Monday 21 February 2011

Libyan immense bravery reflects badly on UK Labour leadership

It has quite sickened me for years that the UK Government sought to suck up to the madman that is Qaddafi. Thatcher had the right idea for this kind of insane dictator. Blair and his 'moral' compass, along with Brown's ineptitude dragged Britain into Chamberlain style surrender.

However, it is another thing for the people of Libya to try and stand up to a regime that will turn machine guns and snipers on protesters. Quite incredible I have been trying to imagine what I would do in such circumstances - having the courage to protest in such circumstances is beyond bravery.

Hopefully, having seen the latest incoherent witterings from Qaddafi's son, the army will soon see the insanity of backing the regime and oust the Qaddafi family; but all hangs in the balance and there could be civil war as the Qaddafi's have only their money and military might to rely on.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is his third call in the last few months. The first 2 related to Gold.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/world-banks-zoellick-calls-overhaul-monetary-system-says-yuan-should-get-prominent-role

A brave man.

Anonymous said...

Anon, 10:43.

You missed the $ quadrillions of derivatives linked to interest rates etc, currency swaps, etc floating around in never-never-land.

CU...would you swap any currency for the $, given the premium on reserve currency status will fail in the medium term?

Electro-Kevin said...

I can't believe that Clegg thinks change in the Middle East is 'exciting.'

Please get this overgrown sixth former out of office.

Timbo614 said...

Then there is the Silver lets-have-it-in bars thing going on - I took half an hour Nick, They are quite excited aren't they.

On a UK note - in a previous discussion we all (eventually) agreed that there is a GDP deflater % floating about so that Inflation is factored out of GDP increases.

My question is, if that is correct (and I believe it is) then; given that inflation has been under calculated or reported for umpteen years. Has this not actually resulted in OVER reporting of GDP growth because the GDP inflation deflater was too small??

Methinks it does, making the recession deeper and the subsequent and prior growth lower! I wonder why no-one else has raised the question?

CityUnslicker said...

I am quite sceptical of most of what i read on Zerohedge. The place has descended into a world of finance market paranoia.

They are always on about some imminent global disaster - but as massive gold and silver bulls - 'twas ever thus.

Having said the the macro environment look s decidedly dodgy at the moment. But my view is the middle east changes are a good long term change. Democracies don't fight each other and don't torture the people as much. the more of it the better.

As for fleeing into the dollar - well look at 2008. What happened, even with the US Ib's goign down the flight was stil to the dollar. Nothing has changed so fundamentally in the past 2 years to change this.

Anonymous said...

Pretty weak shooting the messenger and ignoring the message.

Oh well, time will tell, as it has on a previous difference of opinion, but you wouldn't recognise.


"the flight was stil to the dollar. Nothing has changed so fundamentally in the past 2 years to change this".

Flight On the surface, yes.

But did you check the amount of naked shorting of the PMs that took place at that time?...their decline was totally counter intuitive and fraudulent...the paper cartel fought well.

The physical demand at that time mirrors today. It was just that at that time certain hedgefunds and wealthy Eastern Nations were not aware of the gearing in allegedly physical markets. They rolled or took fiat. Now they are aware!

And, many things have changed since then. FX crossses show them. Multiple nations are isolating themselves from the effects of the $. Small beginnings creating regional currency hubs.

Commod prices through the roof will create the motivation for gov't to act more rapidly. Exports to a failing $ will lose importance. Stuff re-aligns. China buys Eurobonds but collateral is...?

"The destroyer of Worlds" description is owned by Oppenhiemer (SP?), so what can we call Bernanke and Congress?
It only needs a few more bips and a world of derivatives deliver their nuclear force.

A historic tipping point, CU. Interesting times Buddy ;-)

James Higham said...

Vigorously underscore every word.

CityUnslicker said...

Anon - I can't calim to understand the PM markets as well as my colleague Nick Drew who will be back shortly. I still stick by not giving much credence to Zerohedge; they've lost their mojo. If I am wrong so be it; given I am not in PM's but indirectly in oil and copper its not going to affect me too much.

alan said...

EK - Very well said.

If Libyan oil production gets shut down, (Or Egypt, Iran etc) it looks very unlikely that other opec counties have the spare production to make up the shortfall.

Are we headed to another nasty oil price spike again? What will crash this time? Public perception was the last spike & crash was all the fault of the banks. If this unrest creates another oil spike who will the public (or rather the rabid US/UK press) blame this time?

This could easily get out of hand very quickly.

CityUnslicker said...

Alan, the Governments will blame speculators they always do. The truth is we should blame our governments that mis understood realpolitick. The trick was to support democracy not, dictators. We will pay a heavy price for losing our soul.

Budgie said...

Timbo614 said: "I wonder why no-one else has raised the question?"

Effectively I did because the GDP growth figures are usually given in the MSM without an assurance that inflation has been taken into account.

My findings (prompted by disagreement with me here) was that the ONS uses their own figure.

But all inflation indexes (indices?) are general, crude and inaccurate, because they can only be baskets of a small number of chosen items, not every single item that makes up one year's GDP.

For example if raw growth = 4% and RPI = 4%, ONS index = 3%. and CPI = 2%, should the quoted GDP growth be 0%? 1%? or 2%?

I remain doubtful of the veracity of quoted GDP growth.

CityUnslicker said...

Budgie - Quite agree. Although you can look at the qauntum of welath growth year to year which is what alot of GDP indexes do...however these are much more volatile than the media would have us believe.

Anonymous said...

A Mojo related fact?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/ecb-emergency-overnight-borrowings-near-record-third-day-row

Sigh, ;-)