EU to investment taxpayers money in Pyramid schemes

A new one of these would be a good tourist attraction in St Ives

This is great news for infrastructure fraudsters in the EU - masses of new money for them to take from European taxpayers.

A jubilant Jean-Claude Junker has today announced a huge lump of money, 15x smaller than the announced €315 bn (that number is plucked out of thin air using something call a 15x multiplier) to fund fraudsters everywhere.

This is how it will work. A company, let's call it Happio, will say they are going to build a nice windfarm in Southern Spain. They will get an Euro guarantee which they can take to the bank to fund the windfarm. The bank will lend them €100m. Against this, if there is any loss, the EU will take the first €20 million odd.

The project begins, but there are delays and cost overruns because the contractors who won the tender are raping all the money they can and are giving massive backhanders to Happio for winning the contract. Also, planning was only secured after a hefty bribe to the Planning dept so the who project finance was never going to work anyway.

So, after a few years, it is wound up. Losses, €20 million. Oh well, the private banks have not really lost and its only the EU. There are now plenty of wealthy Spaniards but no windfarm.

This will happen in every EU country, including the UK.

So, dear readers, anyone with any wildly ambitious infrastructure investment plans that we can get working on.....

Yikes - portfolio tops 65% down on the year

Wow, how bad is that, my portfolio now is back to its summer 2009 low, just after the second downturn of the Financial Crash. Top fallers year to date:

CAZA - 80% down, 3 bad drills in a row (out of eight planned), one of which was a duster, have knocked the business right of course, down from 65p highs of the year to 8p this morning. Cash on the balance sheet is considerably higher and they did a large placing for this at 40p less than 6 months ago. Shocking, too late to sell now...

GKP - Down nearly 40% on the year with huge dips this past week. Now at 125 when just a week or two ago was 186. No real news here, continues to find billions of barrels in oil and awaits a full permit process from the Iraqi Government.

EMED mining - down 75% from the year high of 22 to 6.5p. Permit news imminent which in normal markets would see the share push its analyst targets of between 35-50p. In this market will it even get to 11p (breakeven for me!).

XCITE energy - Shocking performance as the company blew it earlier in the year with a poor resources estimate. Awaiting final approval to develop its North Sea oil field - due between now and Xmas - touching 115p today. On production with oil at $85 a barrel a full valuation would be about £5.


Feels like capitulation to me but the FTSE as a whole is still only just under 5000 as the risk shares I own have taken the biggest kicking...bring on QE2 for my portfolio. Cancel Xmas.

The worst policy of New Labour, Ever.

Really, I have heard of some daft Government policies, Cones hotlines, Dangerous dogs, 5-a-day, etc.

But today takes the biscuit big time. At the G20 Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown started advocating the tobin tax. This is an old left idea for taking a tax on all international finance transfers.

Not only do very few countries agree with this idea, it is simply impractical to implement; and wrong. more tax is never the answer as all good capitalist know.

What really staggers me though is that Badger and Brownstuff could promote this idea in the very week in which they confirm the UK taxpayer is to own the largest international bank in the world by assets and 43% of another top 20 bank.

So the UK government now owns banks and is advocating a policy which will cripple there recovery. This is beyond stupidity, it really is.

In years to come the political world will have a new lexicon for all this Government;

'as stupid as a Brown plan' - for a truly appalling policy announcement

'even Brown would not have done that' - for a really turkey of an idea

ad infinitum.

Harman red tape madness

Not content with saddling the British Economy with an total lemon of a budget, the best brains in the Labour Government are determined to go further. Now we have a new equal pay bill.

This comes in a session where it has been noted that the Government has almost no new work to do, but they can make up time for this.

There are many studies showing that , a) Women's pay is getting better every year and b) some gaps are structural due to maternity and women's choices in employment.

Now, at this time of economic woe, when all our companies are struggling just to keep going, we get a new load of useless socialist worker nonsense.

What credibility now does Harriet Harman have for Labour leader...certainly not as a leader of New Labour.

The Government is without shame, where is its vaunted regulation reduction department to combat this tripe? A silence across Whitehall.

Gordon Brown, supposedly in his own mind a champion of business, lets this go by as his power is so diminished within No10.

The saying is that you get the Government you deserve; the UK is a sad and pathetic PC country heading for meltdown on this evidence.

Difficulties with Reality

Several contrasts of peoples' opinions have struck me recently, I thought they should be shared:

- Loving estate agents getting sacked; hating house price falls.

- Wanting an end to the recession; admiring our 'Strong' Government.

- Seeing bankers brought down a peg; not wanting the credit crunch to cost 'their own' job

- Wanting rid of George Osborne; disappointed to see Labour Revival (that is me, although have been v. impressed by his courage under fire the last few days)

- Superior pride of new found frugality; whining about lack of foreign holidays

- Pleased the Post offices have been saved; moaning about length of queues in post offices

- Working as a neutral BBC journalist; biased pro-Brown reporting

Any others worth sharing?

Time's up then...

Well, this is it. We have finally talked ourselves into a recession. For a long-time this could have been avoided with just positive thinking and everyone going out and carrying on a normal, but n0. Those nasty pessmists have had their dreams come true. I'd just like to thank those superior intellects who have stuck by not talking ourselves into a recession mantra:

Alistair Darling

Shriti Vadera (the real UK Chancellor)

John Redwood, MP

Martin Broughton, CBI Chairman

Stuart Rose, M&S Chairman & CEO

This was just the first page of googling, there were 200,000 hits. It serves a useful purpose though, at least in the future one can be sure that none of the people who came out with this drivel know much about economics or markets and so can ignore their public statements.. Just as well none of them are in charge of our destinies, eh?

UK Brown re-shuffle reaction

...one small point to note, the only person who was remotely qualified to be in the Treasury team, Liam Byrne, has been moved to the Cabinet office and seemingly not been replaced.

Good to see the commitment to the economy in these dark times....

Housing boom to flop in 3 easy steps

Well, the Government's re-launch started today with a real lemon. Not just a bad idea that won't help many people, but one that has actually been tried before and found wanting, as Chris Dillow spells out here.

Not only are Labour copying Norman Lamont, a man who they love so much they are always going on about David Cameron advising him about Black Wednesday, but they are copying one of his worst ideas.

So, on one level this is all David Cameron's idea if we follow Labour logic on their description of Black Wednesday. I look forward to them ascribing their insipiration to him at the next PMQ's.

The other pieces thrown in, helping the desperate few at the bottom, OK but really not buying you that many votes is it? 6,000. They need millions when they are this far behind in the polls.

And bringing forward spending for social housing, this has all the hallmarks of another PFI-brained scheme where the Government thinks it is so clever it can beat the market and make a profit whilst advancing the cause of social justice. We'll see here how the market develops over the next year or so...