterday announced that they were working on a plan to buy toxic and worthless debt from the American banks struggling under a mountain of the poisonous paper.

This will cost many hundreds of billions of dollars.

Putting this into context, this month the American government had its defense budget, for $612.5 billion waved through the legislature.

There are innumerable other costs mounting up for America that are beginning to look insupportable.

I have one question, where is all this money going to come from?

If the Feds print it we will end up with runaway inflation, which could ruin the lives of future generation.

If they borrow the necessary funds we will find ourselves owing money overseas, where it would have to come from potential foes in Asia and Arabia. We cannot be in hock to people who could pressure us to do things against our long term, strategic interests.

If the decision is to raise the money through taxing us we will be crippled by the size of the debt.

Unquestionably the announcement by President Bush that the Feds were going to take this action did relieve some of the huge anxiety that had built up in the stock markets of the world but we do need to question where the money is going to come from and what are the long term ramifications of this probably essential action.

You can’t help believe that this might well be the long heralded beginning of the end of America as the key financial superpower. Maybe the baton is being reluctantly pried from America’s grasp by hungrier, richer, more successful Asian powers. This would result in the USA and possibly the EU, being relegated from a long held and easy assumption of pre-eminence.

There is no doubt that when a country’s financial muscles atrophy and fail it’s military and political dominance will also wither to a similar extent.

Therefore, unless the Western powers are ready to abdicate their long held hegemony they will have to do more than survive, they have to find a way to prosper. That is going to prove extremely difficult.

TzipiLiviniforIsraeliPM

One of the most important news items in the world went largely unreported in the mass media over the last couple of days. I refer to the victory of Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister of Israel, who was newly elected leader of the Kadima party. This should result in her succeeding Ehud Olmert as Prime Minister. She is a feisty, attractive woman in her middle years, and no one doubts that she has presence, style and a smart brain. Now we’re going to find out if she can deliver in the Mid-East, which is never easy but is always unforgiving.

Tzipi Livni aims to take the office of prime minister and has started working on building a new coalition government. The Israeli constitution allows her six weeks to accomplish this task, but the President, Shimon Peres, wants her to do it in a few days in order that no momentum is lost in the various sets of current and separate peace negotiations.

This is the woman, after all, who has been holding peace negotiations with the Palestinians plus the Syrians via the good offices of Turkey and last but not least, planning what Israel’s response will be with regards to the threat of Iran going nuclear and its continuing threats to the Jewish state.

Many Arab leaders in the Middle East regard Livni as a moderate, levelheaded foreign minister. Aluf Benn, a columnist and diplomatic editor of Haaretz, Israel's leading intellectual daily said, "She's been [Ehud] Olmert's No. 2 for two years, and she spent five years in [Ariel] Sharon's government. She's not exactly coming from nowhere. She's been in the system; she was born into it," he says, referring to Livni's background.

Her parents were members of the Irgun, the hard-line pre-independence Zionist militia that in Israel is regarded as being equivalent to having come over with the Mayflower or having fought in the American Revolution.

The official result of her Kadima Party election showed her beating Shaul Mofaz, her closest competitor by just one percentage point. But the tough-minded Ms. Livni strode into the political limelight as if that made no difference.

Livni said her party's choice demonstrated that "there is a different kind of politics. For a very long time I was told there was no such thing, and today Kadima proved that there is."

Her use of the language of political change has drawn parallels with presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign – and this permeated Livni's pronouncements as she moved from backstage diplomat to front of house policymaker. Unlike many other Israel's politicos of various hues, she is the proud owner of a totally clean reputation.

Livni has created a strong working relationship with her Palestinian counterparts in the renewed peace process, which she invigorated. Domestically she created a buzz because, if successful, she will be the second woman in Israel's history to become prime minister.

But she’s no magician and there are many Israelis and others who warn against unrealistic expectations of sweeping progress on the main issues in the immediate future.

There are all the normal complications that exist in the Byzantine political scene in both Israeli and amongst the Palestinians. There is also the certainty of both sides waiting to see who will be the next US president before moving trying to finalize on any agreement.

When it comes to the feasibility of peacemaking, the same internal divisions amongst the two peoples remain. The basic, underlying problems on the Palestinian side stay the same, with Hamas in charge of Gaza and Fatah holding onto security in the West Bank by their fingernails.

Golda Meir in 1969 was the last Israeli woman Prime Minister. Livni, like Meir, is more appreciated overseas than at home, where she still has many foes. There is little doubt that she faces a tough time initially due to her win over Mofaz being so tight. His is the more typical profile of the ex military insider with much more military knowledge and hawkish credentials. He represents the archetypal picture of the tough guys Israel usually chooses when worried about the prospect of another war.

Livni, however, earned her image of understanding Israel's complex security challenges because of her work as a Mossad officer dealing with intelligence matters.

"The national mission … is to create stability quickly," Livni told reporters. "On the level of government in Israel, we have to deal with difficult threats."

Livni's first, obligatory function is to form a workable coalition government, not a foregone conclusion in politically complex Israel. When Olmert formally resigns, the coalition's government dissolves. Olmert will probably remain as caretaker Prime Minister until a new coalition is approved.

Livni has 42 days to assemble a new coalition; if she does she will almost certainly be the next prime minister. If she can't, new elections will be held early next year.

Huge problems confront her. Shas, one of the long-term coalition partners in the government, state that it won't join a government that will agree to divide Jerusalem. The city has been governed by Israel since they conquered the part they didn’t already control in the 1967 Six Day War.

The situation is very complex and every party will come along with their demands: Shas on Jerusalem and demanding more funds for their children. Labor will have its own demands, but this is Israel, so Likud will want something else.

Livni is not famed for her ability to wheel and deal, but she is rightly proud of her reputation for integrity. Perversely that may make it more difficult for her to survive in this political hot house. I can’t see any real progress across the board until the next elections, in 2009, but the world should all wish this strong woman much luck and a prevailing wind, we could all do with some stability and peace in her very difficult part of the world.

WhatNext

The ever-unfolding financial crisis moved forward rapidly today. The big news is that HBOS is in the final stages of a shotgun merger with Lloyds TSB, in fact the retail banking and mortgage behemoth is being taken over.

Normally such a giant financial institutional merger would not be allowed as it is totally against normal competition rules. But these are certainly not normal times, and rightly the rules need to be relaxed if it is clearly in the interests of the world at large.

Morgan Stanley shares have fallen 30% today, and Goldman Sachs shares are also plummeting. After watching Merrill Lynch and HBOS being sold short in the last few days it’s clear that Morgan Stanley is now being targeted by more short sellers. These people profit by driving shares downwards and then buy back in at a reduced price. They only lose when the price goes up, so these leeches make money by ruining businesses. Some consider shorting a safety valve for the market place, when the general trend of stock prices is upward.

I believe this practice needs to be looked at closely and either banned outright or, failing this, it should be suspended when any stock moves more than 5% in any trading day.

AIG, after having $80 billion pumped into it, has been, in effect, nationalized, and this is the first time in history that the American government has taken such an action. The reason for this is clear, the economy simply could not survive AIG collapsing.

Barclays has nearly concluded the purchase of the property related parts of Lehman Brothers, which could mean that not all the staff of that company in the US will lose their jobs.

However if you examine the most important bank rate, that for money lent between banks, otherwise known as LIBOR, it’s sticking at a high level and most worrying of all, indicates that money is simply not flowing between the banks, nor will it do so until this rate is lowered.

As a consequence of the shrinking economy the unemployment rate in the UK has suddenly gone to its highest figure in a decade, and although still at historically manageable levels, is becoming yet another thing to worry about.

The governments of both the UK and USA must take a clear lead in acknowledging these problems and dealing with them.

More important than this, they must, as part of the G8 work out a strategy and publicly express it, rather than react in an ad hoc basis.

We all need to clearly understand why some companies will be bailed out whereas others are allowed to collapse.

This drama will become a tragedy unless and until there is international co-ordination between the central governments of the G8 and the major financial institutions.

ASteadyHand

Yesterday Lehman Brothers went bust, and Merrill Lynch was bought for $55 billion by The Bank of America, which is about a twentieth of what its bosses said it was worth less than a year ago. In fact Lehman Brothers were figured to have 110% of the liquidity it needed just one week ago. This is a fast moving avalanche of bad financial news that is set to run for a while. It hasn’t bottomed out as yet, and no one quite knows where it might end.

It is made even more frightening by the fact that thousands of jobs are beginning to be shred as the financial and other sectors of the economy begin to contract. This is the second leg of the nightmare scenario in which the entire economy collapses as it did during the Great Depression. As yet, thank the Lord, there is no new hunger to go with the job losses, companies closing and homes being lost, and let’s all hope it stays that way. But this is a hope, not a certainty as everything is up for grabs right now.

So what happened to make this, and much more happen? It’s very simple; there has been a break down of banker’s trust in each other. Regular people have begun to doubt big time and bankers, those pillars of our society, have lost their faith in each other.

This started about a year ago when the sub prime mortgage market began to implode. That started to show itself with min runs on banks in various countries such as the UK’s own Northern Rock. We saw that dreaded sight of people lining the street trying to get their savings out. Now in the States, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac we have more imposed nationalization that, on the surface seems the only way to go to save the situation, but also could be considered illegal. It does also mean that no sane investor in the world will invest anything in British or American banks and many others, until the situation has been brought under control.

One of the main agents of this breakdown of confidence and trust in our system is obvious but needs to be re-stated. The bankers paid themselves grotesque bonuses in London last year £17 billion ($30 billion+) after years of doing so. There is no other way of describing this except for the image of pigs at a trough. This is no different to similar size sums being paid in New York City and had all the hallmarks of people with no thought about the effect of their greed on others.

The American government clearly made a choice not to bail out Lehman Brothers after having done exactly the opposite in previous days with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Were they right to do so, only time will tell?

This is the either worst financial situation since the 1930’s and is another Great Depression in the making or it’s a delevaraging that is long overdue. By which I mean that the financial sector is being downsized by market forces led by Wall Street and was perhaps long necessary. Put another way were there too many banks chasing too little business and therefore putting together untenable and insupportable deals.

In my view the main culprits are probably the central banks, which kept the interest rates too low for too long which resulted in too ample a money supply, and that made people reckless in their borrowing. This type of casino investing and banking has led to excessively liberal capitalism, which resulted in a bust like no other since the war. In other words there was not enough government intervention for a very long time and now there is going to be too much of the same thing.

Wholesale liquidation is what happened in the 1930’s and it was very painful and we are on the precipice again. For a market forces system to survive and prosper there must be trust in the system and therefore we all need, in fact demand an honest and transparent system from here on in.

In the UK exports are about 30% of output whereas in the States this figure is about 12% and as a consequence the UK, with sterling at a lower value will pull through quicker than most other countries.

It wasn’t long ago that I, amongst many others in this country felt that even if our pensions were becoming less and less valuable or workable, we did, at least, have financial security via our properties. Now that has been shot through by the sub prime market collapse, which is going to result in millions of properties going into negative equity.

The one thing we can all agree on is the urgent need for calm heads and steady hands at the tiller of our financial world. We could do a lot worse than look at history and realize that we simply cannot afford to make the same mistakes again.

MuckingAboutOnTheRiver

There are some times that stick in the memory. This weekend was one such time. I have to admit that I was never much of a boy scout, in fact I think I lasted just one or two weeks. I fancied myself in the uniform as a little boy but when I joined up I only lasted for two weeks as the trousers itched terribly around my delicate thighs. Of course I left the group immediately.

Decades later I was invited by my in-laws to help out on the weekend with a scout troop that they were taking on a boat down the river. It was a big narrow boat that looked pretty wide and was 65 feet long. We met on the River Stour near Harlow, a town near the border of two fairly local counties, Hertfordshire and Essex.

We were lucky as it was a day of mild temperature and no rain. We arrived at around 9 o’clock and mucked in as the scout leaders carefully prepared the boat. A short time later we were joined by 7 scouts on the capacious well fitted out boat originally put together by Red Watch fire crew.

I want to make a few points about our time on the rivers Stour and Lee. There are magical places in England that gently seduce you on this stretch of water, with images that Constable would have enjoyed to paint and which are engraved behind my eyes. It could not be more beautiful or succulent, this England of ours on days such as these.

I have never steered a boat like this before but was soon being instructed how to do so, although I admit to wanting someone with the requisite skills to be in charge when the boat traveled into locks with just inches to spare on either side.

It was great fun also learning to operate those locks and sling the ropes to the rest of the team to secure us as necessary. It was great watching the world passing us by in super slow motion, forcing us to relax and appreciate our surroundings.

It’s wonderful to greet your fellow travelers on the side of the river and to wave to the children walking along the towpath. The scout leaders were terrific with their young teenage charges, nurturing, leading but not bullying.

But above all, and most impressive were the seven young teenagers. They were polite, willing to learn, quick to listen to instruction, charming and intelligent. They disprove the generally held theory that our youngsters are a lost cause; they restored my faith in the future possibilities of our country.