I live in an upside down house. It's kind of built into the hill side, so the sitting room and kitchen are upstairs. This is a picture from the balcony outside the sitting room. Purdy, eh? And rumours that I practice my Mussolini impressions from this balcony are entirely without foundation.
PS And you see that bridge down the bottom left? That's where the three billy goats gruff live in constant fear of the trolls on this blog.
9 comments:
nice pic. FYI, the market square looks lovely too even though eaden lilley stands abandoned.
Looks like a nice view!
Turning to Politics this could have an interesting president for Lord Ahmend, the Labour Peer awaiting sentencing for texting and being involved in a subsequent accident where someone died - the Peer claimed he was not texting at the time:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7865114.stm
It was some months ago now that our economic genius extraordinaire, one G Brown, first touted the idea of a “Toxic Bank”. All the nasty, toxic debt held by our banks would be transferred to a tax-payer funded dustbin, thereby allowing our banks to start lending again.
Why has it not happened? Consider the comments of Mike Shedlock, who blogs as Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis;
“The unresolvable problem is that the banks will not sell for the mark-to-market price (or anything near it). The unspoken reason is if they were to take the market price they'd be rendered instantaneously bankrupt. (This, by the way, is an admission that they are intentionally mis-marking these "assets" on their book now, or they'd have already been seized!) The government will not buy at "par" or anything near it because to do so will cause the taxpayer to suffer a trillion dollar loss; Goldman (and Schumer) both said this is a potential $4 trillion problem. Ergo, its a Mexican Standoff and there is no solution.
The "dirty secret" behind a lot of these "assets" is that they are literal zeros. A lot of the debt issued in the last few years was in fact fully synthetic - that is, it was not backed by an actual mortgage or other actual debt instrument - it was created out of swaps and other derivatives that "acted like" the real thing. The problem with this sort of model is that it relies on the ability of the counterparty who wrote the swap to pay - if they can't pay then what you have is a worthless piece of paper since you can't even foreclose on the underlying property and seize the collateral! With no meaningful margin supervision a lot of these so-called "counterparties" in fact can't pay. This means these "synthetic" instruments are in fact worth nothing.”
If this is true, then it is both astonishing and terrifying, bearing in mind the extent to which we, the taxpayers, now either own or are otherwise committed to underwriting the banks. Mr Shedlock’s suggested course of action?
“ALL debts must be settled - either reaffirmed with capital adequacy and ability to pay proved up or those debts must be forced into the open and restructured or defaulted. The game of "hide the sausage" among financial institutions cannot be allowed to continue; confidence must be restored and it cannot happen until and unless everyone knows that all balance sheets fairly represent a firm's assets and liabilities. The lying has gone on for long enough that nobody trusts anyone; only FULL TRANSPARENCY resolves this problem.”
I profess to know nothing about high finance; I have that much in common with our leading bankers and our Prime Minister, but what Mr Shedlock says seems eminently sensible to me. Now consider the comments today by Mr Anatole Kaletsky, writing in The Times;
“The “mark-to-market accounting” that assumes that market prices automatically reflect true economic values has been discredited by the illusory profits it created in the credit boom — and should be ignored in valuing bank assets for the new guarantee schemes that governments are rolling out. These schemes should instead use what Ben Bernanke has described as the “hold to maturity” valuations of assets, which use transparent and reasonable economic assumptions about house prices, inflation and so on to assess the long-term probabilities of default.”
If Mr Kaletsky is “kite flying” on behalf of the government, or is in any way foreshadowing future government policy, this seems to me to suggest that Gordon Brown is about to compound the ignominious folly of the banks with an act of totally catastrophic lunacy.
Is that the Gyppo camp near Southborough?
On a serious note, do have a look at all the lovely Civil Service Jobs on offer
Polly Toyboy says..
I can see some of my houses from up here..
ex apprentice.
See Post Bank + Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley. Is this super bank big enough to dump some toxins into?
The adverts on your blog get stranger and stranger. I am now being asked if I fancy some "Gay Ebony Dating".
I blame Peter Hitchens.
In these times of straitened financial pressures, your arrogance is breathtaking. Don't you realise that many people don't have balconies?
So, you have your next Christmas card image sorted, then? What a beautiful picture.
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