Foreign Exchange Watch

I was thinking from a European point of view. I would let them suffer a bit. Show disinterest, indifference even, get them really keen and ask are you really sure about this? After all no one wants to force anything on Ireland that this proud Tiger does not want, now do we?

Squire... yes, I agree, better a dodgy construction sector than a dodgy financial system.... after all, those houses and shopping centres will eventually find a use, while many of the SIVs and CDOs are worth about as much as the paper they are printed on...or even less if they exist only electronically. As I said before, while that Ballsbridge site of Sean Dunne's may not be worth what he paid for it, it may well be worth half of what he paid for it... which is still something. Plus which, if we ever need them, we have a lot of people trained... could be useful if we need to shore up sea defences in a hurry or retool all our housing for the inevitability of the Russians limiting the EU gas supply.... I note the lads at the Beeb have copped on to that one... the new entry sequence for "have I got news for you" has changed... where there were once Arabs with gushing oil wells and a few arriving tanks, there is now a shifty Siberian turning a wheel on a pipeline.... and all the lights in Europe go out.... If you think what is happening economically now is bad, wait till that brown stuff hits our fans.

I am very worried about Britain... the Government is increasingly hoarding (and losing) people's data, while constant attempts are being made to undermine the rule of law and re-introduce equivalents of internment, years after the Nordies proved it didn't work. This, allied with a jingoistic national press that are being milked owing to the war, and an anti-Europe mentality that make Decco Ganley look like Francois Mitterand...and a resurgent BNP, a poverty stricken underclass that is disproportionally Asian Muslim, and increasing level of white poverty....and now we have a killer recession... the little Englanders won't get through this in one piece, not at all. The race riots and social unrest are going to hit, big time. The only thing holding back the civil liberties issues is the unelected house of Lords...there are some good people in there, they were brought up with the better British values instilled just after the war and before Thatcher, materialism and targets began to hold sway. But they may not hold the line for long. I may have to go frontally lobotomize myself, because despite having lifelong socialist sympathies, I'm beginning to think that the only thing that might prevent the UK turning into a police state might be the election of the Tories....but then, that party also houses the anti-EU faction.

Sooo...I wonder, will the UK be forced into ever closer EUnion and into the eurozone, or will he hold out until the Cameroons get in and then they'll referendum themselves out entirely, (using Decco, Libertas and his suspected UKIP/Tory paymasters to bring us with 'em)???

Oh yes, and I forgot, dem wars is still ongoing, and they are borrowing to pay for them, and since the recently elected Saviour of the US has pledged to continue in Afghanistan....they're still costing the Brits and the US, and will do for the long term, regardless of whether they are separately delineated in the accounts as such... or not. Sadly, the Talibs will win this one....they have time and their enemies' exploding debt levels on their side.

Looks like one socialist is beginning to wake up anyway. Too late now as Labour have no more interest in the poor than Lord Baron Rothschild has. Dig up Enoch Powel has he predicted all this 50 years ago and the mouthpieces ridiculed him. A miserable police state now.

The thing is some people want this future for Ireland as well

youngdan wrote:

Looks like one socialist is beginning to wake up anyway. Too late now as Labour have no more interest in the poor than Lord Baron Rothschild has. Dig up Enoch Powel has he predicted all this 50 years ago and the mouthpieces ridiculed him. A miserable police state now.

The thing is some people want this future for Ireland as well

Indeed.... but they won't get it. There are crucial cultural/electoral differences, in Ireland we have STV PR, a feisty well educated electorate, politicians that are happier to U turn (no such thing as a safe seat) and an expectation that all politicians are untrustworthy and the the law should work for us rather than we for the law. We have FAR more of a familial/community based setup here and everyone knows everyone else. It means that while people might be vaguely convinced of the rightness of some draconian measure, all it takes is a sob story from someone who knows someone who knows someone to turn their opinion around. And witness the protesting pensioners.

The SINGLE most scary thing about living in the UK was the reluctance of all and sundry to complain/protest about anything. It would be far easier for a Hitler type to claim power there than here. But we are far too close to them, geographically, should much go wrong.

Well the Irish electorate would surely be one of the most informed in any free country. But would we have not said the same about the British in the 70s.

The fear of speaking out is spreading. Anytime some lad comes up with ideas that the establishment wanted to suppress, their credibility was attacked and they are labeled a loon.

A good example of this is Lyndon LaRouche. He too is a socialist but his heart is in the right place. He was warned for years that the derivative markets would bring about an economic collapse in the real physical economy. He is been proven right.

As other allegation is that the Queen is a drug dealer. This gets heaps of scorn but anyone that cares to study it can learn about the Opium Wars. Many of the rich families in New England made their money in drugs. Anyone that thinks the Afghan War is not tied to 80% of the world's herion supply is bonkers.

Now you say that Irish politicians can u-turn. Well maybe when the subject is medical cards but wait till Lisbon 2. I would wager that all 3 parties will still shill for it despite the fact that the majority voted against.

youngdan wrote:

Well the Irish electorate would surely be one of the most informed in any free country. But would we have not said the same about the British in the 70s.

The fear of speaking out is spreading. Anytime some lad comes up with ideas that the establishment wanted to suppress, their credibility was attacked and they are labeled a loon.

A good example of this is Lyndon LaRouche. He too is a socialist but his heart is in the right place. He was warned for years that the derivative markets would bring about an economic collapse in the real physical economy. He is been proven right.

If you rave as much as Larouche, you're statistically bound to be right about something at some point. It doesn't make him a sane individual, particularly since the claim that the financial system will collapse if financial dealers are allowed free rein is obvious to anyone who isn't in politics. Any unregulated feedback system eventually explodes.

youngdan wrote:

Now you say that Irish politicians can u-turn. Well maybe when the subject is medical cards but wait till Lisbon 2. I would wager that all 3 parties will still shill for it despite the fact that the majority voted against.

That's because the responsibility of elected politicians is to do what is best for their country, based on the idea that they are considering the matter full-time, and in receipt of better information than the voters. They can be wrong about what is best, but that's still what their responsibility is, not simply voting whatever way their electorate swings on any given occasion.

Expat.

I agree with you about the House of Lords. For the life of me I couldn't comprehend the desire to reform. The codgers were more than capable of causing the Commons (Conservative or Labour) difficulty. They proved that Democratic elections did not necessarily produce the best representatives. A combination of old money eccentrics, Bishops and retired Judges proved an awkward bunch so they were reformed. They were a good lot with a senses of what is right and didn't need to worry about the next election.

New Labour is deeply worrying on issues relating to personal freedom. They are a bunch of control freaks and follow on from that upstart of a grocers daughter and her legacy which was base. I can understand the one Nation Conservatives, but these Thacherite acolytes are beyond me. They are way below power. It is as though the Public Schools have abandoned Politics. Middle England is deeply conservative but not in that rabid jingoistic way.

I think there are two reasons, firstly politics has lost some of its salience as, like the USA, the parties are almost reflections of each other and secondly the press. There has been decades of propaganda that is anti EU. Politicians are afraid to say boo. Brown won't openly do anything unless his hand is forced. He will hate to relinquish any control however the canny lad may well quietly prepare the ground in advance just in case.

Right now I have more faith in the British Civil Service than I have in their politicians.

I agree with you on the Lords. Despite its archaic nature it is far more effective at doing its job than any elected chamber would be for precisely the reasons you highlight above.

If the politicians are not there to do as the voters tell them then just get rid of the elections and have an Irish House of Lords.

I knew we would find something to agree on.

With who in it? Batholomew, Earl of Drumcondra and Raymond, Baron Burke?

johnfás wrote:

With who in it? Batholomew, Earl of Drumcondra and Raymond, Baron Burke?

Lord Ganley of Tuam.

johnfás wrote:

With who in it? Batholomew, Earl of Drumcondra and Raymond, Baron Burke?

I think that should read Raphael, Baron Burke!

Generally the siblings of a Lord gain the title "The Honourable" so I presume we will also have The Honourable Noel Ahern.

Can we have a 'Sargent' at arms?

Dollar weakness all round today as the €/$ rate jumps almost 3 cents to 1.2870 and $/Chf down 2 cent at 1.2000. Neutral v Yen but even the British pound is up a cent and a half. We could be at the start of a long slow decline for the dollar as the impact of the massive cumulative bailouts, continuing with the Citicorp $306 bio. today, takes effect. While the moves in the dollar don't appear to be major, the perception on technical traders may be that the dollar can only be used in any short term rallys as an opportunity to sell.

Our our global productive forces just too big and dynamic now for the old national financial systems to manage? Its beginning to look as though this thing can't be reeled back in.

Programme of Bonds "The Ascent of Money" on Channel 4 - quite interesting so far

cactus flower wrote:

Our our global productive forces just too big and dynamic now for the old national financial systems to manage? Its beginning to look as though this thing can't be reeled back in.

It'll take a while. Countries seem to be splitting into the Bailout/Slushfund Brigade...UK and US principally... who seem to think it's a good idea to throw tons of borrowed money into the economy and pay it back "later" My own against trend feeling about this is that they are sitting up and begging for what happened to us in the 80s... 10 years of screaming debt, huge unemployment etc. There is no guarantee all this economic stimulus stuff is going to work the way they intend; in fact, I'd almost guarantee the opposite; people are spooked and they'll save it. This might help to lower the personal debt mountain, but to what avail if, just as a fledgling recovery occurs, there is a massive series of tax hikes?? What makes me really ticked off about this is that it is obviously very electoral in both cases... Obama has the Big 3 carmakers in his back yard and Wall street is too big to fail, while Gordon Brown obviously sees handing cash to the electorate as a great way to remain in power for longer. Much as I hate to say it, I'm with George Osborne on this one.

The other smaller group seems to consist of people like ourselves who have no choice but to rein in expenditure... I am cynically beginning to think the only reason the US and UK are getting away with their borrowing is that the international market deems them "too big to fail". The UK were screaming blue murder about our bank guarantee scheme as being anti-competitive... so what does that make their VAT drop???
But the international markets still seem to deem lending them money to be a good bet...I don't geddit. It's an open secret that UK govt debt doubles when you add PFI. I also think they may have been cooking their figures a bit. I can pinpoint when the UK stopped looking like there was spare Government money for infrastructure, services etc. That would be 2003.... when the war started. I lived there remember, the only thing expanding in Britain since 2003 were the effing potholes. Oh, and property prices! Whoopsie!

This is the dollar index that Peter Schiff was talking about going to 40 or even 20. It is a measure of the exchange rate of the dollar against a basket of currencies.


http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=NYBOT_dx

Quote :

The US Dollar Index (USDX) is an index or measure of the value of the United States dollar relative to a basket of foreign currencies. It is a weighted geometric mean of the dollar's value compared to the euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), Pound sterling (GBP), Canadian dollar (CAD), Swedish krona (SEK) and Swiss franc (CHF).

It was started in March 1973, soon after the dismantling of the Bretton Woods system. At that time, the value of the Dollar Index was 100.000 and has since traded as high as the mid-160s but also into the low 70s. As of October 2008, the USDX was trading in the mid-80s. On March 6, 2008, the index touched 72.89, the lowest since its inception in 1973. It continued downward and reached 70.698 on March 16.

The index is updated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is listed on ICE Futures Exchange US (e.g., New York Board of Trade [NYBOT]).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Dollar_Index

Massive moves in the forex market in the last week or so. Sterling getting hammered and close to 93 pence against the Euro. Euro at 1.44 against the dollar, up 25 cents from a fortnight ago. Fed rate cut the latest reason to sell the dollar. It is looking horrible for sterling. Newry will be busy at the weekend.

Last Monday week on the iseq thread I posted that the dollar had topped and everyday since it has dropped. It is not just the interest rates. It is the perception that a big mistake was made in electing Obama. His new deal and the sleeze has him looking worse than Jimmy Carter.

Gold is up about 120 dollars in days. The euro
and pound are history as well so just compare it to the yen, gold and silver

The US Dollar Index is taking a drop about now too - this is the dollar against a basket of currencies (see above).

youngdan wrote:

Last Monday week on the iseq thread I posted that the dollar had topped and everyday since it has dropped. It is not just the interest rates. It is the perception that a big mistake was made in electing Obama. His new deal and the sleeze has him looking worse than Jimmy Carter.

Gold is up about 120 dollars in days. The euro
and pound are history as well so just compare it to the yen, gold and silver

What do you make of the Swiss Franc, youngdan? There was a huge move in it v Sterling today from 1.75 to 1.66, and it went from something like 1.12 to 1.07 v the dollar.

It a kinda weird currency in that it seems to be traded technically to a much greater extent than the others.

I do not watch it everyday like the other 4 . Some months back though I was asked by pm over yonder on advice when the banks were shaky. The situation still applies. A person has no way of knowing what is coming but a person has to spread the risk out as much as possible. The person's mother had the proceeds of a house sale and was rightfully worried. Part of the advice was to withdraw money and put a 5% in Swiss. Even if they could not buy Swiss government bonds they should put it into Swiss cash/money orders and hide. This would cost a few % but was to be done next morning. Another chunck was to be put into Yen and another chunk was to be divided into Canadian, Australian and Russian to make it if resourse curriencies gained strenght.

A portion was to go to metals as well needless to say. A lot should be withdrawn because the Euro could survive after the Irish banks fail. Then they could buy at firesale.

The thing is to avoid the trainwreck as much as possible and a good pile of silver/gold will get you over the crash.

These are emergency measures and forget about profit and loss when financial survival is at stake