Weekend Reading: Drax / Womens Rights vs Trans

Couple of worthwhile MSM press articles here - unusually good; and for the final one, an unusual source, too.

Drax - the papers are full of Drax at the moment as Miliband has partially caved in to the Starmer / Reeves growth-fixation.  OK, he's reduced the annual amount of subsidy for the Yorkshire tree-consuming monster, but he's extending our payments to undeserving Drax by another 4 years, on spurious grounds ("TINA": well, Ed, there are better alternatives), all for the sake of keeping options open for Drax to build a 'BECCS' plant, maybe, some time in the future of its own choosing, if it gets given even more £££, no commitments made at this time.  That's one helluva costly option, without any certainty of ultimate delivery.  Madness.

Several of the MPs taking a broadly anti-Drax line in Parliament of late, have actually screwed up in what they've said on this fairly technical topic; and the press have not been much better.  Even the FT is all-too-frequently disappointing in such BAU matters, silently and implicitly siding with, errr, BAU (and ad revenues?)  This, though not 100% accurate, is many times better than usual.  Oh, and quite a neat, perky little snipe from Nils Prately in the Graun, too.

Trans - also from the Graun is this, from the increasingly confident feminist pen of Sonia Sodha.  Here's a flavour (my emphasis): 

No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague... Peggie shared her account of what happened with the tribunal last week ... Dr Beth Upton, the [trans] male doctor in question, walked into the [changing] room while she was partially undressed... Upton put in a formal complaint, and Peggie was suspended for bullying and harassment... The greatest responsibility lies with Peggie’s employer, who, instead of making separate accommodations for Upton, expected female colleagues to ignore the fact he is male [sic!]... The attempted justification is that everyone must adopt the minority belief system that someone’s sex is not a scientific fact but a matter of their gender identity, or some sort of gendered soul.  As a personal worldview, that’s someone’s own business, but it is wrong – and, in a work context, unprofessional – to try to force it on others in relation to single-sex spaces, services and sports...

The idea that a man who identifies as female is literally a woman, and must without fail be treated as such, has become a cherished principle for some progressives. Politicians and women’s rights activists speaking against this have been excommunicated from the left. Slowly, but surely, this is starting to change ... Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.

'Misgendering' the doctor, by name, in print!  Go Sonia, Go Graun!

ND

Danske Bank scandal buried in Europe

Last year a huge scandal was uncovered. The Danish bank, Danske Bank, had bought a few years earlier an Estonian Bank. This bank was being used as a piggy bank for various Russian Oligarchs. Danske took over, promptly saw that the moving of hundreds of millions to the West via the Bank was the only source of profit and decided to look the other way, or to find ways of making that business feel compliant.


Eventually, this was discovered and the Bank looked to be in deep trouble for breaching Money Laundering regulations. But the European Banking Authority has reviewed the report published into all the above shenanigans and closed the case. It has said that although there were failings there was not wrong-doing.


The obvious conclusion to this is that the Board members of the EBA are other National Bank regulators and they have concluded that their own banks may well be doing this, so it is best to make sure there is no punishment for this, as they and their own countries will be next.


Interestingly then, the EU commissioner, Valdis Domrbovskis, is infuriated with this decision, as are many Euro MEP's. They want to see the report and see some action. They will see action of course, but it will be by the US who will no doubt decide on massive fines for money laundering.


It is an interesting case of supra-national governance failure. More akin to Fifa than anything else, where the members pretend to be upholders of justice but in reality vote for their own interests alone. Notably the EU does not have its own Banking regulator - maybe it needs to give the ECB come teeth?


More worryingly perhaps is that Denmark and Estonia should be worried about their own houses and reputation for Financial Affairs, but will now hide behind this ruling. All this rule by international, undemocratic and unaccountable bodies seems not to be the way forward for clean business - who would have thought?

Mayday in Japan

I hold no candle for Mrs May, nearly losing an election to actual commies in a right wing country is unforgivable.

But today the news leads with her saying she will stay on and fight another election. This is classic non-story news. Asked a question she gave an answer to put it to bed, after all she is in Japan, trying to get some sort of trade deal going and also offer re-assurance from the Korean menace.

But our intrepid political reporters never give up,why leave the cosy Westminster bubble stories alone when you can create them on demand like this?

What was the PM supposed to say, anything that indicates hesitation and the media line will be she is wobbling and the next call is to Boris. It is a silly and juvenile game indeed.

Re Japan, nice to see Nissan massively expanding its Sunderland production and aiming to increase the use of U.K. Parts. Good deal struck by the Government there, how strange this does not get a mention in the FT - a quality paper also reduced to juvenile behaviour by its editor.

Interest Only mortgages - a scam from the city?

Real non-story in the FT today.


Under their usual remoaning headline of course.


With PPI coming to an end there is an industry of ambulance chasers looking for some more victims.

Here the 'victims' are people with interest-only mortgages.




Given that property prices in the UK have followed a pattern, see graph above, why would anyone ever care about not repaying the principal?
You will always over time have a capital gain bigger than your mortgage, normally over 20 years by at least 100%.


You have to be historically unlucky, taking out a large mortgage right at a market top, to not manage to make a capital gain over 10 years, let alone 20 years.


This is just a non-issue. In fact I would consider it back to front - surely the scam is making people re-pay mortgages and forfeit their wealth for no reason when they are earning more in their property anyway? That must be the real scam, how much money the banks make on excessive interest rate charges on secured lending. All pushed even harder by the FCA since 2009!

The Brexit Bankers' Dilemma

This piece in the FT last week is very revealing about the state of Brexit.


At Davos, the Chief Exec of Goldman Sachs was joined by the other Chief Execs of US Banks in warning that a Hard Brexit will see them move their European Operations into EU jurisdictions.


As a reminder, Goldmans actively financed Greece to the point of bankruptcy, shorted the CMBS and RMBS bonds that created the Great Financial Crash and then begged the Fed (run by an Ex-Goldmans alumni, natch) to bail out AIG which owed it billions of Credit Default Swaps such that its collapse would have taken down Goldmans too. There are newer scandals over Aluminium and other commodity hoarding, but the charge sheet is long enough.


So, anything told by a Goldmans CEO is every time and always talking their own book. The US Banks have a big dilemma, none of the Execs they send to Europe want to work or locate their families anywhere but London. At the moment, strikes are threatened and even enacted every time Paris is mentioned.


This is a big headache, one might have thought the Banks would do well to lobby the cause of the problem, the EU, who after all are the ones insisting on Hard Brexit, thanks to their overblown commitment to the four freedoms.


Anyway, the Banks whine on in the article how about how tough life is for them and why they are annoyed that their special pleading is being ignored. Then right at then (this is an FT article after all), they note how Prime Minister May understands their issues perfectly and is quite aware of the real impacts upon them of Brexit.


That must have both killed the journalist to write but also must have ruined the day of the US Bankers - how can they square the circle of not firing their friends and colleagues (read cousins etc)and replacing them with work to rule French people?

Remainers still pro-EU...3 months on

I guess it is hard to expect any different from the FT, but today's headline of how worried the City are (in reality it is an ex-bank CEO who is now a spinner for  The CityUK) is very unbalanced.


Big banks, especially US ones, are worried. They are worried because they do not like change to the status quo which has them as top dogs an unchallengeable. For the US, the Trump factor also means that they do not want to have more political uncertainty than they have to.


The UK though is very divided, this one of the worst points to come out of the referendum. For a long time in the future the country will be split on Leave/Remain terms, with the accompanying Shires vs Cities and Liberal vs Conservative split. (I find it so weird the political parties have not realigned themselves with voters here, but perhaps with time).


Also intriguing though is the threat of 'Hard' Brexit and yet this always seemed the most likely outcome given EU intransigence and the sheer difficulty of trying to negotiate a deal within 2 years. Hard Brexit will be a shock, but of course it will be much worse for the EU than the UK (given trade flows). Thus the UK will continue or even increase its role as a safe haven, untied from European travails which run aplenty.


The big downside to the Remoaning is that no other views appear. KPMG has released a study today saying all CEO's are looking at moving business...all the PR guns are lined up to remaon just as they were lined up for remain. This talking the country down piece is frustrating as it makes a difficult situation worse than it needs to be and stops the brightest and best form coming up with the solutions required - so focussed are they on spinning for remoan.