Friday, January 23, 2009

Der view aus dem Bunker

Although I grew up listening to a combination of Radio 4 and Radio Moscow (pretty much the same thing), it has been several years since I have been able to stomach the rampant statism on Radio 4's flagship Today program.

(To raise my blood pressure to critical levels, even now all you have to do is whisper the magic words, James Naughtie.)

But it would seem that even the supine state-lovers on Radio 4 are beginning to challenge the current master of the silk purse.

Iain Martin, of the Torygraph, reports on what was an excruciating Gordon Brown interview, this morning, in which it became clear to all and sundry that McAvity Mugabe really is becoming unhinged.

(If you can stomach twenty minutes of pompous flannel and bombastic obfuscation - and I could barely take it - then you might be able to hear the interview yourself, here. Just scroll through to 11:00 minutes, if you can do without the overture, and then to 16:15 where Emperor Brown refuses to acknowledge the existence of the phrase 'Boom and Bust'.)

After listening to this bilge, Maturin Towers felt obliged to make the following comment on Iain Martin's blog:

EnglishJack January 23, 2009 01:28 PM GMT

If Gordon Brown is correct in deducing that this entire shebang started in America, then he must ask himself how it all started in America.

It is becoming increasingly evident that this shebang started with the reckless mortgage policies of Fannie Mae, pushed into disastrous lending policies by the US Congress. Gordon Brown must then be asked why he is creating his own "Fannie Mae" via the handy vehicle of the recently nationalised Northern Rock, if we want to avoid such "fiscal contamination" from America?

Does he even know what Fannie Mae is or what it does? Or are we pumping even more wasted billions into this latest reverse-geared Northern Rock project simply to save Gordon's wretched short-term neck?

The traditional bottle of whisky and revolver are too good for this destroyer of wealth of and creator of financial chaos. He should merely be offered the revolver.

For more on how Fannie Mae created the giant US housing bubble, Iain, you might want to read the recent interview with Edward Pinto, its long-time credit controller:

http://www.safehaven.com/article-12386.htm

Way to go, Gordon. Just what we need to solve a giant housing bubble - an even bigger housing bubble!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Jack, I must ‘fess up to all of this. It was I who posted in the DT: that if the government wanted to get the economy moving again it should consider that it had control over both the printing presses i.e. origination, and ownership of Northern Rock and its branch network i.e. distribution.
I only meant it in jest, but who knows who reads these postings.
The government’s position is a mess. It still tries to pretend it there is nothing wrong with Northern Rocks assets and they will come out of the exercise showing a profit but fail to take into account that if that were to be the case, they had no good reason to nationalise it in the first place
I suspect however this is much the same tactic as they played with the economy in the first place.
The economy was in a mess so if they messed it up even more, and blamed the overall outcome on saving the world to obfuscate the original sin.
In the case of Northern Rock they now realise they will make a significant loss and plan to cover it up by writing a load of new assets.