Monthly Archives: November 2011

French, German Secret Services to launch combined assault on selected bond traders.

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I wouldn't press that "Sell" button if I were you, Monsieur.

I wouldn't press that "Sell" button if I were you, Monsieur.

A document leaked to us by a secret source has revealed that the French DGSE and the German BND have assembled a series of secret teams to “deal” with stroppy dealers targeting Eurozone countries.

Under the codename Operation Gekko, the task force is currently getting ready to make a number of traders “disappear” as a warning to other traders about over pricing bonds to Eurozone countries. The document also suggests that a Eurozone version of Guantanamo Bay has been set up in Northern Finland to hold the detainees, where they’ll be fed a diet of organic vegetables and tofu and made watch the films of Michael Moore and Jean Luc Goddard.

The Champs Elysee has declined to comment other than to say “You want to know what the secret service are up to? What are you asking us for? Ask them. And tell us what they say. Actually, if it’s about blowing up stuff, or sinking ships, better not.” A source in the Bundeskanzler’s office in Berlin said: “There is no such operation, and such an operation would not use three environmentally sound low emission  helicopters nor would it have purchased a thousand square miles of Swedish forestry to make up for the carbon footprint it didn’t generate.”

 

Would a EuroTax allow us to turn on the printing presses at the ECB?

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Gentlemen: Start your presses?

Gentlemen: Start your presses?

There is much talk about the latest solution to Europe’s debt crisis being to let the ECB turn its printing presses to full throttle, and start printing out an extra couple of trillion euro (trillion. Yes, we’re now talking about trillions!) to cover Italian debts and also to act as a form of quantitative easing to reflate the economy. Not surprisingly, the Germans have a big problem with this, primarily because of a strong German folk memory of the Weimar years of the 1920s and galloping hyper inflation.

Would it work, if the Germans agreed? I don’t know, I’m not an economist, but I do have an idea about how to reassure the Germans. If we were, for argument’s sake, to print out a trillion extra euro, how about we also agree to levy a EuroTax on, say, petrol in the eurozone, with the idea being that the tax would be structured to suck, say, 10% of the trillion euro out of the economy and back to the ECB every year for ten years. It would give us the benefit of having the money entering the economy and creating economic activity, but by having a mechanism and date by which the “artificial” money will physically be removed from the eurozone economy, it could act as a long term counter inflation agent, and more importantly, as a reassurance to the Germans that this is a temporary measure.  

Opposition parties to be replaced by iPhone App.

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Constructive parliamentary scrutiny? There's an app for that.

Constructive parliamentary scrutiny? There's an app for that.

The government has announced, as part of its cost cutting programme, that opposition members of the Oireachtas are to be abolished and replaced with a free downloadable iPhone app. Speaking to the house, Michael Noonan, the minister for finance, revealed plans for the opposition parties to be replaced with a piece of software which can criticise the government.

“Let’s be honest. We can set this up in such a way that it can read online news about the government, compare it to manifestos, and then just pump out any of a 150 tried and tested slogans. Isn’t that pretty much what the opposition do, at a cost of €90,000 a skull? For a very modest development fee, probably the cost of a single TD, we can create an app which will put things on the Dail record like “this is a betrayal of the people of county X” and “the people of the Y sector are amongst the most vulnerable in the country”. You’d hardly be able to spot the difference.”

On being questioned by journalists about how an app can subtly study proposed legislation and come up with thoughtful improving amendments, the minister was puzzled. “We’re talking about replacing the opposition. Who are you talking about?”

The minister denied rumours that there was a proposal to replace the Taoiseach with an advanced piece of software that exceeded his abilities. “Yeah, we looked at that, but we came to the conclusion that the Irish people might be a bit irritated to be ruled over by a game of Tetris.”

If we didn’t have Fianna Fail, would we invent it now?

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I’ve been paying attention to Ogra Fianna Fail’s national conference in Cork this week, and it’s an interesting insight into the party. Consider the following link, which is to the various policy motions being debated. There are some very interesting ideas being discussed, and I agree with many of them. But here’s the thing: look at Young Fine Gael’s manifesto here. There are differences, but they’re not huge. Put it another way. If someone in Ogra FF proposed one of the YFG policies at the Ogra meeting, would anyone notice?

Or consider Ogra’s website, which tells a lot about what Ogra does, but not about why someone chooses FF over another party.

This is the question that fascinates me. If someone really wanted to get some of these policies turned into law, why would they join Fianna Fail? Surely joining FG is the way to go?

Of course, the reply is that they are in FF for other reasons too, and that’s when I always am fascinated by discussing this with Fianna Failers. Ask them why they are in FF and not FG, and what values did FF have that FG doesn’t? The first answer is usually “Because FF is a republican party”. You then ask “What does that mean?” and that’s when it gets interesting, and brows get furrowed. Fine Gael isn’t as committed to a united Ireland, they’ll say, until you ask them to prove that Fianna Fail does more to achieve a united Ireland. More brow furrowing. Then you get something about Fianna Fail caring more about ordinary people, a phrase that makes non-political people fall around laughing, and the FFers know it too, which is why they say it to each other but not to the voters. So you end up back at base camp. What is it that makes someone join FF and not FG now?

There is actually an answer. In fact, there are two. The first is that for many in FF, they have invested so much in the structure that from an ambition point of view, starting in FG would mean starting at the bottom again, and they don’t want to do that.

And the second answer? That’s the depressing one. Why be a member in a Fianna Fail party? Because there has always been a Fianna Fail party. God love them.

By the way: If there are any Ogra people who feel I’m being unfair, and would like to write a piece outlining what values FF has that no other party offers, get in touch. 

A Great Book: Strange Days Indeed.

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A great read, indeed.
A great read, indeed.

I enjoyed it so much that I just have to give five stars to Francis Wheen’s “Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia.” The book is a look at some of political and social madness of the 1970s, primarily in the UK and the US, and is great fun, being both informative and laugh out loud funny.

Wheen takes the reader through Richard Nixon’s mental breakdown during Watergate to the OZ obscenity trial (where the British State attempted to draft in experts to determine what size Rupert Bear’s penis was. I’m not joking) to the British cabinet secretary stripping off naked and having a nervous breakdown in front of the Governor of the Bank of England, to various plots to overthrow the British Govt using the army, the police, and by placing ads in the Daily Telegraph!

Add in Idi Amin and Uri Geller and you have one of the most enjoyable books of the year. Check out Wheen’s videos at the Amazon links above to get a taste of the books.

Alien invasion of Earth cancelled due to economic crisis.

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Alien Invaders fear the bond markets.

Alien Invaders fear the bond markets.

The Imperial Vorgon Empire has announced that it has shelved the planned military conquest of the planet Earth due to the economic crisis. A Vorgon High Command spokeswarrior, Commander Klakk, revealed the decision following the latest news from Greece.
“We reckoned that we could have had a fair chance with the Earth’s military forces. Your nuclear weapons and fighter aircraft would have been crushed like ants. But we weren’t so sure about dealing with Italian bond yields.” Speaking from the flagship BoneGrinder, Klakk continued: “Our war ministry was ready to take out NATO headquarters, the Pentagon and the Chinese Central Military Commission in the first hours of the glorious conflict. But then the economics ministry started talking about the effect on our currency, the Vorg, and whether we could afford to take on Earth’s debt. The galactic bond markets started having doubts, talking about contagion, and before you knew it the Imperial Planet Devastator Fleet was ordered to halt in mid-space. Then someone saw something on Bloomberg about Bernanke projecting low job growth, and the whole thing was scrubbed. We’re thinking about invading Skaro instead. You have to give the Daleks that. They run a tight fiscal ship. Or the Vulcans, they run a budget surplus as a matter of course. Safest home for capital in the galaxy. Not counting Switzerland, of course.”

A fear of complexity, not euroscepticism, is what will kill the EU.

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Eurosceptics will tell you that there are millions of Europeans who spend every waking moment cursing the EU. It’s not true. They don’t praise it either, but instead just don’t really notice it. However, in times like this, it hovers into view, and it ain’t a pretty sight, and it is in times like this that it triggers that most basic of human urges: to run away. Since the beginning of time, when the first caveman with a problem wandered over the hill into the next guy’s valley, the reaction has been: “I have my own problems. Go away and sort your own out.” It’s that gut instinct, in the bellies of German and Finnish and Dutch voters, that they have enough problems making ends meet without Greeks wrecking the place. Let the Greeks just go away and be Greek on their own time and stop bothering us, we have to get the kids to school.

That’s the challenge there, and the euro exacerbates it, because so many Europeans think that if we didn’t have the euro we would not have these problems. They are right, to a degree. By having a common currency we have bound ourselves togther, warts and all. But even if we didn’t have a euro, given the amounts of money involved with French and German banks, we’d still be baling out each other. Having a European country go belly up with hundreds of billions of debt is not a euro problem, but a problem of the complex international finance system we have created to fund the consumer lifestyles we want.

The easy answer, turning our backs on European integration and retreating back behind our national borders, away from the crazy foreigners, will feel good. But it won’t solve our problems, because Europe is not the cause of our problems. Modern life is. 

A Good Book: The Fear Index.

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The Fear Index: Thoughtful and entertaining.

The Fear Index: Thoughtful and entertaining.

In “The Fear Index”, his latest thriller, Robert Harris looks like taking over the mantle of the late Michael Crichton. Not in his subject matter, but in the concept of taking a subject (the use of ultra-advanced technology in high finance) and distilling it into a book that manages to be both entertaining and informative.

The books tells the story of Dr. Alex Hoffman, a brilliant physicist who devises a software programme that can make obscene amounts of money on the stock markets. He then gets attacked. I won’t go into further details, as the plot starts almost immediately with the incident relevant to the rest of the story, other than to say that Harris has written a thoughtful yet entertaining story with plenty of twists and drama.

I listened to the unabridged version on my iPod, and it was a very pleasant way of getting through the modern aggro that is air travel. A good “read”. 

Greece gets bullied with other people’s money.

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Greece decides.
Greece decides.

So, December 4th is the day that the Greek people get to decide their future, and let’s be clear, they do have a choice. For all the guff you hear about democracy and national sovereignty from eurosceptics, the truth is that it is the Greek people who decide what happens next. On the one hand is the austerity programme and billions of euros paid by workers in other EU countries to keep the lights on in Athens. On the other hand is the ultimate expression of national sovereignty, expressed through a big two fingers to the EU and the IMF and a decision to go it alone outside the euro on their own very modest resources, with a home grown austerity programme far more severe than anything dreamed up in Brussels. But at least it will be Greeks deciding how poor Greeks will be.

Of course, I can already see the headbanger posters. Solidarity with the Greek people! But the funny thing about all that is the assumption that German, French, Finnish and Dutch workers all want to side with their Greek compatriots. They don’t. They actually support, effectively, the EU and IMF in saying to Greek workers that you have to work and pay taxes. It’s that part of the delusion of the Irish hard left in particular that fascinates me, the belief that working class people will never vote for the right. It’s just not true, as Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan proved.

How would we vote if placed in a similar quandary? If we decided to default on Anglo-Irish debts, and Paris and Berlin threatened to cut us off from their money? The gap is so enormous between spending and revenue that even if we saved the Anglo-Irish money, there’d still be a massive deficit without EU help. But we’d still have our national sovereignty, the right to choose between EU money and instruction, or massive cutbacks and complete self-determination. Would we choose the flag or the greasy till? Knowing the Irish, I have my own idea, but then, maybe I’m a cynic. I just always picture John Hurt in “The Field”.

But here’s the question: What’s the plan if Greece votes no? How do we engineer an orderly exit from the euro without the markets going after other countries like Italy or Spain? Is someone in Brussels furiously typing an emergency treaty as we speak?