bozo's return

Defending Paris and the Free Market

Last night on the tube I saw in someone else's Evening Standard the headline of an article:

"So have the free marketeers been proved wrong?"

Which reminded Bozo of a much loved witticism. Viz

"How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?"

"Who knows, they have never tried!"

The one thing we learned from the crash and the credit crunch is that the market system we have been running in the West bears no relationship to a free market system. Any more than the Soviet system that collapsed in 1989/90 represented Communism in any real sense.

Let's go back to the Soviets for a second. Basically, everyone had a job, but people didn't always have food - still less tvs or gagdets or a free press. But the system could say - "Everyone has jobs!"

When the food went short - it wasn't the people running the system (let us call them the Apparatchiks) who suffered. Apparatchiks always  eat well and get limos to drive them down special lanes in the middle of the road. It is only the ordinary folk who actually suffered from Soviet systemic failure. The central system always paid whatever price was needed to be paid to preserthe system. And this system endured from 1917 to 1989 with only a few million victims of starvation or purge. It endured until the cost of military competition with Ronald Reagan made the last rouble of cash or credit just run out.

Whoa!! Wait a minute.

Let me get this right.

You mean when the system went wrong, the central government bailed out the system?

You mean that when the system went wrong, ordinary people suffered but the people at the top of the system didn't?

Surely thats the same system we have been running!!!!!!!!!!!!

Indeed erudite readers. Exactly the same.

We have no idea if the free market works - because we don't operate it.

Bear Stearns and Lehmans may have been allowed to go broke - but AIG wasn't. And if AIG had - well then so would half a dozen other investment banks (with Goldmans at the fore). Indeed - we are told that the reason AIG and RBS et al were balied out is to preserve western society as we know it. Right?

When Hank Paulsen was still at Goldmans he could have explained how the free market worked. That's why, as Secretary of the Treasury, he let Lehmans go down the loo. The market reaction to this scared ole Hank so he then decided the greater good involved making sure Goldmans survived.

The whole market - at this point in time was not saying "We are a free market, government must keep its hands off. The market will police our failures!"

Or if it was I didn't hear them - and nor did ole Hank. (Nor ole Gordon).

What I heard the market saying was:

"Give us money now! Or we won't get our bonuses! Er no, we mean give us money now or the whole fabric of western society will crumble into dust!"

Nowadays - whenever the subject of more stringent government regulation comes up the HSBCs of this world talk about moving HQ back to Asia. Why? So they can be free of course! free to be proper free marketeers! Until they need the tax payer to pay their losses and underwrite their bonuses again.

You can make a gazillion comments telling me Capitalism is superior to Communism.

You can tell me the western system has given more people more benefits than the Soviet system.

You can tell me more scientific and medical progress has been made in the Western system (and I will nod my head and say, yeah, military too - and wait till we start designing the enclaves we will need to build to protect the wealthy from the rapidly growing underclasses we have created).

You can tell me all that - and I will say but two things

1) Fine, its superior - but don't tell me its the free market - because in the free market the Federal Government doesn't own AIG or Royal Bank of Scotland "in order to preserve society as we know it".

2) The Soviet system worked too - until there wasnt enough money to bail it out any more.

I will let Abraham Lincoln say the third thing:

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Feel free to spout that capitalism is superior - but don't tell me its the free market - not until 100 years after the banks return to private ownership.

The soviet system did not fail for any other reasons than that the pople stopped standing for it and the money to preserve it ran out.

When I read about JP Morgan's CIO (already long gone from our headlines) I am left wondering how long a "free" market full of such cowboys will take to repeat the whole crash. After all - if you keep doing what you have always done - you will get what you always got! And if we get another crash or two - I do wonder if the people will stand for it -and if the money will exist to bail it out again.

How familiar it all sounds.

 

Out of the mouths of babes...

As regular readers will know Bozo is a solid follower of the razor sharp philosophy of Hobbes (as in Calvin and Hobbes/ Bill Watterson).

Today I would like to highlight the wisdom of 6 year old Calvin in the 'toon published last Sunday online here.

With full acknowledgement to Mr Watterson let me share his wisdom (for those of you too lazy to click on the link), Calvin, whilst careering downhill on a cart with Hobbes, says:

It's true Hobbes, ignorance is bliss. Once you know things you start seeing problems everywhere and once you see problems you feel like you ought to try and fix them and fixing problems always seems to require personal change and change means doing things that aren't fun. And I say Phooey to that! But if you;re wilfully stupid you don't know any better and you can keep doing whatever you like!

The secret to Happiness is short-term stupid self-interest!

Hobbes interupts to say:

We're heading for that cliff!

Calvin Continues:

I don't want to know about it.

 

In a crumpled heap at the bottom Hobbes says :

I'm not sure I can stand so much bliss.

Calvin replies:

Careful, we don't want to learn anything from this.

 

Well surely it is entering the realm of patronising my well-read, well-educated, street-smart readers to point out the similarity of the whole 'toon to the behaviour of investment bankers?

Of course, there is a slight difference, the investment bankers float gently to earth on the parachute of immense bonuses leaving the hoi polloi to do the actual crashing.

But recent activity at JP Morgan clearly confirms that none of them want to learn anything at all from the last crash.

Rober Peston (many thanks and acknoweldgements to him) in his blog yesterday (to be found here) has actually found an investment banker who fulfilled the Hobbes role and told JP morgan their CIO was heading for a cliff.

His name? Bill Winters, former co-head of JPMorgan investment bank.

His warning?

• that the risks being taken by JP Morgan's Chief Investment Office were not transparent enough
• that it was a discreet trading operation answerable only to Dimon and whose deployment of the bank's precious capital could not be scrutinised by other senior executives

The result?

Well now you know why he is the former co-head. His warnings got him "pushed out of the bank in summer 2009" as Mr Peston puts it.

Yup he warned them three years ago and they echoed Calvin "I don't want to know about it!" and got rid of him.

Of course Jamie Dimon and Ina Drew have lost their jobs. But Jamie Dimon and Ina Drew are wealthy people who have benefited from bonuses generated by the CIO's activities for the past 3 years since the got rid of Mr Winters - so they will, I suspect, cope with this setback they will be floating gently to earth on their bonus parachutes.

Who will be lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the cliff?

Interestingly, JP Morgan's employees are suing the bank for trashing their retirement funds. I hope they win - it will compensate them for the inevitable job cutbacks.

When JPM announces the rank and file redundancies remember where you read it first.

Risk, Regulation and Relocation

Alliteration alive and well...

 

Some random thoughts from the Bozo on the subjects of Risk, Regulation and Relocation.

Starting at the end.

I read with a smile today that Stuart Gulliver has told investors that relocating HSBC back to Asia is postponed indefinitely. Of course there may be a myriad of reasons (SG cites "too many moving parts") but SG himself lives in South Ken (I mean who wouldnt! Bozo lived there himself for a while) and let's face it the convenience of a 10 minute limo drive to the corporate box at Stamford Bridge or Twickenham is a lot more alluring than Hong Kong - let alone Zug. And I would be unsurprised to learn that many of the senior execs at HSBC - as well as many of the traders have weektime pads with postcodes such as SW1, SW7, SW5, SW10, W1 (with of course two or three other addresses each too)... and much as you might whine about high taxation (which whilst you might be technically liable for -  you don't seem to actually pay anyway) and new regulation - none of you really want to relocate to Zug, or Shanghai, still less Beijing or boring old Singapore (hardly a tax haven itself).

So What about Risk - well I smiled when I read in last night's Standard that JP Morgan's losses are more like £4.4 billion than £2 billion. How very predictable. But it also raised an eyebrow because last night I also viewed a documentary on PBS called "Breaking the Bank" - it was about the financial crisis but focused very much on the experience of BoA/Nationsbank/whatever taking over M Lynch. Clearly they got screwed - and clearly goold old Hank (line Goldman's pockets) Paulsen gave them little option. But the funny thing was that some guru/insdier said:

"We nationalised the banking industry that day in September, and the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is now the most influential man on Wall Street."

Really?

I alread blogged about how little Barack has done to reform the culture of Wall Street - but the fact is that his failure to do so means that it is not his fault that some dipstick egomaniac at JPM has set fire to another large chunk of economic growth - soon no doubt to be paid for by some massive redundancies among the ordinary working people of JP Morgan - it is the fault of the ongoing unchanged culture of Wall Street.

The tax payers of the western world (and I mean those who actually PAY taxes) have paid a trillion or several to bail out a banking system which is so unchanged that it is already showing signs of doing exactly what it was doing in the lead up to the last crisis - less than 4 years after the so-called nationalisation of the banking system!!!!

There is an old saying - if you keep doing what you're doing, you will get what you always get.

So why is anyone in banking surprised by what has happened at JPMorgan?????

Which brings me to ask what the big problem of regulation is. Why are you all so worried about regulation?

I mean, given what has been happening since 2007 it seems clear that regulation isn't preventing banks making fortunes - it will be preventing them losing fortunes!

But I already know the answer - and so do they - and so should the government - and all of you.

The truth of the matter is that this London Whale - and his boss, and the senior people surrounding them are all stinking rich from bonuses paid before these positions went south. They are none of them going to go to prison (unlike the bloke who nicked a pair of traders in the riots) and they are none of them going to be asked to pay the cash back.

Despite all the lessons the bonus culture continues despite all these lessons to say to traders:

"you keep the winnings, the shareholders or (better still) the tax payers, will take care of the losses."

So why is anyone surprised that the behaviour of traders is just as dangerously irrational today as in 2006/07???

There is no real believable indivdual downside to a trader from irrational trading behaviour. None. So why is anyone surprised when more evidence of it comes to light?

Regulation is not really the answer - it really isn't - the real answer is cultural change in banking. The real answer is prudent rationality. But we have seen so much evidence that prudent rationality is out of the reach of the people running the world's largest banks that regulation is left to be the only answer.

Prison might help ... not so much fun having a pad in SW7 and another beside Lac Geneve when you are doing a 5 stretch in Wandsworth sharing a cell with an armed robber.

And you may tell me no laws have been broken - and I will - as usual sigh  a long deep sigh and marvel at a society that will lock up an unemployed, uneducated, teenager for nicking trainers but has no lawas to punish highly educated, wealthy, privileged people sending the economy deep into the toilet for the sake of the ablity to buy another house and another car.

Sigh...

 

Politics, statesmanship, slavery

Let me give you one of my favourite political quotes:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country"

Of course it could be about today. But it was Abraham Lincoln's congressional address in December 1862.

When there is a war going on that has slavery at its core, the word disenthrall has extr special connotations. But we are a society in thrall right now.

The staff at JP MOrgans CIO division (and probably not just them) are in thrall too. They are in thrall to money. To the making of it. To the worship of it. Because needing three homes and five cars is being enslaved to stuff. Because needing yet another £1,000,000 in bonus, when you get paid £1,000,000 and your bonus is already likely to double that anyway is the act of a junkie.

Here is another quote:

"Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims."

That was St Paul writing to the Corinthians. He wasn't talking about making money. But he may as well have been.

I am not against money - it serves a purpose. I am not even againts the rich - the ones who actually pay taxes and give to charities also serve a purpose. But I cannot see how this so called more psoperous world we live in is really doing any good for any but the top 1 percentile of the wealthy.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, every year the gap in the west between rich and poor has got wider. Every single year!

And people say to me, "why does God allow poverty and starvation in Africa?" Well I think God provided us a world with more than enough resources to feed everyone. We just arent very good at distributing it fairly. And those people who ask me the question would be outraged if God;s solution was take some of what they have and give it away!! They feel God's solution should be just to create some more for the poor without taking any from the rich - just so they can feel better about having five cars and three homes and a £1,000 a week cocaine habit.

But there is an argument for a fairer society that ought to make sense to even the most rabid atheist.

The last time we had a recession this deep and long and in which the poor suffered all the pain and the rich just shrugged their shoulders was the 1930s. In which time poor people across large parts of the world became massively radicalised. The democractic governments had done nothing for them - so the lunatic fringe got a big look from the masses. So we had the atheist Hitler, and the atheist Stalin. And a war that killed millions upon millions of people.

We all look at documentaries about those times and ask:

"how could ordinary Germans support that lunatic?"

And I think the answer is simple: "What have the democrats given me except poverty and austerity and how come while i have all that to deal with, the rich get richer!"

We want to throw a rioter in jail for stealing a pair of trainers - but not one single person involved with the whole financial collapse of the world has ever been charged with anything. And we call that morality!

You may think France in 1789 is ancient history. You may think Russia in 1917 is ancient history. But ancient history is there to show the dimwitted what happens when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

We are creating a society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and it doesnt matter who you vote for the same thing happens. [Thirteen years of New Labour saw the rich get richer and the poor get poorer!]

Let us be wise enough to see sense before we radicalise another generation of young people who see no benefit in preserving decent democratic government.

Let us disentrhall ourselves from the addiction to money for money's sake.

 

Outraged

I meant to blog this yesterday - but I had forgotten to update my typepad subscription!

I don't know what the Daily Mail had on their front page yesterday - why on earth would I? But while having my morning Espresso in my favourite coffee shop next to Twickenham Station I noticed the lead article in the Metro (you may think it a very tabloiu read - but it doesnt have the pompous and supremley rubbish writing to be found pouring from the editor's pen at City AM) that - the highest earners in our fair land pay less tax (as a percentage) than their cleaners!

Yes - that's correct - our millionaires are not paying the 50% tax rate they moan about - nor even the 40% tax rate - they are paying under 20%.

Now I know my dear friend "Bozo's Antagonist" has moaned on these very pages about high taxation. But I also know that he is actually paying the 40% rate.

I don't know about you - but to me, "outraged" was a good word to describe how I felt on reading this (certainly more apt than "surprised"). Outraged is a good Daily Mail kind of word too.

The Daily Mail - and its readers - would be outraged by benefit fraud. They would be outraged by illegal immigration. We know they were outraged by the riots and the looting. But are they outraged that those best able to contribute to rebuilding the country's finances (which were destroyed by high earners in the City - albeit with a bit of help from useless Gordon) - are in fact doing their damndest to make sure they contribute as little as possible???

While bankers make sure their tax bill is as low as possible, RBS (owned by the tax payer) is making those tax payers redundant at record pace and other City institutions are still paying massive bonuses to people who call their client's muppets and invest hours of meetings into debating not how they can add value to their clients endeavours or the country's wealth - but how they can shaft everyone in order to line their pockets!

Now Bozo does not condone or encourage rioting - or looting. But am I really the only person who understands that this country is FULL of pent up outrage at the two tier society that we have created?

You know when you put up taxes, those who (in theory if not practice) might suffer scream in pain and talk about leaving the country and setting up shop elsewhere. (To my mind Zug is welcome to them -especially as they don't actually payt their way). But, when instead of getting cash from the rich we are forced to make the already disadvantaged yet more disadvantaged what do we expect them to do?

Well that is easy, led by the Daily Mail we expect them to be compliant, we expect them to accept that the country is in a tough place and that suffering must result.

And, unlike the investment bankers, they cannot take their riches and leave.

But heaven forbid they should be upset or angry!

Well in the absence of rioting or looting - Bozo for one is going to be OUTRAGED!

And I hope you are too.

 

 

Role Models

Read in the metro just now that poor Charlie Simpson (he of busted and fightstar) lost 10,000 cds that were about to go to the retailers in a riot fire. Charlie says its wrong for people to lose their livelihoods.

I like Charlie. And I agree with him. I also think its wrong for people to lose their homes.

In this current recession. Triggered by giving banks gazillions in bail outs. I know several small businesses that have gone to the wall. My own small business has teetered on the brink.

It wasn't less heartbreaking for those people whose businesses went down due to a Banking nightmare. It wasn't less heartbreaking for those who were made redundant and had homes repossessed. It was just less televised.
They too were victims. We just haven't cared enough to lock up the perpetrators.

You can be an MP and steal (yes steal) from the public purse by fiddling your expenses. And you are very unlikely to go to prison.
Great Role Models!

You can be a media mogul or a major editor and break the law and bribe policemen. No one will end up in jail. Not even the corrupt policemen.

Great Role Models!

You can bring down the economy of the whole country through some un provable cocktail of greed fraud and total stupidity in banking. No one locked up

Great Role Models!

Unemployed? No future? Broken Home? Live in a ghetto ruled by gangs?

Prison for you mate.

 

I think Gordon Brown's government will always be remembered as the most stupid.  Well Tony's too with Gordon cocking it up as Chancellor.

 

But will the Coaltion be forever remembered as the most uncaring?

 

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Hope...and no hope... business ... and society

I just want to say I find it much easier to accept what the rioters have done than to accept what News International did - and to accept what the banking community did.

 

Because the government's fear of the mobility of the rich leads them to make the poor pay for the deficit and that is plain wrong. You may feel that rioting is worse than defrauding the public purse of several billion pounds - but I don't.

 

I am not condoing rioting. It scares me as much as it scares you. And no one really thinks that two wrongs make a right.

But let us accept that in the 13 years of LABOUR government the poor got poorer and the rich got richer.

I have heard people say - we need to recognize and encourage those high earners who generate the real growth of wealth in the country.

Well why?

Because since 1997 the real growth of wealth in this country has not benefitted all the pople in this country has it?

So why should anyone who isn't benefitting give a fig (for want of a better word) about encouraging high earners?

I have repeatedly said in these pages that if we keep driving the poor down lower and lower because we are too scared to make the rich pay more than they do - we will create a society that will be much worse than we have now - and which will make the riots of the last few days look mild.

You know why?

Because society never stomachs injustice for long. Whilst it is true that the great reactions against injustice in 1789 and 1917 created pretty awful totalitarian governments - it is also true that they succeeded because ordinary people rose up.

If you think the bonus pay out in the city this year was justice then you are dim.

The greed, mendacity and lack of ethics in the City is at the heart of all the problems we face.

The whole of Europe is not in financial crisis because governments spend too much money on supporting single mothers.

It is in crisis because of the greed of people who already have lots of money.

If you don't want a society that burns and loots - you need to accept that your two car two home million pound pensuon pot lifestyle may have to suffer a percent or two of extra tax.

So pay it - or sod off to Zug and build a really big wall around it. And hire a lot of security guards. And find some time to read a history book or two.

 

But there is one source of hope....  and His hope never fails

 

 

Management Matters (still)

Regular Bozo readers will know he is a baseball fan.

They will also know he is a great admirer of the management skills of Joe Maddon - the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays - and has quoted him and his wisdom on this blog in the past. Well I have no quote from Joe today but it is time to give him another accolade.

Last year everyone said was the Rays last big chance to win something. Many of their stars had contracts expiring and they would all walk off into the sunset to get big contracts that Tampa could not afford to give them. That the team would be broken up, that it was back to square one for Maddon and Tampa, if not square zero.

The first nine games seemed to prove that was true. The team did indeed lose almost all of its best position players. Most of its relievers and was 1-8. Bottom of the division after nine games on April 10th.

Since then...poor denuded undermanned Tampa has won 22 and lost only 8.

They are now 23-16.

They are now top of their division ahead of the biggest salaried teams in Baseball (The Yankees are second, two winw behind, and the big spending Red Sox remain under .500 and still flirt with bottom of the division).

To my mind this is all about Joe Maddon's knowledge. Both of the game, and of management.

There are some big similarities between sport and business. Key people get paid a lot, sometimes they get paid so much that managing them becomes hard.

When i was trading it was always the case that managers in a trading room had to be great traders or no one would respect them.

It's kind of understandable.

it;s also utter cods.

If you look at great sporting managers and ask them to show their player's medals, you can be disappointed.

Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho... no great success as players

Joe Maddon, no great success as a player.

But they can manage, They understand their jobs intellectually.

And they know how to create a winning team.

And guess what... unlike the other names I mentioned, Joe Maddon's winning team isn't the highest paid team in their sport.

This makes Maddon superior (in my mind) to Fergsuon and Mourinho by far.

The question for you folks in business is this.

What sort of manager are you?

A cheque book manager?

Or a good manager?

 

How do you spell Praetorian?

Over the weekend we watched The Blind Side. It is beyond question a feelgood movie. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy are as impressive on film as they were in Michael Lewis' book. And because Hollywood has done its thing (although not too aggressively) you kinda need to have read the book which (being by hard edged Michael Lewis) is , er, more hard edged than the movie.

BUT, what hit me most is that the poor part of Memphis, Tennessee was a lot like Arusha Tanzania. Not the bit where Graceland is. The bit where the poor black people live. When we were in Arusha we did some home visits with health care volunteers to HIV patients/families. I have to say it was far less depressing than seeing Memphis 2010. The world's richest country has people living in almost as much poverty as Tanzania! You may say the almost is a big gap - and i say PHOOEY. I say you look at poor America and try to tell me Capitalism is a success and I will laugh in your face.

You may say socialism has failed. And I will laugh in your face. Socialism has never been shown to have failed the way Capitalism has. The Soviet Union failed. But only an idiot compares the Soviet system to actual socialism. Besides we all know it failed because it could not both keep up a military hardware competition with the USA and  feed the population. And that was because of America's borrowing power. Winning that battle was the birth of the US deficit. But nowadays people are seriously questioning if America can actually sustain that deficit.

The lovely, delicious and sexy irony of that is that the last few trillion of deficit has been created by bailing out the banks who are the jewel of capitalism's crown.

Almost as deliciois is that it is analysts in the same bailed out banking system that question whether governments are spending/borrowing too much!!! It's like something Dogbert could have created (actually he probably did).

Capitalism has told us that it works because only the fittest and smartest survive. By the laws of capitalism there would be no Goldmans no AIG no Citi. So the lions of capitalism managed to suspend their onw laws for their own benefit for a while... Interestingly they still want to apply those laws to the poor souls who cannot pay their mortgages!

Now that is irony in spades. Citi, who should have been foreclosed on in 2007-08, was bailed out but doesnt want to allow any form of grace to its borrowers...

So in Memphis, and just about every other city in America you have people living in about the same squalor as in parts of Africa, and that is meant to show us the success of capitalism.

Really?

Of course what capitalism has created is plutonomy. The top 1% richest people in America control 95% of the wealth. Which is like Pareto on steroids!

The proponents will tell you that the American dream works because anyone can lever themselves up out of the squalor and achieve riches. Yeah right. It is aspiring to do just that which leads so many poor black Americans to arm themselves with automatic weapons and sell drugs. In the slums of memphis if you cannot claw your way out by playing sport (Gladiators anyone?) then your next best chance is by becoming a drug dealer.

The plutocrats the plutonomists are poor students of history. They don;t even understand the recent lessons of Reagonomics and the fall of the Soviets. They certainly don't understand the Roman lessons.

When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; then the rich build bigger walls around their communities and pay more armed guards to patrol them.

Eventually the vast numbers of armed guards stop being the servants and become the masters.

Go and read your Gibbon and maybe you will learn how to spell Praetorian.

 

Enjoy!

Lingering Confusion

Hello all you finance gurus.

I still have some lingering confusion over the efficacy of the free market system and the competition base of capitalism as a social model.

Let me get this right...

Capitalism is freedom to choose....freedom to have whatever business idea you like and let the market decide if it works.

 

If it works, you get rich, if it doesn't you go broke.

Those people who have poor jobs or no jobs or lose their jobs.... Those people shouldn't get help from the tax payer. And if people do not have the right skill set that's something they should use their freedom to sort out.

Is that it?

Because I am a bit puzzled as to how a bank repossesses the home of one of those people, when that bank only exists because it got MASSIVE help from the tax payer. I am a bit confused that a bankCEO who the freemarket discovered was running a bank that was bankrupt still has a job... doesn;t the free market system say that person should be unemployed and having their home repossessed?

Have I missed something?