Steering clear of murky economic waters...
...on a blog which rarely stays mute on the subject of politics, has been a pair of mixed metaphors waiting for a cliché to happen. Because it's an election year in the States, financial turmoil has inevitably become a cursed opportunity for the respective protagonists to engage in a pissing contest of condemnation and reassurance; charting the claims, counter-claims, alternative fixes, and near-instantaneous (and frequently partisan) analyses of the desperate gestures - performed like emergency keyhole surgery on a freshly-transfused patient - would be folly. Current circumstances may well benefit from those endlessly Twittered updates, posted amidst a jabbering cacophony of opinionated 'OMIGODness'-style news clips and soundbites, but I've left that sort of breathless nonsense to those who seem to thrive upon its intrinsic (and frequently manufactured) drama.
Similarly, whilst I've no desire to belittle bloggers-who-aren't-really-bloggers (that's LiveJournal in the main for you), or the rent-a-quote mob who rely upon personal anecdotes and "connections" to the eyes of real hurricanes for their little slipshod attempts to encapsulate the Wall Street or London Docklands zeitgeist "as it happens" (to them, or those close to 'em), I've had the complete arseache with those more heavyweight commentators whose missives regularly haunt my Inboxes. This week especially. (Sorry, chaps and chapesses, but I'm glad you're calming down a bit now.)
Robert Peston (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/) may be good at breaking economic news stories - the reluctant and half-arsed UK government takeover of Northern Rock last year, and the Lloyds TSB "merger" with HBoS yesterday - but his mantra-like expressions of finality and closure have caused many of my economist and historian pals to hold their heads and weep, as the popular press and media suck it all up without question or recourse to relevant documentation. If Peston says Gordon Brown had no choice but to nod earnestly and look grateful as a High Street bank sought to become an economic superpower in Britain, then we should all be grateful, right?
Wrong.
HBoS wasn't some two-bit minnow primed for asset-stripping, with workers ready and waiting for a Lloyds re-training scheme to save 'em from the ever-growing British unemployment queues. Take a look at any major thoroughfare in Scotland or the North East for proof. (I would say "throw a brick and you'll hit a window of one of their branches", but there'll be plenty of disgruntled counter staff doing exactly that in the next six months.) And if you've got a mortgage with HBoS, rather than Lloyds, the reason why will eventually come to haunt you, as a big black horse pulls up outside your home on its repossession route through your neighbourhood. Howard - below - was an iconic pussy compared to these guys...
(Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEVjbosMqFM)
Some of tomorrow's newspapers will dare to question the legality of the Prime Minister seeking to brush aside legislation put in place precisely to prevent a wholesale takeover like this, and other banks are already scratching their heads at a Labour government's apparent disdain for Parliamentary process. They're not alone:
http://www.economonkey.com/2008/09/18/rulebook-torn-up-for-lloyds-tsbhbos-merger/
With the grumbling about Brown's leadership unlikely to fade as the party lurches into its annual conference tomorrow, the architect of a decade's economic short-term mismanagement will point to the rest of the world and shrug, as he always does, and in doing so he may miss the knife sliding between his shoulder blades. I'm putting this entry to bed, sans edits*, with two Cabinet members still poised to challenge him directly, but I want to leave you with another friend's perspective on the current global economic situation. He's far less parochial than I, and carries much better links...
http://trailer-spot.livejournal.com/189563.html
G'night.
*Yeah, right. ;o)
Similarly, whilst I've no desire to belittle bloggers-who-aren't-really-bloggers (that's LiveJournal in the main for you), or the rent-a-quote mob who rely upon personal anecdotes and "connections" to the eyes of real hurricanes for their little slipshod attempts to encapsulate the Wall Street or London Docklands zeitgeist "as it happens" (to them, or those close to 'em), I've had the complete arseache with those more heavyweight commentators whose missives regularly haunt my Inboxes. This week especially. (Sorry, chaps and chapesses, but I'm glad you're calming down a bit now.)
Robert Peston (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/) may be good at breaking economic news stories - the reluctant and half-arsed UK government takeover of Northern Rock last year, and the Lloyds TSB "merger" with HBoS yesterday - but his mantra-like expressions of finality and closure have caused many of my economist and historian pals to hold their heads and weep, as the popular press and media suck it all up without question or recourse to relevant documentation. If Peston says Gordon Brown had no choice but to nod earnestly and look grateful as a High Street bank sought to become an economic superpower in Britain, then we should all be grateful, right?
Wrong.
HBoS wasn't some two-bit minnow primed for asset-stripping, with workers ready and waiting for a Lloyds re-training scheme to save 'em from the ever-growing British unemployment queues. Take a look at any major thoroughfare in Scotland or the North East for proof. (I would say "throw a brick and you'll hit a window of one of their branches", but there'll be plenty of disgruntled counter staff doing exactly that in the next six months.) And if you've got a mortgage with HBoS, rather than Lloyds, the reason why will eventually come to haunt you, as a big black horse pulls up outside your home on its repossession route through your neighbourhood. Howard - below - was an iconic pussy compared to these guys...
Click to view(Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEVjbosMqFM)
Some of tomorrow's newspapers will dare to question the legality of the Prime Minister seeking to brush aside legislation put in place precisely to prevent a wholesale takeover like this, and other banks are already scratching their heads at a Labour government's apparent disdain for Parliamentary process. They're not alone:
http://www.economonkey.com/2008/09/18/rulebook-torn-up-for-lloyds-tsbhbos-merger/
With the grumbling about Brown's leadership unlikely to fade as the party lurches into its annual conference tomorrow, the architect of a decade's economic short-term mismanagement will point to the rest of the world and shrug, as he always does, and in doing so he may miss the knife sliding between his shoulder blades. I'm putting this entry to bed, sans edits*, with two Cabinet members still poised to challenge him directly, but I want to leave you with another friend's perspective on the current global economic situation. He's far less parochial than I, and carries much better links...
http://trailer-spot.livejournal.com/189563.html
G'night.
*Yeah, right. ;o)