Debtocracy

An auditing of who a country owes it's debt to seems a compelling argument. Especially when the austerity measures including cuts to health and social spending mean that the country's own people die so that offshore bankers get paid. Bankers and international financiers who lent money in the first place with interest that reflected the riskiness of the loan.

Often, as in the case of Greece, debts were built up based on dodgy accounting and bribes. Not done by the people but by a small group of corrupt politicians and lobbyists.

This documentery, called Debtocracy, is well worth watching. It looks at Ecuador as an example of how to audit debt and reduce what is owed by discounting odious or illegitimate debt.

http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/07/debtocracy-exposing-greek-debt-crisis

Union leaders pay

The Taxpayers Alliance lists the pay of the top UK union leaders. Benefits aside, the range is from £80 - 100K. What should a union leader get? The same as a headteacher, GP? Slightly more than an MP's basic of £70K?

Just what are those Greek austerity measures?

Interesting breakdown of what life on the ground is like in Greece. Although it doesn't go into personal income tax rates.

https://aleksandreia.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/just-what-are-those-greek-austerity-measures/

Greece - D Day

From Graham Summer's Market Forecast:

However, the facts remain the same. The world is awash in garbage debt. The only reason the banks and others haven’t taken the “hit” that they NEED to take is because they’ve bought out the politicians. Put another way, we are seeing clearly that the two primary principles of the West (capitalism and democracy) have both become jokes: alleged “capitalists” like the banks don’t ever actually see losses for mistakes and “democratically elected” leaders are in fact owned outright by the banks via donations/ bribes.

Graphic debt charts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13361934

Flinging a pot of paint at the Royals

There is no better image of the conflict between unearned wealth and young people whose education is being made more expensive than the paint attack on Charles and Camilla's car.

The attack or protest highlights a question not even being discussed on the rigged slate of what is on the chopping board. It is a given that the state can continue to give support the Royal family but in order to reduce the deficit it has to take away from the much less well off.

The Crown Estate, nearly 700,000 acres of land, generates an income that goes to the government, of which some is given back to the Queen as a grant known as the Civil List. If you find it hard to imagine 700,000 acres, the average private homeowning family who has just 0.18 of an acre for their home.

As Kevin Cahill wrote in his book Who Owns Britain:

"The Queen an her immediate family of just eight people, believe that to be comfortable they have to have, for their use in one way or another, a quarter of the land needed to house 45 million poeple in the private sector."

The government made no savage cuts to this Royal grant. In the June budget it was frozen at £8 million per year. To that annual cost we need to add extra state expenses for travel and security totalling approximately £120 million. This is balanced by a net income to the Treasury from the Crown Estate of £200 million. The Royal family is at best revenue neutral.

The Prince of Wales personally receives revenues form 140,000 acres of the Duchy of Cornwall. This earned him a post tax income of £17 million in 2009-10. As his annual accounts tell us, he pays tax 'voluntarily on the surplus of the Duchy of Cornwall' and generates £100 million for charity each year. As we're all in this together can we look at the part-privatisation of Royal land assets?

Flinging a pot of paint at a car is something the Suffragettes would have done to draw attention to their cause. I don't know what the thoughts and beliefs of the paint flinger are, but they've drawn attention to an elephant in the room.

Tuition fees

Martin Luther King spoke of the 'fierce urgency of now' when fighting for freedom and warned against the 'tranquillizing drug of gradualism'. I'm bemused by the rush of this government into drastic changes in many policy areas where sudden change threatens to rip apart the consent necessary for peaceful civil society. Where is the rush to change the behaviour of bankers and international speculators whose derivatives sunk the world economy? Their banking levy rate is being adjusted downwards in case, horror of horrors, it actually raises too much money from the speculative financial sector who caused this sudden retrenchment of the state.

But let's celebrate – tuition fee reform plans will allow students to have a free university education, provided they earn less than a £21,000 salary for the next 30 years. Then the government will write the outstanding loan off, so that you can start planning for your retirement the following decade.

The doubling of student tuition (or course) fees to up to £9,000 per year will not make much difference to the 7% of privately educated students who presently make up 15% of those at university. Their parents have been paying on average of £10,000 each year for their education. The children of the very rich, whose family wealth has ballooned in the last ten years, are largely immune to high fees. The more they pay the better the chance of an 'exceptional return' on their investment. The most expensive public schools skew the result. Half of the students at Westminster School (£30,000 per year) get into Oxbridge. That's an advantage worth paying for. The golden ticket of an expensive education will give them a high chance of becoming an MP – one in three of whom were educated privately. (Nearly half of Conservative MPs were privately educated.) Privately educated students are also disproportionately represented at the higher levels in journalism, the legal profession and the military.

Of course, there is no reason why the 22 of the 29 members of the cabinet who have assets and investments worth more than £1 million should not appreciate the extra burden that increased tuition fees will place on students from middle income families who graduate into jobs earning little more than the £21,000 repayment threshold.

Once this earnings threshold is crossed, the debtor must pay back at a rate of inflation (the higher RPI measure) plus 3%. Repayments for a graduate earning an average of £30,000 per year with a total loan of £40,000 will be £70 per month. Under the Browne proposals the payment depends 'only on the income of the borrower, it is independent of the interest rate and the size of debt outstanding.' After 30 years £11,000 of the loan would be repaid. The rest of the loan would then be written off. Psychologically it will be very strange for a person of 50 to still carry a debt of £30,000 around their neck from 30 years ago. They might feel a bit ashamed that they haven't managed to pay back their debt. If only they'd become a banker...

Why should 100% of the tuition fees be charged to solely to the individual? The skills gained from the degree are not the property of the student. They are employed to achieve a greater earnings potential which is taxed at a higher rate if they earn a high salary. The company they work for gets the benefit of a skilled employee who earns a profit for them. Are we happy to be a society that has taken selfishness to a new level as if neither society nor their employers benefits from their education?

When was it decided that we can't keep 40% of a generation in higher education without them paying for it, yet we can afford to keep 100% (or more accurately 93%) of the same generation in school up to the age of 18? What does it say about a society when it won't give all it's young people access to higher education. Does it fear an educated citizenry? Maths graduates who won't waste their money buying lottery tickets. History graduates that can spot the next illegal war. Economists who know that a Robin Hood tax on city financial transactions would raise enough to provide free education and a lot more besides.

This education in individual accounting opens the door to personal 'profit and loss accounts' for citizens, tracked by your NI number, where what you are able to take out of a system (for example, in terms of health care or social security) is defined by how much you've paid in over your lifetime.

Welcome to a selfish, individualistic, highly unequal, profit and loss society. Higher education - not so much 'know thyself' as 'know thy economic worth'.

Dear Nick Clegg

Dear Nick Clegg,
I'm dreaming of a Robin Hood (Financial Transaction Tax) £4bn raised at 0.1%
on derivatives trades, I'm dreaming of higher council tax on properties banded E-H raising £2bn. And I believe in a social contract where the state provides a free education.

Will the UK be like Iceland in a year or so?

From Business Insider:

While the currency devaluation might have helped the nation's export (while
forcing debtors taking haircuts), the domestic inflation, and asset devaluation,
most likely will wipe out the entire middle class

EU Budget and Overseas aid

Via John Redwood

Over the five years of this planned government £41 billion will be spent on contributions to the EU and £39 billion spent on overseas aid, a grand total of £80 billion. The annual figure for the two combined hits £18.9 billion in 2014-15. The government plans to borrow an extra £460 billion over period 2010-2015, so these two programmes account for over one sixth of the additional borrowing.

Wind farms: economic facts

I just want facts on the cost of renewables. Some breakthrough here, thanks to Christopher Brooker

Also lessons from the Spanish Renewables Bubble.

Something I didn't know

By the end of 2009, some 40,000 children living in Poland were receiving British child benefit – which is significantly higher than similar support in their own country. In Poland, the equivalent is about £5 a week.

War on a class already taxed to the hilt

Good commentary from Peter Oborne. If you want a solution - look in the mirror.

Auditors Bribe Tories

From Craig Murray:

The entire Western accounting system is based on the compliance of morally corrupt little pen pushers. The fact that it is the company which chooses its own accountants and auditors, who have a vested interest in keeping their mouths shut and are never prosecuted when a scheme folds (along with the hopes and savings of millions of investors), is a scandal.

Our jails should hold less desperate social security scammers, and a great many more accountants.

$23.7 Trillion Bailout

Plus or minus the odd trillion, it's enough to sink a battleship.

Via Blacklisted News/ABC

The staggering $23.7 trillion estimate elicited concern from members of Congress and a sharp rebuke from the Treasury Department after the report was leaked late Monday.

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan...

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, both profiting from the economic crash.

The banks win again

Meanwhile the rich continue to get richer and the poor...

From the Nation

Our Great Depression

The Great Depression isn't over. According to Gerald Celente.

Funny Money

From Telegraph

In eight months, Sheikh Mansour has made a £1.45bn profit on a £2bn investment in Barclays.

Just think how useful it would be if the taxpayer had made that profit. All it would have taken was some funny money created by the Bank of England to buy Barclays shares. Of course, the shares may not have risen as much if the bank hadn't 'stood on it's own two feet' but every little penny helps.