The Very Model of a Blogger Very General

TITLE: I Am the Very Model of a Blogger Very General

I am the very model of a blogger very general.
I’ve a life existenti-al and really quite ephemeral.
I know things geographical and sometimes cosmological,
From Timbuktu to Doctor Who and space that’s hyperbolical.

Urban Poverty

It isn’t lack of opportunity that keeps people poor. A welfare mother in Central Harlem is not poor for the same reasons that a subsistence corn farmer in Mexico is poor. That’s just one of the many self-evident conclusions to emerge from an antipoverty program begun by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007. This initiative, Opportunity NYC–Family Rewards, bestows cash rewards on (for the most part) single parents and their children if they act responsibly—by attending school, for example, or by working. The program was based on Oportunidades, a Mexican initiative. Bloomberg’s version of Oportunidades officially pretended that New York’s underclass faced similar tragic choices, that the poor failed to “plan for the future” because they were “so focused on surviving”.

PFI – Politically Financed Insanity

Richard Murphy who maintains the web site ‘Tax Research UK’ has published an article today about PFI. PFI being a bête noire of mine, I have read and re-read the article a few times. Paraphrasing what Richard has written:-

“According to data from HM Treasury £56 billion of projects have now been financed by PFI at a total eventual cost of £252 billion. The ratio of cost to benefit is sufficient evidence in itself of the appallingly poor value for money inherent in these projects, many of which are now owned by banks. If cash has to be injected into the economy to provide liquidity then there can be no doubt that one of the best way to do so for the future benefit of the UK would be to buy out all PFI schemes now. Around £200 billion could be ‘saved . If new legislation to empower such arrangements is required we would argue that is a necessary price to pay to achieve this important social and financial goal for the UK as a whole”.

Those Bonded Buy Bonds

An article by Frank Chodorov with the title Don’t buy Government Bonds is republished by the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. The following is an abridged version of that article, the original having appeared in Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), which was a collection of essays and the last of Frank Chodorov’s books published during his lifetime. You may, or may not, be relaxed about the Government issuing bonds, as may be your attitude to the issue of Eurobonds. In the latter case it is your government that is buying Eurobonds on your behalf and if you are a taxpayer you are bonded to buy these bonds. While Chodorov was writing specifically about the US National Debt and advising against the purchase of US Government bonds, his hypothesis is as relevant today and applicable to all government bonds and those states that issue them. Chodorov states that: -

The debt we’re in

In 2009 it was claimed that the true level of government debt was £2,200 billion (i.e. £85,610 per household) and not £805 billion as was reported by the ONS. In a report issued by The Centre for Policy Studies in 2009, Brooks Newmark MP in The Hidden Debt Bombshell claims that the official figures did not take into account:

1. the full cost of projects financed through the PFI (£139 billion)
2. unfunded public sector pension liabilities (£1,104 billion)
3. contingent liabilities such as Network Rail (£22 billion)
4. the cost of recent interventions in the financial sector (£130 billion).

These hidden liabilities totalled £1,395 billion (100% of GDP). The true public debt was therefore £805 billion + £1,395 billion = £2.2 trillion (157% of GDP). This was an increase of £346 billion since 2008 – almost £1 billion a day or £700,000 a minute – when the true level of debt was £1.85 trillion (127% of GDP).

It’s Hell For Democracy

First separately published by C.S. Lewis some 50 years ago as ‘Screwtape Proposes a Toast‘ (pdf), it was written some 15 years after the Screwtape Letters. In the followed abridged version, Screwtape addresses the part played by democracy and education in the downfall of humanity. Those changes to gender references have not been done for political correctness, but to make it representative of our own age in which it would seem little has changed. Or has it?

The Devil Is in The Detail

Democracy is a word we all like to throw into a discussion and we normally assume that we have a common understanding of a ‘democracy’ that is accepted by all. Some time ago I offered a post with the title ‘No to Democracy’,. It intended to make the distinction between a Democracy and a Republic. Matthew Parris in a Times article, “The trouble with democracy is that you just can’t trust it”, goes on to say; “Democracy, I believe, should always be invited to the table but rarely left to dine alone. I mistrust the quivering, awe-struck deference to Demos as though to some sacred text or divine and inviolable authority. The popular will is one factor – one of many – that it may be wise to take into account”.

Here There Be Dragons

The Screwtape Letters, written by C. S. Lewis, purport to be the correspondence from a senior assistant named Screwtape, who is working on behalf of ‘Our Father Below’, to his nephew and subordinate Wormwood. They are a series of letters advising Wormwood on methods of securing the damnation of a man known only as “the Patient”. God is always referred to as ‘the Enemy‘, being the protagonist against ‘Our Father Below’.​ In the introduction Lewis writes; There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.

Who Needs Balls – Ed or Dave?

In a 2009 article in the First Post with the title ’How Labour’s Faustian pact with capitalism led to the financial crisis’, Nick Cohen contended that the seeds of the current crisis are to be found in the 2001 Financial Services and Markets Act. This Act required the Financial Services Authority “Not to discourage the launch of new financial products”. So said the government as it laid down the terms of trade for London’s banks and hedge funds. In addition, the FSA had to avoid “erecting regulatory barriers”, also “it must consider the international mobility of the financial business” and “avoid damaging the UK‘s competitiveness”.

A very European Road to Perdition

Bill Bonner writing from Paris for The Daily Reckoning is claiming that the US road to bankruptcy is running parallel to France. He states that, If you’re French you have to worry about the country going broke. There is no way they can continue to pay all those people who are retired. They seem to live forever…and they’re very expensive. France is going broke. In terms of debt and deficits the country that most resembles France is the United States of America. Both are going broke. But so are many other “European” nations…and eventually, probably all of them. The point is, most of them are going broke. Their model is exhausted. This was the social welfare model derived from Bismarck – take from workers; pay to non-workers. It was okay as long as the pool of workers was growing faster than the pool of non-workers. But that’s no longer the case.