Banning always works

I don't really have anything to add to this fantastic blog post which highlights the gap between the nobility of intention of stupid politicians and the harsh truth or the real world.

Other than, perhaps: WHY DO YOU FUCKING CUNTS NEVER LEARN?

Why Tory economic policy is doomed to fail

It's a conundrum for everyone who cries out that a smaller government inevitably leads to economic growth.

Hence, libertarians and "small-c conservatives" are all calling for cuts, yet despite all the evidence of cuts being trumpeted left, right and centre, economic growth is flaccid, limp and in desperate need of economic Viagra.

The cuts are smoke and mirrors. Inflation is kicking in, services are being cut, especially at the frontline, and yet growth isn't happening. "Progressives" and tribal Labour supporters are jeering that this is proof that government spending is vital.

But the truth is that we're not seeing the whole truth.

The previous government spent money it didn't have like a drunken sailor in port for the first time in 18 months. Banks were bailed out, vanity projects were finances, PFI skullduggery was rampant.

And when governments do cut spending, they always cut at the frontline first, because that way it hurts people the most so they start screaming for services to be reinstated.

In a business, you cut the frontline as late as possible, because those are the people bringing the money in. It's always possible to make managers manage more people or combine functions so that you can get shot of people in the back office.

But the motivations are different in the two cases. Businesses want to make a profit and retain customers. Governments want to build empires and fuck people around.

So while there may be small cuts happening in government service provision, there aren't cuts in taxes from the savings made. And because there are no cuts in taxes, it's impossible for individual spending to make up for the cuts in government spending.

Taxes are still sky-high, and that's because of the massive debt. The debt isn't even being attacked, all that the government is trying to do is clear the deficit, which is the gap between current income and expenditure. When they've done this, they will still be left with the legacy of debt that needs to be paid off. But at least then they'll be able to start paying off historical debt.

And the other side of the government spending issue is that government spending isn't actually going down. By the time the Tories get kicked out of power again, government will have spent more every year than even that insane Scottish spendthrift maniac could spunk out in his desperate attempts to buy votes. It's just being spent on paying for debt.

So if the currently fuckwit Lib Dem and "Red Tory" hold on taxing the people who actually work to death, while spunking money out on their pointless vanity projects continues, the best that we can hope for is that some miniscule growth will happen and that somehow Gideon will pay off some of the debt so that the next lot of delusional cuntwanks can start the whole "pissing other people's money away" lark again.

Personally, I can't wait. I'm fucking off to Lichtenstein.

The old ones are the best!

Yes, you moronic twat, your profligate money-pissing saved the world.

In other news, this:

Wall Street had its worst day for almost three years as shares tumbled on fears about the eurozone debt crisis and the US economic recovery.

The Dow Jones index closed down more than 500 points, or 4.3%, and came after the leading European bourses fell more than 3%.

It was the biggest one-day fall for the Dow since October 2008.

Earlier, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned that the sovereign debt crisis was spreading.*

Also in New York, the S&P 500 index fell 4.8% and the tech-rich Nasdaq was more than 5% lower.

Meanwhile, Frankfurt's Dax and London's FTSE 100 indexes had their worst day this year, closing almost 3.5% lower as investors fretted that Italy and Spain might become engulfed in the debt crisis.

"People are throwing in the towel because they can't find relief on any front," said Milton Ezrati, market strategist at Lord Abbett.

Investors sought the relative safety of gold, sending the price of the metal to a new record high of $1,677 an ounce.

Christ knows how many billions of pounds Brown's stupidity has cost us. Every time someone does the sums, it turns out that if we'd held on to the gold, it would have been worth more and more.

Obama's bailout of every greedy cunt who stuck their hand out has clearly fucking worked well.

Rather than actually addressing the structural and fundamental financial issues, it looks like a handful of companies got huge amounts of taxpayer funding thrown at them which has helped to the extent of the square root of fuck-all, as far as I can tell.

The Teleprompter Jesus has failed to save the US. The snotmuncher failed to save us. The collective wisdom of Gollum and his fuckwit elves is clearly not saving the EU.

The only upside of this is that by the looks of it, the Euro is going to go down the shitter in a hurry, so my holiday should be a cheap round this year.

*In February, Barroso displayed his deep financial knowledge by claiming that the Euro would protect the EU from default issues. The cunt.

I couldn't face it after comment four

Anthony Evans has a corking article here on the need to de-regulate the banks, in which he makes a couple of thought-provoking points:

1. Legalise insider trading. The regulators have failed spectacularly. They did not foresee the systemic risk created by excess credit creation and over-leveraging, and it would be naive to expect any single organisation to steward an entire industry. Demonising hedge funds and banning short-selling miss the point since these are the ultimate protest vote for market participants. The meltdown of a year ago would not have happened had protesters been truly able to act on their knowledge; legalising insider trading would allow asset prices to integrate as much information as possible.

2. Repeal legal tender laws. When sovereigns control currency, they debase gold coins to augment their own coffers. When politicians control currency, they print money to monetise their debts. Even by giving control to independent central banks, we haven't found a way to protect the value of money, since there is still a monopoly provider with an incentive to inflate. The best form of consumer protection is competition, and commercial institutions should be allowed to offer currency to allow markets to determine the most effective medium of exchange.

3. Eradicate crony capitalism. The official narrative is that when Lehman Brothers failed, it sparked a crisis of such proportions that state action was the only way to prevent another Great Depression. But as we start to learn more about what went on behind closed doors, things become murkier. The haphazard manner in which some banks went bankrupt and others were bailed out probably has more to do with personal networks than economic necessity. But even if you have faith in the government to exercise its powers in the public interest, it simply doesn't have the knowledge to act. It's understandable that Hank Paulson put more emphasis on Wall Street than on conservative banks that spend less on lobbying, because that's the world he lives in. For the rest of us, these deals create regime uncertainty and weaken the power of markets.

Needless to say, this is eye-popping stuff for the average Graun-reader. In fact, my eyebrows raised at the idea of legalising insider trading, but I can actually see where he's coming from. However, the commentards over there are so fucking dumb than I couldn't get past the fourth comment:

The total de-regualtion of the market os what has allowed this pproblem to happen

Ignoring the functional illiteracy of this cocktard for a second, just relish the idea that he thinks the market is totally de-regulated. The financial institutions that were at the very heart of all this were and are so heavily regulated, they employ entire buildings full of people to make sure they are compliant with UK regulations, EU regulations, US regulations, industry standards, security standards, "plain English" standards, diversity standards, BASEL regulations, PCI requirements, ... the list goes on for ever.

It is this kind of dream-world, literally fantastical approach to life that makes me sometimes wish, just for a moment, that I could actually remove these people from the gene pool forever. These fucking twats represent the uncritical, woolly, bovine thought processes of the average government policy influencing, LibLabCon voting, soft-centrist cuntstain that has encouraged all this fucking irresponsibility from corporates sucking up to the government and allowed the government to continue with its "something has to be done" agenda.

These fucking morons are as much to blame for the current financial crisis as the fucking board of Lehman Brothers.

Get out of your fucking copy of the Guardian and go have a chat with a bank manager if you don't believe me, you useless oxygen thieving goat anus.

The Sophisticated World of High Finance

Best watched in fullscreen mode (click on the fullscreen button on the bottom right of the slideshow.)