Healthcare in the EU - No 1 Cyprus

An ultrasound scanning machine is a basic piece of hospital diagnostic equipment - with many purposes , it has it's main clinical use in examining pregnant women - although other tests including checks for ovarian cysts or cancer, blocked bile ducts, and infertility checks are just as vital.

At Limassol General Hospital (2nd largest twn in Cyprus pop. 170 ,000) it has been broken (amd unrepaired or replaced) for 16 months, with little propesct of the situation changing soon.

This means pregnant women to either go private or travel to Paphos hospital for scans.

Meanwhile if you need a scan pay = OR - €100 by going to private clinics join the queue at Paphos hospital.

Andreas Georgiou, is described as the Supplies and Offers Officer at the Ministry of Healthand explains the bureaucratic delays.

“Although the bidding process has moved on substantially, it is unfortunately a long technical process that allows any bidder to make objections or comments and go to court challenging decisions. We are not evading responsibility, but it is a long process,” he said.

Further more the hapless and hopeless Georgiou explains that contracting a company to provide a new ultrasound machine was not the responsibility of the Ministry of Health, but of the Ministry of Communications.

“In the case of ultrasounds we may be responsible for supplying hospitals, but it is the Electromechanical Services, Public Works Department and the Ministry of Communications that is responsible for the bidding process,” Georgiou said.

According to Georgiou, they are making huge efforts to fix the existing ultrasound, so that it can operate until the new machine finally arrives. “I have asked that we buy a probe for the existing machine until the new one comes. I am making huge efforts for this to happen,” he said. - What no spares ? No maintenance contract ?

Surely a phone call to the manufacturers would be enough ?

Meanwhile medical tourism in the form of Plastic surgery and cosmetic dentistry is a booming business on the island .....

Schizoid Gubment buying toxic debts with one hand and trying to flog / insure toxic debt with the other

One could be forgiven for thinking that theUK Government is not only confused but alarmingly schizoid - one bit is busily buying up toxic banks, toxic debts, with borrered money, mortages on the future tax payments of at least 2 generations and their newly minted / invented quasi money... or even going into the busiess of insuring bad debts.

A Parliamnetary Question yesterday laid bare the inconsistency of approach - lest we forget ur Local MP asked a very, very pertinent question. Evidently the student loan book is very, very toxic (no surpise there then !) and no-one will touch it your barge pole never mind theirs.

Paul Rowen (Rochdale, Liberal Democrat) Link to this | Hansard source

What progress has been made in selling the student loan book.

David Lammy (Minister of State (Higher Education & Intellectual Property), Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills; Tottenham, Labour) Link to this | Hansard source | Video match this

The Government still intend to make sales from the student loan book, but it is clear that that should be done only when we can get a good return for the taxpayer. For the time being, the market conditions do not allow that, but we will actively look to identify opportunities for a sale that represents value for money as market conditions improve.

How big is the Student Loan Book ?

Good Question , the Guradian in a report 6th November 2007 when Lord Triesman announced the sale

The student loan book is worth around £18.1bn and is expected to increase in value to £55bn over the next 10 years.

Mr Lammy was asked about this 12 Jan 2009 : Column 65W Hansard Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills what the monetary value of the last three valuations of the student loans book were. [243335]

Mr. Lammy: The student loan book valuation for 31 March 2008 and 31 March 2007 is disclosed in the resource accounts of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. (this is on line at http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc0708/hc08/0864/0864.asp but is unreadable / unopenable / cannot be de-crypted ) Prior to this, the student loan book valuation was disclosed in the resource accounts of the Department for Education and Skills.

More details on the valuation methodology for the student loan book can be found in note 21 of the resource accounts of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.(Ditto valuation for accessibility)

So what the Student Loan Book is worth is anyone's guess (our is a nominal £25 Bn. ) and Mr Lammy is not anxious to give it the oxygen of publicity - nor does anyone seem to want to buy this premier loan book .. perhaps he should pop round to see Mervyn at the BOE they seem to be on a spending spree.

Making money by printing money ,, winners and losers - and you ain't a winner pal ...

Boris Fyodorov, the late (died ,heart attack aged 50 Nov. 2008)reformist Russian Minister of Finance was a bastion of rectitude and struggled against the abuse of authority and the looting Oligarchs.

Confusion helps the powerful, he declared. Complex complicated bailouts, uexplained and unpublished (cf Paulsen's Pals Act) complicated government bailout schemes, multiple and vicious and volatile exchange rates, or high inflation, it is very hard (impossible) to keep track of market prices and to protect the value of firms. The result, if taken to an extreme, is looting (cf armed raid on Gazprom offices in Ukraine yesterday ) : the collapse of banks, industrial firms, and other entities because the insiders take the money (or other valuables) and run.

A noteworthy and powerful critique was his publication of a book of blank pages under the title The Economic Achievements of the Chernomyrdin Government.


Now that HMG / Treasury / BOE have decided today on their stop gap / stop go policy of £75 Bn (5% ish of GDP) (approved to the level of £150 Bn. by the MEPC) nothing is clearer. Confusion reigns.

Our analysis is that this move this is the same effect as a private limited company extending it's Purchase Ledger in the knowledge it cannot meet it's debts as they fall due . They become technically insolvent.

The major UK based banks will sensibly hoover up the funds pronto - including Barclays who the sleek jowled Varley assures us have no asset valuation problems.

Cui bono ?

The banks have greater liquidity which they will use as they please (owned by the taxpayer or not) and HMG have assets no-one (anywhere) is inclined to buy at any price.

So if £75 Bn doesn't work, we suck up another £75 Bn. Then what ?

On top of this we relentlesy dribble away tax payers funds ... as the following post shows.

Still Tranche 3 of the Eurofighter is to be cancelled anyday now, so that will save a bob or two on the Defence Budget.. probably enough to repair the Vanguard submarine loitering without intent under a French submarine sous l'Atlantique .

Next step 2 carriers sunk without trace ?

If the US Treasury cannot sell US$2T of paper >end of 2010 then the Obama plan falls apart : Ditto UK

On January 22nd Tim Geithner in a written reply to Congress, in response to a question from Sen. Olympia Snowe, (R-Maine), that President Obama’s administration “backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists - believes that China is manipulating its currency.”

Best estimates are that China bought US$374 billion of U.S. bonds in 2008. With the Obama administration proposing a deficit of more than $1 trillion in 2009, is it good policy to insult your best foreign customer?

Tim's comments were followed by a bond sell-of and Su Ning, vice governor of the People's Bank of China, countering that "these remarks are not only inconsistent with the facts, but they are misleading about the reasons for the financial crisis."

Yesterday Tim was testifying to Congress again. A Congressman asked a direct, simple question.

“Mr. Geithner can we sell the bonds necessary to fund this deficit? Are the Chinese still buying our bonds?”

Mr. Geithner responded with a full three minutes of non-answers to those questions. At the end of three minutes the Congressman repeated his questions.

For another two minutes Mr. Geithner ducked the questions.

If the US Treasury cannot sell about US$2T of paper up to the end of 2010 (at the current historical low rates), then the Obama plan falls apart. Period.

NB : Fleshy Gordon is in the same spot more or less, but his problems arise from selling UK Government securities in the next nine months to fund his banking payola, PFI bail out (which has only just started) etc.

Armageddon

If interest rates are (as widely rumoured) due to drop yet again in the morning - the job looks even harder.

Steve Bundred, (pic Nov200) chief executive of the Audit Commission,said in an article in the Times Feb 26th , "The measures that the government is taking to stimulate the economy may well be absolutely necessary but they involve unprecedented levels of public borrowing and public debt,"

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) say UK national debt rose to £703.4bn in January, or 47.8% of GDP the highest for 20 years - this will (say the ONS) increase sharply if the money being pumped into Britain's faltering banks was taken into account.

Mr Bundred warned that if borrowing pushed above 65% of GDP, there was a "distinct possibility" Britain could face "the Armageddon scenario most feared by the Treasury: that there will be insufficient lenders to match the planned level of borrowing".

PS : & UPDATE The 2008 Audit Commission report on the NHS included the first full year audit of payment by results bills, which found that up to £1bn of the bills hospital trusts have sent primary care trusts could be wrong.

Dutch Bankers ING make losses and take prompt plans to cut business, costs, staff

ING the Dutch financial services, founded in 1743, has reported a whopping net operating loss of €3.1 billion euros (US $4.68 billion) which consisted of €1.07 Bn loss at ING's banking arm - principally on more bad loans, and a €2.04 Bn.loss as insurance deals have gone bad. (They escaped buying ABN - Amro in September leaving it to the Tartan Titans RBOS)

ING has cut two deals with the Dutch government. Last year it received a €10 Bn. investment lifeline. In January 2009, the state assumed most of the risk for €27.7 Bn in troubled US mortgage-backed securities ING owns.

Major attack on costs and deep jobs cuts

In January 2009, the company had warned markets it expected a loss for the quarter of €3.3 Bn and CEO Michel Tilmant had resigned.The company claims they will cut operating costs by 1 billion euros in 2009, reduce loans by 10 percent from September levels and announced 7,000 job cuts in January, representing 5 percent of their total work force. wi600 joll go at ING Direct, the online business that posted a Q4 pre tax loss of €1.41 Bn.

1,400 jobs will go at its wholesale banking unit, which lost €f 366 Mn, retail banking which made aprofit of €75 Mn. will see 800 job cuts.

The company’s insurance business, which had a loss of €1.39 Bn, will slash 4,200 jobs - 2,400 in the Americas, 1,100 in Europe and 700 in the Asia- Pacific region.

ING confirmed today they will not renew the 3 year sponsorship contract with Renault F1 and to end its presence in F1 beyond the 2009 season.

ING shares fell to €4.97 in Amsterdam - ING shares have dropped 32% this year reducing market capitalisation to € 10.2 Bn.

How can a company facing these problems have even looked at taking over ABN / AMRO - why on Earth did RBOS persist ? Hubris.

You don't need bankers to sort this mess out, clear objectives, clear policy, prompt effective action between informed Government and honest decent managment.

Not much in evidence in the UK.

It's been a Funny Old Week for Eruz Israel - Tits up in Washington and Wall Street - Tits out for the lads in the BIG APPLE

Just so US taxpayers can get the detail on exactly how they intend to squirt way US$800 +++ they have set up a website ..... http://www.financialstability.gov/


In between filling his IRS returns , Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday 10th Feb outlined a comprehensive plan to restore stability to the US / World / Galaxy financial system.


In his address, Secretary Geithner discussed the Obama Administration’s strategy to strengthen the US / World / Galaxy economy by getting credit flowing again to families and businesses, while imposing new measures and conditions to strengthen accountability, oversight and transparency in how taxpayer dollars are spent. (plus a whole list of hornswoggling , boondoggling and pork) .


Secretary Geithner explained how the financial stability plan will be critical in supporting an effective and lasting economic recovery. HoHo.Ho.


For more information, please visit http://www.treas.gov/initiatives/eesa/



See Daily Telegraph Geithner plan disappoints investors. FT ....."During the half hour on Tuesday that Mr Geithner was making a much-anticipated speech on his rescue plan for the banking system, the S&P 500 fell 3.4 %, while its financial sub-index fell 6.5 %. Ten-year bond yields had been above 3 % in the hours before the speech, but dropped back to 2.86 % as investors piled back into bonds. "



Someone kindly sends this You Tube link $550 Billion Dollar Bank Run - Collapse Of The Entire World Economy In 24 hours



In the interests of air safety, the Zionist knicker pushers M&S , admirers of Southern Airlines , here is Leo di Cap's pic he sent us of his stunning supermodel girlfriendjust days she learned she had landed the coveted cover of Sports Illustrated magazine's Swimsuit 2009, she's flying high on the side of a plane.. Bar Refaeli unveiled Southwest Airlines' new SI One 737 at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Wednesday (11 Feb 09).. The plane, which features a huge image of the Israeli model - almost wearing a bikini, will fly the very friendly skies for a month..



Complain to Leo about pic Qlty. His hands were shaking - not many guys get to see their girl friends 12 foot high pudenda.

UPDATE :Feb 12 10:05am ET Dow at 7745.91 Down 193.62 (-2.44%) ( 3 month low)

Years of fraudulent Accounts by Barclays, overvaluing assets, over stating profits and jolly fine divvies - shares crash - again.

WSJ reports that Barclays said it didn't know of any reason for the fall in its shares shortly before close of business Friday. Ho.Ho.Ho.

Reasons market denizens give include ;

1. The 3 month Financial Services Authorityban on short-selling financial stocks ended.

2. The UK Government will announce new aid / bailout / throwing away taxpayers money measures next week from which Barclays will not benefit unlikr previous recipients of Gordon's helicopter cash - Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS (now including Lloyds) including "softer" terms on preference shares taken up.

3. If (as is wildly rumoured) the UK Government setup a "bad bank " to buy up bad assets (as the original but discarded after 13 days US TARP scam ..er...plan... bright idea) Barclays will not be able to particpate.

Readers might not be up to speed on the way Barclays prepare their financial statements - they might usefully look at Page 167 of Barclays Annual report 2007 which details how asset impairment is handled.

8. Impairment of financial assets

The Group assesses at each balance sheet date whether there is objective evidence that loans and receivables or available for sale financial investments are impaired. These are impaired and impairment losses are incurred if, and only if, there is objective evidence of impairment as a result of one or more loss events that occurred after the initial recognition of the asset and prior to the balance sheet date (‘a loss event’) and that loss event or events has had an impact on the estimated future cash flows of the financial asset or the portfolio that can be reliably estimated. The criteria that the Group uses to determine that there is objective evidence of an impairment loss include: (inter alia)

e) the disappearance of an active market for that financial asset because of financial difficulties; or

f) observable data indicating that there is a measurable decrease in the estimated future cash flows from a portfolio of financial assets since the initial recognition of those assets, although the decrease cannot yet be identified with the individual financial assets in the portfolio, including:

The amount of impairment loss is measured as the difference between the asset’s carrying amount and the present value of estimated future cash flows discounted at the asset’s original effective interest rate. The amount of the loss is recognised using an allowance account and recognised in the income statement (ie as a loss) .

So the rub is , that if Barclays have been lying about the value of their very many assets and refused to take impairments so maintaining the fiction (which they have done for years) that they have made profits - they are, by by refusing to "come clean" , put themeselves in the position that they cannot use the taxpayers money to scrub their balance sheets of all the shit they have been hiding and overvaluing.... for years.

So they persist in reporting after close of trading today that "its 2008 profit before tax, (reports due Feb 17th) after reflecting all costs, impairment and market valuations, would be "well ahead of the GBP5.3 billion consensus estimate of sell-side analysts."

CEO of Barclays (£2.8Mn a year) since 2004 is John Silvester Varley (born 1 April 1956), in 1981 he married Carolyn Thorn Pease, daughter of Sir Richard Thorn Pease, and in so doing married into the fascinating Quaker Pease family, whose bank became part of Barclays in 1902.

Curiously ( Catholic, Downside, Oriel College Oxford (History)) by then trained and working as a solicitor (like his father) , joined the Merchant Banking section of Barclays the following year,1982, with it appears no knowledge, history or experience of banking in any form. He is apparently, unlike any other major bankers and excellent table tennis player.

It is of interest to note that Varley's sister in law Nichola Pease is chief executive of JO Hambro Capital Management and was a nonexecutive executive director of what was Northern Rock plc. Her husband is Crispin Odey who founded Odey Asset Management, which made £55 Mn Y/E April 2008 and paid him£23 Mn salary....their especial skills ? Shorting UK bank shares. They were at it again later this year shorting Bradford & Bingley involving the taxpayer in a direct £ 4 Bn write off and the introduction of the FSA ban on shorting financial shares.

What goes around, comes around.

Are Barclays too BIG to fail ?

No.

Expect some remarkable and "unexpected" events as the share shifters get dug in. Again.

Get ready to shortly own a chunk of Barclays along with your other banking assets like RBOS and HBOS.

David Walker David Walker, US Comptroller General the United States ,GeneralAccounting Office who resigned to tell US Taxpayers the Truth

Date 28th August 2007

Brown / Darling plan to get banks to lend is simply doomed to failure.

Gordon Brown a Scotsman , widely described as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury told Andrew Marr on TV this morning ...

'The first thing we're thinking about is how we as a Government can help the flow of money to businesses, how we can get the banks doing what they said they would do after the recapitalisation, and that is maintaining the level of funding for small businesses and mortgages that happened in 2007, which was a very high year.

Over on BBC4 his Mr Darling another Scotsman spoke to the World this Weekend" and said

'When I announced our original plans in October, I said it would be necessary for us to continue to take whatever measures were necessary to ensure that we get lending in the system. Over the next few weeks we will continue to discuss with banks what further steps we can take that would help lending, particularly to small and medium-sized businesses.

'We have got to make sure these banks are strong enough in the first place - in other words, to help that recapitalisation process....we also have to ensure there is enough money in the system so that businesses and people looking for mortgages can get the money.

This gormless pair of twats, and their advisers, the double firsts from Oxbridge crowding the corridors of Threadneedle Street and jostling the elbows of Mervyn King fail totally to understand how , what economists like to call SME's (small and medium sized businesses) are financed.

Most (but not all ) manufacturing and trading concerns have limited liability, that is the shareholders have limited the liability to their creditors by the amount of issued and full paid up capital.

So if a company has 100 £1 shares issued it's ultimate liability is £100.

There are (ish) some 1Million Limited Liability companies in the UK (inc Wales, Scotland and NI) . Say only half are active. Of those, any bank manager , accountant, insolvency expert will tell you without hesistation that at least half are hugely undercapitalised.

Indeed this is the curse of industry.

So how do they survive. Well principally by the skin of their teeth.

The capital base of a typical small business say up to £5 MN turnover is.

1. Share capital. When the business started (probably not by a businessman but a couple of people with a bright idea, little money and lots of energy) they set up / purchased an off the shelf a company, changed the name and issued two fully paid up shares of £100. Even Erinys the curious and secretive security company that has picked up major multi million pound MOD contracts in Iraq (and was involved in the balonium scare through their contacts with UK citizen Mr Berezovsky) has only £100 of capital and 2 fully paid up shares.

2. Working capital would be ;

A.Personal savings lent to the company as a Director's loan. There may also be loans from wives, parents, friends.
B. A bank loan secured probably on their house(s). To have belt and braces the bank would make this a "joint and several" loan, let's say of £10,000.

So our tyro businessmen think they each stand for £5000 each. WRONG, "joint and several" are one of the many inoccent looking hurdles to trap the small businesman - it means if one person securing the loan defaults , the other takes on the burden of the whole of the loan repayment.

C. Once trading they can obtain (not easily and almost impossible for a new business in the current climate) trade terms or credit from suppliers. They also have to offer credit to their customers - impossible to trade if not offered. It is not uncommon that creditor exceed debtors by a factor of 5 - in fact their company is funded by their major suppliers!

D. Once established as a going concern, they discover from their accountant they can borrow money in other ways ;

Leasing or lease hire of vehicles, where they never actually own the asset and if they fail to pay the asset is recovered by the lessor. 90% of company vehicles in the UK are leasd - you can lease anything, furniture, computers, pictures, carpets....

Credit cards

Typically such businesses do not build up capital assets, if they do, their nett worth is probably 10-20% of their declared value on the balance sheet.

So the bank will see that the overdraft, whilst serviced as agreed is always bumping up against the limit and will prove resistant to extend the size of the loan unless some more security is available.

So our businessmen get good at milking supliers for credit and bearing down on customers to pay.

Then after the lying bankers disclosed how frail and fraudulent their balance sheets really were - credit hit the buffers for everyone and suppliers clamped down.

All of a sudden they have no money to pay the year end VAT Bill, the January date for personal tax, Corporation Tax,is almost on them, and the financial year end at end of April is looming.

The leaseholders on the wife's car is getting shirty... although she is on the books her notional salary went months ago.

They can't get the bank to extend the loan and they are asking / demanding tougher terms. Why shouldn't they ? Not only have they no money to lend, they know from experience that the company is basically insolvent.

Insolvency has two tests.

1. The companies assets are exceeded by their liabilities.
2. The company cannot meet payments when due.

Their accountant tells them that the law requires them to call in an insolvency expert.

Figures are tossed about of an impending 35,000 companies closing in the next 6 months. That sounds like a conservative view.... whatever clever fucking scheme Brown / Darling and the wizards of the Treasury and Threadneedle Street whizz up.

...and don't expect Cameron and the Bulingdonites to come up with any answers either. This just has to work out through the system.

See Roto Rooter Economics

Also as a an example of joined up thinking, there is curently a perverse, incentive whereby companies in liquidation (they are kaput, finito, dead like this parrot ) are exempt from empty property rates while those in administration (ie they may phoenix like arise again) are not.

It is of course not unusual now for property owners to remove the roof to avoid empty business rates when their tenant has folded, moved on as it is ion the current market unlettable and unsaleable.

Old Labour Economic Theory. Tax and spend . Nu Labour Economic Theory. Spend and Tax then we can spend even more

As we kick off into a New Year the wise words of CynicusEconomicus provide a warning and state succintly what all people with experience of the real world - as distinct from Guradian readers, politicians, head massagers for the police service in Sussex . etc

[I]n the UK (and the same could be said of the US), there had been no real growth in what I considered to be wealth creating assets over the last ten years which could explain GDP growth; manufacturing, commodity extraction, export of services, and tourism (no net growth).

Instead I pointed to the growth in debt, and asset inflation (real estate) as the source of all of the GDP growth of the last ten years. This debt, in conjunction with the multiplier effect, along with upwards levers such as immigration, created an illusion of growth in wealth. It led to the 'post industrial', 'service economy'. My argument was that this was completely unsustainable, and that a collapse in asset prices would signal a self-reinforcing downward spiral in the economy, driven by a collapse in consumer sentiment (a massive belt tightening) leading to the collapse of the service economy, higher unemployment, more belt tightening and so forth into a downward spiral.

This unsustainable faux national economy cannot of course maintain the national tax (spend) base.

Such a service based economy cannot (and will not) survive because this type of economy depends on the velocity of the money supply - now virtually stalled - but the spending has been boosted beyond belief.

This all revolves round the incapacity of the policy makers, people like Balls, Brown, Darling (and Osborne , Boris and the rest of the Bullingdon Club) and the double first at the BOE to distinguish between GDP and wealth creation.

Also what the politicians don't (understand) and certainly don't explain is that the taxes they levy rely on the velocity of money. Every time it goes around the circle there is less money because of tax extracted from the system - balanced a little by a small amount going into cash savings.

The received wisdom (as per J K Galbraith) is that therefore we now have to get the consumer spending again! To ... er .... get the economy moving.

Guradian Darling renews effort to increase lending with cut in fee to banks ..."Darling said: "All these measures will continue to help ensure that we get bank lending going again."

Independent - Darling: Banks must go further to help businesses - "Mr Darling promised yesterday to push the banks on lending, as he told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee that a wider range of government guarantees to underwrite loans to companies and mortgages may also be implemented, as ministers make a determined effort to unfreeze the credit markets. "It's one of the range of things we are looking at," he said. He added that "we need to do much more" to restore lending to the economy.

Banks lend ...you spend ... we tax ... we spend .... altogether now ....

Tata Blackmails Government for a handout

The BBC report that the Finacial Times are reporting that Tata Motors, the owner of Jaguar Land Rover, is to inject "tens of millions" of pounds into their UK business.

Tata acquired Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motors for an all-cash deal of US$2.3 billion (£1.15 Bn at the then rate of exchange £$1= US$2) on May 2nd 2008 (Less than Ford paid for Jaguar alone). Shortly after (20/9) the The Indian News reported that the Tata board "has reviewed its fund raising plan " for the acquisition after considering " the current situation of the capital market and price changes in the stock market since May 2008". Tata had revenues globally of US$62.5Bn in the year to March - late last week, Tata announced a sponsorship deal with the Ferrari Formula One team.

According to the new financing plan, the board had decided to keep the share capital as low as possible. This was shortly after the announcement (31/7) of a joint venture with French bank Credit Agricole, that the Italian auto giant Fiat would be handling the financing of all new Jaguars and Land Rovers purchased across Europe. Fiat takes over financing for Jaguar/Land Rover in Europe

However if you read the Times today - Gordon Brown puts millions on table to save car maker Jaguar Land Rover

"A state package worth hundreds of millions of pounds will be negotiated in the new year to save a firm claimed by its Indian owner to be of key strategic importance to Britain’s economy."

Apparently Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya has received many international awards including the Padma Bhusan from the President of India for services to science, technology and industry and is an adviser to Tata Motors (and personal friend of the great patriarch Ratan Tata) and has been involved in talks with the UK Government.

This year his alma mater, IIT Kharagpur awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Sciences, the institution's highest accolade with previous recipients including Mother Theresa and Ratan Tata.

The Independent has a different tale from Sarah Arnott - The Indian giant with a begging bowl - JLR has laid off 850 agency staff , will thin out 600 posts with redundancy ,cut production at Castle Bromwich and Solihull in the West Midlands, and at Halewood on Merseyside.

Tata Motors, the Indian arm of the car business, lorry sales have fallen by 50% and the high-profile scheme to build the world's cheapest car , the nano (see pic) has been hit by scandal and delay.

Tata Steel, is seeing steel prices slumping it has lost 500 UK jobs at Corus, which cost them £6.2bn last year, and wants state aid from both the Dutch and UK governments.

Would we be right in thinking that Mr Tata has bitten off more than he can chew and now expects the UK tax payer to fund his extravagance ? Gordon is fast becoming a serial bailer - he should take heed of the future demands ....

WWHD ? What would Hitler do + advice from Rowan Atkinson to Gordon .."Government's plans to boost spending - addict returning to the drug"

David Gordon at the Mises Institute has an excellent esssay "Nazi Economics"

"What, then, would be Hitler’s economic policy?" he asks at one point .... or in a more contemporary fashion WWHD ?

He shows that pre-war Nazi economy couldn't be described as capitalist as all forms of private ownership (depending if you were Jewish , homosexual etc.,) were preserved. The government did not nationalize the means of production, as in Soviet Russia. Prices could not be set by the individual or the business , - appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates was retained but wholly state controlled. Both internally and externally.

Businesses in all their activities were bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by the government’s supreme office of production management. This office (the Reichswirtschaftsministerium in Nazi Germany) tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages - (what banks should lend, what for and to whom ?). It decreed to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds. (what banks should lend, what for and to whom ?)

Externally the Nazis engaged in bilateral trades which were engineered by Schacht (his full name was remarkably Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht) , especially with South east European countries. Such agreements would involve particular commodities, with the rate of exchange between the German and foreign currencies "fixed at a level different from the actual rate of exchange... the barter agreements gave Germany a kind of monopoly of the trade with the countries of southeastern Europe which could not fail to link these countries politically with the Reich."

He points to the calls for extreme measures for extreme circumstances and exemplifies it by the increasingly lunatic Paul Krugman, e.g., in The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 [Norton, 2008] who said "there will have to be an assertion of more government control – in effect, it will come closer to a full temporary nationalization of a significant part of the financial system."

David Gordon adds finally that the rapid transition to state socialism under Germany during the 1930s illustrates the dangers of such a course.

He quotes Mises (Human Action, Mises Institute, 1998, p. 854.)

If one wants to correct their manifest unsuitableness and preposterousness by supplementing the first acts of intervention with more and more of such acts, one must go farther and farther until the market economy has been entirely destroyed and socialism has been substituted for it.

If you want to try to trace a perspective and put some sort of order for your own sake on the increasingly bizarre decisions of our masters, political, economic and even religious, now that the Archbishop of Canterbury has seen fit to chime in... read this.

US the land of the free - where it costs YOU to lend money to the Government

Living now and the grandchildren can pay later

Live Now, Pay Later is remembered as a startling film, not least for the boost to the early career of Jack Trevor Story who is credited as scriptwriter. It appears this was based on the novel(?) published by Frederick Muller in 1961 and later as a lurid paperback All on the Never, Never. JTS capitalised on the film's success and "novelised" the film script as "Live now Pay Later" which was published originaly by Secker and Warburg and then by Penguin as a paperback.

The back cover blurb on AOTNN .... "The trouble with Iris is that she can't resist buying things on Hire Purchase. She can't meet the payments so she attempts to solve her difficulties by trying to sell her body. She doesn't find it an easy way of balancing the budget."

Jack Lindsay, 1900 - 1990, was a prolific, author, poet, editor of journals, translator of the classics and from the late 1930s a convert to the Communist Party of Great Britain, after which he also wrote about Marxist issues.

The film also launched the nascent careers of Ian Hendry (1931 - 1984) , Liz Fraser and Kiwi Nyree Dawn Porter (1936-2001) - falmost all for being filmed with almost all of their kit nearly off.

Callendar: There's 200,000 consumers in this town, and they're all waiting for you... just you.

Albert: Yeah, to con 'em into buying a whole load of stuff they don't need and can't afford.

Callendar: There's a nasty little streak of honesty in you, Albert. You wanna watch that... it's bad for business.

Perhaps the current and well supported plans of Gordon Brown to plunge us all into a deeper mire of personal and national debt has it's origins in those heady days when Harold Macmillan - "SuperMac" told us all, "We had never had it so Good"... and Ian Hendry's randy male selfishness and his single mum girlfriend Treasure , were straws in the wind identifying the social changes that reflected the days of easier credit.

The Abortion Act was passed 5 years later.

Peter Mandelson inserts his sticky fingers into the Woolworths pick'n'mix take over / bankruptcy / insolvency

Lucky old Ardeshir Naghshineh who escaped from Iran in 1979 when the iron democrat Shah Pahlevi was rudely overthrown, with but £2,000 of jewwllery and his lovely wife Clare, the daughter of military historian, Correlli Barnett.

Having seen his 10% stake in Woolworth's become almost worthless and losing him him £5 Mn he will be delighted that "a Minister" from the Ministry of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) - the department so skilfully run by Lord Mandelson of Foy ("We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich." , called John Varley (Downside , Oriel, and solicitor and devout Catholic) , chief executive at Barclays on his ever present Blackberry , as well as the Bank of Ireland's Burdale divison and GMAC, to ask why the banks were pushing the 99-year old pic 'n' mix retailer and purveyor of cheap Chinese made tat for the masses into administration.

Phew !!

Ardeshir Naghshineh, no slouch when £5 Mn. of his ( well probably HBOS actually after a major re-financing of his company Targetflow in 2002) wrote to the retailer’s entire board this afternoon to ask them for one final meeting to discuss a deal.

Meanwhile the BBC is negotiating to buy upWoolies 40 % stake in 2Entertain, the DVD business, for a fugure not unadjacent to £100 Mn. The pension fund is entitled to the first £50 Mn. of any 2 Entertain disposal under an agreement struck between the trustees and the Woolworths board last January which would almost meet the pension fund deficit of 58.2 million pounds as at August 2nd.

At stake of course are the jobs of 30,000 voters and the pensions of 20,000 pensioners which are threatened by a massive shortfall on their pension fund.

Mr Naghshineh (says the Times) declined to comment, but it is understood the Iranian tycoon has found financial backers who could give the company an immediate cash injection.

They also report that Mr Naghshineh is seriously considering the futile gesture of legal action against the board if the company goes into administration. The board meanwhile are anxious to avoid breaking the law by trading whilst insolvent. They are desperately trying to juggle their cash position by not paying suppliers so they can meet the payroll on Friday.

It is interesting at this point to consider a letter John Varley wrote to staff when the bank decided to reject the Queen's shillin' ad take the ones on offer from the Middle East (text Daily Telegraph) which includes the following....

The conversations we had around the Board table over that period were very clear: even in ordinary times, it is important for a business to have the right to determine independently what its strategy should be. And that point is even truer of extraordinary times like these. You don’t want your risk management compromised. You don’t want your strategic options constrained.

It was very clear from the conversations that I had with the UK Government over that weekend that it would, as a shareholder, influence our dividend policy; it would influence our lending policy; and it would become involved in the formulation of strategy. Of course the role of the Board is to protect the interest of shareholders and to create the circumstances in which, over time, we can maximise value on their behalf. And that was what was in the mind of the Board as we came to our decisions: we felt that our ability to do what our shareholders would expect of us would be compromised if Barclays was nationalised.

Perhaps nobody has told Peter that the Government (well not yet anyway) don't own Barclays.

Whilst Barclays have produced a seruies of fraudulent Balance sheets , and declared fat dividends on the basis of non-existent profits we have little sympathy for Mr Varley et al.

Our advice to Mr Varley and his counterparts at BOI and GMAC is to tell the slimy reptile Mandelson to fuck off and take his probing fingers and place them where they might receive a more receptive welcome.

UPDATE : 5.30 GMT - At 6pm Woolworths Board will officially announce they are calling in their advisors, deloittes as administrators this will not inlcude 2 Entertain.

UPDATE & APOLOGY : We regret if we gave the impression that only the unelected Lord Mandelson had been poking his person into the business of Barclays / Woolworths. It now appears from a contact within the IT department of Woolworths that another unelected person -the deeply loathsome and unelectable overweight busybody, shrieking Duchess Shrita Vadera had been active on the e-mail front in sticking her ample form into proceedings.

Copies of the alleged electronic messages are said to be forthcoming ... keep your eyes skinned.

Meanwhile our advice remains the same as that proffered to Varley in the case of Mandelsons limp wristed entreaties - tell them to fuck off. Not the first time of course that she has stuck her nose in ... see Thursday, November 08, 2007 - Northern Rock - full figures revealed - Ugandan babe exposed as busy body and unwanted by Darling

Pssst .. wanna buy a used car company .... just in time for the holidays ?

General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Richard Wagoner, Ford Motor Co.'s Alan Mulally along with Robert Nardelli of Chrysler LLC are scheduled to testify at a House Financial Services Committee hearing later today after telling a Senate panel yesterday that they need US$25 billion to keep operating. (They each turned up in their respective corporate jets)

Their shares reacted today - GM were down 15% @ US$2.63 - Market Cap US$ 1. 7BN and Ford were @ US$1.49 down 11.3% - Market Cap US$3.54.

So the US taxpayer stumps up US$25 Bn to keep them going to Christmas and yet they share a Market value of ... say US$ 10 Bn. ...tops ?

Since the first amphibians crawled out of the slime
We've been struggling in an unrelenting climb
We were hardly up and walking
Before money started talking
And it's sad that failure is an awful crime.
Well it's been that way for a millennium or two
But now it seems there's a different point of view
If you're a corporate titanic
And your failure is gigantic
Then in Congress there's a safety net for you.
I am changing my name to ChryslerI am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to ChryslerI am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand outYessir, I'll get mine.

—Tom Paxton, "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler" (1979) (hear it sung by Tom on You Tube)

That's a picture of cars imported being held at Long Beach, CA...some of them have been lying around 3/4 months. ...

See GM makes you sick 18 / 3 /05 also Friday, February 24, 2006
Disembowelled US - 3 more years of Dubya

Will the last person leaving Michigan please switch off the lights.

First Snow in London and Eastern Seaboard

Greek Yoghurt, a freshly plucked and sliced fig, a drizzle of honey and warm Mediterranean sunshine......aaaahhh !!!

The Banker's Money Pit swallows helicopter funds at an increasing and alarming rate. When do the Fed and the BOE run out of paper and printing ink ?

The quantity of money that the US Federal Reserve is prepared to throw out of the helicopters is truly staggering. Just to keep you up to speed , Banks and securities firms have posted losses exceeding $188 billion since the start of last year as the impact of surging defaults on subprime mortgages has roared through world financial markets like a tsunami on a Thai holiday beach.

That really is one helluva hole to fill.

That of course is merely the write offs they have made, what else is hiddden on their rotten fraudulent balance sheets ? What unrecoverable loans are there out there ? For example Barclays (on Dec 20th) are sueing (some fucking hope) Bear Stearns for US$400 Mn over 2 collapsed (and likely fraudulently run) Cayman Islands based Hedge funds.

Fed Chairman Bernanke started to fill up the bottomless money pit a day later on 21st December offering a measly Christmas present of US $20 billion, (Technically, the Fed auctioned off US$20 billion in loans - just to confuse they call it - Term Auction Facility TFA) which 93 banks bid for US$61 BN at a rate of 4.65% - which was a 10 basis points below the Fed's discount window at the time of 4.75%.

Then well after the Christmas turkey had been gobbled, he held some slightly more generous US$30Bn auctions , quickly followed by the promise of of 2 planned auctions on March 10 and March 24 of US$50 Bn. dollars - now he has anniounced the same unpleasant medicine for the moral hazardless bankers of a further US$100 BN in April - and the rumour is this will carry on at this rate until September. Or even at a higher level.."The Federal Reserve, shortly before the report was released, underscored its concern for the economy by saying it will pump more cash into financial markets to try to ease credit."

In an unorthodox move the Fed is llowing investment banks to borrow from it directly - a facility previously only the privilege of commercial banks. Presumably the loan of US$29 Bn. to J P Morgan for Bear Stearns made the process a mockery ... which is what it was.

The Fed's chairman, Ben Bernanke, will be quizzed about the auctions, by Congress next week, but they haven't got any bright ideas about what to do either . Does it have anything to do with the slide against the Euro? The yawning trade deficit ? The yawning budget deficit ?.. well never mind the suckers who voted will get their tax backs soon and everything , everything I tell ya will be fine.

Please don't anyone ask what happens when the Fed run out of pritning ink and paper.

Spring Break is just around the corner !!!!

This week there were concerted moves by central banks to bring down the Libor - the rate at which banks lend to one another - which stays stubbornly at levels that prevailed at the beginning of the credit crunch. As the banks are all liars and crooks, they won't lend to each other as they know all the other bankers are liars and crooks and they can't sucker the public much longer and stuff their fictuive balance sheets with illusory assets.

Its's no better in London

Bank of England governor Mervyn King met the Commons Treasury Select Committee on Wednesday, after the Bank put an extra £5bn into the market last week.

..." The Bank of England would continue to offer extra money in the markets as a short-term way of boosting confidence in the system," and added , confirming that they haven't a fucking clue what to do ..."The Bank of England would continue to offer extra money in the markets as a short-term way of boosting confidence in the system"

" longer-term solutions would be discussed with UK banks" .. i.e we will see if they have got any better ideas what to do.

..today the £ closed against the € down 0.092 or 0.75% @ € 1.26215 lowest ever.

The UK housing market has healthy demand boosted by insane planning laws, pent up demand from a ruising population, and fragmenting families - the market is sound although prices will rise more slowly (apparently only 1% nationally last year) and mortages will be more expensive. The insane HIP's , stamp duty, and other costs will help depress upward mobility and therfore market movement.

Wages will be held down, as inflation, led by energy and food costs will roar away pushed by global markets and forces.

Sterling will decline, against the Euro and end up at something like parity by Christmas. The decline against the dollar will be slower and shallower probably hitting US$1.80 at the same time.

Unemployment is such a fudged figure it is impossible to evaluate how it will be affected.

Constrained by the flow of funds Goverment spending will be hit, aircraft carriers, Nimrod, and asome submarines will go. The NHS will feel the pinch, transport subsidies will be cut ....

And Benranke and King the helicopter pilots will take a well cushioned early retirement.

Carlyle Capital Corporation go bust - US$16.6 BN ++++ down the tubes...more to follow

We posted about the woes of Carlyle Capital Corporation last Friday, March 07, 2008 - Carlyle leads the way with Triple A mortage Fire Sales as margin calls cannot be met.

Now today they have issued notice that effectively they have gone bust - Carlyle Capital Corporation (CCC) Unable To Reach Agreement With Lenders; Lenders Likely to Take Possession of Remaining Assets Carlyle Capital Corporation Limited listed on Euronext Amsterdam ticker symbol: CCC; ISIN: GG00B1VYV826 it is a Guernsey investment company that was formed on August 29, 2006 and completed its initial offering in July 2007. Carlyle Investment Management L.L.C. (“CIM”) manages the Company pursuant to a management agreement. - CCC has not been able to reach a mutually beneficial agreement to stabilize its financing.

Which means they have run out of money.

The only assets held in the Company’s portfolio as of today are U.S. government agency AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS). (There are of course avariety of views as to whether these actually represent assets - ie they have actually no tradeable value - like Lord Patel's 600 Vinyl LP's)

In the last week Company received margin (and could not meet margin calls of more than US$400 million.

Unable to meet them the lenders proceeded to foreclose on the RMBS collateral.

Beware - adjust your clothing before reading the next sentence.

In total, by last night, the Company has defaulted on approximately $16.6 billion of its indebtedness. The remaining indebtedness (?) is expected soon to go into default.

Today we expect margin calls tomorrow of approximately US$97.5 million.

CCC IPO'd last July at US$ 20 a share , today they are worthless. Carlyle Gropup are said to own 15% of CC .Says something about the management skills of Carlyle Investment Management L.L.C.





According to CCC's annual report, counterparties for its repurchasing agreements as of the end of 2007 (ie the folks who are left holding those wonderful AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS)) were Bank of America, Bear Stearns, BNP Paribas, Calyon, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, ING, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and UBS.

Clusterfuck Nation - Hunter S. Thompson lives .... Fear and Loathing on Wall Street

The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle by Jim Kunstler

August 20, 2007

"Hot Shots". The Federal Reserve seems to be manufacturing an impressive supply of "greater fools" to go along with the dribs'n'drabs of credit that it is dropping into the sucking chest wound that the economy has become for the body politic. The Fed's idea, I suppose, is that if they lend a little money to the geniuses who engineered the latest (and probably last) bubble of the cheap oil age to cover their present losses, then the US economy will "right itself." What I think they don't get is that finance has virtually become the US economy -- if you subtract it, there is nothing left besides hair-styling, fried chicken, and colonoscopies. By "righting the economy" do people mean the ability to keep running a transparently fraudulent set of rackets that have nothing whatever to do with financing real productive activity?

By "greater fools" I mean, of course, buyers willing to step up and purchase securities that other people are shedding as if they were smallpox blankets. But even the Fed's supply of greater fools may prove insufficient when it becomes evident how much bad paper really is out there, and how it has been allowed to contaminate every tradable niche in the banking and investment house of horrors. I don't think we've begun to hear the disclosures.

........Personally, I don't quite get how a financial industry based on bad loans would be helped by borrowing more money to bail out a hopelessly unwinding Ponzi loan racket of the type the industry had engineered for itself -- but maybe I'm lacking the gene for financial creativity that the Bear Stearns bonus babies were all born with."

If you seek an original view on the markets, a good read and something to stiffen the sinews as you clutch at your Starbucks squillion calorie nerve steadier ... read Jim if nothing else.

BTW the grand old Bank of England let it be known that on Monday a bank (one of 57 that have the facility) borrowed £314 Mn. at 6.75% which is said to be a "penal" rate but is actually only 15 points above London Interbank Rate at the time.

This is what bankers call "throwing good money after bad", when they give speeches to conferences of bankers.