We’ve been a bit busy in the pub cellar sorting out all the beer barrels so please talk amongst yourselves for a while. Normal service will be resumed soon. Talk about the weather, politics, sex, religion, state of the economy, or whatever comes to mind.

Photo by mezzoblue

1
GildasTheMonk
September 23, 2011 at 08:50

I don’t know about everyone else but here at the Abbey it’s been relentless monking and admin. We also have the cider and mead to make. Plus Sister Eva has put me on an ever more vigorous exercise regime.
While all this is going on, the world economy seems to be going to hell in a handcart and I really am quite scared it’s going to go into melt down. What are the causes? What is to be done?

2
Michael
September 23, 2011 at 12:46

Fear not! Brother Gildas. When all that is built on unsteady foundations is shaken away, what will remain will be the unshakeable, the pure, the good and the true.

3
GildasTheMonk
September 23, 2011 at 15:05

I am thinking it might be better if we embraced the chaos, everyone went bust, and then we started again. I am not entirely sure whether I am joking or not!

4
John Pickworth
September 23, 2011 at 16:28

I sincerely hope you’re not joking… that’s probably the only certain way to sort out the mess. It may even be inevitable.

If not, I foresee years upon years of fudging the numbers and tinkering with the economy much like Japan has done for the past 15 odd years.

5
Cascadian
September 23, 2011 at 21:18

“I foresee years upon years of fudging the numbers and tinkering with the economy”………Errrrrr, you just described UK since 1945.

Gildas will be OK, monks do not have to rely on a government ponzi pensions and they have some institutional experience of surviving the dark ages.

As far as trying to understand the situation Gildas, I would recommend this series of lectures on banking from the Khan Academy, admittedly based on the US federal reserve banks but applicable to most countries economies. Or if you are pushed for time, I will summarize-the central banks make it up as they go along, money is created from thin air as required, and the system is based on the major banks acting prudently to avoid a run on the assets. The taxpayers always pay for stupid bankers-be very concerned.

I present the Khan Academy

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/banking-1?playlist=Banking+and+Money

Also excellent for improving your math and other subject skills, introduce your grandchildren to Khan if their parents cannot afford private tuition. Declaration-I have no financial interest in Khan, it is just a very good use (maybe the best) of the internet.

6
Engineer
September 23, 2011 at 13:31

Never mind, Gildas! At least we know that with all the Global Warming we’ve been promised, we’ll not freeze while we’re living in penuary. We’ll be like Greece, but with marbles.

7
Richard Jones
September 23, 2011 at 16:13

Can’t we sell Greece the Marbles for I don’t know £10billion, so we can pay off our structural deficit, I am sure they have some money they borrowed from the EU spare? Isn’t that the way the world is working at the moment?

8
Clarissa
September 23, 2011 at 16:53

Sadly £10Bn is less than 10% of our budget deficit and a drop in the ocean of our structural debt.

9
Elena ‘andcart
September 23, 2011 at 17:04

Elena ‘andcart is fine, thank you very much. There are worse places to go, like the once Great Britain. But that all ended much sooner than most people think. About 1945 if I remember correctly.

10
Rex
September 23, 2011 at 09:34

Are Blair and Cameron related?

Cousins perhaps?

11
Daz Pearce
September 23, 2011 at 12:19

Frankenstein’s second monster, perhaps?

Bloody classical literature and the ideas it plants in people’s heads – ban it for the sake of the children!!

12
Rex
September 23, 2011 at 14:00

I was thinking more along the lines of wars…
then basking in the glory…..
then advocating even more wars…….

Do (did) these people really want to run the country or bask in adulation??

13
Clarissa
September 23, 2011 at 16:55

Nothing so indirect. Father and Son I’d say.

14
Carly
September 25, 2011 at 20:42

Camerons come from Lochaber, Davy Boy’s grandfather lived to the west of Inverness. He is more Scottish than Brown and Blair put together.

Blair is a lowland name which means came to mean Battle Ground.

15
Dave H
September 23, 2011 at 17:23

The man in the picture looks like he’s taking a leak into the lager barrel.

16
Engineer
September 24, 2011 at 20:18

I knew there was a reason why I prefer cask ales.

17
Matt Wardman
September 23, 2011 at 17:40

I’ve been dealing with Gerunds and Gerundives, aka “a loft requiring to be insulated”.

Caption competition arriving in 10 minutes.

18
2Mac
September 24, 2011 at 10:48

Economic Crisis Summary.

A not long time ago in a galaxy far away a lot of really rich kids with no common sense nor life experience were allowed to work at their daddies banks, stock brokerage, pension & investment funds. The group as collectively known as the “The Shitty of London”

At the same time a group of triad unionists shop stewards, charity workers, professional students & political researchers formed a dysfunctional government called “ZaNu Labour”

Now the story goes that neither ZaNu Labour nor the “Shitty of London” kids understood what they were doing. So in good socialist fashion they gave the job of regulating the Shitty to a one eyed bully called El Gordo the Cunto and his minions Red Ed & Balls’Ed Up.

They set about creating a micromanagement system called the FSA to regulate the Shitty. They filled its ranks with a combination of Shitty types & ZaNu Labour supporters. They in turn spend a decade playing with the paperwork and tinkering with paperwork requirements and coming up with create concepts like “treating customers fairly” and ethical fund management schemes. This technique had worked in every public sector organisation for a century.

At the time the Shitty decided to employ computers to manage the humans cos everyone knows computers are really smart.

The Shitty thought everything was going great. The computers were buying and selling things really fast from other computers and everyone was getting paid multimillion pound salaries & bonuses to turn them on in the morning and off again at night. Before heading out in London to buy champagne, screw rentboys/hookers and snort cocaine with their pals in ZaNu Labour.

The FSA was busy redesigning paperwork and El Gordo and his mates could concentrate on selling the Gold of the UK at record low prices and entering into PFI deals to build hospitals at 10 times the price rather than borrowing money on international bond markets at really cheap rates.

All the banks made huge imaginary profits, the government got loads in tax and they hid the PFI deals off the countries balance sheet as it was not a debt even though it was a debt we had to pay. This allowed the Government to give all their supporters in the Triad Union controlled Public Sector massive payrises and extra jobs. The Bolshevik Broadcasting Commissariat (BBC) reported all was well with the world like a good like socialist propaganda unit should.

The banks were so impressed with the Shitty Kids they sent some to them USA to buy stuff. They all purchased Sub Prime Mortgage investments & property portfolios for better interest rate returns and then sold them to the pension & investment schemes run by their friends. Everyone paid themselves millions in bonuses and a slice to the ZaNu Labour Gov.

When the USA economy stalled it turned out that the USA banks had been lending 100% mortgages to NINJAs (No Income, No Job or Assets). The NINJAs handed the keys back to their houses and disappeared.

The Investment & Pension funds of hardworking peoples money collapsed in value killing retirement options for 3 generations.
The banks realised they spent all OUR money buying sub prime crap in the USA and had no money left. So they all paid themselves millions in bonuses to protect themselves when they are out of jobs living in the Bahamas. But there was no money left to lend to hard working businesses.

Small banks(Northern Rock, etc) who were trying to be like the USA banks and were also selling crap mortgage books to the Shitty could no longer sell their investments so they went bankrupt.

As their was an election coming up the ZaNu Labour muppets borrowed hundreds of Billions on behalf of the UK people and gave it to the banks. The banks then moved that money out of the country to shore up their investment funds globally and paid themselves millions in bonuses.

This seemed like such a great idea all the bankers in the world told their governments it was genius so they all copied El Gordo. But there was not enough money available for everyone to borrow so the countries printed more imaginary money called Quantitative Easing and lend it too their banks and the banks in turn lent it back to a different countries Governments by way of Bonds. The greedy ones lend money to the highest risk countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain, etc for a better return.

Now everyone had a pocket full of imaginary money, the banks paid the Shitty billions of bonuses in real money and the computers carried on buying stocks from each other.

When it turned out that the countries could not afford to pay for their debts by extorting the private sectors of their countries any further the less debt ridden countries borrowed hundreds of imaginary billions to let to the really debt ridden countries. Now all the countries are really debt ridden and about to collapse.

The computers carried on buying and selling shares from each other while driving the prices down and down as all the imaginary money was gone. The computers in the Shitty started selling all the shares and buying precious metals thus removing the last of the money left in the economies.

Meanwhile the governments decided to distract the people by spending hundreds of millions on wars and foreign aid even though this was money they borrowed.

I have to stop now as I am depressing myself. I have missed out much but this is only a summary. Please feel free to add anything I missed

The End….in nigh

19
The Colonel
September 25, 2011 at 12:30

You’re Geraint Anderson and I claim the ten bob.

20
2Mac
September 25, 2011 at 20:36

Engineer,

Being called the son of a English Labour politician is probably the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me.

Take it back, please.

21
Engineer
September 25, 2011 at 22:23

Eh?

22
Michael
September 25, 2011 at 21:10

Anybody else noticed that Spooks appears to be sponsored by Apple Inc?

23
Gloria Smudd
September 26, 2011 at 19:35

Well done The ITV! How clever of you to find some way of making the turgid new series of ‘The Only Way Is Downton Abbey” actually watchable by cleverly cutting to the gripping tale of “Gary The Aviva Biker” during what I think you’ll find we all expected to be run-of-the-mill ad breaks! As the billed hour-and-a-quarter broadcast of ‘TOWIDA ‘progressed, I realised that The ITV had pulled a clever trick and was catering for two audiences at the same time – and getting paid a handsome, prime-time fee to boot! Experts at The ITV must have known that throughout Britain there’d be legions of middle-aged men just busting their expanding guts to settle down of a Sunday night to watch the love lives of a few hoity-toity-bygone-age types played out on their bedroom telly, much to the annoyance of their lardy-midriffed wives who, as any fule kno, can’t stand that kind of telly! A genious stroke, then, The ITV to interweave the tale of ‘Gary’, his bike accident, his hospital stay, his delayed return to work and – genious stroke – his salvation by Aviva thanks to him having paid some accident insurance premium! Terrific stuff and I can tell you it’s the only thing that kept me sane between 21.00 and 22.15 hrs! The juxtaposition of Gary’s story (every 7 minutes or so!) was so cleverly woven in that Mr Smudd – a sucker for th0se dreary J. Fellowes ‘period pieces – almost didn’t notice the parallel tales being told! Even I, who was ‘with’ “Gary The Aviva Biker” every step of the way, wasn’t sure at times which production had been the subject of several pages in the TV Times! So, The ITV, keep up the good work and make sure that less than one hour of ‘TOWIDA’ continues to occupy 75 Sunday-night minutes and that discerning viewers can, as the series drags on and on, watch a decent bit of drama – that of “Gary The Aviva Biker” and his salvation by a benevolent insurance company – without it causing ‘terse words’ in the bedroom!

I shall continue to tune in each and every Sunday night to watch as the tale of Gary unfolds. At last, intelligent broadcasting. Hurrah for The ITV.

24
Thaddeus J. Wilson
September 27, 2011 at 12:39

I must confess, I briefly watched a few minutes of Downton Abbey (a very few, as I was not troubled by commercial interruptions!) and felt completely unmoved by it all.