lundi 13 octobre 2008

So much madness, so little time

As expected, shares rallied today, everyone is happy again and we are all saved. Thank you Gordon. Now the banks can lend us the money, at interest, that we'll be giving them for nothing. Given the lavish, and frankly ludicrous praise he's been getting for this liquidity squirt, he'll be up for the Nobel prize in Economics next year. (Why not? Every other talking cock with a two-two in the dismal science has one....). The MP's attack dog Darling did his best to defend the bailout in Parliament and must have felt an (illusory) glow of success as the brokers obediently bought stocks in a faux display of confidence.

In the ensuing undebate, Darling was his usual robotic 'self', the idiottories, well they were just themselves, agreeing with, but desperately trying to distance themselves, from a governing party that stole and inhaled all their ideas back in 1987 can't be an easy ticker, but half way through the debate, some MP actually said something interesting. I didn't catch his name but the giest of his point was that the total liabilities of the banks being "nationalised" amount to something over three trilion pounds. That, he went on to say, is three times national output and five times annual tax revenue. And - he didn't say - that's just the accessible figures. The bankers know there's far more skeletons in the cupboard, all clutching derivatives and laxitives or whatever these made-up names for "gambling" are actually called.

The PM and his media whores are all assuring us that the national debt won't be affected and that we will even make a profit on this deal in the long run. But he didn't even look as if he belived himself.

Another remarkable story, briefly treated in the Observer is that, as Peter Hain, an ex-Labour minister argues, it's now likely that power, water and transport companies may well need bailing out since they too have borrowed and gambled on a huge scale and are now running out of funds.

Iceland just got a lot closer.