In November 1976 Jim Callaghan faced a sterling crisis which forced him to apply to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for a £2.3bn rescue package. At that point it had been the largest ever call on IMF and as part of its conditions the IMF requested massive cuts in public spending. The ship steadied and the UK entered the Thatcher years shortly thereafter. The rest is history.
Today the UK has NATIONAL DEBT approaching £1 trillion (£940.1billion-July 2011) equating to 61.4% of total GDP. Annually the cost of servicing this spiralling debt is circa £43bn (or 3% of GDP) which also matches the size of the UK defence budget. The debt is increasing at c. £121bn p.a or £2bn a week.
Now these figures may seem extraordinary but when one looks elsewhere severe alarm bells start to ring and they're getting louder by the minute. The UK is at number 23 in the Premier League of Debtor Nations (source CIA World Factbook).Interestingly the CIA added the European Union to their Factbook (on 16th December 2004) because the EU "continues to accrue more nation-like characteristics for itself". Seven years later things seem to be at breaking point.
But let's take a look at the Cavalry shall we?
It's called the IMF.
It was formed at the end of WW2 and designed to stabilise international exchange rates and facilitate development through the influence of neoliberal economic policies in the forms of loans, debt relief and even aid to countries especially in the Third World. There are 187 member states or members working to foster global co-operation, secure financial stability, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth and reduce poverty. Each member has a quota and vote on all major decisions requiring an 85% supermajority. Now this gets interesting!
The following countries have been running the IMF helmed by the incumbent Managing Director at the time (when UK went "cup in hand" in 1976 the MD then was a Dutchman); 1946-1951 Belgium, 1951-1963 Sweden, 1963-1973 France, 1973-1978 Holland, 1978-2000 France, 2000-2004 Germany, 2004-2007 Spain and 2007-to date France. It's interesting that USA, UK, Canada, Australia and the anglo nations have NEVER had a leader of IMF and with the recent Strauss-Kahn scandal there was a call from the BRICS's bloc to elect someone from outside the EU as by appointing a European undermined the legitimacy of IMF, in fact asking that the appointment be merit-based too. As an aside it wouldn't be understated if one said that the whole undertone of the structure of the IMF might be construed as being biased towards the EU (& France in particular with 5 of the total of 11 MD's being french); it's in effect an EU based culture that is prevalent in the IMF.
Now let's fast forward to the present crisis in the global economy. Christine Lagarde, the current MD (the former Finance Minister of France) has called for cohesion across Europe and global markets and meanwhile is suggesting that a Euros 2 trillion (£1.75bn) fund is created creating a firewall around the most indebted eurozone nations, allowing for an orderly Greek default (the creditors are standing by Christine!) and bailing out European banks (mostly french banks so the markets believe) most at risk. Note Greece is currently paying 66% interest on its short-term debt.
The scenario unfolding reminds me of the young man who has over-extended his overdraft (unauthorised), requesting that the bank assist him by extending his credit and then is told curtly by the Bank Manager that the bank finances are in a total mess anyway so there's absolutely no chance of any assistance. Except of course there's a twist. The young man's grand-father is the Life President of the bank in question.
Looking at the current IMF make-up the Eurozone nations % call would be;-
Germany 6.13% of the quota
UK (not in EU but would have to participate anyway) 4.52%
France (AAA status under watch) 4.52%
Italy (almost bust) 3.32%
Holland 2.17%
Belgium 1.94%
Spain 1.69%
Switzerland (not in EU) 1.45%
There are of course peripheral eurozone nations that didn't make the 1% cut but a guesstimate total of Eurozone % influence within IMF would be 19.77%-25% of the fund. So in effect somewhere in the region of Euros 500billion would have to be paid by the Eurozone to contemplate a Loan to itself of Euros 2trillion. The terms have yet to be decided but it's likely to look pretty rosey for the recipients although I doubt the investors/depositors would achieve anything comparable to the current inflation rate. On this basis alone it's a dead duck but what I find extraordinary is why any capitalist would think this a sensible approach. Although a QE style assist (sorry for the baseball analogy Mr Geithner; btw is that a german surname Tim? just curious!) seems initially a good idea the make up of the quota within the IMF would have to change first in my professional opinion for this program to work. Let me explain. Most of the principle nations within the quota are indebted e.g USA 17.72% Japan 6.57% in addition to the above list BUT (& this is the big BUT) if Madame Lagarde is to obtain any credibility here she must insist that the CREDIT nations increase their quota %'s. In this regard I cannot see that China 4.01%, Saudi Arabia 2.94% (how daft is this quota?), Canada 2.68%, Russia 2.50%, India 2.45%and Brazil 1.79% by example have even remotely fair or equitable quota %'s.
Now there's one other thing that's going to rear up here before long too. It's called CONFLICT OF INTEREST and in this regard France clearly has a major conflict of interest here. Trichet is at the ECB and with Lagarde at IMF in my opinion this is NOT healthy for the anglos & ROfW (Rest of the World). I wonder how long it will take before co-conspirators see that Lagarde's position at IMF is untenable if this monstrous bailout is allowed to succeed! She was ill advised to accept this job but I suspect that it was a classic case of Sarkozy massaging the process. By the way I wonder how many of the EU electorate know that Lagarde is currently under investigation (since 3rd August 2011 by a french court) into her role in a Euro 285 million arbitration deal that favoured Bernard Tapie. Oooopppppssss!
The 3rd November 2011 G20 meeting should be a hoot!
Monday 26 September 2011
Friday 23 September 2011
You can't always get what you want...ROLLING STONES --- a challenge to TWIST & SHOUT
Wow what a week!
It's hard to summarise what's been happening to capital markets over the last few days but one thing is certain, investor confidence is disappearing by the minute. I've had plenty of chats with those clients brave enough to contact their brokers and one thing that is coming out LOUD & CLEAR (please turn up the volume) and this is...
You can't always get what you want....Mr Bernanke (sung with a Deptford accent please)
A Mr B from Wales (his name isn't Bernanke) rang me earlier in the week and we both concluded that the other Mr B is more interested in trying to control the diseased oak tree rather than focusing on the acorn. Isn't it just marvellous news that I no longer have to listen to those folk on Bloomberg and BBC entertain us all with notions of "green shoots"? Well it would be except that like millions of people across Europe UK and the good ol' US of A there are bills to pay and strategies to adopt to allow some safe navigation through what is becoming a heavily fortified and dangerous mine field.
As a broker I'm of the opinion that all and sundry around me are losing the plot but I expect everyone is thinking the same. I heard for the first time a respected strategist mention the dread 'R' word last night on B'berg. He suggested that the US is bogged down in REGULATION. So let's wind back to pre-1980's shall we? Yes you've guessed it there was NO regulation and the OLD WORLD ORDER did indeed manage to avoid the pitfalls of Contangos and Arbitrage back then so the question is what is going wrong in the developed economies. Well we all know that for the last 50 years the west has outpriced itself. Firstly it was Korea that undercut British shipbuilding, then Japan that provided the enterprise with cheap efficient cars and electrical goods and more recently it has been the BRIC's nations that are leading the way. No-one in the west wants to work anymore and the governments and regulators are kowtowing to this extraordinary lack of will by massaging the welfare systems. Unfortunately the welfare model is BROKEN (just look at the waves of mexicans crossing the Rio Grande into the southern states and the africans paddling their way across the Med) and needs to be reworked quickly. But as we all know it's worse than that. I've NOT heard a single politician, broadcaster, banker, regulator or strategist say how it really is on the networks for months now. Why is it that no-one can understand that economies are driven from the bottom up NOT top down. Yet of course these same people keep mentioning the global economy (when wasn't there a global economy?) in tandem with emerging markets, frontiers markets and just about everywhere except our own back yard. They understand that the indian economy, for example, is being driven by the people and yet due to some socialist mindset think that they all have the right to shackle the millions out there in the west who are struggling. It is rapidly becoming THE NEW WILD WEST here and the riots in London and the ARAB SPRING are not worlds apart as many are being drip fed.
So where do we go from here? I've had a long hard think about this since 2007 and it seems to me that we're all looking at the solutions to our problems the wrong way round. Governments cannot and never can solve these problems. Only the people can and until we get some leadership that stops spinning the kick start regulatory and monetary yarns the west will remain in a trough for years to come.
Here's my quick fix if anyone from the World Bank/IMF/G20 wants to take a look (fat chance);-
1. Abolish Income Tax for all earning less than £100,000 US$150,000 Euro 110,000 p.a....let the income flow back into savings and purchases
2. Simultaneously increase the top earners tax rates to 70% across all three areas
3. Investigate ALL non-domicile status & abandon any investigations on offshore tax havens. Tax all non-domicile people & companies at onshore rates. In fact abandon the notion of tax havens and treat all democratised economies in the west the same way re tax treatments.
4. Increase Corporation Tax across all 3 zones by 10% firstly harmonising the corporate tax treatments & preventing relocations elsewhere.
5.Abandon ALL forms of regulation & legislation for individual investors, stockbrokers and focus regulatory attention on BANKS, DERIVATIVES and an OPEN & TRANSPARENT REAL-TIME ACCOUNTING universe.
6. Let insolvent banks go to the wall and investigate the bank bonus culture and if necessary tax bankers retrospectively. It's NOT going to be easy but essential if capitalism is to survive as the governments have effectively been running a bonus ponzi scheme since Lehman's.
Oh yes....& sack Mr. B
Happy days are here again!
ps Oh yes & the Welfare State needs to be scrapped too.
It's hard to summarise what's been happening to capital markets over the last few days but one thing is certain, investor confidence is disappearing by the minute. I've had plenty of chats with those clients brave enough to contact their brokers and one thing that is coming out LOUD & CLEAR (please turn up the volume) and this is...
You can't always get what you want....Mr Bernanke (sung with a Deptford accent please)
A Mr B from Wales (his name isn't Bernanke) rang me earlier in the week and we both concluded that the other Mr B is more interested in trying to control the diseased oak tree rather than focusing on the acorn. Isn't it just marvellous news that I no longer have to listen to those folk on Bloomberg and BBC entertain us all with notions of "green shoots"? Well it would be except that like millions of people across Europe UK and the good ol' US of A there are bills to pay and strategies to adopt to allow some safe navigation through what is becoming a heavily fortified and dangerous mine field.
As a broker I'm of the opinion that all and sundry around me are losing the plot but I expect everyone is thinking the same. I heard for the first time a respected strategist mention the dread 'R' word last night on B'berg. He suggested that the US is bogged down in REGULATION. So let's wind back to pre-1980's shall we? Yes you've guessed it there was NO regulation and the OLD WORLD ORDER did indeed manage to avoid the pitfalls of Contangos and Arbitrage back then so the question is what is going wrong in the developed economies. Well we all know that for the last 50 years the west has outpriced itself. Firstly it was Korea that undercut British shipbuilding, then Japan that provided the enterprise with cheap efficient cars and electrical goods and more recently it has been the BRIC's nations that are leading the way. No-one in the west wants to work anymore and the governments and regulators are kowtowing to this extraordinary lack of will by massaging the welfare systems. Unfortunately the welfare model is BROKEN (just look at the waves of mexicans crossing the Rio Grande into the southern states and the africans paddling their way across the Med) and needs to be reworked quickly. But as we all know it's worse than that. I've NOT heard a single politician, broadcaster, banker, regulator or strategist say how it really is on the networks for months now. Why is it that no-one can understand that economies are driven from the bottom up NOT top down. Yet of course these same people keep mentioning the global economy (when wasn't there a global economy?) in tandem with emerging markets, frontiers markets and just about everywhere except our own back yard. They understand that the indian economy, for example, is being driven by the people and yet due to some socialist mindset think that they all have the right to shackle the millions out there in the west who are struggling. It is rapidly becoming THE NEW WILD WEST here and the riots in London and the ARAB SPRING are not worlds apart as many are being drip fed.
So where do we go from here? I've had a long hard think about this since 2007 and it seems to me that we're all looking at the solutions to our problems the wrong way round. Governments cannot and never can solve these problems. Only the people can and until we get some leadership that stops spinning the kick start regulatory and monetary yarns the west will remain in a trough for years to come.
Here's my quick fix if anyone from the World Bank/IMF/G20 wants to take a look (fat chance);-
1. Abolish Income Tax for all earning less than £100,000 US$150,000 Euro 110,000 p.a....let the income flow back into savings and purchases
2. Simultaneously increase the top earners tax rates to 70% across all three areas
3. Investigate ALL non-domicile status & abandon any investigations on offshore tax havens. Tax all non-domicile people & companies at onshore rates. In fact abandon the notion of tax havens and treat all democratised economies in the west the same way re tax treatments.
4. Increase Corporation Tax across all 3 zones by 10% firstly harmonising the corporate tax treatments & preventing relocations elsewhere.
5.Abandon ALL forms of regulation & legislation for individual investors, stockbrokers and focus regulatory attention on BANKS, DERIVATIVES and an OPEN & TRANSPARENT REAL-TIME ACCOUNTING universe.
6. Let insolvent banks go to the wall and investigate the bank bonus culture and if necessary tax bankers retrospectively. It's NOT going to be easy but essential if capitalism is to survive as the governments have effectively been running a bonus ponzi scheme since Lehman's.
Oh yes....& sack Mr. B
Happy days are here again!
ps Oh yes & the Welfare State needs to be scrapped too.
Friday 16 September 2011
Back Seat Drivers (& a view on that chap from UBS)
I promised during my last visit to Enterprise Britain that I would spill the beans on a new scandal that I'm aware of in UK outside the City of London (& NHS) but of course the events of the last 24 hours concerning Mr Kweku Mawuli Adoboli of UBS have rather got in the way of the scoop.
Instead I'm going to talk about another hang up of mine that I call "BACK SEAT DRIVERS" which is bound to upset a few people but frankly m'dear I don't give a damn. I'll discuss Mr Adoboli later. READ ON Dear Reader.....
Years ago my grand-father, a respected and well known stockbroker, used to travel to his office in Copthall Avenue from a small railway station in Kent, Hildenborough with 2 friends, a Mr Letts (of the diary family) & a Mr Abrams of Coutts & Co, Bankers. For years they enjoyed respectable living and yarns of the Penshurst Home Guard that they were all part of. Sadly my grand-father was diagnosed with various ailments in the late '50s leading to various operations and amputations so he decided to get himself a chauffeur and a new Citroen DS to go with it. Or was it the other way round? Anyway, the chauffeur, Mr Weston, used to drive him to the City and back most days until he was forced eventually to give up work at the firm. My grand-father like most of the privileged few used to talk openly to Weston (I never knew his first name) about all matter of things and became part of the furniture so to speak. The interesting thing about this relationship was that both knew what their roles were. My grand-father would read the FT, probably the Racing Post too, in between nodding off and Weston knew his way around the country lanes and City streets. It was a perfect match. But in the mid-60's my grand-father died and Weston was subsequently killed in a car accident after hitting black ice somewhere in Kent. That was that. Fast forward to the '80s and few new age Big Bang stockbrokers could afford chauffeurs and by then it was almost a taboo anyway even to consider it. So to use the analogy many rear seat City folk were forced to drive to work in their own cars or by whatever method available. Often in business, in the financial world especially, it's become imperative for those who once may have occupied the rear seat to actually drive (their businesses) with their assistants or batmen in the passenger seat (one might call them dealers or traders). This sort of scenario explains how independent brokers, investment and insurance, would operate during that period but then as computer systems got more complicated the real stars became the software personnel and the quant gang. Then came the settlements men who up till Big Bang had taken their lead from business getters like my grand-father. In fact in the financial world historically everyone took their lead from the experienced business getters who had personal liability and responsibility for their firms and staff. Around 1960 My grand-father bailed out a client for £30,000 because a broker, a Mr Skrimshire, had made a grave error over this clients affairs. You see he had supreme integrity (and didn't need to take an exam to prove it: TAKE NOTE Mr Sants and Ms Nicoll). As FSA came into its own more and more back office personnel joined the ranks of the settlement people. Of course they're called Compliance personnel, Credit Controllers and of course they are ALL referred eloquently as MIDDLE MANAGEMENT. None take any responsibility for clients, know very little about the real workings of capital markets, rarely apologise for errors and think that they can drive the businesses from the rear seat just like my grand-father. But there is a fallacy here isn't there? Very few have any real skills about what the raw business is and despite sitting in the rear seat think they can drive the motor car by shackling people such as myself who are actually driving the revenue stream. So many cars have now been produced that have BACK SEAT DRIVERS that any sensible government should really question the need for some of these people. I am of course referring to REGULATORS who no longer regulate the safety valves but want to instigate directives about where the driver should head. It's got that bad folks!
Recent events at UBS are no surprise to me. There are probably '000s of similar scalps and scalpees out there in London, NYC and possibly working from home somewhere. What is interesting is that despite Nick Leeson of Barings fame, Jerome Kerviel of Societe Generale (he couldn't have done it on his own despite what the french courts concluded) and now the man from Ghana, Mr Adoboli none of the BACK SEAT DRIVERS are ever mentioned in the press reports. According to the FSA's own web site Mr Adoboli was first registered as a Trainee CF22 Investment Adviser on 14th Match 2006 and full non-trainee CF26 Customer Trading on the same date, both licences becoming CF30 Customer on 1st November 2007. His licence was withdrawn yesterday (so much for innocent until proved guilty). But what is really alarming is that a young man of this degree of experience could Trade more than £10m a ticket. It's clear that the experience is NOT there. By comparison my current licence for retail is also CF30 Customer which is extraordinary. How does an inexperienced SYNTHETICS TRADER at any bank get the same licence as someone such as myself with over 40,000 trades (albeit investment driven) and 36 years behind me?
God help us all if Mr Adoboli had been driving the motor car rather than acting as a passenger helping his senior colleague(s)!!!!
It seems that society has too many BACK SEAT DRIVERS and far too many young people especially in the City have been propelled into jobs beyond them. This is the real effect of QUALIFICATION over EXPERIENCE and EDUCATION.
Instead I'm going to talk about another hang up of mine that I call "BACK SEAT DRIVERS" which is bound to upset a few people but frankly m'dear I don't give a damn. I'll discuss Mr Adoboli later. READ ON Dear Reader.....
Years ago my grand-father, a respected and well known stockbroker, used to travel to his office in Copthall Avenue from a small railway station in Kent, Hildenborough with 2 friends, a Mr Letts (of the diary family) & a Mr Abrams of Coutts & Co, Bankers. For years they enjoyed respectable living and yarns of the Penshurst Home Guard that they were all part of. Sadly my grand-father was diagnosed with various ailments in the late '50s leading to various operations and amputations so he decided to get himself a chauffeur and a new Citroen DS to go with it. Or was it the other way round? Anyway, the chauffeur, Mr Weston, used to drive him to the City and back most days until he was forced eventually to give up work at the firm. My grand-father like most of the privileged few used to talk openly to Weston (I never knew his first name) about all matter of things and became part of the furniture so to speak. The interesting thing about this relationship was that both knew what their roles were. My grand-father would read the FT, probably the Racing Post too, in between nodding off and Weston knew his way around the country lanes and City streets. It was a perfect match. But in the mid-60's my grand-father died and Weston was subsequently killed in a car accident after hitting black ice somewhere in Kent. That was that. Fast forward to the '80s and few new age Big Bang stockbrokers could afford chauffeurs and by then it was almost a taboo anyway even to consider it. So to use the analogy many rear seat City folk were forced to drive to work in their own cars or by whatever method available. Often in business, in the financial world especially, it's become imperative for those who once may have occupied the rear seat to actually drive (their businesses) with their assistants or batmen in the passenger seat (one might call them dealers or traders). This sort of scenario explains how independent brokers, investment and insurance, would operate during that period but then as computer systems got more complicated the real stars became the software personnel and the quant gang. Then came the settlements men who up till Big Bang had taken their lead from business getters like my grand-father. In fact in the financial world historically everyone took their lead from the experienced business getters who had personal liability and responsibility for their firms and staff. Around 1960 My grand-father bailed out a client for £30,000 because a broker, a Mr Skrimshire, had made a grave error over this clients affairs. You see he had supreme integrity (and didn't need to take an exam to prove it: TAKE NOTE Mr Sants and Ms Nicoll). As FSA came into its own more and more back office personnel joined the ranks of the settlement people. Of course they're called Compliance personnel, Credit Controllers and of course they are ALL referred eloquently as MIDDLE MANAGEMENT. None take any responsibility for clients, know very little about the real workings of capital markets, rarely apologise for errors and think that they can drive the businesses from the rear seat just like my grand-father. But there is a fallacy here isn't there? Very few have any real skills about what the raw business is and despite sitting in the rear seat think they can drive the motor car by shackling people such as myself who are actually driving the revenue stream. So many cars have now been produced that have BACK SEAT DRIVERS that any sensible government should really question the need for some of these people. I am of course referring to REGULATORS who no longer regulate the safety valves but want to instigate directives about where the driver should head. It's got that bad folks!
Recent events at UBS are no surprise to me. There are probably '000s of similar scalps and scalpees out there in London, NYC and possibly working from home somewhere. What is interesting is that despite Nick Leeson of Barings fame, Jerome Kerviel of Societe Generale (he couldn't have done it on his own despite what the french courts concluded) and now the man from Ghana, Mr Adoboli none of the BACK SEAT DRIVERS are ever mentioned in the press reports. According to the FSA's own web site Mr Adoboli was first registered as a Trainee CF22 Investment Adviser on 14th Match 2006 and full non-trainee CF26 Customer Trading on the same date, both licences becoming CF30 Customer on 1st November 2007. His licence was withdrawn yesterday (so much for innocent until proved guilty). But what is really alarming is that a young man of this degree of experience could Trade more than £10m a ticket. It's clear that the experience is NOT there. By comparison my current licence for retail is also CF30 Customer which is extraordinary. How does an inexperienced SYNTHETICS TRADER at any bank get the same licence as someone such as myself with over 40,000 trades (albeit investment driven) and 36 years behind me?
God help us all if Mr Adoboli had been driving the motor car rather than acting as a passenger helping his senior colleague(s)!!!!
It seems that society has too many BACK SEAT DRIVERS and far too many young people especially in the City have been propelled into jobs beyond them. This is the real effect of QUALIFICATION over EXPERIENCE and EDUCATION.
Friday 9 September 2011
The Crocodile Farm Syndrome
For some months now I've been meaning to get something off my chest. Like 'Mr Angry' on the Enterprise Britain blog I have a few hang ups but I'm increasingly alarmed at a new style of bureaucracy that I have seen 2 perfect examples of develop in UK in the last few years.
In both cases there is 'a lack of reason, a lack of common sense' and both are perfect and plain examples of how not to treat Professional people. For years we've heard how Doctors have been mistreated in NHS but there are more disturbing examples of what I call THE CROCODILE FARM SYNDROME.
You see 'Dear Reader' this is how a crocodile farm is built. Some villagers in a small farming community are thinking of how to better their lives. They don't like farming. It's dirty, hard and unprofitable work but they occasionally use their dugouts to assist big white hunters, the established bread winners for their part of the jungle, to use their skills to seek out, capture and kill large crocodiles for these trophy hunters. At the end of the hunt they get given the meat and the pieces of the crocodile that the hunters don't require as well as a small moderate payment to buy some beers and the extortionate malaria tablets that their fellow villagers need. The hunters are happy, they've had a great trip catching crocodiles, go home with their trophies, some skins to sell to the handbag trade and many macho stories to tell their wives and friends when they get home. BUT one day one educated villager returns to his village and is told by these farmers that the big white hunters regularly come to their river, capture crocodiles with the assistance of his friends and family, and profit enormously from this sport. So he calls the tribal leaders over and suggests that the villagers construct their own crocodile farm and stock it with young crocodiles and entertain a breeding program. The object of course is to nurture enough crocodiles for food and skins and sell the best skins to the western handbag buyers. Before long the hunters no longer visit the river because there are no crocodiles and the sport is terrible. The proprietors of the lodges are not amused but what can they do? After many years the crocodile farm is a big business. The full life cycle of the crocodile is operating efficiently. The eggs are incubated, there are '000s of hatchlings in what look like fisheries, '000s more in the 1st year pens, '000s more in the 2nd year pens, not so many in the next until there are some 15 metre monsters in the last pen. The crocodiles are being fed of course on crocodile meat but they're NOT that happy. Neither are the villagers who have to work at the crocodile farm as there are some villagers profiteering out of the community operation. There is corruption in the air. But the farm is the biggest provider of work for the village as the farmers regularly have failed crops and they've got used to the reliability of the farm for income. There are now too many crocodiles, the villagers can't cope with looking after them, their managers are incompetent and often ignorant of the operations of the farm and ignore the demands of their ultimate customers, the handbag manufacturers. And there's a new threat too. There is now a government department that has been set up to control this farm and others so more villagers are employed to oversee the managers, the researchers who monitor the gene pool and the pen handlers. For sake of confusion let's call them the Farm Regulators....
And guess what happens next!
The health of the crocodiles start to deteriorate, conditions get bad and worse by the minute. Very soon the crocodiles escape and eat all the people as well as the smaller crocs in the farm except of course the Farm Regulators who run away because they don't want to face reality.
And what is the farm called folks?
If you haven't guessed by now it could be called the
London Stock Exchange
or more specifically this is what is happening thanks to the peculiar misgivings of the great CISI the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment who used to look after the interests of the experienced operators of business on the exchange. After all OPPORTUNITY must be given to everyone regardless of what knowledge, experience and education they may have. IT'S AMAZING WHAT A BIT OF GREED AND A QUALIFICATION CAN DO TO COMMON SENSE!
For the second example of the Crocodile Farm Syndrome you'll have to watch this space. It's even more alarming and I can assure you it will be a journalistic scoop. And it has nothing to do with the City of London or NHS by the way!
In both cases there is 'a lack of reason, a lack of common sense' and both are perfect and plain examples of how not to treat Professional people. For years we've heard how Doctors have been mistreated in NHS but there are more disturbing examples of what I call THE CROCODILE FARM SYNDROME.
You see 'Dear Reader' this is how a crocodile farm is built. Some villagers in a small farming community are thinking of how to better their lives. They don't like farming. It's dirty, hard and unprofitable work but they occasionally use their dugouts to assist big white hunters, the established bread winners for their part of the jungle, to use their skills to seek out, capture and kill large crocodiles for these trophy hunters. At the end of the hunt they get given the meat and the pieces of the crocodile that the hunters don't require as well as a small moderate payment to buy some beers and the extortionate malaria tablets that their fellow villagers need. The hunters are happy, they've had a great trip catching crocodiles, go home with their trophies, some skins to sell to the handbag trade and many macho stories to tell their wives and friends when they get home. BUT one day one educated villager returns to his village and is told by these farmers that the big white hunters regularly come to their river, capture crocodiles with the assistance of his friends and family, and profit enormously from this sport. So he calls the tribal leaders over and suggests that the villagers construct their own crocodile farm and stock it with young crocodiles and entertain a breeding program. The object of course is to nurture enough crocodiles for food and skins and sell the best skins to the western handbag buyers. Before long the hunters no longer visit the river because there are no crocodiles and the sport is terrible. The proprietors of the lodges are not amused but what can they do? After many years the crocodile farm is a big business. The full life cycle of the crocodile is operating efficiently. The eggs are incubated, there are '000s of hatchlings in what look like fisheries, '000s more in the 1st year pens, '000s more in the 2nd year pens, not so many in the next until there are some 15 metre monsters in the last pen. The crocodiles are being fed of course on crocodile meat but they're NOT that happy. Neither are the villagers who have to work at the crocodile farm as there are some villagers profiteering out of the community operation. There is corruption in the air. But the farm is the biggest provider of work for the village as the farmers regularly have failed crops and they've got used to the reliability of the farm for income. There are now too many crocodiles, the villagers can't cope with looking after them, their managers are incompetent and often ignorant of the operations of the farm and ignore the demands of their ultimate customers, the handbag manufacturers. And there's a new threat too. There is now a government department that has been set up to control this farm and others so more villagers are employed to oversee the managers, the researchers who monitor the gene pool and the pen handlers. For sake of confusion let's call them the Farm Regulators....
And guess what happens next!
The health of the crocodiles start to deteriorate, conditions get bad and worse by the minute. Very soon the crocodiles escape and eat all the people as well as the smaller crocs in the farm except of course the Farm Regulators who run away because they don't want to face reality.
And what is the farm called folks?
If you haven't guessed by now it could be called the
London Stock Exchange
or more specifically this is what is happening thanks to the peculiar misgivings of the great CISI the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment who used to look after the interests of the experienced operators of business on the exchange. After all OPPORTUNITY must be given to everyone regardless of what knowledge, experience and education they may have. IT'S AMAZING WHAT A BIT OF GREED AND A QUALIFICATION CAN DO TO COMMON SENSE!
For the second example of the Crocodile Farm Syndrome you'll have to watch this space. It's even more alarming and I can assure you it will be a journalistic scoop. And it has nothing to do with the City of London or NHS by the way!
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