Monday, 14 January 2013


 Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don’t See Them Coming







       Monday, 14 January, 2013 14:09


A history of hubris and flawed hypotheses

Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don’t See Them Coming, by Gary B. Gorton, Oxford University Press; RRP£19.99

To what extent was the economics profession to blame for the financial crisis? Many would agree with Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, when he pointed in The New York Review of Books in 2011 to “an unjustified faith in rational expectations, market efficiencies and the techniques of modern finance”.
http://tinyurl.com/axftq3w

An Honest Referendum - What Like Last Time? Are You Havin' a Larf!

It is becoming increasingly clear to everyone that Cameron has a real problem with his own party and the daily mass exodus to UKIP across the country. It seems that, unless Cameron is politically totally inept, that he will have not alternative but be forced to trump UKIP by announcing, finally, that he will honour his party's pledge to hold a referendum, as distasteful as it will be to Cameron to go against his Bilderberger masters on this. But the temptation to align his party with the electorate and win massive election brownie points will be just too tempting. Failure to take this step will be the end of Cameron's political career that much is clear. Add to this Edward Miliband's oft-quoted anti-referendum stance, presumably in order to brown nose to the Bilderbergers to show that it is he who is really "their man", and this leaves the stage clear for Cameron to announce that it is he and he alone who has the listened to the electorate. A chance he simply will not miss to put clear water between himself and Clegg. 
 
BUT......
if anyone honestly believes that any referendum will be run properly and correctly by Westminster and Whitehall then they are being very naive and have not read history. If these chinless wonders of the Westminster village are allowed a free hand again to control the referendum then the whole thing will be a charade from start to finish, just like the Common Market vote was with Wilson. 

No doubt Cameron will enlist the EU funding AGAIN to prop up the IN Campaign, as they did so unashamedly last time. 
They will limit the BBC exposure of the OUT campaign just like they did last time aided and abetted by the BBC (who astounding as it may seem, have been provided loans over the years from the European Commission which is why the BBC always take the EU side - why hasn't Patten sorted that damned corruption out ???).

Herman von Rinklebum  will be allowed to swan around this country handing out largesse from our very own tax money to buy votes for the IN Campaign, whilst the IN campaign will inform the gullible public, incorrectly,  that our exports will attract tariffs if we are to export to the EU from outside of it. This is precisely what they did last time and is nothing but a monstrous lie. Ironically, it was Leon Brittan (he who went native when arriving in Brussels and who, subsequently had to scuttle out of the Santer's Commission when it had charges of corruption levelled at it in 1999?) who worked to bring the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs & Tradehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade) to the world thereby preventing any signed up country from applying Tariffs to other country's imports. The IN Campaign will attempt to muddy the waters and say that most of the complaints about Europe should be levelled at the European Convention on Human Rights. But the IN Campaign will again be wrong because following the Lisbon Treaty the  European Convention on Human Rights has been all but subsume into this treaty making it all one and the same European Marxist organisation.
 
Another organisation the OUT Campaign must be very watchful of is the USA's European arm. We all know that the US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the Bilderberger's pet little organisation (stuffed full of Rothschild's and J.P. Morgan's corrupt bankers like Jamie Dimon) but did you know there is a European arm called the European Council on Foreign Relations, (try this little gem to see what they're like:-http://www.ecfr.eu/content/entry/time_to_grow_up_what_obamas_re_election_means_for_europe). 
 
One way to defeat this corruption that the IN Champaign will inevitably attempt is for the OUT campaign to organise itself early and populate as many polling stations as possible around the whole country and take exit polls with their own tellers, as one way to defeat the Common Purpose corruption that they will attempt to bring to any referendum.
 
The OUT Campaign would do well to start campaigning today and recruit as many exit poll tellers as possible, some 10,000 I estimate will be needed.
 
The government Europhiles did it last time and cheated upon the British public and OUR SOVEREIGNTY compounding Heath The Traitor's treasonous ECA1972 for which all the evidence is there and has been passed to police forces up and down the country for prosecutions. (Sadly the chief constables are committing Misprision of High Treason by illegally choosing not to follow these up).

The OUT Campaign must not let it happen again and remember that Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, Clarke are Bilderbergers!  Whitehall and Westminster must be warned against any corruption and charged with treason should they get found out for corrupting the Referendum result in any shape or form. This applies equally to officials within the Electoral Commission who undoubtedly have sent some of their staff on the cancerous and seditious "Common Purpose" courses. 
 
Cameron, matey, you will have to bow to the inevitable - JUST BLOODY WELL DO IT AND LET'S SEE WHAT THE BRITISH PUBLIC REALLY WANTS AND WHETHER THEY ARE HAPPY BEING SUBJUGATED TO A FOREIGN POWER. I KNOW WHERE MY MONEY IS GOING!
 NKC


 Mon Express clippings

Politics List
================================================================================================
 

Express
1. Global warming exposed as a expensive con
[no link]

2. Renewable Energy Foundation say wind farms will add £8 billion to our energy bills
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/370642/Wind-farms-may-lead-to-higher-bills

3. New waves of EU migrants from Romania and Bulgaria will overwhelm our housing supply admits Pickles
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/370616/Next-influx-of-migrants-will-cause-shortage-of-housing-admits-Pickles

4. EU spends out on lavish gifts for VIPs  MENTION: Paul Nuttall, UKIP MEP
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/370591/Brussels-spends-1m-on-luxury-gifts-for-VIPs

5. A referendum 'No' vote will be the signal to quit the EU   MENTION: Nigel Farage, UKIP MEP
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/370617/-No-vote-will-be-signal-to-quit-EU-

Other
UK
1. Gerard Batten, UKIP MEP, speaks to Obama assertion on EU-UK referendum on RT: "Butt out"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19GqTN-20ss

2. Roger Helmer, UKIP MEP, reports on EU moves to ban lead shot in guns
http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/the-end-of-lead-shot-what-it-means-for-shooting/

3. Douglas Carswell, MP (C), on how not to handle the voter-UKIP issue
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2388/how_not_to_deal_with_ukip

4. Clegg and the Germans opine on the undesirability of leaving the EU
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2427/clegg_and_the_germans_pile_in_with_more_eu_alarmism_on_uk_independence

5. Cameron exposed as fraud - no intention of rocking the EUroboat
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261450/Wed-MAD-leave-Europe-David-Camerons-covert-battle-madness-cutting-ties-EU.html

6. Ireland has an actual 6 tonne crock of gold stashed in the Bank of England, and the leprachauns are mad about it
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/uk-bank-sits-on-a-pot-of-235m-in-irish-gold-3350347.html

EUroland
7. Just as Germany and Japan go off nuclear power, EU spends vast sums on ITER, *experimental* fusion reactor in France
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120810-the-quest-to-recreate-the-sun/2

Wind farm contracts to increase energy bills for families

Millions of families face higher energy bills because of a “shocking” catalogue of errors made by the Government when it awarded contracts for expensive offshore wind farms, MPs will disclose today.

Wind farm contracts could lead to higher electricity bills
Customers face higher energy bills because of the way contracts were awarded to companies delivering power from wind farms Photo: ALAMY
By Peter Dominiczak, Political Correspondent
12:01AM GMT 14 Jan 2013
Comments502 Comments
Consumers could see bills rise in the coming years after “generous” deals worth £17 billion were agreed with energy firms delivering wind-generated power to homes, a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has warned.
Under a scheme agreed by Labour leader Ed Miliband during the last Labour government, but implemented by Coalition ministers, the contracts guarantee that the power firms will be paid even if they fail to deliver energy to households.
Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the PAC, described the contracts as a “licence for the private sector to print money at the expense of hard-pressed consumers”.
The warning on energy price hikes comes as temperatures across the UK are set to plummet in the coming days.
The Met Office has issued warnings of ice and severe cold weather, with snowfall predicted across central, northern and south-east England as well as parts of Wales and Scotland.
Heathrow Airport could face severe disruption, with forecasters warning there could be up to 5cm of snow in some parts of the country.
Energy bills have more than doubled since 2004 to more than £1,300 a year per household, largely due to rising gas prices.
Bills are set to go up by hundreds of pounds a year under all the Government’s green and fuel poverty policies.
Following the MPs damning report into the wind farm contracts, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has now said it will “re-examine some of the terms” of the lucrative deals.
The sharp criticism of the Government came in a report on the “elaborate” new system that licences companies to operate assets bringing wind-generated power onshore.
Energy ministers want controversial offshore wind farms to provide up to 15 per cent of the country’s electricity needs by 2020.
That will require around £8 billion of investment in infrastructure such as platforms, cables and substations.
The committee said that long-term licences awarded to energy companies so far “appear heavily skewed towards attracting investors rather than securing a good deal for consumers”.
Under the terms of the contracts the companies are guaranteed an RPI inflation linked income for 20 years regardless of how much the infrastructure is used.
The estimated returns of 10-11 per cent on the initial licences “look extremely generous given the limited risks”, the MPs said.
Ministers stand accused of failing to learn lessons from failed Private Finance Initiatives, with the committee warning that costs from the wind farm schemes will now be passed on to taxpayers.
Mrs Hodge, the MP for Barking, described the way the contracts had been awarded as “shocking”.
“[The energy companies] are guaranteed income even if we don’t use the electricity and if the transmission cables fail they can only get fined up to 10 per cent of the total income coming in,” she said.
“It’s like another PFI. If you create such generous terms people would be mad not to get involved in the market.”
The contracts were awarded to the energy firms in March 2011 but the policy was decided by the last Labour Government, the committee confirmed.
“Not only is it unlikely that this new licensing system for bringing electricity from offshore wind farms onto the national grid will deliver any savings for consumers, it could well lead to higher prices,” Mrs Hodge added.
“Indeed the terms of the transmission licences appear to have been designed almost entirely to attract investors at the expense of securing a good deal for consumers.
“Licensees and their investors are provided with a guaranteed income, increasing annually in line with RPI, for 20 years regardless of the extent to which the assets are used.
“Future payments to licensees are estimated at around £17 billion, and this will ultimately be funded by customers who could well end up paying higher electricity prices.”
The Labour MP said DECC and the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority had wanted to create a “competitive market” for offshore transmission, but the first six licences were awarded to just two firms - Transmission Capital Partners and Macquarie.
“In setting up this new market the Department and Authority ignored vital lessons from previous government experience of PFI, such as the need to share refinancing gains, and it is shocking that the Treasury allowed it to proceed,” the Labour MP said.
Christopher Heaton-Harris, the Conservative MP for Daventry, warned that consumers could be left paying for “redundant” wind farm technology because of the deals.
“This is going to be a sizable chunk of money in the future on top of our bills,” Mr Heaton-Harris said.
“There is every chance that in 15 years you could be seeing huge numbers of redundant offshore wind farms that we will still be paying for.”
A DECC spokesman insisted that the contracts had been designed to “drive value for money” for consumers.
“The offshore electricity transmission regime harnesses competitive forces to drive value for money for consumers,” the spokesman said. “Potential licence holders bid against each other on price in the context of the licence terms.
"With six licences now granted, now is the right time to re-examine some of the terms. We therefore welcome Ofgem's current consultation on them.”
The disclosure that consumers’ energy bills could increase came as a poll showed that the majority of MPs do not trust energy companies to offer genuine competition and provide customers with choices so they can choose between suppliers.
The survey of 92 MPs by pollsters Ipsos MORI found that 86 per cent distrust the companies to “provide clear information so customers can choose between suppliers”.
Of the surveyed MPs, just 10 per cent said they believe energy companies will try to offer “genuine competition” in energy supply. 
BR

Posted by Britannia Radio at 20:09