Amid the COVID-19 panic, it has hardly been noticed that Carphone Warehouse went bust, with 2,900 people losing their jobs. Its co-founder, David Ross, is of course the billionaire that Boris Johnson claimed paid for his luxury holiday to Mustique, whereas Ross claimed he only organised it. Who actually paid is one of those Johnson peccadilloes, like the promotion of Jennifer Arcuri, the Garden Bridge fiasco, the Guppy conversation over beating up Stuart Collier, the Russian Influence report, the question of how many children he really has – I could go on rather a long while here – which will be discreetly downplayed by the state and media nexus.
Ross, like Branson and so many others of the “entrepreneurs” that we are taught to worship, came from a very wealthy background and had the great advantages of capital and connections to boost him up the ladder. To be fair to Ross, unlike for example Philip Green, there is no suggestion that he made his fortune from Carphone Warehouse by systematic asset-stripping. What he did do, which is typical of capitalism today, is with the other directors systematically and legally remove capital as it accumulated from the company into their own personal bank accounts. In the long term this left Carphone Warehouse unable to restructure and adapt to changed market conditions, which it needed to do, as its High Street model failed for reasons unrelated to the current health crisis. Ross also had illegally used his shares as collateral for £162 million of personal loans, for which this major Tory party donor has inexplicably never been prosecuted.
Ross had inherited a very large chunk of shares in, and the chairmanship of, Cosalt Ltd, a maritime supplies company. It went bust with £70 million debt and a £50 million pensions deficit, which ruined the lives of many employees and ex-employees. Inexplicably, after it went bankrupt its best assets were sold by the administrators Price Waterhouse at a knockdown price to… major Tory Party donor David Ross. Who thus made money from his own family company going bust and its pensioners being shafted.
Inexplicably, major Tory Party donor David Ross was not disqualified as a director of other companies by the Insolvency Service when Cosalt, of which he was a chairman, went bankrupt.
About 7% of Ross’s wealth would pay the entire Carphone Warehouse staff being made redundant for a year. That of course will never happen because it is absolutely contrary to the model of capitalism currently operating, in which the ultra wealthy view companies as sources of short term wealth extraction and feel zero connection to the workforce.
There is room to be congratulatory of Rishi Sunak’s active interventionism in the face of the economic crisis caused by the reaction to coronavirus. Many of his interventionist measures are very good, in particular in subsidising wages. It has been rightly and widely noted that to date there is not enough to support those self-employed in the gig economy, while to rely on universal credit to support anybody in crisis is plainly insufficient. But I am here more concerned with the larger macroeconomic measures. Quantitative easing as ever will merely push more money into the financial institutions for them to looad into financial instruments of zero real economic benefit.
The vast bulk of the £330 billion business bailout will find its way in huge tranches into mega-companies. The airline industry has already requested £7.5 billion, to give just one example. That is a series of simple large cheques for an overstretched civil service to write. I strongly suspect that the loans to small businesses, started today, will be slow and bureaucratic and difficult to access. They will be subject to bank interest – the bankers always win – which for a period will be paid by the taxpayer. Many of these measures when you analyse them are in the long term more transfers of money from the taxpayers to the banks.
It has been widely noted that money is suddenly magically available which was denied to industrial strategy and to the NHS for decades. But do not be fooled; this is not a conversion to Keynes by the Tories. In bailing out the airlines, Branson is not going to be asked to put back one penny of his personal wealth, and nor is David Ross nor any of the other billionaires. Those who have made vast fortunes in our ever-expanding wealth gap are not going to be asked to put anything back into the companies or system which they exploited. Massive state subsidies will predominantly go to the biggest companies and benefit the paid agency of the bankers. You and I will pay. The taxpayer will ultimately pick up the tab through what may prove to be another decade of austerity imposed as a result of another transfer of wealth from us to banks, financial institutions and big companies. The small and medium companies which will go to the wall – and a great many will – are going to provide rich pickings in a few months time for the vultures of the hedge funds and other disaster capitalists.
It is fashionable to write articles at the moment stating the Government has discovered the value of socialist intervention. I suspect history will show that nothing could be further from the truth.
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Good header.
The only thing I would add for the time being is that the grab is international.
Oh stop this socialist rubbish, any chump can churn that out.
Please keep us in the picture on the Salmond imbroglio. Or should that be debacle?
It’s not really socialist to point out that the Tories are robbing the people blind. It’s simply true. It becomes rather more partisan, and rather less true, but perhaps still not strictly socialist in and of itself when Craig implies that a Labour government would do something different.
Craig wants to believe that some political parties are “in it” for the benefit, not of themselves and their cronies, but of the people. You know political parties like Labour, or the SNP, errr oops!
They’re all crooks. And always will be.
This is indeed theft on a scale even grander than 12 years ago. Ali Baba is looking down on (or more likely up at) us from wherever he is, spitting with anger about the limited opportunities available to him back in the day.
David: “They’re all crooks. And always will be”. New Labour fo the most part maybe. New SNP leadership maybe. But can you point to anything crooked Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell has done? Or Alex Salmond? Why do you think they are so hated by the establishment?
Ali Baba is doing pretty well at the moment in the person of the richest man in China, Jack Ma, who has just sent half a million Covid-19 test sets to the USA. Jack wants Americans to be alive and healthy so that they can afford to buy more of his products. Is that so reprehensible?
Indeed. One benefit of this outbreak is that the corruption of the global financial system, governments and the offshore banking system is finally laid bare. MMT has been providing a lens into this murky world for some time – one this outbreak is over, there will be another bloodbath when people finally realise just how duplicitous the bankers, politicians and the elite actually are.
Bill Mitchell has it spot on.
“The world is changing that is for sure. Governments around the world are promising to spend billions to address the coronavirus crisis and no-one (other than a few so-called progressives – see below) are talking about how governments will pay for the interventions. Everybody knows how. They have always known. The shams about governments not having enough money to provide adequate housing, schooling, health care, employment, other services, and a sustainable response to climate change are now exposed for all to see. The game is well and truly up. Everybody can now see that governments just have to announce billions of intervention and it will happen. Forget all the ‘complexity’ about accounting arrangements. Forget all the stuff that we will also drown under massive tax burdens if the government dares to help some disadvantaged person get a leg up in life. Forget all the stuff about bond markets punishing profligate governments with insolvency. Everybody can now see that the bond markets are the beggars and the government rules. Even in the Eurozone, it is obvious that the ECB is able to fund fiscal deficits of any size – ‘there is no limit’. Only the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists have consistently outlined the rationale for what is going on at present. And that point is increasingly being recognised although not always in ways I think does our work justice.”
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=44547
And what these revelations mean for an independent Scotland outside the EU.
https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2019/12/21/the-magic-money-tree/
Of course, but when an independent Scotland tries to print money, the currency will collapse against all others.
For nations of our size outside The Club, we need to generate wealth by exporting things the world wants to buy.
So we better start inventing clever things and manufacturing them, and building a banking system that invests in the private sector and not the corporate one.
Won’t it be easier to use the Euro?
No the Scottish currency won’t collapse. If Scotland is smart it will let its new sovereign fiat currency freely float. No peg, no “snake”, and definitely no use of sterling or the euro. That way the markets are impotent.
It’s only when your treasury chases exchange rate targets at its peril, or uses, or borrows in, a foreign currency that you are prey to market vultures.
Otherwise Scotland will be independent in name only.
Yes, the European Commission has temporarily removed the treaty obligations regarding budget deficits (max 3% of GPD) and accumulated public debt (max 60% of GDP), plus a host of other neoliberal dictats regarding state aid and competition, but that’s just for the duration of the CV crisis.
Once it’s over, those treaty terms will be reinstated. Or at least the Commission will seek to reinstate them. (I suspect at least one country (Italy) would then have no choice but to leave the eurozone, but that’s another discussion…)
So why would you let Brussels tell you exactly how much public spending you’re allowed to have, when you’ve just gone to extraordinary lengths to escape Westminster doing precisely the same thing?
Thank you Mr S. Best wishes to you and yours.
Tim Rdeout has investigated and written on the feasibility and success of a new Scottish currency. Tim is an SNP member, and got ‘new currency’ passed into SNP policy, against the wishes of the current leadership, hence why it doesn’t seem to be getting promoted much. Here is his website, it even gives a timetable, except the dates might need to change now:
https://www.reservebank.scot
Wally Jumblatt; not the Druze WJ, I presume? I’m not a Scot, but I have to admit that Scots have in the past come up with some crafty inventions that just about caught on: the pneumatic tyre, television….
Don’t confuse money with wealth. Governments that print money are merely redistributing wealth, not creating it. He who gets the most money is the winner. Anybody getting less than a pro-rated wad of cash loses.
Here Joe – have a free fifty quid. See what that’ll buy you after I give Bill three hundred billion. Cackles evilly.
Doesn’t really matter whether we have a central bank or just print it as in MMT. The main difference is that publishing the amount of the debt and including it in a budget every year makes it a little bit harder to hide the dishonesty from the public. MMT is just an assist to the propaganda boys – that’s all.
You really think the corruption is going to end and the government is suddenly going to start helping the poor just because MMT? Of course it won’t – to the extent that the government is able to disguise the amount it is taking from the people and becomes even less accountable as a result of MMT, it will become even more corrupt.
MMT just means even more of the product of your labour will end up in some bankster’s back pocket.
@David You misrepresent MMT with a straw man stating “… or just print it as in MMT” – in fact MMT makes it very clear the limits to sovereign government money creation are available labour & resources, thus exposing your observation that “MMT is just an assist to the propaganda boys” as ignorant rhetoric. Instead please read Bill Mitchell’s corrections to such misunderstandings, e.g.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=44547
“1. MMT is not a new regime that we will shift to. That is a fundamental mistake in understanding that many people fall into. A government does not suddenly ‘apply’ or ‘switch to’ or ‘introduce’ MMT. Rather, MMT is a lens which allows us to see the true (intrinsic) workings of the fiat monetary system. It helps us better understand the choices available to a currency-issuing government. It allows us to understand that most choices that are couched in terms of ‘budgets’ and ‘financial constraints’ are, in fact, just political choices.
There are no financial constraints on a currency-issuing government, only real resource and political constraints. And when life is threatened, as it is now, those political constraints soon evaporate. MMT is not a regime but an accurate perspective on reality. It lifts the veil imposed by neo-liberal ideology and forces the real questions and choices out in the open. In that sense, MMT is neither right-wing nor left-wing – liberal or non-liberal – or whatever other description of value-systems that you care to deploy.
I mean by that, that while MMT provides a clear lens for viewing the system, to advance specific policy platforms, one has impose a value system (an ideology) onto that understanding. To talk about MMT’s prescriptions is to reveal a lack of understanding about that distinction. The point is that MMT is what is. It is not a matter of moving to MMT.
By eschewing the discretionary use of fiscal policy and imposing fiscal rules, or, the alternative now of spending significant amounts to address the coronavirus crisis, a government is not exercising ‘non-MMT’ policy options in the first instance, and, ‘MMT policies’ in the second. The MMT lens allows us to tease out and more accurately predict the consequences of such a policy choice.
2. Deficits clearly matter in MMT, but, not for the reasons that mainstream macroeconomists claim. In MMT, all constraints on government action are real. By that I mean the available real resources that it can purchase.
I am very glad to know that Mr. Salmond is found not guilty, this is good news!
re: socialism. Not exactly socialism, but nontheless
I recently came across an interesting opinion that I want to share here. One of the sites where artisans sell their work, has recently announced New Advertising Program: in addition to the existing fees, they will collect 12% fee on orders from these new ads. All orders of the buyer who came through clicking on the ad and bought something (or multiple orders) within 30 days. The entire order amount, including shipping costs counts. Sellers who have earned more than $ 10,000 in 12 months cannot opt out of this “ad programm”
Of course, the innovation caused heated discussions in our circle. One participant strongly objected to mandatory participation, appealing to the fact that the United States is a free country and there’s no Communism there.
Well, I expressed the opinion that if the site paid for at least one lesson for me, then it would be communism, because education was free under communism in Russia. As well as guaranteed employment.
What struck me in this discussion was the opinion of some participants that freedom was not violated, because there’s a choice – everyone is free to leave the site.
I’m surprised that people call the lack of responsibility and absolute abscence of obligations – freedom!
As the bible says
“ go now and free those who have been slaves all of their lives for fear of death “
The bible said they were freed
But they were not ,
Instead , they changed the definition of freedom
Exactly, Terence. You summed this up. “Instead , they changed the definition of freedom”
Many artisans are fed up with those “innovations”, always aimed to bring more profit to the intermediary. It’s getting unbearable to sponsor such a “partner”. Many decide for INDEPENDENCE, myself among them. Joined discussions on how to build a stand alone site.
There’s a credo I once adopted – if I’m able to earn money to live on + a bit extra for that company, then why do I feed that company at all?
Salmond acquitted on all charges, in a four-week trial that barely lasted two. This was always going to end either Salmond’s career, or Sturgeon’s. .As dying Wilde said of the wallpaper in his bedroom, one of us is going to have to go.
No not at all
AS and NS are not enemies , many would like to think they are and many say they are but they are not enemies.
NS could not stop the PF bringing charges forward
Many would have liked her to but it would have been wrong
The thing is when you are wrongly accused and charges are brought you have no option but to go to court and defend yourself
Saying to the judge or the First minister of Scotland you are innocent doesn’t cause the PF to abandon the case
You have to go to court and defend yourself
To normal to do so
The accusers is where the spotlight should be
Don’t YOU know that Vronsky ?
Pretty standard for a politician who wants something to go ahead says in public that they really wanted to stop it but simply could not. Its amazing how little power a powerful politician has when they don’t want to accomplish something.
I’d also be willing to wager that we’ll hear a lot more about how she wanted to stop it AFTER the acquittal than we ever did BEFORE.
Wanted ?
Irrelevant
NS couldn’t wouldn’t didn’t try and pervert the course of justice
Why not do the Tory/Lib Dem thing and say ‘We have conducted a full internal investigation and there is no case to answer’? The Labour thing is just to ignore it. And it’s not that the SNP pursue sinners in a more even-handed way. John Mason, the Glasgow zealot, has seen no repercussions for his announced intention to defy the party line and endanger people’s lives. Whence this mysterious protection, this curious immunity?
“The Labour thing is just to ignore it.”
You obviously believe what the MSM and assorted politicians said. Labour investigated much more than other parties and to this day the Tories have not investigated their own Islamophobia including that of their leader.
Terence Callachan
You say A. Salmond and N. Sturgeon are not enemies. Now I hope that is the case but how do you say that with such certainty. Do you know who the accusers are? Nicola Sturgeon has a lot of questions to answer.
Also how could a procurator fiscal bring that shambles of a case to court. 20 detectives and 386 statements and that is all they come up with.
A lot of public money has been wasted on a political plot. People must be held accountable.
The PF is independent of NS she has no say in their decision
I agree with this you say…
“ Also how could a procurator fiscal bring that shambles of a case to court. 20 detectives and 386 statements and that is all they come up with”
We will hear more about that
It matters not who the accusers are NS has no control over their legal action she couldn’t stop it
Once the PF knows of the case there is no going back
There are questions unanswered , I’m sure that answers will be vigorously sought
Further legal action is possible
Terence Callachan
I am not saying Nicola Sturgeon is guilty of anything. Just surprised that you clearly do not know who the accusers are but you are happy to say everything is fine between Salmond and Sturgeon. More an article of faith rather than evidence/ analysis.
Remember Mc Canns comment on the texts that came out in the trial. Who knew about that?
Great video below, especially for those that still reject Corona as a flu or that Corona doesnt bother them because they are old,
https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1241859943017349126
It’s what has come to be known as ‘fear porn’ It is more contagious than any flu, the coroney bug included. Best keep a large social distance away from TV and other propoganda outlets. Hope that helps. Stay strong.
cheers
Watt
There is nothing harder to open than a closed mind. The expression fear porn has now become one of the catchphrases of those who do not want to believe the glaring evidence because there is a conspiracy by the WHO, the Lancet, JAMA, the whole medical community, the governments of China, South Korea and Italy to do what exactly?
Those who say this is exaggerated line themselves up squarely with the likes of Trump “it’s a hoax” or with Johnson who wanted us to develop herd immunity whilst millions die. Wake up before it is too late.
SA
This is why the spread is the strongest in europe right now, far too many ridicule the crisis not realizing it might as well hit themselves sooner or later or their kin.
On a different note – https://www.rt.com/uk/483861-alex-salmond-acquitted-sexual-assault/
On the wrong subject but I have just heard Salmond was acquitted on all charges. BBC News’ Sarah Smith was quick to point out a ‘Not Proven’ on one charge though before going through exactly what Salmond had been charged with and found innocent of. It’s almost like they didn’t have a script ready for this and had to adapt the one they had..
Yes, Smith’s report had a distinctly sour tone. She gave a strong impression of disappointment at the outcome: along the lines of ‘Yes, he was acquitted, but there was one “Not Proven”. And look at the nasty things he was accused of ………… ‘
Waiting now to observe the fallout and to hear your assessment, Craig.
@ Gary Scott & Old Red Stone,
Agreed.
On R4’s PM earlier Smith sounded more even-handed but was “inexplicably” digital glitched and was unable to finish her piece.
“It sounds like we’re trying to cover something up and not at all .. ” giggled Evan Davies.
Listen from 35:35:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gkvw
It’s entirely co-incidental that the witnesses were almost universally described as “civil servants” and then all of a sudden it’s now becoming an internal SNP matter.
I’ve no doubt there are some in the SNP that we need to get rid off – I’m a almost 65 year old with donkeys years of support – but we need To rediscover the soul of the party. Let’s get rid of the careerists and SPADS and hingers-oan and get back to the Party’s raison d’etre – INDEPENDENCE.
Good for you Margaret.
I have been a member of the SNP for over 30 years. There is only one reason for the party’s existence – Independence.
It has no other purpose – and the idea that a person who is a “Soft Yes” would have the gall to seek nomination as a candidate- and worse, be entertained in doing so – and to occupy senior party position, is utterly incomprehensible to this member.
We have one purpose and one purpose only: INDEPENDENCE
Agreed Margaret
Upon being cleared and standing outside the High Court — Salmond announced: “As many of you will know, there is certain evidence I would have liked to have seen led in this trial but for a variety of reasons we were not able to do so. At some point, that information, that facts and that evidence will see the light of day.”
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/483888-alex-salmond-scottish-acquitted/
The Guardian, like Sarah Smith, also reported Salmond’s innocence with a very sour paragraph emphasising the one “not proven” charge and linking it to 2 jurors who were “let go”. This exposes the great weakness in Scottish justice compared with English justice in this one regard, as it affords the media an opportunity to clearly imply a “no smoke without fire” scenario, even though in all but name, “not proven” is exactly the same as NOT GUILTY on the evidence as presented and in any case, this only involves one of the many charges.
This also exposes the whole subject of the ability of a group of people, with absolute anonymity, to conspire together in conjuring up any old allegation. In the reasonable view of many, provided a minor is not involved, every alleged crime needs to be asserted without the privilege of hiding behind a manufactured cloak of hidden identity, as with ANY other type of alleged crime.
The Guardian’s implied message is clear: “We acknowledge the case was not proven but we know he did it”. That is not a satisfactory outcome of proper justice.
Not proven is a good judgement
those who criticise it or infer that justice has not been done
are suggesting that someone should be criminalised and found guilty of a crime
that nobody
witnesses QC,s judges juries
can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they did
Their criticism of not proven is always has always been short lived
Not really Terence. As I said, not proven EQUALS not guilty, because any case which lacks sufficient evidence should always fail.. Of course there is always a risk that the decision was wrong, but that is better than giving the press an opportunity to imply guilt when all the normal rules of justice and process have been followed. Therefore I do not follow your logic. Having two tiers of innocence or implied guilt is a very poor way to administer justice.
Not proven means that the prosecution failed to make its case and as the fallback is ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is the same as not guilty.
One of the difficult things that will likely be hoving into view, after all this cash splashing, is why was Greece
made to suffer so terribly by the E.U. Elite?
Not that nonsense again. Debunked years ago, but endlessly repeated by Brexiters. Makes you wonder when people say things about Brexiters.
To encourage the rest
michael norton
Well EU have alot of problem after this crisis, for one it havent worked one bit. Some Cuban, chinese, russian doctors are instead helping some european nations.
Why? That’s an easy one.
To bail out otherwise insolvent French and German banks.
And as a cruel experiment to see what the consequences of internal devaluation would be in a eurozone nation, that, not having its own currency, had no other choice.
Next question…
As an example to the slightly higher orders.
Make no mistake about it – this is a pre- Bail Out for a recession that was already coming for the Big League Banks.
The Virus has offered up ( yet again ) an opportunity for the Big Players to profit.
Those businesses who thought they were ” One of Us ” ( Thank you Maggie ) have found out that they are One of Them.
Sad tale: as an Ex -Northerner living in France- Greggs is shutting its doors.
It was the best of times and it was the worst of times etc etc.
Michael Norton,
Well nearly all Greek airports including those heavily used such as Athens and the islands , were bought cheaply by …..
Guess who. .?
German companies
Mercedes, MAN, and many other high profile brand companies wete bought up by….
Guess who?
Saudi Arabian kings and princes
Globalisation does not work, just as mega Cities are becoming risky to live in and unsustainable.
Just saw the headline on PressTV. that Mr. Salmond was acquitted.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!
Some good news.
I too am pleased to see justice was done and almost seen to be done in dismissing the false charges against Alex Salmond.
Germany’s COVID-19 curve is flattening. However Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, says he expects 60 to 70% of the world’s population to become infected with the virus eventually.
https://www.rt.com/news/483816-coronavirus-infections-flattening-germany/
If you are on ACE inhibitors or ARBs. This is what Dr Malcolm Kendrick says about them based on Italian data.
“There has been much debate as to whether or not ACE-inhibitors (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors) and ARBs may increase the risk of death [these drugs are widely used to lower blood pressure]. This is because COVID-19 appears to enter the body through ACE2 receptors – found in high concentrations in the lungs and can cause upset to the neurohormonal system where ACE, and ACE receptors, play an important role.”
I’ve linked his blog-piece on this to my name,
It is not often I watch anything on the Beeb. However, today is a special day for Scotland.
Tonight I will enjoy watching the summersaults from Smith et al that lead to an aquittal being a death sentence for AS.
.
Death knell of the Union, more like.
I must say that Salmond I think is a decent semi leftie but maybe the Oil Lobby and other ‘ interested parties ‘
marked his card a long time ago.
Like Galloway he has allegedly taken the Putin Rouble.
I don’t believe that for one minute – particularly when the criticism comes from those who have long taken the Clinton ( male or female dollar) and posed as ‘ Progressives ‘
” the Guardian needs your support etc etc ”
I prefer the Express – at leat you know where you stand with them…………..and of course the Weather Reports.
It is a form of socialism and its possible due to Brexit, now that UK is no longer promoting EU Austerity to save the Euro. But whether it’s a socialism for the people or the banks depends on whether its spent or borrowed into circulation. But it shows the money was always there proving austerity was a political choice rather than an economic necessity.
And strictly speaking Laguerre is right, the EU is not to blame for the destruction of Greece, because the Greeks chose to suffer and remain in the Euro.
AS was found not guilty because the jury was not convinced or intimidated into believing touching a knee was akin to attempted rape, despite all the Me Too propaganda. That is they could see the charges were trivial and did not fear being accused of sexual depravity for delivering not guilty verdicts. This may sound odd but this sort of catch-all branding is the intended outcome of identity politics.
This has proved a very effective way to secure guilty verdicts in ‘race’ cases, such as the two found guilty of murdering Stephen Lawrence. There was no real evidence presented to the jury other than an ‘inadmissible’ under cover tape showing them making racist comments and the jury feared being denounced as racists if they returned not guilty verdicts.
The alternative to the Euro would have ben going back to the Drachma and its convertability as an inependent currency would have been gauged by the currency Markets.
There never was an escape as Varoufakis thought.
Sipras took the view that if anyone is going to Privatise Greek people’s assets then Syriza should try its best to lengthen the process.
Meanwhile Yanis did a tour of Europe,.
Don’t get me wrong I like Varoufakis as I like George Galloway – but political organisers they are not.
A liitle anecdote: My friend Lakis used to go to smog ridden Athens with an empty suitcase and be asked at Greek Customs -” have you anything to declare? ”
No he would reply and he would go through with his empty suitcase and the Greek Authorities would scratch their heads.
He would then buy (in Athens) thousands of cigarettes – for his own use – after visiting his Mother of course -no dodge and successfully glide them through British Customs.
He knew that OK if he got caught he would pay the same amount of tax as if he bought the same cigarettes in the UK.
Nothing terrible in that – it is what he would have paid anyway in the British Shops.
His success ratio entering the UK was 5/2 .
5 times he got away with it and 2 times he was caught.
Not a bad ratio.
he also told me and my brother that his Dad and him had an ID Card with a chip 1996 and that because he and his were Communists all the info for the State’s perusal was on that card.
It doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to get to the Cashless Society via chipped Bank Card.
If you don’t play the game – ot doesnt work.
The warning by Lakis is 22 years old.
Things have moved on.
Craig, read MMT (Modern Monetary Theory). Bill Mitchell spells it out today, in particular that economic activity (i.e. both public and private spending) is limited by labour and resources, NOT numbers in spread sheets held by banks. As such, the central bank will never bounce a treasury cheque: government can simply instruct the BoE (e.g. see A. Darling letter to M. King https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-bank-letters-idUKTRE6132O720100204 ) to make bigger numbers (funds available) in other bank accounts. No bonds need be sold. No “borrowing” needs be done. No taxes need collecting. Simply run up the numbers within the limit set by available labour and resources. http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=44547
Very true, but its not a popular idea with the private bankers and was the reason powerful financial interests wanted war with Germany after they adopted MMT in the 1930s.
George Galloway was in Scathing mode last night Re Covid-19 Boris failings and others..
But he always has to get his Anti Scotland Independence Slot in..Telling you that we Depend on Oil – LIE.
Great news about Alex S.
Gawd I have never seen a Craig post being so Overrun by OT potsts so Early in a Thread
Salmond was intending to return to the political fray in 2018, a popular politician who led us to a independence referendum, Sturgeon would’ve felt threatened by this.
Having led the party, for several years as well as FM, she’s become accustomed to the position. Salmond’s return could’ve saw her popularity as leader wane, as would that of her clique of confidantes appointed by the Treasury and endorsed by Sturgeon, so they struck before he could return to the fold.
As for damaging the party, I doubt Sturgeon or the ten complainants thought for one moment that Salmond would not be found guilty, the bigger the lie so to speak.
Now the calm before the storm, as the repercussions begin to mount up, not just from Salmond or those who know whats going on inside the SNP, but from the unionist parties, who’ll watch as the SNP tears itself apart, the coup de gravce will be the information that Salmond was forbidden to reveal in the High court.
Hopefully Sturgeon and her deceitful hordes, led by LE, will be vanquished, and the SNP can rise from the ashes once more, possibly with Salmond at it head.
If not I’ll vote for Salmond if he creates his own indy party prior to the next Holyrood elections. It would give me great pleasure to see Craig Murray and the Rev, get behind his banner, what a force fir goid that would be.
Creating the huge amounts of money quoted by the chancellor, will be done in a sly and sleekit way. The treasury issues bonds for the money the Government need, which then gets bought by financial institutions and then the bank of England will buy the same amount of bonds back from other financial institutions (as they did with QE) with computer created, digital money. The Government are supposed to pay the interest, due on the bonds that the BOE now owns, when it’s due, but of course that will never happen. I wish they could miss out the trickery and come clean with the public that there is a magic money tree, that can be used to pay for schools, hospitals, services and infrastructure. But of course that would mean the business model for commercial banks, who create money when they issue loans and charge interest on it, would become redundant, and they would probably collapse (like Blockbuster did when their business model became redundant).
Interestingly, The Bank Of England now owns hundreds of £645 billion worth of UK Government debt because of the QE buyback of UK bonds. Here is the link to the Bank Of England website, which confirms this astronomical figure. At some stage it is expected to be written off. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/quantitative-easing
gareth
yes – that’s about it.
Except: The surety lodged by the companies who buy the Bonds are in the form of crap assets.
Like the Financial Bail Out.
For example RBS was bailed into Bonds with a view to selling back RSB’s assets back into the Private Markets as and when the time/price was right.
they haven’t been because the price isn’t right ( not cheap enough for the private buyers) and who is goin to but these ‘assets ‘ now in the current climate.
I honestly believe that this opportunity has been take to temporarily underpin the Overnight lending Markets for Medium and Large Banks.
There are rumours that trump’s government have pumped 9Tr dollars into the Bank marekts in the last 6 months.
If true – we are all beggared unless we do a Castro.
p.s. Please excuse the typos – it was written at speed because for us it is important that we know what
is or may be going on here.
By the way: The US Fed has said it will do in QE terms what ever it takes to shore up ‘ The Markets.’
we are post WOW.
Any government debt ‘owned’ by the BoE is just an accountancy ledger entry – the BoE, independent it may be, is still the bank of ENGLAND. It can just be cancelled at a stroke.
Abracadabra! Vanishooo!
Why the QE ended up with private banks to loan back to the government is the daylight flim flam robbery!
People just need to get out of Maggies lying handbag and see.
“Why the QE ended up with private banks to loan back to the government is the daylight flim flam robbery! ”
Not really. QE was just an asset swap; the existing holders of those govt Bonds (including banks) simply sold them to the BoE in exchange for currency.
It didn’t make them any richer, because they *already owned* those £435bn of assets (in Gilts).
Gilts are as liquid as currency; the only difference is that currency in the bank is a liability at the BoE (and currently earns 0.1% interest), while Gilts are a liability at the Treasury (yielding about 2%). Both institutions are owned by the Government, so its all government debt.
The motivation for QE was to target lower interest rates after the GFC; with the Govt-owned BoE in the market for billions of pounds worth of Gilts, the price went up, and because they are fixed-interest Bonds, the effective yield (interest) went down.
That’s all there was to it. Yes, the BoE created the money to buy the Gilts out of thin air, but then it does that sort of thing every day, for example, to pay nurses and teachers salaries, and no-one complains (except Tories!).
One of the problematic issues with QE though, is that, with fewer (ultra-safe, Government guaranteed) Gilts around, all that currency that was swapped for them had to go somewhere a bit safer than a Barclays or HSBC deposit account (guaranteed only up to £85K), hence the asset price boom, as the target for safe savings turned towards equities and property.
Not so safe now, of course…
Money is only “loaned” to the Government in the sense that it provides the private sector with safe savings products in the form of Gilts, Granny Bonds, NS&I products e.g. Premium Bonds, etc. As monopoly creator of the currency, it doesn’t actually *need* the money, which it created in the first place, that’s saved in one of its products.
I don’t think we disagree – going by your reference to Richard Murphy below – who I was paraphrasing. ?
I note that no explanation is provided regarding the mechanism by which the rich will become richer.
You cannot cure a solvency problem with liquidity – something which this time around will soon be plain to even the most ideologically possessed.
Quite.
It’s the equivalent of pumping water into a jar with holes in it.
Get rid of the jar!
You wouldn’t be at all “ideologically possessed” yourself would you, perhaps to the extent that you consider Trump anything but the narcissistic moron he most obviously is?
Loony
Can you explain then why after the crash of 2007-8, and the bailouts and quantitative ease, that we now have many more billionaires whilst the rest of us suffered austerity?
The response to 2007/8 was to inject liquidity (i.e. cash) into an insolvent system.
In order to prevent a Zimbabwean type hyper inflation the cash was channeled into a narrow range of asset classes. Hence you have seen real estate and stock market inflation. This has obviously benefitted the holders of real estate and stocks.
Cash (by way of zero % interest rates) was given to large corporations – but because the system is insolvent there are very few investment opportunities. Therefore the cash was used for gargantuan share buy back programs. As senior management are incentivized by way of earnings per share buying back shares necessarily increases earnings per share and hence management bonuses.
Various Ponzi schemes were ramped up – the most obvious one being the explosive growth of debt fuelled higher education. I do not know what people mean when they speak of austerity. The real austerity is the one they have done their best to hide – namely the crippling amounts of debt that John and Jane Doe have been forced to assume – whether directly through loans secured against inflated real estate or inflated higher education or indirectly through public sector services being loaded with debt. This a slow burn deal – but one day (perhaps this day) the speed of burn will increase close to the speed of light.
Most of the rich people you seem so exercised about are the holders of a lot of this debt. Their problem is that the debt cannot be repaid. That that cannot be repaid will not be repaid. Not so rich really.
Naturally they will force governments to repay them – but the only thing governments can do is print money. At some point all faith will be lost in money and at that point no matter how much is printed it will be goodnight Vienna for the erstwhile rich. However because they like being rich they will most likely try to seize real assets. History is replete with examples of that not being a successful strategy. Notwithstanding history it is a racing certainty that they will try – and at that point it will be “guns, guns shatter the lands”
Loony
Are you really being serious?
“In order to prevent a Zimbabwean type hyper inflation the cash was channeled into a narrow range of asset classes. Hence you have seen real estate and stock market inflation. This has obviously benefitted the holders of real estate and stocks.”
In other words in order to prevent any sort of meaningful recovery the money was channeled to into property and stock markets, both of which only benefit the rich but have no value on infrastructural projects or employment. Confirms what I said.
“Cash (by way of zero % interest rates) was given to large corporations – but because the system is insolvent there are very few investment opportunities. Therefore the cash was used for gargantuan share buy back programs. As senior management are incentivized by way of earnings per share buying back shares necessarily increases earnings per share and hence management bonuses.”
Again big coorporations were given cash to inflate their share values so that the inflated share values so engendered added to the wealth of the big shareholders. Confirms money recirculation to the rich.
Various Ponzi schemes were ramped up – the most obvious one being the explosive growth of debt fuelled higher education.
Really? was that the only ponzi scheme you can think of? The real ponzi schemes which lead to the crash such as those of Madoff and others, not only remained unpunished but rescued so as to have even bigger ponzi schemes. Madoff was the only one scapegoated, many others thrived.
I do not know what people mean when they speak of austerity.
I really feel you are being disingenuous here. You mean all the major contraction in public projects, the starving of the NHS, the contraction of local services provided by councils, the contraction of policing, community centres, youth services, the major rise in the gig economy are not really manifestations of austerity? Words fail.
The real austerity is the one they have done their best to hide – namely the crippling amounts of debt that John and Jane Doe have been forced to assume – whether directly through loans secured against inflated real estate or inflated higher education or indirectly through public sector services being loaded with debt.
O my oh my!!!! This is tantamount to blaming the victims. I guess you will next tell me that the poor are poor because of original sin or something. I think I will leave you to figure out that what you wrote makes no sense whatsoever.
Most of the rich people you seem so exercised about are the holders of a lot of this debt.
You really are telling me that this money owned by billionaires is not real? Oh poor billionaires.
Loony your post is typical of supercilious right wing commentators who think they can bluff their way by saying anything as long as it sounds like jargonese. I am sorry it is just that and it is piffle.
Printing money is fine until it isn’t. The problem is that we don’t know when the tipping point is. What you have to do is watch the bond market, if bond prices start falling we have a big problem. It will mean that lenders are demanding higher rates to lend to governments and make it impossible to borrow more.
The UK has another problem after the massive intervention which will need massive new state borrowing the £ has been crashing, we could end up having to raise interest rates to defend the value of the £ this would result in mass personal defaults
This is much bigger than than the rights and wrongs of bailing out VAT fraudsters like Branson.
Don’t need lenders for a government to ‘borrow’ they just tell the BoE to issue a loan out of thin air for the Treasury to spend – without the middleman bankers getting commissions and interest on that magic money as usual.
What happens when people find out ?
Printing money is fine as long as it is invested in infrastructure, jobs, people and fairness and therefore can have returns. But sadly in the capitalist system eventually most of the money printed is ultimately syphoned to increase the wealth of the few and is thereby sequestered. That is exactly what happened in 2007 under our great socialist leaders Blair and Brown (sarcasm). But of course the alternative was proposed by Corbyn and was demonised by all because it would have disturbed this one way money traffic.
“Printing” money is a misnomer; there’s very little printing nowadays. It’s almost all created digitally.
And “creating” money digitally is absolutley fine. It’s what happens every single day, as the government injects currency, created at a BoE keystroke, into the economy in the normal way, to carry out the public spending that we all ultimately depend on as a source of net, sterling-denominated, financial assets.
The limit to how much ahould be created is dictated by the capacity of the real economy to absorb all that spending, without overheating and causing inflation. This is what tends to happen in a boom, so spending may need to be temporarily reduced in those conditions.
Right now we have the polar opposite, and that is an understatement.
You are going to see sterling currency creation go through the roof in the next few weeks and months – thank goodness – so sit back and enjoy the ride. It will disabuse you of any lingering Thatcherite myths that the Government has no money of its own, but only what it can borrow or raise in taxes! First off, no-one has had a massive, emergency tax bill, enabling the govt to spurge on steroids, and secondly, there’s no-one left to “borrow” from, even if the govt needed to; the private sector is on its knees, and begging the govt for bailouts!
#LearnMMT
Mr S
Excuse the old fashioned term ‘printing money’. Of course but this ‘virtual money still finds its way inordinately into the virtual accounts of the rich and billionaires unless it is recirculated. The false premise of allowing the rich to get richer because they are ‘job creators’ is what it seems this money creation schemes are about. So in fact the small government of capitalists is a mere mask as governments divert money to the rich instead of investing in public infrastructure. Am I right?
Geoffrey, “we” do not have a “big problem” if Bond prices start falling. The Govt doesnt “need” to issue bonds at all, it’s just a convenient cover to look as if it isn’t the currency creator, so it can clamp down on demands for public spending.
Richard Murphy makes it easy to understand in this blog post:
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/03/23/at-long-last-the-government-can-borrow-straight-from-the-bank-of-england-as-modern-monetary-theory-has-always-suggested-it-should/
but if you prefer to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/market-notices/2020/apf-asset-purchases-and-tfsme-march-2020
“With respect to corporate bond purchases, the Bank reserves the right to carry out secondary market purchases via other methods, such as bilateral purchases, should it be deemed necessary. The MPC will keep under review the case for participating in the primary market.”
The last sentence is the killer: As Murphy explains: “Treasury can now create a bond whenever it wishes and the Bank of England may buy it directly from it, without ever involving private banks. In effect, then, the Treasury can now run an overdraft at the Bank of England (even if it is wrapped up in a bond arrangement)…”
Who needs the markets, eh? : ))))
You are wrong. If you can magic money, why work,why pay tax or why get out of bed ?When people realise that the BofE and government is making fun of them, money will become worthless.
Then we will we have starvation etc.
‘You’ can’t magic money unless ‘you’ are a banker.
Only the STATE can and always have – the bankers have a licence from the State to create money.
A person can go bankrupt if they can’t pay their personal debts and their assets can be seized and they can be made bankrupt
A state is not a person and can never run out of money to pay its ‘debts’.
Try and get your head around that simplicity.
If you truly want to understand than ask or go read Richard Murphy as the poster above suggests or any other modern monetary theory exponents.
Taxes by the way are only the way that a governments currency has any ‘value’ – again a simple concept if you bother to open your preconceptions onstilled by the bashing on the heads of Maggies handbag and purse – a complete lie.
Good to see you’re back, Craig, and be assured most folk who follow your blog really have your best interests at heart, and enjoy reading your postings.
All the best .
Hey look at me sticking to topic!
War is not ‘socialism’ either. It’s main purpose is money. For the military industrialists and of course the bankers – they make money from all sides and their factories never get destroyed.
Since the 1st war whole new industries have got involved , chemicals, electronic and pharmaceuticals and whatever we now have like genetics etc.
They like to disrupt and destroy revolutionary forces which are the poorest people rebelling against the classes holding them down – that means terror and death is deployed.
So this is the third world war and of course it is with new weapons as in every war. Money for all these above. Plenty of it to stay at the top of the greasy pole.
The other periodic event is to scalp all the wealth, by giving loans/credit and then making conditions so they default and the security put up gets grabbed. Investments are encouraged in stock markets and shares sold at higher values and then crashed and picked up at a fraction. There will be a sop of a few thousand £’s a head handed to these whose earnings are destroyed, the millions if employed and self employed – gawd bless you master bozo you’ve looked after us. As laura will no doubt be working up in soft focus. Aaw and he’s got a new baby too!
Rinse and Repeat is their ancient game.
The Virus is being tracked back to its origin and it seems certainly not to have originated from the Wuhan market as proved by the infected who had no connection with it – all should have been.
The spooky coincidence of the miltary games held there with hundreds of US soldiers attending in October. The coincidence of world’leaders’ holding a table scenario of a spread of a corona virus organised by Bill Gates also in October. The coincidence of the Italian, Spanish and Iranian outbreaks linked with US bases. The inexplicable failure of the WHO to declare the pandemic according to their protocols. And the utter failure of bozo and the tories and US not implementing testing and isolation until now to encourage a state of national emergency to grab more powers and pop the bubble with the excuse of the blackswan virus… we are as usual being toyed with and destroyed and robbed blind.
R&R
The stolen assets, privatisation, having being stripped & robbed and cannot be maintained are ‘failed’ and ‘saved’ by renationalisation with public money and fattened up for future reprivatisation
Rinse and Repeat.
People glued to msm are stampeded into the shops to buy bog roll and everything causing faster spread and chaos – more reason to pass mad dog draconian laws and ratchet down on future protests.
R&R.
Craig is right. This ain’t socialism breaking out its the same old same old.
There are some decent sites with relevant updates – MoA has been consistent and thorough. And the sooner we can get the 10’s of millions of test kits that will tell who has already had it and is therefore ‘immune’ the quicker these people will be able to get back into the public and normality will be seemingly restored with massive new powers enshrined and a pavlovian response instilled in the masses to volunteer into martial law!
https://mobile.twitter.com/Laurie_Garrett/status/1241828745134190592
It can never be forgotten that the tories OWN this completely and why Jezza had to be stopped. We can guess what bozo was upto when he disappeared post election to a sunny island (to be fully briefed) and why the response to the flooding was muted – there were bigger fish to fry than just pushing through the hard brexit.
I suppose if phil or betty croak it they’ll be put in deep freeze! Can’t suddenly say it’s ok to have masses in the streets for the funeral! Best save that for the long planned brave new world.
The Russians have been left out of the loop seemingly as they clear the ME of the head choppers and their backers – the only thing I can’t get my head around is that China head a top representative at Gates war game!
Dungroaning
There are many strands to your post. At this time when not many facts are known, it is important to keep a level head and not to speculate too much. I agree with your assessment of MoA but there are other websites that in my opinion used to be good but turned rogue. Another good source to read is Caitlin Johnston.
There is no evidence that this is a bioweapon scientifically and in any case why would you have such a difficult to control weapon which quickly attacks your own side? Ah population control some say, but the population is already controlled anyway and the disease does not spare the rich and destroys industries that the rich rely on to make themselves richer. We then go on down this conspiracy spiral.
We, and by this I mean progressives (whatever that means) must distinguish between real happenings, in this case, a natural virus that has spread in China probably related to they way they operate food markets and the species they eat, and how governments use events to control us and continue with their narratives. In fact I think in this case UK and USA have been taken by surprise and wrong footed, so let us not encourage them by starting narratives that at best are diversions.
SA
I too don’t think an engineered virus is likely but I also don’t think the powers that be have been wrong footed. What you see in response has been carefully planned and the go button was pushed when the virus appeared. After all there is always another virus on the way, like bird flu, SARS etc.
I repeat what I said elsewhere. Do we really believe that the WHO, The Lancet, JAMA and the whole medical establishment and the governments of China, South Korea and Italy are all making it up? And what for?
I don’t think it is being suggested that any of the organisations you mention are making it all up! If you were planning a crime you would not start off by trying to engage, blackmail or bribe anyone who might stand in your way. You would familiarise yourself with their procedures and habits and make use of these to further your effort. A remarkably small number of people are needed to set something in motion. Once something is initiated it is only necessary to guide it along the pathways of established and trusted entities. Unfolding events need only a little poke here and there to ensure that the desired outcome, whatever that may be, is reached. Other, unrelated, actors will also start to come into play, spotting different ‘openings’ advantageous to their own particular agenda. I think it a little simplistic to believe that what is happening is not being manipulated or even deliberately initiated, or that the perceived responses to it are aimed at the common good of mankind.
Thank you for explaining how conspiracy theories work. But that was not my point, There are people out there and even some who write frequently in this blog site who repeatedly dismiss Covid-19 as made up and is really only deaths related to the flu virus and that we should really not worry at all. Some others say it is a man made bio-weapon. I haven’t yet heard anyone say that all the dead and unburied in Italy are ‘stress actors’ yet, but I suppose that will come. There is a particular website which used to be good and progressive that devotes itself to trying to convince everyone that this is a hoax, thereby agreeing with Trump and Johnson before he was made to change his mind. The website I mention is now haunted by crackpots who dismiss this pandemic. Some of the frequenters of that website also write here but fortunately tone down their conspiracies. I hope this is not too near the bone.
The virus is quite real, I have family who work in the medical profession seeing patients first hand. Quite how deadly it will eventually turn out to be remains to be seen, there are many experts and many opinions, but until it has played out no-one really knows. But if you believe that all that we read is the unadulterated truth, I have to say that I think you are a little misguided.
I apologise for posting what you consider a description of conspiracy theories, I did not mean to either appear patronising or sound stupid. You said ‘Do we really believe that the WHO, The Lancet, JAMA and the whole medical establishment and the governments of China, South Korea and Italy are all making it up?’. I was simply trying to point out, using the example of an ‘everyday crime’, how it is entirely possible for those with power and/or wealth to manipulate events without the knowing assistance of those reacting to them. But please yourself! .
Sorry for the length of my post – i read widely – and check info and then end up writing without editing and posting – it is freeform.
Here’s one I posted at the end today but will do again here since people are congregated. Shorter and more links that will satisfy I hope.
……..
Anyway here is the agenda of ratcheting down on the population and the divide and impoverish policy continuing:
‘The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said the delay in announcing help for the self-employed was down to it being “incredibly complicated” finding a way of designing a scheme that would help those in need, while not giving money to people who did not need it.’
Lol. These ‘middleclass’ waged workers with pensions and savings and stuff and the execs and bankers obviosly NEED it and the hand to mouth self employed – yes even these who only work for cash – supposedly don’t need it.
Meanwhile the Government experts have reduced the status of the Virus – ‘As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.’
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
And did we all get the same text today?
‘GOV.UK ALERT
CORONAVIRUS
New rules in force now: you must stay at home. More info and exemptions at gov.uk/coronavirus
Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives’
Talk of moving goal posts and mixed messages.
I’ll also remind us all that today is World Tuberculosis Day.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis
Now this one really is a pandemic.
The tories have no intention of letting this crises achieve anything approaching fairness, quite the opposite it seems to me the rush to pass draconian legislation under cover of this ‘medical emergency’ is leaving us with martial laws being imposed and taken for granted.
By the way SA you comment on my conjecture and no evidence but in the same breath blightly declare “…PROBABLY related to they way they operate food markets…’.
Come on! That’s schoolboy. I can’t let you get away with hypocrisy.
Because the origin of the infection in this case is not known but is thought to be originally an animal virus due to its close structure to those of known bar viruses. In this case it could not be confirmed that it came directly from bat to man but through an intermediate unknown species. I do apologise that my statement is unfounded but is something that has been mentioned in some quarters. Certainly didn’t to be hypocritical just sloppy.
I have just visited the Tartan Army Childrens Charity Website to order up a couple of their
‘Pain is Temporary’
‘Pride is Forever’
T shirts
Seems the donate mechanism has been changed from PayPal to Virgin Money Services. Who want to charge 4.5% to cover admin charges.
Is there no bottom too low for these slugs.
“Suspend the rules of capitalism. 30% unemployment isn’t a situation you can bootstrap or free market your way out of.”
https://twitter.com/krystalball/status/1242180684057382916
“I suspect history will show that nothing could be further from the truth.”
What history will show depends on who’s going to be writing it.
I fear that to certain people even to generations who’ve only ever known the post-Thatcher world, these crooks are heros, something like the ‘Great’ Train Robbers (aka the Chessington Mail Van Raiders) were to some of that generation, persons they might envy, to emulate even if on some much smaller scale..
I can’t pay you anything just now but I want to thank you , please keep going you are brave and the internet is a wonderful medium for exposing the truth , we need more people like you ,
thank you Angie
Craig,
Actually its worse than that. The ‘coronavirus’ rescue package for SME’s is via a bank facilitated Government loan guarantee scheme, not cheques from the Government to those that apply, indeed, it is entirely discretionary and the banks are in fact discouraged to lend to companies who they wouldn’t have lent to prior to pandemic consequences (point 2 below). Then, as if to make it really clear they add a P.S. which effectively says if you would lend the money normally then do so. By consequence the terms of the guarantee to the bank are: if you wold normally lend to the company in normal circumstances then we won’t guarantee the loan and if you wouldn’t lend to them in normal circumstances we won’t guarantee the loan.
https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/ourpartners/coronavirus-business-interruption-loan-scheme-cbils/
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
Smaller businesses from all sectors[3] can apply for the full amount of the facility. To be eligible for a facility under CBILS, an SME must:
Point 2:
Have a borrowing proposal which, were it not for the current pandemic, would be considered viable by the lender, and for which the lender believes the provision of finance will enable the business to trade out of any short-to-medium term difficulty.
Point 3:
Please note: If the lender can offer finance on normal commercial terms without the need to make use of the scheme, they will do so.
The coronavirus is being hyped beyond reason to get the “Coronavirus Bill” through Parliament. This Bill is draconian and creates a police state (for 2 years). Following Brexit the establishment want these powers to tackle another virus called Populism.
How does bailing out airlines jive with Climate Change Act 2008 ? Surely Covid-19 is Chinese impetus to the Green Economic Future lauded by Ursula von der Leyen ?
I believe the first Euro Commission President was Walter Hallstein who pushed the Zollverein against Ludwig Erhard’s FTA preference. – is the last EU Commission President to be German also ?
Any bailouts should transfer shareholder equity and convertible bonds to a State Pension Fund which can ensure a decent old age for penurious workers screwed over by Cameron-Clegg-Osborne