For the last 6 months or so the media has projected images of the slaughter in Syria and highlighted the clear divisions between the West (USA, UK, France etc) & the Russian Federation. A political stand-off appears to have occurred with some 30,000 deaths resulting. The UN has yet again shown its lack of metal too. The Dan Snow Documentary shown on TV the other night about Syria proved that there are NO easy answers to this implosion of freedom. I came away from watching it having some minute sympathy for Assad and I feel somewhat guilty for this. As the shenanigans in Libya and Egypt have proved, it may be very dangerous to fly the FREEDOM/DEMOCRACY flag until some clear direction is shown by global STATESMEN. With Obama doing a tour of Israel and the West Bank there are serious tensions in the zone with Iran stirring up the pot. The debacle of Iraq & Afghanistan still hangs over us and terrorism is rife in Yemen, oppression rife in Bahrain and elsewhere, and now France have gone over the top in Mali showing that Africa is not immune too. It's getting like a RISK board out there.
Putin, Medvedev and the competent Foreign Minister have always suggested to the West that Russia's stance is mainly historic and symbolic. Russia has sold arms to Syria for generations and claims it doesn't want to lose it's influence in that area of the Middle East. The truth is, of course, that since the fall of USSR the russians only have minor access to the Mediterranean through a naval base in Syria. Beforehand the USSR had the luxury of using its Baltic fleet out of the Black Sea but today Ukraine controls this area of influence (although many of the former USSR warships are rusting in dock).
As the Cyprus crisis deepens and there is a degree of politicising between Bruxelles, Moscow, Nicosia and other vested cities it would appear that there's a real opportunity here to sort two huge messes out with some strategic and sensible diplomacy. It's clear that the bankers are running out of ideas whilst Russian citizens with cash in Cyprus are saddled with a potential problem not of their making.
This has just been reported;-
Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has lambasted the EU’s handling of the Cyprus debt crisis, comparing a plan for a levy on bank deposits to measures that hurt savers under the Soviet Union. However, Moscow has yet to offer any concrete help to the Cypriot government,the FT reports. Cyprus on Wednesday was left with narrowing options to rescue its outsize financial-services sector from collapse—something that could end its membership in the Eurozone—after international lenders rejected an alternative government plan to secure a multibillion-euro bailout and Russian officials remained cool to a Cypriot gas-for-cash deal, The Wall Street Journal Europe says. Banks in Cyprus were ordered to remain shut until Tuesday as Cypriot and European officials anxiously hunted for alternatives to an abortive plan to tax bank deposits as part of a €10bn bailout. Officials were resurrecting previously discarded proposals as they attempted to avoid a financial meltdown, the FT says.
Surely this is the time for STATESMEN & STATESMANSHIP!
The historic Greek and British interests in Cyprus are really irrelevant to the situation today. Cypriots appear to prefer the russian connection especially as Cyprus is really a Moscow equivalent of Monaco anyway.
By getting Obama and Putin together on the Syria solution, working with the ineffective UN, it's quite possible that Russia really does hold the right cards to extend its EMPIRE. It makes complete sense to me to allow Russia (Gazprom) access to Cypriot oil and gas contracts in return for assistance to the indebtedness of Cyprus. The question surely is; is Obama up for a solution to Syria at the same time?
In the small picture this blog may not have a great deal to do with Enterprise Britain but in the big picture a Russian solution may be better than throwing good money after bad into Cypriot coffers. Britain could quite easily broker a deal by throwing our moribund naval base into the hat.
The EU should make a hasty retreat from their dithering.
A new age in Anglo-Russian relations is a distinct possibility. Does Hague have the bottle?
Thursday 21 March 2013
Wednesday 20 March 2013
Welcome to ZOMBIEVILLE
Since my last post in December I haven't posted a blog either on Enterprise Britain or Hoblyn & King so apologies for the apparent arid writing conditions but I do have a confession to make and a sort of (poor) excuse.
As predicted by H&K for some years things everywhere appear to be going from bad to worse. Of course there are quite a few new age "wealth" managers and their clients extremely happy with the performance of most western indices but even Bloomberg has considered that there has been a great disconnect between Wall Street and the real economy referred as Main Street.The nub of the problem is that there is a vast swathe of FINANCIAL REPRESSION occurring daily and many people haven't even noticed.
Have the recent events in Cyprus surprised me? A. No......many observers have predicted this. Asset grabs are the order of the day as the EU turns many of us into ZOMBIES daily. Repression can come in many forms. It can be outrageous taxes (as prescribed by the EU over Cyprus), excessive and pointless REGULATION (the 'R' word in my judgment IS the problem everywhere), too much assistance to Public Employees (over Private Enterprise), bad and creative accounting, bad and creative spinning of newsflow, hypocrisy, lies and corruption supported by newswires....need I go on (?).
In the City there is a constant debate about RDR, charging, FSCS, the 3 new hydra regulators, derivatives, accounting practices and everyone with a position in a regulated entity seems to have flown the white flag over the COST versus BENEFIT ratio. For record at least 10% of brokerage income & fees is sliced towards 'R'. Thousands of ZOMBIES are working for the regulators and compliance departments and '000s more are earning a living from training people in the ZOMBIE universe, enforcing CPD etc...it's all totally pointless but creates '000s more of pointless jobs. My partner keeps reminding me that this is exactly how USSR prospered until its eventual demise.
Hasn't anyone in government (what government?) or the financial media considered that the British economy ignited during the Industrial Revolution WITHOUT 'R'? Historically NO investors were ever protected through support mechanism's, too big to fail policies (but smaller enough to steal from- SEE CYPRUS) and yet today an entire industry is telling everyone that "PROTECTION" works.
(Editor's note; when President Reagan was shot some years ago a popular song was called 'Protection' by Graham Parker & the Rumour...the catch went ....."you can't get, you can't get, you can't get NO protection....protection.")
Well I've got news for you ALL. Protection doesn't work when the economy has been zombified, when there's NO money around, jobs are being exterminated and growth is zero to negative, inflation is reported at 2.8% (9 month high -ONS), real inflation is closer to 10%, interest rates are geared to protecting (?) the zombified over-geared crowd but NOT savers and zero-debt citizens, when exchanges are dismantled for regulatory rhetoric and everyone is looking at a crooked mirror.
The crazy side show to all of this QE, quasi Keynsian policies, etc is that governments support bankers (more bonuses), governments support regulators (more compliance, paper & bonuses), governments support each other, governments don't create jobs, governments don't save because austerity is a mirage, governments are running scared which is why Cameron has sent a RAF aircraft with Euros1 million for "our/their" 3,000 troops but no confetti for 60,000 ex-pats........
The establishment is supporting itself BUT not the economy.
There is an economic war going on. It is not between LEFT & RIGHT, left of centre v. right of left of centre (5 3 2, 4 4 2, 4 3 3), labour v. tory, liberal v. loony, catholics v. protestants, monarchists v. anarchists, red rose v. white rose, republican roundhead v. cavalier.....it is a war between RIGHT & WRONG...market believers v. market destroyers..the old economy and the new economy, old politics & new politics, environmentalists v. quasi environmentalists, humans v. zombies.......the nearest I can come up with is doers v. non-doers.
Governments have turned me into a ZOMBIE but I'm fighting back....(my excuse)
Twitter: CoeurDeLion
LONG: Longbows and arrows, gold, idealogy
SHORT: markets, bureaucracy, REGULATORS, the NEW regulated press
As predicted by H&K for some years things everywhere appear to be going from bad to worse. Of course there are quite a few new age "wealth" managers and their clients extremely happy with the performance of most western indices but even Bloomberg has considered that there has been a great disconnect between Wall Street and the real economy referred as Main Street.The nub of the problem is that there is a vast swathe of FINANCIAL REPRESSION occurring daily and many people haven't even noticed.
Have the recent events in Cyprus surprised me? A. No......many observers have predicted this. Asset grabs are the order of the day as the EU turns many of us into ZOMBIES daily. Repression can come in many forms. It can be outrageous taxes (as prescribed by the EU over Cyprus), excessive and pointless REGULATION (the 'R' word in my judgment IS the problem everywhere), too much assistance to Public Employees (over Private Enterprise), bad and creative accounting, bad and creative spinning of newsflow, hypocrisy, lies and corruption supported by newswires....need I go on (?).
In the City there is a constant debate about RDR, charging, FSCS, the 3 new hydra regulators, derivatives, accounting practices and everyone with a position in a regulated entity seems to have flown the white flag over the COST versus BENEFIT ratio. For record at least 10% of brokerage income & fees is sliced towards 'R'. Thousands of ZOMBIES are working for the regulators and compliance departments and '000s more are earning a living from training people in the ZOMBIE universe, enforcing CPD etc...it's all totally pointless but creates '000s more of pointless jobs. My partner keeps reminding me that this is exactly how USSR prospered until its eventual demise.
Hasn't anyone in government (what government?) or the financial media considered that the British economy ignited during the Industrial Revolution WITHOUT 'R'? Historically NO investors were ever protected through support mechanism's, too big to fail policies (but smaller enough to steal from- SEE CYPRUS) and yet today an entire industry is telling everyone that "PROTECTION" works.
(Editor's note; when President Reagan was shot some years ago a popular song was called 'Protection' by Graham Parker & the Rumour...the catch went ....."you can't get, you can't get, you can't get NO protection....protection.")
Well I've got news for you ALL. Protection doesn't work when the economy has been zombified, when there's NO money around, jobs are being exterminated and growth is zero to negative, inflation is reported at 2.8% (9 month high -ONS), real inflation is closer to 10%, interest rates are geared to protecting (?) the zombified over-geared crowd but NOT savers and zero-debt citizens, when exchanges are dismantled for regulatory rhetoric and everyone is looking at a crooked mirror.
The crazy side show to all of this QE, quasi Keynsian policies, etc is that governments support bankers (more bonuses), governments support regulators (more compliance, paper & bonuses), governments support each other, governments don't create jobs, governments don't save because austerity is a mirage, governments are running scared which is why Cameron has sent a RAF aircraft with Euros1 million for "our/their" 3,000 troops but no confetti for 60,000 ex-pats........
The establishment is supporting itself BUT not the economy.
There is an economic war going on. It is not between LEFT & RIGHT, left of centre v. right of left of centre (5 3 2, 4 4 2, 4 3 3), labour v. tory, liberal v. loony, catholics v. protestants, monarchists v. anarchists, red rose v. white rose, republican roundhead v. cavalier.....it is a war between RIGHT & WRONG...market believers v. market destroyers..the old economy and the new economy, old politics & new politics, environmentalists v. quasi environmentalists, humans v. zombies.......the nearest I can come up with is doers v. non-doers.
Governments have turned me into a ZOMBIE but I'm fighting back....(my excuse)
Twitter: CoeurDeLion
LONG: Longbows and arrows, gold, idealogy
SHORT: markets, bureaucracy, REGULATORS, the NEW regulated press
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