Prog Gold

Blimey, this bank crash is making people eloquent. This comment to Deborah Hargreaves’ Guardian post calling for the heads of bank bosses got 60-odd recommends in a couple of hours in the middle of the night.

I think the average Guardian reader’s a just a little bit angry at the banks:

BedmiAndrew

Oct 10 08, 12:40am (about 7 hours ago)

In another article, it has been warned that hedge fund managers and the like will just move to “high-paying Mumbai and Shanghai”. You know what? Read on:

Those of you wealthy people who think you can threaten to take your “expertise” abroad, go. Leave. Get the hell out. We’ll strip you of your passport and you’ll never come back. People are sick of the wealthy threatening to leave at any sign that they might actually have to pay their fair share. Some might consider this anti-social behaviour. If you cannot survive on what everyone else survives on, if you think that the unfettered amassing of wealth is a “good thing” then fuck right off and go.

And good riddance be to you, you social-darwinist deviant

What could I possibly add to that?

UPDATE:

Someone followed up:

Domovoy07, Oct 10 08, 3:52am (about 3 hours ago)

I am really disappointed. CiF is not supposed to be a place for hate speech. I know bankers and bankers. Some of them are now on a very difficult animic moment, deeply lost in a soul-searching process that can be personally devastating.

Good. They bloody well should be.

..got a counterfeit dollar in his hand, too.

In reply to Larry Elliot’s new daily column on the economic crisis a commenter points out the utter pointlessness of UK Chancellor Alistair Darling’s belated bank rescue ‘plan’ :

cojock

Oct 07 08, 3:05am

What is being missed here is that even if banks do start lending again to other banks, against their better judgment, it doesn’t solve the problem, which is that bank capital was only part of the capital which supported the bubble of credit now deflating increasingly rapidly.

Banks outsourced huge amounts of credit risk to investors through the mechanisms of securitisation; credit derivatives (essentially a time limited guarantee); credit insurance and toxic cocktails of all three.

Even if banks’ balance sheets were restored - which they won’t be - and even if they lend at the same daft levels of “gearing” - which they won’t - there is still a vast capital hole which can only be filled by governments.

This deficit-based system of monetisation of credit is finished - and we must thank Mr Greenspan for bringing forward its inevitable demise several years.

The alternative to credit is a new approach to”equity”, using non-toxic alternatives to the Corporation as legal frameworks for investment in assets of all types, Public and Private; commecial, social or charitable in aims, and whatever the legal form.

Not only are such alternatives now possible: they are emerging in the UK and elsewhere, simply because such “unitisation” actually works better than conventional “equity”…..

I agree: the corporate model must die. Mutualisation is going to be a word we’ll be hearing a lot more of and believe it or not the Conservatives are ahead of the curve on it. Strange days indeed.

But wonky discussion of possible future economic models doesn’t answer today’s essential question - ‘Is my money safe right now‘?

Martin is sensible and banks with a Dutch bank - he’s safe, they were nationalised over a week ago. I bank with RBS, which has teetered on the cliff-edge of insolvency while Darling dithered. The answer to that question for me, as for many other British people, is ‘Who knows?’

Now finally, after a over a week of cowardice and indecision, at 5am today Darling came up with a plan; it’s a plan that’s that’s neither fish nor fowl, neither nationalisation nor a full guarantee of British banks, but a half-assed waste of 50 billion pounds that will give a thousand pounds for every woman, man and child in the country to incompetent and greedy billionaires, with few guarantees for the taxpayer.

Darling was aided in this by his Economic War Cabinet - these people:

Lord Mandy… one of the world’s foremost authorities on dodgy self-cert mortgage financing
Lord Drayson… a man well known to BOM readers for his keen understanding of markets, and the price of everything
Lord Myners… a man who is fully versed in the dark arts of short selling British bank stocks and who has produced a veritable shedload of official reports
Lord Helpus… a man who has always fancied a peerage

OMG. Mandy, two of those notorious Labour donors, and Lord Helpus. It’s a re-run of the National Economic Development Council, an entirely useless talking shop finally abolished by John Major in 1992.

So New Labour ’s blinded by the bankers again, giving away taxpayers’ money even as those taxpayers lose their jobs and homes. For many this winter it’s heat or eat.

But can anyone protest at this government stupidity, profligacy and incompetence? No, they’re doing it whether we want them to or not. Our opinion is irrelevant.

At least the Americans got to protest a bit about the theft of their money before it was stolen. Parliament has had precisely nothing to say, let alone the voters. If this is a democracy I’m a banana.

I saw this quote from Ludwig von Mises atThe Proletariat’s News and it did seem rather apt considering the US government paid what they were asked for for crappy debt books, regardless of actual market value:

“A government that sets out to abolish market prices is inevitably driven toward the abolition of private property; it has to recognize that there is no middle way between the system of private property in the means of production combined with free contract, and the system of common ownership of the means of production, or socialism. It is gradually forced toward compulsory production, universal obligation to labor, rationing of consumption, and, finally, official regulation of the whole of production and consumption.” - The Theory of Money and Credit

So zillionaires are losing billions. How very sad. Oh, how my heart bleeds.

London, Oct 5 (PTI) NRI steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal has lost 16.6 billion pounds in the global credit crunch owing to plummeting stock markets in the last four months, media reports said here today.
The 58-year-old Mittal heads a list of ten super-rich losers who together have seen their share portfolios shrink by about 23 billion pounds from their peaks, The Sunday Times claimed.

Another NRI entrepreneur Anil Agarwal, who built up his metals empire, has seen his stock plummet by 2.7 billion pounds.

The height of Mittal’s losses dwarfs those of others in the list of top 10 losers, which include Mike Ashley, the beleaguered owner of Newcastle United football club and the retailer Sports Direct.

Mittal has seen his family’s stake in ArcelorMittal, the steel conglomerate, fall from 33.24 billion pounds on June 4 this year to 16.63 billion pounds at the close of Friday’s markets. The loss is equivalent to 137 million pounds a day or nearly 6 million pounds an hour.

The credit crunch losses were established by comparing the value of shareholdings around the world held by them at their peak with the value at the close of markets last Friday. PTI

All very sad for them, the poor penurious preciouses - but I doubt very much any one of them will do without food to put money on his electric or gas meter key this winter.

Courtesy of a commenter at Digby’s comes this quote:

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

–Thomas Jefferson

Quite.

Just in case US voters rebel against the biggest theft ever of their money… Wall St and Washington have got it covered.

Congressional Democrats think that stealing national assets to cover private losses is just fine and dandy and want to act fast to save the banking system:

Rep. Frank sees Congress acting fast on bailout plan

They think Bush’s bailing out the banks is brilliant:

Democrats see boost for $50 billion econ stimulus By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The urgent need for the U.S. Congress to approve a Bush administration plan to rescue Wall Street has given Democrats renewed hope of enacting another economic stimulus package for Main Street, congressional aides said on Friday.

For months, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats in Congress have been pushing $50 billion in emergency spending they say would spur the flagging U.S. economy.

I wonder why? Here’s your answer:

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) — The market storm that brought down Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., American International Group Inc. and other pillars of U.S. finance may have also blown holes in the portfolios of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator John Kerry and more than 50 other members of Congress.

Altogether, 56 senators and representatives had stakes in AIG, Lehman, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns Cos. or IndyMac Bancorp Inc. — some of the biggest casualties of the market bloodbath — according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The most recent annual disclosure filings list investments as of Dec. 31, 2007, and reveal the size of holdings only within a range of values. Lawmakers may have sold shares since then.

I should’ve known.

There’s not much to smile about in the papers this morning except David Hockney in The Grauniad’s letters page, who deserves a special prize for cleverly piggybacking his pet cause onto a crisis :

Could it be that the smoke-free rooms of New York bankers are not working as well as the old ones. Smoking a cigar or pipe makes me ponder, whereas the replacements can make prudence go out of the window. Just a thought.

David Hockney
London

As any smoker knows the real business of meetings is done outside in the rain while sharing a convivial fag. He has a point there.

But that’s about all it’ll get you. [Via The Consumerist]

Megacorporations are lying, thieving bastards. They always were, but they aren’t even bothering to pretend they’re not any more.

A used beemer, that is.

Why so? Thanks to Egalia at Tenessee Guerilla Women for drawing my attention to this sick little ad campaign for BMW:

As it’s described in Salon:

Broadsheet: [A] beautiful young woman — presumably naked and lying in bed — wearing a come-hither look and a crown of blond curls. In small print scrawled across her bare shoulder, it reads: “You know you’re not the first.” As your eyes drift to the bottom of the advertisement — and the top of her chest — you learn that it’s an advertisement for BMW’s premium selection of used cars. Used cars, used women — get it?! And, finally, there’s BMW’s slogan in the bottom right-hand corner, which takes on a whole new meaning: “Sheer Driving Pleasure.”

I’d also add - how old is that girl? 13? 14? She could be 18; but even so the aim is to make her look pubescent, yet still available.

The air of innocence suggests virginal chastity, yet the pose of passive abandon says ‘here, take me’. The makeup is deliberately designed to accentuate the dewy skin, pouting mouth and cherubic curls of extreme youth; yet the direct gaze gives an implicit promise of sexuality. It’s all very carefully done and just to make sure you get the message, it’s made explicit in the slogan. “You know you’re not the first”. Oh well, that’s all right then. Lech away at the child.

No doubt BMW’s marketing droids are aiming for a discrete demographic - and from the message sent by this ad, I’d say that’s the repressed-paedophile-with-aspirational-tendencies-in-a-boring-job-that-doesn’t-pay quite enough-for-a-posh-car market segment. I bet the research people found their target audience goes on holiday in Costa Rica or Thailand as well; but what I’d find even more interesting is the range of media this ad’s been placed in. That would tell us even more about whether BMW sees their customers as potential paedophiles or not. But on the content of that ad alone, I think that were I a second-hand beemer driver, I’d be just a tad insulted.

[First spotted by Copyranter.]

* Jeremy Clarkson, The Sunday Times