You would have to live on another planet not to be aware that the global – and especially the British – economy was in meltdown. While some other newspapers indulge in Obamania, <em>The Daily Telegraph</em>, at least, devotes the bulk of today's edition to the accelerating crisis.

But, despite the acres of newsprint, it seems that the learned – and not so learned – commentators have not even begun to understand the nature of the crisis and its root causes, the one begetting the other.

This is seen in the Telegraph leader (print edition only) which attributes the UK banking problem, with its "toxic debts" and excess credit to a "regulatory regime that allowed it to happen". But this, the paper asserts, was "designed and constructed" by Mr Brown, which makes him "complicit" in the collapse of the country's most important industry.

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The problem is that you are dealing with a conspiracy of silence, due to the size of the problems. They can't admit to just how big it already is and are even more scared of how big it could get.

Plus in our case it was Browns removal of B o E oversight of the Banks, in favour of the FSA, that caused the regulatory failure.....though that does not excuse the opposition, but they as usual, are no-where to be seen.

Here is a classic example, of just how bad the FSA is. AIG wrote trillions of OTC derivative crap, out of it's London office....The London Office invented.Credit Default Swaps, the very beast that is causeing most of the problems. Yet the FSA doesn't seem to have been aware, that office even existed and it sure as hell never had the capital, to back all that crap. Yet the FSA did hit AIG with it's sixth biggest fine ever, over a procedural error!!!!!! Which is like giveing the getaway car a parking ticket and walking on, while it's waiting for the bank robbers.

The FSA, always was and still is useless. Only a moron like McSnot, could think otherwise.

Whilst on the subject of Ambrose from The Telegraph he did another glorious piece on Spain today too.At least we have "some" room to manouver,unlike our unfortunate Spanish colleagues...referring to S&P removing Spain's economic AAA rating.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... Spain.html

Here's a really long read, from the Washington Post, last December, about how AIG got into the mess it is in, with some good explanations of the Derivatives that are causeing the problem. Other banks includeing ours, are miles deep in this stuff. Though the article does not go for the greed driven bonus mania, that really drove this nightmare, it lets them all off far too easily.

It's in 3 parts.

Part 1The Beautifull Machine

Part 2 A Crack in the System

Part 3 Downgrades and Downfall

The Crash, what went wrong. Even more articles, includeing the above articles.

PS The biggest Derivative beast by miles is JP Morgan, they have maybe 30 % plus of the $ 700 trillion of OTC Derivatives, the Stock is at a new low tdy down 18 % and falling. This one is truly too big to bail.

"England has not defaulted since the Middle Ages. There is a real risk it may do so now," says Ambrose.

Scary.

Is Scunner Brown some kind of delayed V weapon of the House of Stuart?

Even if Brown has no real control over this crisis, he's still a true believer in the Tranzie cult.

http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx ... ame=544899

"The world is at risk of a "damaging spiral" of de-globalisation if countries do not co-ordinate their responses to the worldwide economic downturn, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said."

"Unless we come together to address these problems in a co-ordinated way, the world is at risk of a damaging spiral of de-globalising. It is fuelled by a combination of deleveraging and national-only policy solutions."

Me-thinks he knows exactly what he is doing.

I would like to think he thinks he knows what he is doing. It will rise up and bite him.

Interesting you mention your own prescient writings of December 2007, before most had noticed any problems. The company I work for made the only redundancies we ever made that month, having suffered a sudden and severe loss of business in the November. We knew we were in for a difficult time and cut back early to ensure our survival. Fortunately for us that relatively small cut was enough, and we have diversified to stay afloat and even managed to take on a couple more people last year. The market we served most often at the time was car makers, and that was the business that all but disappeared almost overnight. We worked with almost all the manufacturers which had European factories, and all of them suddenly didn't need the urgent recovery of supply lines we specialised in, they must have started to accept production line shutdowns. Next time around, watch the car industry closely. This time it was the canary in the coal mine of the British economy.

Economic crisis? Where? The BBC is monitoring ten small businesses, and 90% are positive. Remarkable.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7833049.stm

"Unless we come together," and this drivel from the leader?
Fix your own house, then stand back and laugh at the rest, leaders are supposed to lead, like be way out in front not spout hogwash and hide in the bushes !

Gordon "the Moron" McSnot has to try and rope as many other countries into his lunatic plan as possible, to try and get some credibility for his own solutions.

The next leg of the Sterling crisis has started and the mkts are now driveing up Gilt rates. Which is banana republic territory.

He will go down in history as a unique double, the worst Chancellor and PM, we have ever had.

The only good news that will come out of all this, is the collapse of the Euro and then the EU.

Hmm, Twilight of the Bureaucrats.
A high price to pay to learn that transnational legislation leads to whole world fqups, with no other systems still running to help out the fallen.
Still quite a cheap lesson really, compared to, say, WW II
(H/T a T-shirt)

Gordon Brown is as much a passenger in these events as was the albatross to the Ancient Mariner.

BTW.A good way to judge the melt down of sterling is to follow an item price in dollars on ebay.One such was £!00 last week is £118 today.Real world devaluation that the non expert can see.