Who is bailing out who?

Let's get this straight - we are not bailing out the banks, we are not even bailing out the government - we (in the UK) are bailing out Gordon Brown's inestimable hubris and "reputation" as he struggles to deflect attention from his integral role in the shambles.

This bloke has been in effective control of the UK finances for 11 years, and it is simply unacceptable that he should pretend that it's all someone else's fault. Brown should be put on trial for criminal negligence; in fact, since there are doubtless now suicides attributable to recession failure, he and every one of the cabinet ministers over the past 11 years might as well be charged with corporate manslaughter.

The ongoing complete inability to explain what these toxic debts were secured upon is certainly criminal negligence. Do we own vast estates of property in the USA? If so, we might as well send over some our homeless to live in them.

Were these toxic assets bought by UK banks at $2/£1 In which case, are these 25% more valuable at $1.50? No one has a bloody clue - or at least if they do, they aren't telling us, which suggests that "they" don't want to tell us because the news is so awful.

As the economy continues to slide, so many more businesses and individuals become progressively less credit worthy. Hence the quaint idea that zero interest rates can slow down the procession to more bankruptcy and toxic loans - so it's too bad the banks are still charging 7% on very well-secured loans in order to keep their discredited managements in "away days" and bubbly.

Whatever else, we must follow the US and have an election ASAP so that we can flush out ALL the old failures and have a new administration that is not going to be so obviously obsessed with protecting its own arse, and burying its own bodies before anyone else can sniff them out.

The EU: millstones for all

Whilst TMP is happy with the idea of a free trade zone, TMP is increasingly convinced that EU social engineering is a thoroughly bad thing, because as the recent Eurovision song contest proved yet again, the notion of any sort of European social unity is a dangerous farce amongst the tribal fiefdoms of the new Eastern states.

These Baltic and Balkan states will understandably extract the bits that suit them, and ignore the rest - like any sensible self-interested nation would. In fact, pretty much like all EU states but the naive UK have managed to do over the years.

The EU appears to be a completely outdated idea that was cooked up by the French and Germans to force their trading partners to suffer the same social costs as themselves, and thus reduce the competitiveness of all member nations. The motto might well have been "let my millstone be your millstone"

A level playing field for the "advanced nations of the West" to gang up on the USA might have made some sort of sense in the 60s when Europe and the US was some 10 years ahead of the rest of the world in most economic respects, and 20 years ahead of China and India, but the rest of the world now laughs at EU employment law and Health and Safety impositions, while piling up foreign currency reserves that could topple any economy of their choosing overnight.