Ha ha ha!

Warning as HSBC profits fall 28%.

That'll teach the buggers for still insisting that I owe them money (I don't).

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August 4, 2008 | Filed Under Capital | Leave a Comment 

Donald Trump: Housing market is still alive!

Those of you struggling to meet your mortgage payments, terrified of what might happen if food and fuel get even more expensive, calm down! There's a man here who'd like to show you that it's not all doom and gloom.

Donald Trump, a well known and very rich man, has just sold his 5km sq. beach-front property to another very rich man for a record breaking $95 million. Trump said of the sale:

In an age of so many people getting hurt in real estate, it shows that you can still do well in real estate. I think it's a great sign for the area, a great sign for Palm Beach and all that Palm Beach represents.

So next time you start to moan about your rent and food bills going up, or the fact that you can't take a holiday this year, just remember: maybe if you worked a little harder, you'd be in possession of a $95 million mansion in Palm Beach. Think on.

(Coming next week: I will explain why banks deserve billions of dollars of government handouts but the working poor don't. And I'm reliably informed that Iberian Notes isn't frothing at the mouth about 'nationalising the banks' which always used to be his yardstick for the end of the world and the rise of the Bolshevik terror. I guess it's OK when it's done by people with whom you share what amounts to being a kind of a political philosophy).

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July 18, 2008 | Filed Under Capital | Leave a Comment 

The system works! Bear Stearns in trouble

US investment bank Bear Stearns begs for government bailout.

Meanwhile, Bush says he's "confident that the economy will improve soon". Well of course he is. He knows absolutely nothing about how it works.

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March 14, 2008 | Filed Under Capital | 5 Comments 

Castro out, Castro in!

So Fidel Castro is finally stepping down this Sunday as president of the council of state, and commander in chief, of Cuba. It now looks pretty much certain that his brother, Raúl will be invited by the council of state to become president.

This move could well lead to a wide range of economic changes in Cuba, though we'll have to wait to see how far they'll go. They can't exactly adopt the China model but I reckon that Cuba can find a way to renew the revolution while improving the living conditions of its citizens. A more even-handed approach from the United States would help them with this.

In other news of Marxist-Leninist insurgency, the Northern Rock bank will finally be nationalised at some point this week. Seeing as British tax payers were guaranteeing the bank, it's pretty sad that it has taken months for Alistair Darling to follow my (well, Lenin's) advice. I remember that Iberian Notes used to use 'nationalising the banks' as an emblem of the terrible things socialist governments can do. One presumes that New Labour's nationalisation of a bank that nearly collapsed because of the instablity inherent in the capitalist system is acceptable. Business in neo-liberal societies traditionally condemns state involvement in the market, unless it's to pick up the pieces after the whole mess falls apart. And it happens again and again and again.

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February 19, 2008 | Filed Under Capital, Politics, UK | Leave a Comment 

French bank used as excuse for everything

After the news emerged that Société Général (SocGen) had been defrauded to the tune of €5bn, gasps rang out across the financial world. Well, gasps and relieved sighs. Because it turns out that the entire financial crisis we're heading into now ('the worst in living memory') isn't caused by systematic problems with the capitalist financial system. Oh no. It's all SocGen's fault.

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January 25, 2008 | Filed Under Capital, General | Leave a Comment 

Apologists and fantasists

As the obituaries of Augusto Pinochet rolled in over the last couple of days, several claims were made repeatedly as an attempt to mitigate what was almost universal condemnation of the murderous dictator. It is understandable that those who have benefited from the rule of a brutal despot will seek to describe him as in some way necessary, excused or even good. Pinochet is no exception: even supposedly neutral news agencies have been busily repeating the myths that the General either solved Chile's economic problems or saved the country from communism.

The economic myth is the most convincing to those not versed in rudimental economics: things didn't seem to be going very well at all when he took over but when he eventually lost power, Chile's economy was a model for Latin America. In fact, this myth is easily debunked on various grounds: (i) there's no telling how the economy would have fared had democracy been allowed to flourish; (ii) Chile's economy only really picked up in around 1982 when the Chicago Boys policies of prior years were abandoned; (iii) the real upturn in the economy coincides perfectly with a sharp increase in the value of copper, the country's prime metal resource.

That Pinochet prevented communists from taking over Chile is a slightly more slippery myth. Of course, it is true that during Pinochet's rule, communists were interned, tortured and murdered - ensuring, along with the proscription of left-wing parties, that communists couldn't take over the country. However, the country had not undergone a communist revolution and while many critics of President Allende argued that his election opened the door to a revolutionary state, it cannot be said for sure if this would have ever happened. What Pinochet did rid Chile of was the chance for its citizens to decide how they wanted to be governed… which, presumably could have included 'soviet republic' as a possible result.

What's really important about Pinochet is that he never faced justice for his many crimes against humanity. This is greatly unfortunate and the UK's 'Labour' government helped him smiling on his way to freedom, despite attempts by the judiciary and even the Lords(!) to extradite him to Spain. Is it right that former heads of state had a supposed immunity to prosecution? No. Is it right that the House of Lords passed a landmark ruling in this regard? Yes. Is it sickening that Labour ended up letting him go home (he looked very sprightly walking down the runway in Santiago)? Yes.

The brief time I've spent with victims of Pinochet's rule has had a massive effect on me. These weren't communist revolutionaries, Stalinist stooges or, for that matter, liars. They were idealists who elected a left-wing government in Chile with the hope of a new age of progressive, socialist government which defended the poor and stood up to big business. I know it's not always a case of either/or but the Chilean refugees I met helped me to realise that sometimes, it's better to be on the losing side. Call us fantasists, fools and losers… we don't care: we know that it's right to stand up for what we know to be right. There's nothing wrong with wanting the world to be a better place.

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December 12, 2006 | Filed Under Capital, Politics | 2 Comments 

A capitalist responds to the London bombs

"Unfortunately, this is the world we live in now. Five years ago, the market would have been down much more. Now, we see it as a buying opportunity," Suskind said. "There's no panic."Unlike the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States — which closed U.S. equities markets for four days — the London events didn't knock out trading systems.

"Major markets already have built in a terror premium," said Joseph Battipaglia, chief investment officer at Ryan, Beck & Co., of Yardley, Pennsylvania. "When an incident occurs, unless it's of catastrophic proportions, the markets take it in stride."
(From Fox News)
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Now, we see it as a buying opportunity!

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July 7, 2005 | Filed Under 'Terror', Capital, Politics, UK | Leave a Comment 

Oil production set to peak. One more time?

In August last year, I read a Guardian opinion piece by lovable looney George Monbiot about how oil production had peaked. He quoted the unlikely-named Texan oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens as saying "Never again will we pump more than 82 million barrels." well you can read the rest of the story here. Monbiot is great. he writes these opinion pieces from the old school of lefty-green fatalism and makes these wonderfully final statements like 'it's the end of the modern age' and they just come true.

But George has competition. John Vidal writes for the… er… Guardian as well. And today he has written a wonderfully pessimistic article about how oil production is about to peak. Sometime next year, he reckons. So we are actually still in the modern age. Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy reading about the end of the world as much as the next smug pseudo-socialist (I am on the way to becoming an archetypal Champagne socialist, the only issue being that I drink Cava - living as I do in Catalunya). What would prove us all more right than the utter collapse of capitalist society?

John Vidal makes the sensible point that oil is necessary for our way of life. I've asked friends and colleagues many times: what do we do when the oil runs out? It's not merely a fuel. nearly every aspect of our lives is partly reliant on plastics of the multitude of other chemicals we manage to extract from that gorgeous black milk. Gemma's response is usually "they'll find something" - and I suppose she must be right. The truth is that necessity has always bred invention. So there'll be a period of what? years, decades? And then things will be OK again.

But that could be my whole life. Living like Mad Max. I hate Mel Gibson.

On the positive side, T. Boone pickens was saying that we'd never pump 82 million barrels a day again. Well John Vidal says we're now pumping 83 million a day. So none of the predictions are that reliable.

One hint: put a decent fuel tax in place in the USA. The average price per litre of octane 85 unleaded petrol in the UK costs 80.5 pence. In the USA, customers pay an average of 27.05 pence* for the same stuff. It doesn't take a genius to realise that a decent fuel levy in America might help reduce consumption… and also raise the necessary dollars to invest in correcting the $7.7 trillion defecit. I know things aren't quite that simple, but they ain't that complex neither. Radical ideas need to be considered, or it's off to the Thunderdome for the lot of us.
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* World petrol prices from the AA.

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April 21, 2005 | Filed Under Capital, Politics | Leave a Comment 

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