Libor truths will eclipse Lords Reform, Coalition Woes and transform British politics!

Sky News has a leaked memo this morning from the Barclays Bank Executive Board in a report linked here, from which comes this quote:

In a memo sent to staff yesterday evening and which has been leaked to (Mark Kleinman, the article's author), the nine members of the bank's executive committee warned that the Libor crisis should not distract them from the core task of safeguarding Barclays' vast balance sheet.
"The macro-environment remains febrile, especially in Europe. We have to remain vigilant on balance sheet exposures and risk management. In short, our focus must remain on capital, funding and liquidity; improving returns; and driving income growth."
The memo, co-written by Marcus Agius, Barclays' outgoing chairman, apologised for the impact of the rate-fixing episode on the bank's staff, but hinted that its rivals were likely to be hit even harder than the £290m in fines imposed on Barclays.
"As other banks settle with authorities, and their details become public, and various governments' inquiries shed more light, our situation will eventually be put in perspective."

Of course it is not just other banks. The true scandal and the eventual truth that will emerge is that it was the Central Bankers and the then governing politicians in Downing Street who conspired to create the crisis.

The posting on my blog from 24th September 2008, quoting a report from Bloomberg gives the entire game away from this one statement:

"There's no real term funding markets except for central banks," said Meyrick Chapman, a fixed-income strategist in London at UBS AG. "The Libor is meaningless. It's for unsecured lending and there is no unsecured lending as far as I can see."

Therefore it is obvious that if there was no unsecured lending in September 2008, and you can read my blog archive for that month by clicking here to recall the prevailing chaos, then as Libor rates continued to be issued, they appeared only as a result of a conspiracy between Central Bankers presumably at the behest of their political masters with ultimate responsibility resting with Gordon Brown in Downing Street, (already widely suspected of having become almost completely unhinged).

The fact that Brown, Darling and those others New Labour ministers and placemen involved have yet to be called to account, speaks volumes on Britain's present methods of governance, in which Lords Reform can immediately be seen to be a complete irrelevance.

Knights for the knackers.

Yesterday's decision, by a Committee apparently including several senior civil servants, represents the chance for Britain to finally shake off some of the sickness deeply embedded in its society and system of governance.

This blog has for some time been calling for the bringing to account of certain of the most outrageous examples of the deep corruption at the top of our civil service. Of course matters cannot be left to rest with those individuals alone, but it is an ideal place for the next steps to be taken after the shredding of Sir Fred Goodwin, upon which I commented yesterday.

Two candidates for immediate consideration for having their knighthood's removed already selected by this blog for earlier consideration are Sir John Cunliffe, here and here, and Sir John Chilcot the first of many posts on whom is here.  A third individual may be a better first case, however, in view of the appalling mess that has been allowed to develop at the Ministry of Defence, where waste and inefficiency and over-staffing is endemic. I do not know the individual(s) concerned but Dr Liam Fox probably has a good grasp of those facts. The deaths of how many servicemen and women might have been saved had the mandarins in charge of the MOD over recent years, either had ability or a shred of managerial ability let alone decency and a normally developed conscience?

In considering Sir John Cunliffe, the case for which has been considerably strengthened since the EU Council meeting in Brussels this Monday, I recommend reading this posting from Kosmopolito titled Cameron's diplomatic failure on his treacherous performance in Brussels, from which I quote this passage in particular:

Cameron’s misjudgment

Both, Die Welt and The Economist have similar stories about what exactly happened during the summit. It turns out that Cameron misjudged the mood among fellow leaders during the summit.  Cameron thought that the ‘Protocol 12′ solution was the preferred method for the eurozone – giving him leverage through a unanimous decision-making procedure. Bagehot thinks Cameron overplayed his hand, others said he lost his gamble (or verzockt as Udo van Kampen called it on German TV)   However, if he had listened to what politicians, diplomats and media commentators  in Germany or France said during the last weeks he should have known better. Plus  he had no allies, hence his isolation was not a surprise. Simply put, Cameron is not in the loop, maybe because he pulled out of the EPP… In any case,  his advisors should be sacked.
Cameron is not a diplomat and I am not sure he actually enjoys summits. Deep in his heart he is a eurosceptic (although the UK government has followed a pragmatic EU policy) but he comes across as arrogant and bossy. Especially during the eurozone crisis a sense of schadenfreude dominated the UK’s rhethoric.  The UK’s bilateral relations with EU member states have not been sufficiently developed. Cameron is like a robot in this respect. Whatever the issue somewhere in Europe he starts his monologue about British interests and why the EU is such a bad idea. This is hardly a good starting point for a constructive debate. Moreover, it seems difficult for him to build personal relationships with other European leaders – a necessity to win an argument at a summit.

Here lies the clue to another new dawn that has arrived today, as Alistair Darling's strident protests on the Radio 4 Today make clear that he has fully grasped, that being that after the smarmy, slimy, self-satisfied and thoroughly disgusting senior civil servants have their worst examples shorn of their honours, as night follows day so must go their ill-gotten gains and following that come the real villains, who should have been in charge of these opportunistic incompetents, the politicians themselves!

More Ironies Too posts on Britain's corrupt civil service are here.

Alistair Darling - ever nearer the brink!

The former Chancellor of the Exchequer's book, which I am slowly making my way through, ludicrously titled "Back from the Brink" over which he nearly plunged us and towards which he propelled the country, with ever clearer and more obvious consequences, contains this mind-blowing admission, by Alistair Darling, on page 61 of the hard backed Atlantic Books edition:

Fred Goodwin's office had contacted me a few days earlier and said he'd like to meet up. Although it would mean not having my private secretary with me , I felt entirely relaxed about seeing him alone at home. I was also intrigued. I had seen other CEOs of the banks alone in the past - none of this was abnormal - but I knew that his asking to see me in private could only mean that he was worried about something.

Given all the subsequent events, the earlier description by Alistair Darling in the preceding paragraphs of the inadeqacy of the RBS Board, his own Constituency and family history connections with the Royal Bank of Scotland described by the author, surely there should now be some investigation underway by the Coalition Government of what actually occurred at, and following this extraordinary meeting?

Surely, given the scale of the horrendous losses to Britain's taxpayers as a result of Brown and Darling deciding to save this absolute disaster of a bank, something should be now be being done to bring some guilty parties to account!

The Entire British Establishment Stands Condemned by Darling's Downing Street Memoirs!

Nobody in Britain can claim that they did not know Gordon Brown was an out of control maniac, determined to destroy Britain's economy. This blog and others chronicled his lunatic and demented activities day by day.

Now the nation feigns shock as Alistair Darling's memoirs of his 1000 days as Brown's Chancellor of the Exchequer, at 11 Downing Street, detail the deliberate denudation of our country.

The entire British Establishment stands condemned of treachery, from the Sovereign at the top, through to the civil service mandarins, down to the lowliest civil servant, on and on to include all the minor fry, whether elected or appointed central or local official, every Quango Chief and ordinary member who ever had any contact with this dangerous man.

If blackmail was involved, as surely must have been the case in many instances, then the nation needs to root out the dark secrets  that were thus being hidden, so awful that each individual deliberately chose the destruction of his country and betrayal of his functions rather than have them revealed.

Even more critically, in today's situation of the EU now being on the brink of economic collapse, a similar crisis confronts us this very day. The leaders of our country are destroying what remains of our national resources, having pared our defences to the bone, to save the doomed Euro currency, while refusing to consider any policy preparations which might ease the path of our country when the inevitable Greek default occurs, and the tumbling dominoes that will follow seem likely to sweep our banks to destruction in their path, and with them all the billions of taxpayers' money, wasted by Brown, Balls, Darling, Cameron, Clegg and Osborne with it, leaving us essentially bankrupt.

What hold does the EU have over our national leaders of today? Where in Parliament is there an MP who will get to his feet  or face a national broadcaster and proclaim "Enough!"

(Update 0845 am BST - Further reading John Rentoul Independent on Sunday.)

Britain's illegal contributions to illegal EFSM

Britain's Commitments under the EFSM, accrue on a basis that is supposedly explained in this linked pdf document.

Note from Page 5, the far-reaching depths of the obligations incurred by Alistair Darling, when there was actually no legal Government in place in Britain.

There are many important features that have enabled the confirmation of the EU's AAA rating. First, the EU is unconditionally committed to honouring its legal obligations towards its lenders. Second, the European Commission has the right to draw on Member States' resources to ensure that sufficient budget revenues are available at all times to cover all obligatory expenditures, including debt servicing. And lastly, Member States are legally obliged to balance the EU’s budget, including debt-servicing.(Blog editor's emphasis added in red).

Note from Page 8, that the peak periods for the payback of State Guaranteed Debt are at their most severe from the end of this summer. See also the Charts on that page, which illustrate the comparatively comfortable position of the UK as compared to the Eurozone. A benefit to Britain that the EFSM clearly seeks to eliminate!

Commission calculations show that peak amounts of state-guaranteed bank debt are expected to mature in the fourth quarter of 2011 through the second quarter of 2012. Comparing charts 5 and 6 illustrates the close correlation between the maturity profiles of both general and guaranteed bank debt and highlights the periods that will be most challenging in the coming months and years.

The footnotes numbered 10 and 11 from Page 9 are also worth highlighting here.

10 Approximately 86% of the nearly EUR 600 billion in government guaranteed bank debt that was issued between October 2008 and December 2009 was rated AAA, comprising a significant portion of the totals that will come due through 2012.
11 This would mean that when refinancing or in the event of a new issuance, such debt instruments would carry the rating of the banks themselves and no longer the rating of the sovereign guarantors.

According to the BBC's Stuttering Peston we contribute 4.5% to the IMF portion of these bailouts (in an increasingly likely default situation) but 13.5% to the EFSM, linked here. Bill Cash MP reckons the figures are 4.8% and 10.2% respectively, read here. These are whopping sums, even before the EU Commissions' proposal of an increase made this morning, upon which I blogged earlier, (see immediately below).

Given that the whole foundation for the EFSM, read here is illegal anyway, as all countries joined the Euro Currency voluntarily and in the face of currency unions throughout history failing without the pooling of economic governance, AND against the combined warnings of many renowned economists at the time, how can this action therefore now be considered as caused by exceptional circumstances beyond their control:

Whereas:(1) Article 122(2) of the Treaty foresees the possibility of granting Union financial assistance to a Member State in difficulties or seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by exceptional occurrences beyond its control.

Furthermore, in Britain's case, no Government existed which could grant approval of such arrangements, even were they ever to be declared as legal as the decision was taken by a non-minister (Alistair Darling) reporting to a non-Prime Minister (Gordon Brown). Yet the present Coalition Government to this day claim that it was their predecessors who took this disastrous decision.

This blog's postings for the month of May 2010, when these events took place, are well worth reading in full, linked here. If time does not allow for such a lengthy and teeth grinding exercise, please at least read this repeated below as posted early on Sunday morning 9th May, 2010, when there remained time for Britain in the form of David Cameron and Nick Clegg, as mentioned within the text, to prevent the expenditure of billions and billions of pounds of wasted taxpayer money to attempt save the clearly doomed Euro Currency

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Former Marxist Darling given last chance to fully wreck Britain's economy!

The following is contained in an Agreement reached by the EU eurozone Heads of State in an INFORMAL meeting of the Eurogroup (ie Euro currency zone members only) - Third, taking into account the exceptional circumstances, the Commission will propose a European stabilization mechanism to preserve financial stability in Europe. It will be submitted for decision to an extraordinary ECOFIN meeting that the Spanish presidency will convene this Sunday May 9th. Alistair Darling belongs to a defeated party and should have no authority to attend an ECOFIN meeting charged with reaching a pan-EU agreement as commanded by members of the euro currency group. David Cameron and Nick Clegg should clarify Darling's status immediately and if possible prevent his departure from the country!  

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My Posting of a year ago on Britain and the Bail Outs

The bail out of Greece has failed and more funds are now required, that of Ireland will never be repaid as reported in the Daily Mail over the weekend. Britain is also committed to contributing funds for Portugal which has no Government to authorise repayment terms. Lending taxpayers money to such a borrower should be a criminal act!

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have governed for a year in this state of outrageous and scandalous waste, which could have been prevented as I specifically warned one year ago, as follows:

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Former Marxist Darling given last chance to fully wreck Britain's economy!

The following is contained in an Agreement reached by the EU eurozone Heads of State in an INFORMAL meeting of the Eurogroup (ie Euro currency zone members only)

- Third, taking into account the exceptional circumstances, the Commission will propose a European stabilization mechanism to preserve financial stability in Europe. It will be submitted for decision to an extraordinary ECOFIN meeting that the Spanish presidency will convene this Sunday May 9th. (Now Inactive - link removed)

Alistair Darling belongs to a defeated party and should have no authority to attend an ECOFIN meeting charged with reaching a pan-EU agreement as commanded by members of the euro currency group.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg should clarify Darling's status immediately and if possible prevent his departure from the country!

Labels: ECOFIN

posted by Martin at 8:22 AM

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Britain's Government must stem this deliberate bleeding of Britain's economy to save a currency to which we do not belong and is under any circumstances doomed.The latest on the EFSF disaster from the Wall Street Journal is here.

Establishment Lying over the EU Bail Out Fund.

Bruno Waterfield in the Daily Telegraph this morning has charge and countercharge over who knew what and who did nothing to avoid Britain having to stump up, what is now known to be, billions and billions of pounds for the EFSF.

Happily, as is nowadays so often the case, unlike all the mainstream media, this blog was alert to the dangers and carried details of all the developments as they unfolded, while the rest of the nation followed the sycophantic garbage that was the media reporting on the formation of the coalition government.

Below I will supply links to my own reporting, during the actual events as brought out in Mr Waterfield's column today. The following passage contains the crux of the dispute:

Mr Cameron attacked Mr Darling for taking the wrong decision during an emergency meeting in Brussels on May 9 and suggested he ignored advice given to him by Mr Osborne. But Mr Darling said: "What we discussed was not voting against but abstention, recognising that Britain could have been outvoted."

Mr Cameron replied: "I have had a full discussion with the Chancellor about this issue and he was absolutely clear it was not something Britain should agree to."

A government document, signed by Justine Greening, a Treasury minister and seen by The Daily Telegraph has suggested that the Prime Minister's account is wrong. "It should be noted that while agreement on behalf of the UK was given by the administration, cross–party consensus has been given," said the briefing note, dated last July. 

 I summarised the entire disaster looking back to early May, on 21st December last year, and concluded that charges of negligence would eventually need to be brought against all those involved: I quote a small part of that posting, which is worth reading in full, together with its several links, for a full understanding of the depth of the lies now being told:

The use of Article 122 was widely known to have been an illegal ruse at the time. The incoming administration led by Cameron, Clegg and Osborne could have refuted Darling's concurrence to such illegality and instituted proceedings to exempt the UK from the disastrous financial consequences.

Can any now doubt that it was a complete dereliction of duty NOT so to do? Indeed can any voter not now perceive that all three main political parties in the UK are complicit in the illegal squandering of the nation's wealth at the behest of the Euro Group member states of the EU of which  assemblage Britain is not even a part?

It was absolutely clear that Darling should never have been allowed to attend the 9th May meeting, as I blogged on that very day, the country was without a government AND not part of the Euro Group which was the only portion of the EU then in crisis. That posting concluded as follows:

Alistair Darling belongs to a defeated party and should have no authority to attend an ECOFIN meeting charged with reaching a pan-EU agreement as commanded by members of the euro currency group.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg should clarify Darling's status immediately and if possible prevent his departure from the country!

Matters did not rest there however, for the Coalition had ample opportunity to clarify the situation when the new Chancellor attended his first ECOFIN meeting as I set out in my posting of 17th May, linked here.
Instead of so-doing he involved himself in the known illegality at a cost to the country which it remains impossible yet to calculate.

To conclude, let me highlight again in red, as I did last December, the main point at issue first posted on 9th May 2010, as is now confirmed by the Treasury Official Justine Green as revealed by Bruno Waterfield in today's Telegraph:

Alistair Darling belongs to a defeated party and should have no authority to attend an ECOFIN meeting charged with reaching a pan-EU agreement as commanded by members of the euro currency group.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg should clarify Darling's status immediately and if possible prevent his departure from the country!  

Italian TV News reports Darling will not sign off on Euro rescue package

The link in Italian is here. The report also states that no unanimity is required on this decision leaving the City of London at risk of destruction by an outgoing administration. Would the EU really undertake such a move against the interests of its largest financial centre if an incoming administration were being represented in Brussels this afternoon and this evening?

Britain's Debts of Trillions requires ACTION Now!

By the time one strips out the ridiculous optimism of Demented Darling's economic growth projections, add in the IMF identified missing 140 billion pound bank bail out costs and recall that the City of London bears a large part of responsibility for the Global Recession making decent tax revenues from that source unlikely over the coming years any idiot should be able to see that action on public spending is needed TODAY. The Times has a good budget summary linked here. Instead of rushing to meet Brown to discuss Daily Allowances for our maggot Members of Parliament (oh what a typical move was that) the Leaders of the two opposition parties should have been demanding early action on the rising debt IMMEDIATELY. First should come a ceiling on all salaries paid by the taxpayers from 1st May for 2 years at the national average income for the last financial year. This would of course apply across the board, Judges, Civil Servants, Ministers, MP, Doctors the whole kit and caboodle of those who feed off the corpse of a bankrupt state. Second, as finally voiced in the Chamber of the House of Commons yesterday by John Redwood MP, the Europe Minister should be immediately sent to inform the EU Commission that the raised contributions agreed by Blair, a principal perpetrator of this disaster, can no longer be afforded by the country BUT with the added advice that Great Britain cannot afford to participate in the farce of the June EU elections to the EU Parliament, nor send any MEP to Strasbourg for the next five years at an annual cost of well over one million pounds per head for absolutely zero return. Third, read my posts from the start of this year, linked here and here.

Demented Darling's Budget

Can any sane person be expected to believe Darling's assumptions for the British economy, they make the entire Budget unbelievable and are as follows: Economic Growth 2009 Minus 3.5% 2010 Plus 1.4% 2011 Plus 3.5% What unbelievable claptrap from this grossly incompetent threesome: Debt 175 Billion in 2009/2010 173 Billion in 2010/2011 (Even with his projection of 1.4% Economic Growth) Debt he says will peak in later years at 79% of GDP.... Some hope! These filth have temporarily rendered us all powerless but with this burden on future generations those who follow us will one day get even! Withdraw the pensions of these MP Maggots!

Maggot Darling - Financially astute only on personal expenses?

The following curious tale from the columns of this morning's Daily Telegraph, here, shows typically Scottish financial astuteness on the part of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling MP, yet as he himself almost admits in The Times (and according to the BBC, here,) he is close to complete incompetence when handling the nation's money:

Last night, a spokeswoman for Mr Darling refused to comment on his expense claims. However, it previously emerged that until 2005 he claimed that a flat he shared with other Labour MPs was his "main home". This allowed him to claim about £70,000 in expenses on his Edinburgh home where his wife and children lived.

It was then reported that he switched his formal declaration and told the Parliamentary authorities that the Edinburgh home was his main residence. This allowed him to claim for a London property and it is thought he bought a flat in the capital.

However, after becoming Chancellor in July 2007, Downing Street automatically became his main residence. It is thought that he then began claiming expenses again on the Edinburgh property and rented out the London home. In the 2007-08 financial year, Mr Darling claimed £9,837 in second-home expenses.

Is BoE Governor King worried over UK Creditworthiness?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, speaking from the fifty million pound G20 meeting finance minister's wining and dining and doing nothing weekend in Horsham to BBC Radio 4 informed John Humphries categorically within the past half-an-hour that Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, was not worried about the nation's creditworthiness. If that statement is true then Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, should be fired on the spot today! If that statement by Alistair Daring is not true then Alistair Darling should resign on the spot - after all the economic dumb shit for whom they both work is now so incapable of seeing reality he cannot be any longer expected to make a rational choice between tea or coffee!

Jacqui Smith and Darling Expenses - the final Straw? Cameron's time is up!

Surely now is the moment to clean up British politics? I was reminded yesterday of a post on the subject of donations in July 2007 when it had been announced that no prosecutions would follow the inquiries of Yates of the yard into the donations disgrace. John Redwood, MP for Wokingham and one of the ever rarer thinking occupants of the green benches, posted some ideas on limits on his blog on 20th July 2007, linked here, titled "I want more change from David Cameron". I was drawn to comment and see no reason to detract from what I said back then, quoted herewith: # Martin Coleon 20 Jul 2007 at 7:33 pm

I quote from the above, ‘We want a more honest politics’ - well said, indeed we do!

A start could be made by senior and long-sitting MPs holding true to the policies they initially stated as ‘core-beliefs’.

Cameron was and remains a nothing. Now it is obvious that actual voters have more than taken this fact on board, what will those who entered politics espousing basic conservative and democratic beliefs now do about it?

Carry on taking the money appears the answer from a brief read of this blog!

The Democratic Deficit is not now mainly in the EU, it is in the lack of a courageous and principled opposition - that seems to me the main reason why Yates has been frustrated. With Cameron leading the opposition the Brown government feels free to do as it wishes and even the most articulate members on the opposition benches appear as if gagged.

Cameron having acquiesced in the coagulation of HBOS into Lloyds and now apparently ready to permit the rolling of the printing presses to further corrupt the currency, both without re-call of parliament or apparently any debate is, with George Osborne, now equally culpable in democracy's demise as Brown and Darling! I believe that Cameron has clearly failed and in the process betrayed the country, any reform of parliament demands his departure as Party Leader.

Some Scottish money for Scotland's Bankrupt Banks

Instead of talking about nationalisation and making what are in the present situation totally loony proposals to raise the inheritance tax threshold to a million pounds on the Sunday Politics Show why does David Cameron not donate his own families and his wife's Scottish estates to meet some of the bad debts - after all he publicly supported the merger of Lloyds to save HBOS. George Osborne is worth a bit too, he could donate any expected inheritance to Northern Rock, as he went live on TV several times to support the merger with the Scottish basket case banks without a mention of consulting Parliament!. Alistair Darling is also a bit of a wealthy toff happy to rip off the taxpayer as revealed in today's News of the World, here, his properties in London and Scotland maintained at taxpayers expense would also be best used to meet the expenses of his own mismanagement together with any other wealth his family might possess. Let's begin to make politicians truly responsible. This blog has earlier proposed that basic State Old Age Pension only should be paid for any Members of Parliament serving in the Major, Blair and Brown incompetent regimes. Gordon Brown himself has no prospect of offering the nation any meaningful compensation for his dreadful performance. What his fate might best be will clearly need further very serious consideration