Park Life

Ten years ago it was around $250 an ounce. Fight or flight?

You can trace the negligence and bravado back to the Bush/Cheney deregulation of the industry. Not in power but their slimy trails still fuking us.

Growth in the last few years was artificially boosted by a cheap debt bubble. The Government did not adequately prepare for the possibility of a downturn by not saving for a rainy day in the good times. Public sector/consumer spending have also contributed to this unnatural growth of the economy. The private sector had begun to faulter well before the credit crisis. Huge levels of bad debt started this crisis in the first place None of the above can be disputed. I think the mispricing of risk is the real underlier. Risky investments are fine with a price tag to match, what toppled the debt mountain was the sale of junk as investment-grade products, not to mention crap regulation by Brown et al while trousering phenomenal amounts of corporation tax. Whilst I agree in principle, risky lending was the malaria, packing it up as AAA was the mosquito. And risky lending certainly wasn't an American only disease. The rock being a prime example. You're keeping it quiet but you well know the new financial environment and public scare tactics has been put in place to divert wealth away from people and captial investment toward keep banks and financial institutions afloat. The squeeze is on. Our leaders are treating us like some bad African country in trouble with the IMF. It must really have hurt the banks watching a decade of enlightned social policy in Germany, France and the UK. I'm sure Israel is involved but I haven't worked out how yet. *GSachs* Well you do support Spurs.

Growth in the last few years was artificially boosted by a cheap debt bubble. The Government did not adequately prepare for the possibility of a downturn by not saving for a rainy day in the good times. Public sector/consumer spending have also contributed to this unnatural growth of the economy. The private sector had begun to faulter well before the credit crisis. Huge levels of bad debt started this crisis in the first place None of the above can be disputed. I think the mispricing of risk is the real underlier. Risky investments are fine with a price tag to match, what toppled the debt mountain was the sale of junk as investment-grade products, not to mention crap regulation by Brown et al while trousering phenomenal amounts of corporation tax. Whilst I agree in principle, risky lending was the malaria, packing it up as AAA was the mosquito. And risky lending certainly wasn't an American only disease. The rock being a prime example. You're keeping it quiet but you well know the new financial environment and public scare tactics has been put in place to divert wealth away from people and captial investment toward keep banks and financial institutions afloat. The squeeze is on. Our leaders are treating us like some bad African country in trouble with the IMF. It must really have hurt the banks watching a decade of enlightned social policy in Germany, France and the UK.

"What is missing from this argument? The cost of labor can be lowered by a classical restoration of progressive taxes and a tax shift back onto property – land and rentier income. Instead, the cost of living is to be raised, by shifting the tax burden further onto labor and off real estate and finance. The idea is for the economic surplus to be pledged for debt service."

So why are the people rioting at the G20. Are the banks more important then our elderly. Europe's Fiscal Dystopia: The "New Austerity" Road By Michael Hudson June 27, 2010 "Eurasia Review" - - Europe is committing fiscal suicide – and will have little trouble finding allies at this weekend’s G-20 meetings in Toronto. Despite the deepening Great Recession threatening to bring on outright depression, European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet and prime ministers from Britain’s David Cameron to Greece’s George Papandreou (president of the Socialist International) and Canada’s host, Conservative Premier Stephen Harper, are calling for cutbacks in public spending. The United States is playing an ambiguous role. The Obama Administration is all for slashing Social Security and pensions, euphemized as “balancing the budget.” Wall Street is demanding “realistic” write-downs of state and local pensions in keeping with the “ability to pay” (that is, to pay without taxing real estate, finance or the upper income brackets). These local pensions have been left unfunded so that communities can cut real estate taxes, enabling site-rental values to be pledged to the banks of interest. Without a debt write-down (by mortgage bankers or bondholders), there is no way that any mathematical model can come up with a means of paying these pensions. To enable workers to live “freely” after their working days are over would require either (1) that bondholders not be paid (“unthinkable”) or (2) that property taxes be raised, forcing even more homes into negative equity and leading to even more walkaways and bank losses on their junk mortgages. Given the fact that the banks are writing national economic policy these days, it doesn’t look good for people expecting a leisure society to materialize any time soon. The problem for U.S. officials is that Europe’s sudden passion for slashing public pensions and other social spending will shrink European economies, slowing U.S. export growth. U.S. officials are urging Europe not to wage its fiscal war against labor quite yet. Best to coordinate with the United States after a modicum of recovery. Saturday and Sunday will see the six-month mark in a carefully orchestrated financial war against the “real” economy. The buildup began here in the United States. On February 18, President Obama stacked his White House Deficit Commission (formally the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) with the same brand of neoliberal ideologues who comprised the notorious 1982 Greenspan Commission on Social Security “reform.” The pro-financial, anti-labor and anti-government restructurings since 1980 have given the word “reform” a bad name. The commission is headed by former Republican Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson (who explained derisively that Social Security is for the “lesser people”) and Clinton neoliberal Erskine Bowles, who led the fight for the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Also on the committee are bluedog Democrat Max Baucus of Montana (the pro-Wall Street Finance Committee chairman). The result is an Obama anti-change dream: bipartisan advocacy for balanced budgets, which means in practice to stop running budget deficits – the deficits that Keynes explained were necessary to fuel economic recovery by providing liquidity and purchasing power. A balanced budget in an economic downturn means shrinkage for the private sector. Coming as the Western economies move into a debt deflation, the policy means shrinking markets for goods and services – all to support banking claims on the “real” economy. The exercise in managing public perceptions to imagine that all this is a good thing was escalated in April with the manufactured Greek crisis. Newspapers throughout the world breathlessly discovered that Greece was not taxing the wealthy classes. They joined in a chorus to demand that workers be taxed more to make up for the tax shift off wealth. It was their version of the Obama Plan (that is, old-time Rubinomics). On June 3, the World Bank reiterated the New Austerity doctrine, as if it were a new discovery: The way to prosperity is via austerity. “Rich counties can help developing economies grow faster by rapidly cutting government spending or raising taxes.” The New Fiscal Conservatism aims to corral all countries to scale back social spending in order to “stabilize” economies by a balanced budget. This is to be achieved by impoverishing labor, slashing wages, reducing social spending and rolling back the clock to the good old class war as it flourished before the Progressive Era. The rationale is the discredited “crowding out” theory: Budget deficits mean more borrowing, which bids up interest rates. Lower interest rates are supposed to help countries – or would, if borrowing was for productive capital formation. But this is not how financial markets operate in today’s world. Lower interest rates simply make it cheaper and easier for corporate raiders or speculators to capitalize a given flow of earnings at a higher multiple, loading the economy down with even more debt! Alan Greenspan parroted the World Bank announcement almost word for word in a June 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed. Running deficits is supposed to increase interest rates. It looks like the stage is being set for a big interest-rate jump – and corresponding stock and bond market crash as the “suckers’ rally” comes to an abrupt end in months to come. The idea is to create an artificial financial crisis, to come in and “save” it by imposing on Europe and North America a “Greek-style” cutbacks in social security and pensions. For the United States, state and local pensions in particular are to be cut back by “emergency” measures to “free” government budgets. All this is an inversion of the social philosophy that most voters hold. This is the political problem inherent in the neoliberal worldview. It is diametrically opposed to the original liberalism of Adam Smith and his successors. The idea of a free market in the 19th century was one free from predatory rentier financial and property claims. Today, an Ayn-Rand-style “free market” is a market free for predators. The world is being treated to a travesty of liberalism and free markets. This shows the usual ignorance of how interest rates are really set – a blind spot which is a precondition for being approved for the post of central banker these days. Ignored is the fact that central banks determine interest rates by creating credit. Under the ECB rules, central banks cannot do this. Yet that is precisely what central banks were created to do. European governments are obliged to borrow from commercial banks. This financial stranglehold threatens either to break up Europe or to plunge it into the same kind of poverty that the EU is imposing on the Baltics. Latvia is the prime example. Despite a plunge of over 20 per cent in its GDP, its central bankers are running a budget surplus, in the hope of lowering wage rates. Public-sector wages have been driven down by over 30 per cent, and the government expresses the hope for yet further cuts – spreading to the private sector. Spending on hospitals, ambulance care and schooling has been drastically cut back. What is missing from this argument? The cost of labor can be lowered by a classical restoration of progressive taxes and a tax shift back onto property – land and rentier income. Instead, the cost of living is to be raised, by shifting the tax burden further onto labor and off real estate and finance. The idea is for the economic surplus to be pledged for debt service. In England, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has described a “euro mutiny” against regressive fiscal policy. But it is more than that. Beyond merely shrinking the economy, the neoliberal aim is to change the shape of the trajectory along which Western civilization has been moving for the past two centuries. It is nothing less than to roll back Social Security and pensions for labor, health care, education and other public spending, to dismantle the social welfare state, the Progressive Era and even classical liberalism. So we are witnessing a policy long in the planning, now being unleashed in a full-court press. The rentier interests, the vested interests that a century of Progressive Era, New Deal and kindred reforms sought to subordinate to the economy at large, are fighting back. And they are in control, with their own representatives in power – ironically, as Social Democrats and Labor party leaders, from President Obama here to President Papandreou in Greece and President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in Spain. Having bided their time for the past few years the global predatory class is now making its move to “free” economies from the social philosophy long thought to have been irreversibly built into the economic system: Social Security and old-age pensions so that labor didn’t have to be paid higher wages to save for its own retirement; public education and health care to raise labor productivity; basic infrastructure spending to lower the costs of doing business; anti-monopoly price regulation to prevent prices from rising above the necessary costs of production; and central banking to stabilize economies by monetizing government deficits rather than forcing the economy to rely on commercial bank credit under conditions where property and income are collateralized to pay the interest-bearing debts, culminating in forfeitures as the logical culmination of the Miracle of Compound Interest. This is the Junk Economics that financial lobbyists are trying to sell to voters: “Prosperity requires austerity.” “An independent central bank is the hallmark of democracy.” “Governments are just like families: they have to balance the budget.” “It is all the result of aging populations, not debt overload.” These are the oxymorons to which the world will be treated during the coming week in Toronto. It is the rhetoric of fiscal and financial class war. The problem is that there is not enough economic surplus available to pay the financial sector on its bad loans while also paying pensions and social security. Something has to give. The commission is to provide a cover story for a revived Rubinomics, this time aimed not at the former Soviet Union but here at home. Its aim is to scale back Social Security while reviving George Bush’s aborted privatization plan to send FICA paycheck withholding into the stock market – that is, into the hands of money managers to stick into an array of junk financial packages designed to skim off labor’s savings. So Obama is hypocritical in warning Europe not to go too far too fast to shrink its economy and squeeze out a rising army of the unemployed. His idea at home is to do the same thing. The strategy is to panic voters about the federal debt – panic them enough to oppose spending on the social programs designed to help them. The fiscal crisis is being blamed on demographic mathematics of an aging population – not on the exponentially soaring debt overhead, junk loans and massive financial fraud that the government is bailing out. What really is causing the financial and fiscal squeeze, of course, is the fact that that government funding is now needed to compensate the financial sector for what promises to be year after year of losses as loans go bad in economies that are all loaned up and sinking into negative equity. When politicians let the financial sector run the show, their natural preference is to turn the economy into a grab bag. And they usually come out ahead. That’s what the words “foreclosure,” “forfeiture” and “liquidate” mean – along with “sound money,” “business confidence” and the usual consequences, “debt deflation” and “debt peonage.” Somebody must take a loss on the economy’s bad loans – and bankers want the economy to take the loss, to “save the financial system.” From the financial sector’s vantage point, the economy is to be managed to preserve bank liquidity, rather than the financial system run to serve the economy. Government social spending (on everything apart from bank bailouts and financial subsidies), disposable personal income are to be cut back to keep the debt overhead from being written down. Corporate cash flow is to be used to pay creditors, not employ more labor and make long-term capital investment. The economy is to be sacrificed to subsidize the fantasy that debts can be paid, if only banks can be “made whole” to begin lending again – that is, to resume loading the economy down with even more debt, causing yet more intrusive debt deflation. This is not the familiar old 19th-century class war of industrial employers against labor, although that is part of what is happening. It is above all a war of the financial sector against the “real” economy: industry as well as labor. The underlying reality is indeed that pensions cannot be paid – at least, not paid out of financial gains. For the past fifty years the Western economies have indulged the fantasy of paying retirees out of purely financial gains (M-M’ as Marxists would put it), not out of an expanding economy (M-C-M’, employing labor to produce more output). The myth was that finance would take the form of productive loans to increase capital formation and hiring. The reality is that finance takes the form of debt – and gambling. Its gains were therefore made from the economy at large. They were extractive, not productive. Wealth at the rentier top of the economic pyramid shrank the base below. So something has to give. The question is, what form will the “give” take? And who will do the giving – and be the recipients? The Greek government has been unwilling to tax the rich. So labor must make up the fiscal gap, by permitting its socialist government to cut back pensions, health care, education and other social spending – all to bail out the financial sector from an exponential growth that is impossible to realize in practice. The economy is being sacrificed to an impossible dream. Yet instead of blaming the problem on the exponential growth in bank claims that cannot be paid, bank lobbyists – and the G-20 politicians dependent on their campaign funding – are promoting the myth that the problem is demographic: an aging population expecting Social Security and employer pensions. Instead of paying these, governments are being told to use their taxing and credit-creating power to bail out the financial sector’s claims for payment. Latvia has been held out as the poster child for what the EU is recommending for Greece and the other southern EU countries in trouble: Slashing public spending on education and health has reduced public-sector wages by 30 per cent, and they are still falling. Property prices have fallen by 70 percent – and homeowners and their extended family of co-signers are liable for the negative equity, plunging them into a life of debt peonage if they do not take the hint and emigrate. The bizarre pretense for government budget cutbacks in the face of a post-bubble economic downturn is that the supposed aim is to rebuild “confidence.” It is as if fiscal self-destruction can instill confidence rather than prompting investors to flee the euro. The logic seems to be the familiar old class war, rolling back the clock to the hard-line tax philosophy of a bygone era – rolling back Social Security and public pensions, rolling back public spending on education and other basic needs, and above all, increasing unemployment to drive down wage levels. This was made explicit by Latvia’s central bank – which EU central bankers hold up as a “model” of economic shrinkage for other countries to follow. It is a self-destructive logic. Exacerbating the economic downturn will reduce tax revenues, making budget deficits even worse in a declining spiral. Latvia’s experience shows that the response to economic shrinkage is emigration of skilled labor and capital flight. Europe’s policy of planned economic shrinkage in fact controverts the prime assumption of political and economic textbooks: the axiom that voters act in their self-interest, and that economies choose to grow, not to destroy themselves. Today, European democracies – and even the Social Democratic, Socialist and labour Parties – are running for office on a fiscal and financial policy platform that opposes the interests of most voters, and even industry. The explanation, of course, is that today’s economic planning is not being done by elected representatives. Planning authority has been relinquished to the hands of “independent” central banks, which in turn act as the lobbyists for commercial banks selling their product – debt. From the central bank’s vantage point, the “economic problem” is how to keep commercial banks and other financial institutions solvent in a post-bubble economy. How can they get paid for debts that are beyond the ability of many people to pay, in an environment of rising defaults? The answer is that creditors can get paid only at the economy’s expense. The remaining economic surplus must go to them, not to capital investment, employment or social spending. This is the problem with the financial view. It is short-term – and predatory. Given a choice between operating the banks to promote the economy, or running the economy to benefit the banks, bankers always will choose the latter alternative. And so will the politicians they support. Governments need huge sums to bail out the banks from their bad loans. But they cannot borrow more, because of the debt squeeze. So the bad-debt loss must be passed onto labor and industry. The cover story is that government bailouts will permit the banks to start lending again, to reflate the Bubble Economy’s Ponzi-borrowing. But there is already too much negative equity and there is no leeway left to restart the bubble. Economies are all “loaned up.” Real estate rents, corporate cash flow and public taxing power cannot support further borrowing – no matter how wealth the government gives to banks. Asset prices have plunged into negative equity territory. Debt deflation is shrinking markets, corporate profits and cash flow. The Miracle of Compound Interest dynamic has culminated in defaults, reflecting the inability of debtors to sustain the exponential rise in carrying charges that “financial solvency” requires. If the financial sector can be rescued only by cutting back social spending on Social Security, health care and education, bolstered by more privatization sell-offs, is it worth the price? To sacrifice the economy in this way would violate most peoples’ social values of equity and fairness rooted deep in Enlightenment philosophy. That is the political problem: How can bankers persuade voters to approve this under a democratic system? It is necessary to orchestrate and manage their perceptions. Their poverty must be portrayed as desirable – as a step toward future prosperity. A half-century of failed IMF austerity plans imposed on hapless Third World debtors should have dispelled forever the idea that the way to prosperity is via austerity. The ground has been paved for this attitude by a generation of purging the academic curriculum of knowledge that there ever was an alternative economic philosophy to that sponsored by the rentier Counter-Enlightenment. Classical value and price theory reflected John Locke’s labor theory of property: A person’s wealth should be what he or she creates with their own labor and enterprise, not by insider dealing or special privilege. This is why I say that Europe is dying. If its trajectory is not changed, the EU must succumb to a financial coup d’êtat rolling back the past three centuries of Enlightenment social philosophy. The question is whether a break-up is now the only way to recover its social democratic ideals from the banks that have taken over its central planning organs. Michael Hudson Prof. Hudson is Chief Economic Advisor to the Reform Task Force Latvia (RTFL). Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971). For more of his writing check out his website: http://michael-hudson.com.

Bonus tax, deferred awards, Basel 3 etc is pointless until there is some fundamental thinking about how countries want the financial system to work. As it is, we're just tinkering around the edges. I totally agree. I have also been predicting on here and the other place that the war against the banks is the most crucial one and states will go to war with banks. And banks don't have armies or regulatory powers so there will only be one winner. Capital might be fluid but your little banking shop on the high streer isn't. Thus far Govt has lacked the balls to have a proper go, but it will happen.

It's basically that but 100x worse. "The explanation, of course, is that today’s economic planning is not being done by elected representatives. Planning authority has been relinquished to the hands of “independent” central banks, which in turn act as the lobbyists for commercial banks selling their product – debt. From the central bank’s vantage point, the “economic problem” is how to keep commercial banks and other financial institutions solvent in a post-bubble economy. How can they get paid for debts that are beyond the ability of many people to pay, in an environment of rising defaults? The answer is that creditors can get paid only at the economy’s expense. The remaining economic surplus must go to them, not to capital investment, employment or social spending."

And as has been said a few times, started the ball rolling with the investment/retail separation abolition. The thorn in the side of the Western economy as a whole is a crazy irresponsible short-termist banking and financial sector. Untill Govt as a whole sit down to tackle this, we will be back here again in a decade or less. Gambling and market manipulation is one thing if you actually own the assest but doing so with fictious paper wealth is a whole other matter. And who decides the value of credit swaps, futures, shorting and ahead of market running investment strategies (actually done by computers mostly now)...Yes the banks themselves. The banks have also been at the core of shirking their responsibility of providing capital for top down growth. Govt should start by laying out a new banking charter which should be overseen independantly as to what banks ought to be doing in countries where they are based. Squeezing and then flooding capital flow as and when they like is not what should be allowed. The question is are banks as they are counter productive to progressive post enlightened democracies? I personally would like to see the state funding small business with small interest rates if banks aren't going to take up the slack and I'd also like to see the state taking back financial mechanisms from the Bank of England.

bit harsh on those who cant work because of say, disability Parky! I obviously retract that with regard to genuine handicap. Apologies.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-stag...ories-honeymoon Who'd have thought, Goldman Sach's pushing governments to tighten spending as drastically as possible, not to ensure social welfare, but for purely political reasons. This whole thing is bollocks our state borrowing is in line with or lower than our EU counterparts and as such will never really be an issue beyond some of the sensible tightning that IMO needs to happen (as all the EU are doing). Govt are citicised via the media for public spending the public catch on in their idiocy with scant facts and have a go at the Govt...Another Govt increases spending the media fan the flames and the sheep are again guided to vote and complain...It's a never ending cycle with no winners and continuing flip flop policy changes every few years. We need a constitution with a protected raft of policy that ALL GOVT when in power should persue and be judged on. Till we get that it will continue to be a game between the markets and national needs that plays out wastefully over and over again. Countries need to protect the things they have built up in the public sector from the profit motive of the private sector and there shouldn't be any shame or blame in this. On the other hand wealth creators should also be given help and policy change where needed as they are the cash cows. But untill there is Eu wide agreement on this, the confusion continues.

Not really I just don't have time to pick through Matts point. Which really isn't a point, more of a rant based on the idea that the Tories have ignored all sound economic advise to put into place a nefarious plan to dismantle this countries public sector at the detriment of the country as a whole....which is of course as ridiculous as it sounds. Like it or not a downgrade would have been a disaster because: A. The countries exchange rate would have been smashed meaning we would have had to pay back much more on our EUR and USD denominated debt B. The rate we borrow at would make interest cost a real burden on future spending Who cares if you can get a bond out if you are paying a 1000+bp spread on it? Of course the accumulated minds of Toontastic have got it right and the government working on the advice of some of the countries finest economists have it all wrong. Clearly a conspiracy against the north *scousetastic* Tories have not ignored sound economic advice, they have acted on one facet of it. You can't claim all the world's top economists say one thing because clearly there is massive division amongst economists themselves. There have been plenty of voices warning not to cut too deep too soon, but you have chosen to ignore the existence of these voices. I assume they received their qualifications after replying to an ad in the back of Razzle and therefore do not meet your standards. Only time will tell whether the course of action is the right one. I don't argue that government was bloated, that those in power were as smarmy and arrogant as the horrible bunch under Major in 1992, that considerable savings can be made across the board and that the UK needs considerable deficit reduction. Labour would have had to accept a retrenchment of state boundaries as part of a natural shift in political and economic reality, just as Cameron had to paint himself as a 'moderate conservative'. I simply don't agree that we should be swinging the axe left right and centre so quickly. The government have decided to act while still in the honeymoon period because it will prove less politically damaging first and foremost. I don't agree with the severity of what they are doing but it is their right as the government to act in this way. However I feel they are being duplicitous and making cuts beyond the levels truly necessary in order to satiate the small state zeal of many party members under the guise of unavoidable budgetary repair. The govt misleading the country is nothing new (the last lot did plenty of it) but I don't think that's any excuse just to accept it at face value. Going to AA would not end the nation, but it is a very serious event and we should be taking all reasonable measures to avoid it. However it should not be used as the ultimate trump card for every government intervention. Investors look at fundamentals as well as the label and will have priced the risks in accordgly already. However you must also recognise that economic growth prospects are as central to the ratings assigned to the UK as deficit repair. If we cut too far and growth is halted, we'll lose on both counts. I wasn't aware that the UK had significant issue in anything other than sterling, but would love to see the composition. And now onto a rant. What annoys me is so much of the country now thinks its OK that we can just slashing at education. It's the one thing that I personally believe should not be messed with. It is more important than any other function of the state. Education is pivotal to economic growth. I reject that it must suffer as everyone else should. BSF was not perfect and it may have been laden with red tape (what large financings, state or private are straightforward?) but the process was improving and ultimately, it delivered new schools which can teach the right skills in a modern environment. This government has accepted that teaching kids in blocks of shoddy prefabs is OK. It's not. Nor is this a northern issue- BSF has already benefited many inner-city Labour heartlands. It is hitting Tory regions and has quite rightly provoked a response from MPs in that area. Now we are likely to see the effective privatisation of university education via an arms-length funding vehicle charging commercial rates. I'm not fussed that the Food Standards Agency has closed. I am more concerned that cameron has barely made a dint on Brown's sizable arseprint in the No 10 hotseat and already we're seeing education under fire and seemingly, a lot of people think that it is OK and hark back to 'their day' when their school was a bit ramshackle and it didn't do them any harm. Well if we want to teach 20-th century skills we'll have a 20th century economy. Good post, good rant Didn't see that. Good post.

What you on about? A single BBC reporter has taken a load of the blame for the entire financial collapse for his reporting on the shit-storm that was coming. The finacial press were talking about the bubble crash back in 2006. Keep up. Parky, keep up.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7914421.stm Good on him. BBC rebukes its Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen for anti-Israel comments By Paul Revoir Last updated at 12:37 AM on 16th April 2009 The BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen faced calls to quit tonight after he was criticised for breaching the broadcaster's rules on accuracy and impartiality in two reports about the Arab-Israeli conflict. An inquiry found that a reference to 'Zionism's innate instinct to push out the frontier' in an article for the BBC's website breached guidelines. In addition, a suggestion that Israel was 'in defiance of everyone's interpretation of international law except its own' was said to have been 'imprecise'. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11...l#ixzz0tkgldJFb

Agreed. NOt sure how we got into the BBC.

Not really I just don't have time to pick through Matts point. Which really isn't a point, more of a rant based on the idea that the Tories have ignored all sound economic advise to put into place a nefarious plan to dismantle this countries public sector at the detriment of the country as a whole....which is of course as ridiculous as it sounds. Like it or not a downgrade would have been a disaster because: A. The countries exchange rate would have been smashed meaning we would have had to pay back much more on our EUR and USD denominated debt B. The rate we borrow at would make interest cost a real burden on future spending Who cares if you can get a bond out if you are paying a 1000+bp spread on it? Of course the accumulated minds of Toontastic have got it right and the government working on the advice of some of the countries finest economists have it all wrong. Clearly a conspiracy against the north *scousetastic* Tories have not ignored sound economic advice, they have acted on one facet of it. You can't claim all the world's top economists say one thing because clearly there is massive division amongst economists themselves. There have been plenty of voices warning not to cut too deep too soon, but you have chosen to ignore the existence of these voices. I assume they received their qualifications after replying to an ad in the back of Razzle and therefore do not meet your standards. Only time will tell whether the course of action is the right one. I don't argue that government was bloated, that those in power were as smarmy and arrogant as the horrible bunch under Major in 1992, that considerable savings can be made across the board and that the UK needs considerable deficit reduction. Labour would have had to accept a retrenchment of state boundaries as part of a natural shift in political and economic reality, just as Cameron had to paint himself as a 'moderate conservative'. I simply don't agree that we should be swinging the axe left right and centre so quickly. The government have decided to act while still in the honeymoon period because it will prove less politically damaging first and foremost. I don't agree with the severity of what they are doing but it is their right as the government to act in this way. However I feel they are being duplicitous and making cuts beyond the levels truly necessary in order to satiate the small state zeal of many party members under the guise of unavoidable budgetary repair. The govt misleading the country is nothing new (the last lot did plenty of it) but I don't think that's any excuse just to accept it at face value. Going to AA would not end the nation, but it is a very serious event and we should be taking all reasonable measures to avoid it. However it should not be used as the ultimate trump card for every government intervention. Investors look at fundamentals as well as the label and will have priced the risks in accordgly already. However you must also recognise that economic growth prospects are as central to the ratings assigned to the UK as deficit repair. If we cut too far and growth is halted, we'll lose on both counts. I wasn't aware that the UK had significant issue in anything other than sterling, but would love to see the composition. And now onto a rant. What annoys me is so much of the country now thinks its OK that we can just slashing at education. It's the one thing that I personally believe should not be messed with. It is more important than any other function of the state. Education is pivotal to economic growth. I reject that it must suffer as everyone else should. BSF was not perfect and it may have been laden with red tape (what large financings, state or private are straightforward?) but the process was improving and ultimately, it delivered new schools which can teach the right skills in a modern environment. This government has accepted that teaching kids in blocks of shoddy prefabs is OK. It's not. Nor is this a northern issue- BSF has already benefited many inner-city Labour heartlands. It is hitting Tory regions and has quite rightly provoked a response from MPs in that area. Now we are likely to see the effective privatisation of university education via an arms-length funding vehicle charging commercial rates. I'm not fussed that the Food Standards Agency has closed. I am more concerned that cameron has barely made a dint on Brown's sizable arseprint in the No 10 hotseat and already we're seeing education under fire and seemingly, a lot of people think that it is OK and hark back to 'their day' when their school was a bit ramshackle and it didn't do them any harm. Well if we want to teach 20-th century skills we'll have a 20th century economy. BSF and the PFI are part of the reason this country will be debt laden for most of our lives, cleared in 2015 my cock. Idiots don't realise, they'll do a £575m PFI job in Scotland, there's one at the Southern General in Glasgow at the minute, the main contractor Multiplex (Aussie wanks) will put the funds up, and we as a nation will end up paying 5 times (or more) the initial £575m. People don't realise this, labour aren't they good investing in our services, yes at the cost of almost bankrupting the country. Fucking idiots. ...but having secured directorships when they leave the House.

What you on about? A single BBC reporter has taken a load of the blame for the entire financial collapse for his reporting on the shit-storm that was coming. The finacial press were talking about the bubble crash back in 2006. Keep up.

Setting aside the ranting grandad parts of that post, I'd have to say that Peston, for example, has been right on the button about a lot of aspects of the financial crisis. And they've given him plenty of leeway to do so. But then I seem to recall the "funding" issue being something of a red herring when it comes to Hamburg-based people anyway. As for the "evil empire" shebang, if the BBC took an aggressively and virulently anti-Murdoch stance, they'd be destroyed within months. So be it. Not sure what your point is...Igonore the evil empire and it will go away?

Is it though? If the BBC was fully commercialised wouldn't it be a major competitor to Channel 4, ITV, and Sky? There's only a certain amount of revenue to be had from advertising, it'd be another mouth to feed. I've always thought Murdoch's attitude towards it was irrational and bitter. I do fear for the BBC under this government. Parky calls it a Sacred Cow and that's about right as far as I am concerned. Without the BBC I'd pretty much not watch any TV or listen to the radio at all. Don't mnd scrapping BBC 3 though (but keep BBC 4). Well I think one of the major factors would be that in the beeb you have probably the best free website in the world and most media outlets would love to see that end. We shuld really be looking at the dovetailing of media empires and the ruling hegemony (big business) and legislation should be tailored to addressing corporate ownership of the mass media and the reality altering light it shines on the clueless. That is the real debate. That used to be the BBc's job a job it has completely failed in wiht upping the understanding of the masses...

The war is against the banking cartels, when the BBC starts informing the layman about the hi jinks and fraud of the banking and financial sector and the daily rape of all across Eruope by the ruling elite, like it used to (It was a shining light in the thatcher era for criticising Govt policy) I would have no qualm about funding it. But now it has become a poodle of the state with hi execs getting paid hundereds of thousands it serves us THE PEOPLE no benefit. I really have no stomach left for twee farm fables or another Pinter retrospective. Fuck it.

Why watch telly anyway? Get rid. Aye, because the BBC is just a television station. And even if it was, ten minutes tuned into BBC FOUR of an evening would quickly put things into perspective compared with the utter dross served up by every other channel. I'm happy to pay my licence fee for that, never mind the radio, web and other benefits they provide. But hey, it's easy and fashionable to bash the Beeb, so let's all stick the boot in and end up like Germany where fucking RTL II reflects the mood of the nation. I love the BBC. But it seems people have sacred cows. Is it right that presenters and other at the BBC earn hundereds of thousands a year? Well is it? No. And it is basically a state organ as its coverage of Gaza and for instance the miners strike and the fiancial crisis proves. Misinformation from the ministiry of information. If it is going to just spread lies for the state, let the state pay for it. They can shove their fucking community radio up their collective arses.

Not sure what's wrong with cutting from both sides of the cheese? I'm a free thinker and a healer. The planet is safe.

how much are rental values in london Meenz? How long is a piece of string? It varies from street to street here, never mind neighbourhood to neighbourhood or borough to borough... Gardens and frontage...Don't forget that.

Why watch telly anyway? Get rid.