Meanwhile, back in Britain, the markets are continuing to fret over the scale of the financial hole the country is in a day after the UK government stepped in and hosed the banks with yet further large amounts of public funds. According to the media pundit and investor, Jim Rogers, sterling is a sell and the country’s economy is headed for further trouble. Even though Rogers’ prediction of a 25-year commodity boom has not quite panned out – oil prices have crashed from $140+ to about $40 now in just four months – he did predict some of that boom and commodity investors who sold out at the right time would have made a killing in some of Rogers’ funds. His take on the economic situation is worth studying.
I see no reason to buy sterling on speculative grounds until Mr Brown is removed from office along with his re-heated Keynesian colleagues. Even then, the return to sound money will be hard and unpleasant. It almost makes me wonder if the Tories would want to regain power with such a poisonous inheritance.
Thanks to Guido Fawkes for the Rogers quote. Guido has been a bear of sterling for some time. To stay with the lingo of the markets, investors should be shorting Brown stocks, a heavily touted investment based on no underlying merits whatsover.
I keep trying to interest people in the benefit of Britain’s next government instituting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as part of the painful process of purging the toxins from the system. The Labour party has sucked so much of the political/bureaucratic/media/judicial Establishment into its corrupt orbit that there’s going to be a real shortage of intelligent and morally uncompromised people to help rescue whatever’s left of Britain by the time GB et al are chased out of office.
Take an optimistic view of humanity – that fallen individuals can be redeemed – and use the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a vehicle for redemption.
Without re-discovering basic civic virtues, and quickly, the future for Britain looks dark – and darker by the day.
The great embarrassment is that the EU should manage to get something so right!
Couldn’t happen to a better country or a nicer politician. When Lehmans fell your fellow European country, Germnay, gloated about collapse of US financial superpower. Sarkozy stepped in and tried to wrench away the control of World bank and IMF from the US and put it under an international regulatory zinger. Gordon Brown prodded an uncertain US into nationalising their banks. All of them could barely contain their glee at the collapse of capitalist system and the US. Classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Sarkozy and Merkel have at least some redeeming qualities; both have supported the War on Terror effort more or less. Not so this friday-faced Brutus.
While the much maligned Bush is leaving office with some concrete achievements in keeping America safe and securing Iraq, no such solace will be there for Brown. Nemesis rules!
Rogers is George Soros’ right hand man. Both men have shown great dexterity at manipulating markets, bankrupting industries and nations, and are probably the leading figures behind the disgusting oil speculation. It is no coincidence that oil prices plummeted as Obama’s inauguration drew closer. Obama is the boy-king Soros paid hundreds of millions to see elected. Soros wouldn’t drop that kind of cash without a reason. He’s seldom up to any good and one suspects his motives are questionable if not dangerous.
I also happen to think that Mr. Brown’s bosom buddy George Soros might just have something to with this crisis. I think him and his cronies propagated “the myth of decoupling”, invested in the so-called emerging economies and propped them as alternatives to the Great Satan, inflated euro artificially against the dollar– all to put pressure on the US, smash its economy and be the new superpower. Turns out nothing decoupled at all and their little gimmick boomeranged on them. Paul Wolfowitz must be having the last laugh after all.
Except no one engineered this crisis other than the tens of millions of crapulous voters world wide who year after year put politicians who regulated the self correcting markets of the world to the point it was bound to all collapse. Conspiracy theories are just such drivel.
I find Soros’ philanthropy quite dubious, but the idea propagated by deluded Bush supporters that Soros is behind America’s economic woes is just a pure desperate attempt to defend a man even more dubious than Soros.
As for Rogers, he was solidly opposed to bailing out the banking industry. This alone makes him better than most members of the American elite.
And as far as I am aware, it has been a custom that an American is usually picked to run the World Bank and a European is usually picked to run the IMF. And Bush was the guy who nominated Wolfowitz’s American successor at the World Bank.
I keep trying to interest people in the benefit of Britain’s next government instituting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The South African model for such a thing involved giving pardons to the guilty at the end of it. I wouldn’t support such a thing here.
Amen to that. ‘The Jew Soros’ is a wonderful bogeyman and much as I dislike him, the antennae on my Barking Moonbat Detector(tm) usually start waving furiously whenever someone starts a rolling narrative on the world’s woes that includes him.
So much delusional nonsense in one paragraph. Rogers’ own oft-stated claim that oil could rally to over $200 per barrel clearly hasn’t worked. He cannot be that powerful, can he? What industries has this man bankrupted, pray, or why?
And the idea that Obama is behind the stunning fall in the oil price is not just barking moonbattery, but bizarre. If anything, the collapse in the price of oil is driven by a, some improvements in supplies; b, falling demand from the West and China, and c, some closing out of speculative positions by hedge funds. In the latter case, what this proves at most is that short-term speculative froth will go away eventually once the fundamentals take over. It came as no surprise to those who look at long term trends.
Yeah, Soros is one swell guy. He’s so cute you just want to pinch his cheeks. But first take off your tinfoil hat and then read this sentence again. “the idea propagated by deluded Bush supporters that Soros is behind America’s economic woes is just a pure desperate attempt to defend a man even more dubious than Soros.” Who the hell is “propagating” the idea that Soros is the explanation for the U.S.’s economic woes? If there exists such a legitimate and intellectually competent “Bush supporter,” please enlighten us with the name. To say nothing of “more dubious than Soros.” Wow, BDS anyone? Otherwise, one must conclude that there are some Moonbats around, but that sentence would have to be exhibit #1 on the application form to the local Moonbat Fraternal Lodge. Sheesh!
George Soros obviously did not cause the economic meltdown. However, he did use his money and media power to get a vapid and manipulatable man into the Whitehouse and he will expect payback (probably mostly in terms of policy influence, but possibly financial).
America is about to get a whole lotta “empirical, non-essentialist social engineering” or whatever that damn fool Popper spent his time blithering on about (don’t have a book to hand).
Gabriel, I don’t think we should blame Popper for the fact that one of his most prominent fans is a bit of a dope on politics.
“Return to sound money”. You’re killing me.
What, the sound money the Unicorns delivered every morning?
There hasn’t been even arguably sound money since 1972. Just temporarily slowly inflating money in some places at some times.
Crap, there goes another one of the life-boat countries from my list! Any seats left on that spaceship?
To return to the original post: were it possible to short the government, Guido’s advice to do so would have been timely in light of this Iain Martin article in the Telegraph …
Indeed.
Free Money Now!
(Money is too important to be in the hands of government. We need many free money’s, each in competition with each other, and each different, and accented to different users. I have no idea on how to do this, but if government hacks can do it, we can, better and cheaper.)
Of course there is sound money. It has existed longer than we have. It’s called gold. It is what takes over when the schemes of the fiat money crowd collapse, and they *ALWAYS* collapse sooner or later.