LOANSHARKS PETITION



UK LOANSHARKS ARE LICENSED BY
PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON
TO CHARGE 4,000% OR MORE. THE CAP WAS 30%
MARGARET THATCHER ABOLISHED ANY
PROTECTION FOR VICTIMS.

1) TODAY - Stop loan sharking; to free families from inescapable debt and interest rates ranging from 15% to 4,500% (Yes - that is four-thousand-five-hundred percent per annum). Please sign the petition :-

2) TOMORROW - Direct the economy. Ask your Member of Parliament, Senator, Congressman or representative - "Who in government hides their capital and tax affairs off-shore?"  - And press for the repatriation of the off-shore $18 trillions to be re-invested in the nations of origin such as Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, UK, USA, Japan etc. etc. - to boost economies and create good intelligent jobs for our unemployed youngsters.

SLIDE 11 - The $18 trillion Tax- Haven cash is 30% of the annual global $60 trillion production. The GGDP surplus p.a. is about 1% - for 30 years siphoned to tax-havens (30 years x 1% = 30%).

http://www.noelhodson.com/Money-Wars-2012-V5SHORT.pdf

3) THIS YEAR - Press for reducing the immense and unnecessary costs of the Money-Economy which could and should be entirely computerised, with minimum cost transactions via mobile-phones. The future is for one single global currency and inter-nationalised banking; to cut the prices of all goods by 25%.

SIGN THE PETITION TO CAP LOAN-SHARK RATES
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/

ENSLAVED, INDENTURED, ARTICLED, APPRENTICED, INTERNED

Protecting young workers from exploitation is a cyclical battle as old as mankind. Babies of slaves were the “property” of slave owners – to be screwed in every sense and worked to death. Indentured workers signed contracts to work unpaid for years in return for food, beatings and work-experience. The “dark satanic mills” from 1750 onwards housed workers, paid them a wage then took it back in rent and via the mandatory factory-shop. The casual abuse of apprentices underlies many Dickensian novels when for example “sound Victorian values” shoved children up carcinogenic chimneys as human brushes and child prostitutes roamed the streets. Before the 1950’s, only the rich entered the professions, paying for their articles – then they were unpaid – then at last articled-clerks were paid for their office work. In emerging economies, now, children are often cruelly abused with underpaid twelve hour days of dangerous and dirty work.

The minimum-wage and the living-wage exist to prevent such abuses. They need to go global.

Employers and economists raged against their introduction, prophesying total collapse if their slaves-by-another-name were freed. The bosses have been raging against their workforces for the past five-thousand years, on and off. Rights of peasants, serfs and freemen to wages and free movement were only won after bitter social battles following the great plagues of the middle-ages, which killed up to sixty-percent of the workforce, empowering labourers. Before those revolutions, serfs were classed as cattle, herds of uneducated families in hovels as “chattels” owned by the landlord; as was their daughters’ virginity. Today, politicians thoughtlessly exploit unpaid Interns.

Over the millennia the good guys have freed the slaves and paid wages. The bad guys have cheated and screwed employees. The good guys are marginally ahead in this long war; but the sociopathic bad guys never rest from oppressing their neighbours while gouging out obscene “rewards” for themselves. For a bright future – we must continue to Fight the Good Fight

TAXING TIMES AT THE TOP

IMF Chief, Christine Lagarde, told the Greeks to pay their taxes and, by implication is telling everyone to stop dodging, minimising, avoiding, evading or downright stealing taxes from the nations that create the common wealth.

Like many international organisations supported by tax revenues (IMF, WHO, World Bank, the EC etc) the staff do not pay tax in their salaries. So, Madame Lagarde pays no tax, a fact siezed upon by disgruntled off-shore tax evaders. She may of course recommend a change to this protocol.

Will the righteous anger of the artful dodgers stop the new official determination to collect the taxes?  No - I think not. With up to $18 trillion washing around off-shore - contrasted to a $9 trillion "global mountain of debt" on-shore - threatening to bankrupt major economies; I guess the responsible authorities will press ever harder to collect what was and is due - for repatriation to, and reinvestment in, the countries of origin.

AS AN EXPERIENCED TAX-PLANNER MY ADVICE IS - MOVE YOUR MONEY ON-SHORE.

FREE MARKETS - THE BIGGEST CON-TRICK EVER.

28^th May 2012.

Moral philosopher Michael Sandel, (Havard, Oxford, Rhodes Scholar) interviewed by Guardian journalist Decca Aitkenhead, led her to ruminating on the magical and mystical powers of Free Markets.

Freedom must be exercised by responsible mature evolved human beings – or it turns into anarchic chaos. Since Milton Freidman, after 40 years of half-baked experiments with “free markets” and “monetarism” – we must surely have identified the theory’s grossest stupidities.

The world constantly hovers on the brink of economic collapse, while top executives gouge out obscene “rewards” tax-free to hide off-shore. The City of London “lost” more than £1 trillion. Wall Street “lost” ten times as much. (Pssst… They actually hid it off-shore). No global agency knows which banks owe what to whom or when; despite the world’s amazing computers there is no daily balance sheet maintained. “They” clearly cannot count very well. Peasants sell their own body parts to the rich. Grossly polluting, allegedly profitable “Free Market” multiple-competition buses jamming narrow streets in Oxford and London, UK, have sacked on-board conductors, so drivers take fares at every bus-stop, tripling journey times for passengers and creating gridlock for all road users. 47 million Americans need food stamps – the free US markets cannot feed them; 35 million US families have no health care, and thousands of US homes are boarded up by the banks (which cannot count) insanely consigning families to tent cities. The US infrastructure is crumbling. The income gap has never been higher; careless, contemptible aristocracy has ballooned while millions descend into the hell of persistent below living-wage earnings, proving there is no free-market at the top (who will offer to do Bob Diamond’s job for a fifth of his “rewards”?). Monopolistic corporations, selling water, air, metals, telecoms, weapons, food, energy, finance and drugs transcend borders and democratic controls, protected by the tax-payers they rip-off, as too big to fail. Up to 50% of young, educated people have no job prospects – a recipe for violence and crime.  

Our leaders are simply too damn lazy to think ahead. Would you trust them to build a plane or plant our crops or plan a surgical procedure? We need to apply science to planning human affairs. We must dismiss and eradicate at all levels belief in fairy-tale secret mechanisms that operate magically to set wages, prices and commodities. Our leaders need to realise there are no fairy shoe-makers who work while we all sleep to do their jobs and organise our world. Those silly ideas are just a load of old cobblers; a massive con-trick by the 1% of gangsters to exploit the 99% of honest workers.    

Its time to grow up!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/

MADAM DEFARGE

26^th May 2012.

MADAM LAGARDE – MOVE BACK ON-SHORE

Christine Lagarde, Head of the IMF, tells the Greeks to pay their taxes – or else. Italian activist, Beppe Grillo, though studiously ignored by the Italian media, calls for Italy’s governing “kleptomaniacs… …to put back what it has stolen”.

The thunderous silence in the UK and USA about repatriating $18 billion of tax-haven and off-shore funds to meet national deficits testifies to the fact that, for example, 2,500 UK senior civil-servants have fiddled their taxes for decades; Treasury officials, The Prime Minister and The Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Ministers are from families embedded in tax havens; the head of tax collecting does “confidential” deals to write off billions of corporate taxes; the head of Barclays is paid his wages via tax-haven companies; Courts strangely favour the most obvious and visible tax-evading crooks; TV and media top presenters always, without fail, hastily assure their public about massive tax-evasion cases “…They are of course acting perfectly legally” when it is obviously not so; and despite oft repeated enquiries MPs and Peers refuse to allow or answer the question “…which of you is involved in off-shore arrangements?” And then they quickly sack half the investigating tax-officers under the guise of austerity.

My current guess, from measuring the thunderous silence of our Demi-Gods on Mount Olympus, is that 75% of high-pay officials, executives, corporations and business owners (and dentists) shovel funds off-shore, gouged out of hardworking communities. Who knows, even at the very top of government, such as our most patriotic retired Prime Ministers, just might have taken enormous, many millions, of “speaking fees” from US Republican clubs and buried them in tax-free treasure chests. But …no, surely, that is a delusional nightmare too far.

But, if you are off-shore, in London, Delaware, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Isle of Man, Switzerland, The Caribbean, Panama and the hundred other tax-havens, do not be fooled into assuming your secret funds will stay secret. The growing anger against sociopaths, who rape their home economies leaving them with “mountains of debt” and consigning their youngsters to lifelong unemployment, is being echoed by authorities responsible for European, USA, Pacific Rim and global fiscal and financial stability, after 30 years of official tolerance. It is naïve to imagine that your bank accounts have not been tracked. The security services watch continually for criminal and terrorist funds flowing round the globe; and in the process they incidentally pick up lists of tax-evaders.

When the political will changes, all the tax-collectors need to show to tax-assess the past 30 years of transfers, valuations and transfer-pricing and to open a back-duty case, is that the transfers were not “wholly and exclusively necessary for the business”. Madam Lagarde and Angela Merkel and others may even now be gathering the knitting patterns they will take to the foot of the public guillotine – to watch the heads roll.

LIVING WAGE - BULLIES – SOCIOPATHS – PSYCHOPATHS.

25^th May 2012

LIVING WAGE - BULLIES – SOCIOPATHS – PSYCHOPATHS.

The mad woman in the attic - from Jane Eyre

A standing joke among my siblings is that our family was so dysfunctional that we locked the sane people up in the attic.

It is not an entirely accurate definition of our parent-child relationships, with dutiful, hardworking, sober, condom-free parents clothing, feeding, housing and educating six ungrateful monosyllabic kids. But many English families will recognise the metaphor.

Dysfunctional families cease to be amusing when parents stuff plastic bags into their teenage daughters’ mouths, pin them down and suffocate them to death; allegedly as did the unrepentant Warrington couple.

Shafilea Ahmed's parents jailed for her murder 
Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 25 years for killing their teenage daughter. (UK 2004).

If they were in a zoo, the keepers would anticipate their murderous, incestuous, psychopathic intent and separate the children from such insane primates – who populate our Fairy Tales and myths as Wicked Stepmothers, violent ogres, angry Gods, cannibalistic witches and other crazed monsters. Like Fred and Rosemary West, these people are conscienceless, narcissistic psychopaths, so far removed from sane society that they do not even know what their crimes are.

They are also unrelenting control freaks and terrible bullies.

Sociopaths are as narcissistic and insane as psychopaths, but have just enough awareness that others exist – and might arrest them – to dissuade them from crude violence. They also are conscienceless bullies who only see others as competitors and, if weaker, then fit for exploitation. Sociopaths lurk in the guise of cheats and liars in business, employers who pay less than a living–wage, by definition consigning people they work with eight hours a day to ever increasing inescapable debts and no life. Slave owners had the same instincts. Powerful sociopaths in governments, banks, cash-hoarding corporations and the private, tax-evading “Free Markets”  are currently depriving society of sufficient re-investment and cash (society’s bookkeeping) to enable normal transactions and lives – such as having a job, a home, travel, health-care and good food; while their hoarded cash, gouged from communities, soars in value.

Like murderous psychopathic parents, convinced they are doing the “honourable” thing, sociopaths also convince themselves of the righteousness of their relentless bullying. However much they have, they want more, and they want others to have less, so they become relatively more and more powerful. The others should have lower wages, lower pensions, longer work hours, lower social security, pay more tax and live on sink estates, breeding ever cheaper child prostitutes; a return to real Victorian values. It is time that the 99% refused to continue to be victims.  

AGING & RED FACED ON FACEBOOK

After fixing the foundations of the socio-economic system in the last ten blog-posts, we now get back to the serious business of forecasting, guiding and creating the future.

When Friends Reunited was launched, I had a go and made contact with people from primary school (age 5 to 11) and secondary school (age 11 to 16) all the way back to 1947 onwards. It was interesting and we few aging survivors even planned a reunion - but it never happened. After 6 months the communications faded away. Applying hope over experience I joined Linked-In and built up about 50 business contacts until the website took an unauthorised £180 from my card (which they repaid) and I cancelled. Invitations arrive weekly from several other business networks that seem to know my birthday, age, height, weight and legendary priapic prowess that their half-price miracle medications would boost - which I ignore. Undaunted - on baffling advice about "viral marketing" I have joined Facebook, to sell my E-novels, set up this blog and I have a Twitter account.

Facebook is primarily for students - ages about 18 to 25 looking for parties and partners - or so it seems to me. I am daily offered friendships with dozens of beautiful girls and handsome boys, fifty or more years younger than me. I ignore most of them, except close family connections, to avoid being embarrassingly tagged as either a potential paedophile, a good old fashioned predatory dirty old man or a totally self-delusional old fool. A few Facebook friends are massive commercial corporations, whose friendship fluctuates with the amount of money I spend with them. None of my "friends" admit to sharing any of my interests or aims - Futurology, Physics, Science-News, Comparative Religions, Internet, Socio-Economic Systems; which redefines friendship as I understood it. Perhaps it is more like family? 

Facebook has cleverly provided all the millions of members with their own free websites. Free so far. Many members already have/had a website.

Several of these social-networks have made it into big business - crowned last week by Mark Zuckerberg's spectacular launch of Facebook - UNIVERSITY TERM REPORT - "Very Well Done - No Need To Try Harder". But what will happen next? What of the future?

I guess that like Friends Reunited, the members will age and move on. They will find little more to say to each other or to boast about themselves. Younger members, school leavers going to university - also seeking parties and partners - will replace them. Thus there will be a fast "churn" rate, which is the expensive bane of all membership clubs, gyms etc. There will be an "event-horizon" where so many millions are on Facebook that it will be a "so what?" status. When everyone wins the badge - it distinguishes no-one. Facebook might evolve with its members, it might hold their loyalty, it might find a vital service or product it can sell them - to pay its bills. Facebook might become another Amazon or Google but it will not replace the internet. Or, it might be buried at the back of the stationery cupboard with all the other dusty, tired, old address books.

Who will dream up tomorrow's social-network successful business-model?

THIS LEVER WILL MOVE THE EARTH

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#SaveBianca: Ask your MP to vote yes today as survey shows 65% of MPs & Public agree! Hello!  The vote in the UK Parliament for proposals to tackle legal loan sharking will take place today - 22 May 2012 - (USA - raise the issue with your Congressman and Senator) ! If you haven't yet contacted your MP, please ask them to vote for amendment 40 of the Financial Services Bill  and let them know an exclusive poll by ComRes for R3, the insolvency practitioners, shows widespread public and political support for this measure! The research shows:  98% of MPs and 93% of the public believe there is a problem with payday lending. 66% of MPs and 65% of the public support a cap on the total cost of credit.  This afternoon MPs can help tackle the problems caused by legal loan sharks in Britain-where Which? research shows one in three payday loan customers experience financial problems as a direct result of taking out a loan. Amendment 40 will give the new financial regulator tough powers to cap the charges these firms can levy for credit. Its the first step towards securing industry wide caps on the total costs of credit.You can also read more about this proposal and the problems payday lending cause British consumers here. The Government has not brought forward any alternative proposal, making this amendment the best chance we have to give British consumers the same protection from these loans that others around the world enjoy. Below is a sample text to use to email your MP to ask them to vote for this amendment - you can find the contact details of your MP here. You can also help by tweeting about the campaign using the #savebianca hashtag in reference to the recent Eastenders storyline on this subject!  Help me make a difference to the families in our communities struggling financially because of these companies by taking action- let's together end legal loan sharking in Britain!  Stella Creasy Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow p.s. Please also share this email with your family and friends to ask them to defy the Government and support this amendment today! Suggested text to send to your local MP Dear XXX As one of your constituents I wanted to remind you that today you have a chance to vote for amendment 40 of the Financial Services Bill to help tackle legal loan sharking- and to let you know how popular this would be with both your colleagues and the public! A new poll by ComRes for R3, the insolvency practitioners, released today shows that overwhelming the public and MPs support action on this issue. It reveals  98% of MPs and 93% of the public believe there is a problem with payday lending. 66% of MPs and 65% of the public support a cap on the total cost of credit.  This amendment would allow the new financial conduct regulator to cap the charges these firms can apply for credit and so help protect consumers from the debt this high cost lending causes. Ministers claim they support the spirit of the amendment but refuse to vote for it- legal advisors are clear that without explicit powers to act, these companies will be able to challenge action by regulators in the courts. Don't let the fight against legal loan sharking become a fee generating opportunity for lawyers- please vote for this amendment today and join the fight to end legal loan sharking in Britain. I look forward to reading that you voted for this amendment. Sign and circulate this AVAAZ petition - to fundamentally improve the World. http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/

ECONOMIC GROWTH – SOFTER TOILET TISSUE - OR GUILLOTINES?

21 May 2012.


Politicians, economists, commentators, journalists and Jeremy Paxman endlessly go on and on about “GROWTH”, a term which glides smoothly over 99% of their audiences’ heads, leaving no trace, impression or illumination.

The concept is quite simple. In the 1950’s many “slum” houses did not have bathrooms and had solid, outdoor lavatories, (whence came the phrase “Built like a brick-shit-house” to describe a hulking rugby forward), a dank cubicle furnished with lashings of cold fresh-air and yesterday’s newspaper torn into convenient squares. Economic growth, stimulated by government grants and delivered by the great British building and plumbing industry, gave all homes a bathroom and indoor WC. The activity created jobs, plumbing apprenticeships, soft-tissue-toilet-rolls and higher living standards; and was, incidentally, the beginning of the end of the British Empire. We had - Growth!

The problem today is having no easily identified cause that can fire the politico-industrial imagination and indignation as did non-absorbent, lead-printed newspaper squares, threaded on a string, hanging on the back of a damp brick-shed door. Bankers, civil servants and politicians could really get behind that issue.
To stimulate the US and UK economies now, needs similarly robust, clear vision and actions. And, to scotch any scurrilous rumours that I am a dyed in the wool socialist or communist or economic-anarchist, let me explain that all such stimuli require:

(A) A shared vision from our leaders

(B) 10% government grant to get it going, and

(C) 90% private sector funding (the High Street banks) to deliver.

Sadly, we have no leaders, no vision, no bankers and no trained plumbers. All we have are terrified off-shore hoarders, too dim, frightened, selfish and paralyzed to stimulate anything – in case they inadvertently improve anyone’s life but their own. They might be stirred into action by a ressurgence of the Guillotine Industry.

5% INTEREST PETITION - EVIL LOAN RATES

“Above all, the rates charged by high-cost credit companies often do not reflect any economic rate, meaning one that reflects competition in the market or the cost of lending. That is why rates vary so substantially, from 4,500% with Wonga to a mere 2,500% with Uncle Buck, 1,700% with Kwik Cash or 1,200% with PaydayUK. There is simply a lack of competition in the market to drive the price down in the way Ministers expect.”  Stella Creasy MP – House of Commons - UK: on Loan Sharks, May 2012

To free oppressed families caught in debt traps, support a global 5% Cap, now, today. The financial sector is the most overmanned and inneficient industry of all; using 1/20th of the entire workforce to do what 5 IBM mainframes could do. Thus, the price of money is far too high - from 16% -30% credit cards upwards to 4,000% on pay-day loans. The money-economy is as expensive as all national health (private and state) services.

The loan-sharks money at 0.5% and sell it at up to 9,000 times the cost. The borrowers earn less than a living wage and so are locked into inescapable debt. This is indentured slavery. It is immoral. It is evil. It is against all world religions. It mocks natural justice.

Reducing interest to fair levels will reduce all prices of all goods by 25% and boost the global economy.

Sign our Avaaz global petition for a 5% per year Cap on interest & charges.

5% per annum cap on all interest rates & charges

Greek Fallout – End of Monetarism.

The banking crisis uncovered in 2008/09 that cost the UK about $1.5 trillion and the USA undisclosed trillions to stem runs on their banks, is now undermining European banks. Greek depositors are starting a run on their banks – and Spanish savers are hot on their heels. Those governments will also have to guarantee all deposits at the banks they license. Other western nations such as Italy and Ireland have already had the runs, of Olympic proportions, over the past twenty years – and it may seem futile to slam the stable door after the horses have all bolted.  

The cash exodus from major nations was led by tax-evaders who siphoned funds to tax-havens – including to London and Delaware. The “mountains of debt” left behind in OECD countries are far less than the “rivers of illicit cash” sloshing around off-shore. Should the two now be balanced and eliminated? The problem for off-shore banking centres such as London, while they celebrate their treasure chests filling with Greek deposits – is that those incoming funds are owed back to the depositors – they are massive debts in the UK banking system; another debt-mountain, waiting to explode volcanically.

What will become of us all?

The inevitable answer is nationalisation of all financial institutions. The banks are incapable of providing a secure service without 100% government guarantees and massive public funds. The off-shore rivers-of-cash running through the so called “the free-markets” will be repatriated from the pink-gin sunlit islands to be put to work in the real-economy. Why major nations ever trusted the creation of cash, vital investment and accurate bookkeeping to a bunch of insatiably greedy privateers will be a matter for future historians.

This is the end of the sad, mean, flawed, dispiriting, unintelligent, base, crooked and criminal “Monetarist Experiment”. Farewell to the low, muddled, selfish thoughts of Milton Freidman, Thatcher, Reagan and Bush.  Hello to a bright new future; free from loads-of-money, greedy, irresponsible freeloaders, spivs and gamblers. Just return all our cash to the tax-authorities via back-duty settlements and then bugger-off to Andorra or Rockall to play roulette for buttons, until the end of your chaotic, parasitical, deluded days. 

17 May 2012 

Cap the price of money at 5% a year.

Loan Sharks lock families, individuals and whole nations such as Greece, into un-payable debt; distressing families and ultimately making them homeless. But even low waged people can repay and escape debt if the charges are fair; eliminating court cases and bad-debts for lenders. 

Charges from 1950 to 1990 were typically on a Base of 7.5%, quoted as "2.5% to 6% above Base" or a maximum of twice-times Base Rate; and banks made good profits.

Lenders can now borrow at Base Rate, e.g. in the UK at 0.5% (half a percent). They lend on mortgages at about 5% or 10 times Base; on credit cards at 16% or 32 times; which increases to 30% or 60 times; pay-day loans are 300% to 3000% or 600 to 6,000 times Base Rate.

Loan charges are sandwiched and levelled at every stage of business – about 20 steps from raw materials through to consumer purchase. Capping the rate to 5% would reduce the costs at each step and final prices by 25%; beating inflation.

Only banks or the super-rich have or can buy money at 0.5% and sell it at up 6,000 times the cost. It is a privilege reserved for the 1% against the 99%. All the world’s religions and fair minded people are against such exploitation. The charges are now horribly greedy and excessive.

Ask your MP, Senator, Congressman or representative to press for a national and global 5% per annum cap on interest and charges. There is a petition on Avaaz you can sign. http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/?launch

Legally capping interest on debt is the single most important reform needed for a fair society - and the easiest and cheapest to implement. Freeing millions of families from grinding debts will stimulate the economy and create growth.

Support your local cyclotron

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL CYCLOTRON

CERN - MODELS – METAPHORS – ANALOGIES – SIMILIES – WAVICLES – THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (LHC) – EXPLAINED AT LAST.

An excellent article in New Scientist 12 May 2012 by Michael Brooks and Richard Webb about Majoranas prompts an urge to unpick the hermetic language of particle-physics and The Big Bang that only one in five-hundred-million people even attempt to follow. Majoranas are nothing to do with Prime Minister John Major, or prancing Drum Majorettes, or bigger Big Macs with fries, but are theoretical particles that may or may not exist, named after Italian physicist Ettore Majorana, who disappeared in 1938.

 The many billions of dollars invested in the LHC at Geneva and other such test sites is motivated by mankind’s insatiable curiosity. We want to know how it all works. If we can figure HOW, then we might be nearer to knowing WHY, and if we know WHY then we might be able to tackle GOD about human built-in depreciation and a few other vexing issues.  

Most readers know that the LHC is a large Swiss/French circular underground tunnel in which bits of atoms are sent whizzing in one direction while other bits speed in the other direction – and are steered by huge magnets to collide. The collision debris is analysed by earnest people in white coats, spectacles, many bad hair days and open-toed sandals. And we know it is very expensive.

What they are looking for are the many bits missing from the Standard Model of how all the bits we do know about stick together. The Standard Model brilliantly explains and scientifically predicts the very small sub-atomic (smaller than atoms) things in the universe. It dates back to before Einstein, who added a few good ideas, and over about 100 years has evolved to be used to make many practical things – like mobile phones and touch-screen-computers and TV Reality Shows; in short – it works.

BUT – The Standard Model of minuscule particles has not been reconciled with the macro-world (as big as we humans, for example), or with Gravity, which is inexplicable, and it has 90% of the bits missing; both from the centre of atomic nuclei, where teeny-weeny Quarks hide, and from Galaxies as large as the Milky Way. If you had 90% missing you would not work – but somehow we and the universe do work, so the missing stuff is clearly not missing, it is just hidden from us.

For many decades the hidden sub-atomic bits have foxed physicists. The current proposed solution is the infamous and universally misunderstood Boson of Professor Higgs – which in teeny-weeny particle terms is a biggish one, but so far elusive and invisible. The minute a layperson quizzes a physicist about the Higgs, they cloak themselves in mathematical, algebraic obscurity, translate normal concepts such as speed, size and weight into unimaginable “MeVs” or millions of electron volts – electric-charges - not little balls hurtling round the LHC; glibly claiming that E=MC² means matter and energy are interchangeable. And they descend into physics-speak to confuse even the most intelligent committees who, rather than admit utter bafflement, keep taxpayers funds flowing. In a few words, this is what they are talking about:

Professor Hubble observed that the universe is expanding. Theoretically tracking the expansion back by compressing it; takes us back to the beginning – The Big Bang. This was (theoretically) a very, very, very, very hot ball of non-material, expanding energy, lots of MeVs. As it expanded it cooled and, just like your chemistry teacher demonstrated crystals precipitating in saturated-solutions, bits formed in and from the cooling stuff of the universe (which is “light” or the electro-magnetic-spectrum). These bits were and are the sub-atomic particles. Light was transformed into matter – straw was spun into gold - and all the phenomena (things) in the universe started to form. The rest is history. However, 90% of matter seems to be missing – so conjure up the Higgs and start searching for it.

“They” think that 90% is missing because our home galaxy, the Milky Way, spins so fast that the outer stars, such as our Sun, should be flung away into space; there is not enough gravity in the matter we can detect to hold the galaxy together. Thus, they say, there is invisible matter or Dark Matter everywhere. The Higgs would fit the gap, fill the bill, do the trick. The LHC will find it – they hope.

BUT, just as all eyes are focused on missing matter, astrophysicists, studying very, very large things, announce that the universe is expanding ever faster. The Hubble Expansion is accelerating and something, another mysterious force, is pushing it outwards; leading gloomily, depressingly and futilely to the ultimate heat-death of the whole damned thing; rendering all of us, the whole of mankind and nature, our lives, thoughts, trials and triumphs completely and utterly meaningless. This annihilating force is called Dark Energy, a mathematician’s theory and conclusion that I wholly disagree with.  

QED

PS – my ideas of what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are illustrated and with music, at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dmvCsQly2c

And without the diverting music:

Short, pictorial, overview of these speculations

http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/Life-Universe-Everything-8Mar2011.pdf

TAX - WHICH BUNK DO YOU PREFER?

"ALL TAX PLANNING IS OF COURSE
STRICTLY LEGAL" - REALLY?

PUBLISHED LETTER - THE GUARDIAN - 11^th May 2012. – Original text.

In Guardian Letters, 9 May 2012, James Anderson of PAM, which advises on-shore and off-shore fund management, wrongly states that “Recovery of taxes payable on undeclared offshore income and capital gains…   …would sadly make almost no impact on the huge and unsustainable national debt mountains in Europe and America”.  But, repatriating the off-shore funds, gouged from the major economies, will quickly repay all the debts.

Accountants with Back-Duty experience know that where, say, $1.7 billion has been transferred to Cayman, as alleged in the recent Olympus case, the invoice from Cayman to Olympus is likely to be on non-commercial terms and not at arms length and therefore in breach of developed nations’ tax-laws. A claw-back of the tax-relief, plus compound interest, plus penalties – financial and criminal – plus tax on the off-shore capital income, will usually repatriate the total capital sum or more. The OECD estimate was $18 trillion off-shore in 2009, which would repay all national deficits. This river of illicit cash flows into Bonds, loaned back to the (indebted) communities who worked to create it. Over 30 years since deregulation, it requires only 353 such “funny-money” or “back-to-back” transactions per year to build up the $18 trillion; most of which could be clawed back via back-duty laws.  Mobilising the Intelligence Services to track and claw-back the funds would be a rapid way to pay off all the global deficits; repatriate first – ask questions later. And create good jobs for all our young people.

Noel Hodson - Oxford

Founding Partner, McVeigh Hodson - Blackstone Franks Accountants.

GLOBAL ECONOMY - BLOG ARCHIVE

Money Wars -  www.noelhodson.com/Money-Wars-2012-V5SHORT.pdf

THE OLYMPUS CASE

Notes - The alleged $1.7B invoice/s allegedly sent from a brass-plaque nailed to a palm tree in Cayman, allegedly to the main board of directors at Olympus in Tokyo or London will almost certainly have been granted tax-relief as a deduction from profits, by HMRC or the Japanese tax office - lets say, 25% tax or $425M. The home-country citizens in the UK or Japan have to fund this amount - and they lose the $1.7B, about 5,000 jobs, from being reinvested in their economy. Instead the $1.7B joins the so called "Free Markets" and the "Bond Markets", which then criticise the home-nations for having no cash and "mountains of debt" - then lend them the $1.7B at high interest rates, risk free and without any work or responsibility. They gouge it out, siphon it off, then lend us back our own money. It is a great wheeze if you can get in on it. This is where all the global cash and productive surpluses have gone to in the past 30 years; into off-shore funds, tax-havens and then back as high cost loans imposed on nations like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Japan, UK and USA - We Are All Near Bankrupt Suckers - unless we retrospectively properly tax and repatriate that cash.

PENALTIES & PRISON

Finding such "Funny-Money" invoices and paperwork in breach of the rules automatically cancels the tax relief so the tax-relief granted earlier is "clawed-back" by the taxman. As such transactions are usually spotted years later, the taxman charges compound interest on the tax that should have been paid. E.G. As the paperwork was outside the rules, the taxman also charges a penalty - often double the orginal tax, another $425M. Over the years the $1.7B capital has been earning interest - in a tax haven so no tax was paid, for say, 5 or 10 or 30 years - and the taxman is entitled to charge tax on that income also, plus interest. If the people involved in making the transaction/s have deliberately misled the taxman - then criminal charges might be brought for false accounting or criminal conspiracy. It was such tax evasion and false accounting charges that sent the notorious USA gangster Al Capone to prison for a long time.

In America, tax advisors can be charged alongside their clients; so they always ask a new client, with whom they may end up sharing a cell, "Which prison bunk do you prefer Sir, - upper or lower?"

PAM - http://www.pamonline.com/asp/front/index.php

CV – Noel Hodson  www.noelhodson.com/SW2000/Take-the-Plunge-NH-CV.pdf

“MOVE TO HIGHER GROUND & MOVE YOUR MONEY ON-SHORE!”

Based on forecasts of the Internet, increasing surveillance and as supposed futurists, for years we have advised adventurous clients to move their money on-shore, as global tax authorities circle tax-havens and tighten the net. The second part of our daily gloomy mantra has been “…and move to higher ground.” 

Nobody has moved their money on-shore and only one client family has moved to higher ground – above possible sea level rises due to global warming. Our persistent, prophetic, truly wise advice has been largely ignored, and even cruelly mocked.

But our reputations may be saved by today’s report from MCCIP, The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, which charts the 200 miles northerly migration by fish to escape warming seas. Canadian and Scandinavian fisheries report cod shoals moving north – and Mediterranean species are being fished off southern England and Ireland, 200 miles from home. Ally this news to last year’s remarks by that most diplomatic, non-controversial, and widely loved observer, David Attenborough, that the Arctic Ice is melting rapidly, and the mockery may turn to wild applause – or at least a grudging acknowledgement. 

When the seas warm-up - the ice melts and sea-levels rise. The immediate impact and process is mapped in my E-book, OUT OF THE DEPTHS, available for a risibly small price from Amazon-Kindle.

Will the second part of our Cassandra-like advice – “Move your Money On-Shore” (before the taxman gets you) be confirmed by events? I think so, so act on the advice now.  Sorting out The Money-Economy is a pre-requisite condition for building the marvellous future promised in AD2516-After Global Warming, where 11 billion souls have great, long lives in a world that functions without money. Also, as it happens, available from Amazon-Kindle for a mere peppercorn. Buy now to avoid disappointment.

Two hundred miles north and south is the distance that climate scientists calculated 20 years ago that the deserts would migrate as the world warms; swallowing Spain, Italy and Southern France – some USA States and South Africa. Intelligent cooperation over water, and trickle-irrigation will avoid disaster – as long as the mad Money-Economy is fixed.

9 May 2012.

OFF-SHORE FUNDS - MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

The Guardian, my favourite independent newspaper, possibly the best newspaper in the world, reports the OECD has recalculated bank deposits in Tax Havens at $2.7 trillion – down from the 2009 estimated $11 to $18 trillion. The OECD presented the new numbers to the G20 meeting in Cannes. Does this dramatic 75% fall in (reports of) tax-free cash sloshing around the globe mean we should abandon attempts to repatriate the funds and invest them into industries in the originating nations?

SLIDE 11 - The $18 trillion Tax- Haven cash is 30% of the annual global $60 trillion production. The GGDP surplus p.a. is about 1% - for 30 years siphoned to tax-havens (30 years x 1% = 30%).

http://www.noelhodson.com/Money-Wars-2012-V5SHORT.pdf

  

No – actually. In 2010, from 2009 statistics (we all know that all statistics are wrong, but they are all we have) in Money-Wars (slide 11 of 23) we calculated that the OECD’s $18 trillion made sense, and it forms a part of the better documented $82 trillion in the Bond Markets (the Free Markets), that slosh around the globe – ever hopeful of finding a totally safe nation that can be fooled into being on the edge of bankruptcy and thus have to pay 7.5% for the next 50 years to Bond holders.

The sensible logic is that the annual surpluses from our national economies, about 1% a year, for the past 30 years have been siphoned off-shore – with tax relief given in the home nations.  The 1% surplus is the liquidity of any economy – which has gone missing and been siphoned away.

It is in the annual siphoning paperwork (transfer pricing, officers, controllers, resident status) that long established tax laws are most likely to have been breached, creating Back-Duty tax cases, which assess the tax-relief granted, the ongoing unpaid taxes, plus compound interest, plus penalties – that in most cases add up to the total capital siphoned out.  

So – the apparent 75% reduction actually reflects that funny-money is constantly shifting from tax-havens to Bond, Shares & Commodity Markets, to on-shore banks, etc. The $18 trillion siphoned in the past 30 years, could and should be subjected to forensic audits – and repatriated. The secret and intelligence services could easily track it down, as few bank computer operators will risk making fraudulent entries to obscure the trails.

Another Guardian article, about Facebook, tells us 2 billion people are on-line, and that 1 in 3 use Facebook. Maybe Facebook can track the Funny-Money.

TAX AND ECONOMICS ARTICLES 29TH APR 13

PHARAOHS & MONETARIST BULLSHIT.

This weekend, allegedly left-wing Francois Hollande beats right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy by 52% to 48%, for the French Presidency and allegedly left-wing Labour Councillors take control of Chipping Norton’s local government in the extremely right-wing heartland and homeland of conservative  UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s country seat. In Greece, as their elections take the country to the left, a middle-class dentist shoots himself, “because I can see no way out of debt”.  The poor, short-sighted man could not face being a Greek beggar. He did not know that everything changes and he did not have the courage to join the fight, stop being a victim, and shout for socio-economic fairness and justice. He must have believed the idiotic dogmatic bullshit that “The money has run out.”

TAX AND ECONOMICS ARTICLES 29TH APR 13

In these cases “Left” means loosening monetary constraints and “Right” means ever greater tightening and austerity. The alleged “reason” for austerity in the UK, as most right-wingers endlessly whine and bleat is that “…we inherited a huge deficit from the Labour government…” (Blah! Blah! Blah! Yeh! Yeh! Yeh! – just do your damn jobs or get out!). These miserable, intellectually challenged, Alzheimer’s raddled, idiot CAN’T-DO austerity apologists have forgotten that it was the bankers who lost all the money. The City of London allegedly “lost” (or transferred to tax-havens via back-to-back contracts) more than £1 trillion in 2008/09, requiring UK.Gov to borrow from the alleged "International Markets" to save the banks – and to continue to finance the enormous, greedy, unwarranted, endless, distorted, insane “rewards” of the talentless, risk-free nonentities who, as soon they have the keys to the corporate safes, steal as much money as they can, as quickly as possible, betray their work colleagues, suppliers, shareholders, customers and countrymen, avoid paying any tax to their communities, sabotage their own companies and sneak off to Tax-havens – while unemployment accelerates out of control and our young people despair of the future. Even the alleged safe-keepers, the major shareholders, including our pension funds (our saved money) are all in on the self-reward gravy train and do nothing that stops the thieving, as they too gouge out huge, selfish, unneeded, tax-minimised “rewards”.

At the base of this Austerity -V- Expansion war is the definition of money. What is it? How can it disappear? Where is it? Who has got it? Why do governments and banks not have enough of it?  We live in the wealthiest, most automated, most productive, most informed and fastest growing economy ever – and yet have persistent, endemic poverty such as 35 million Americans on Food-Stamps and millions of families in loan–shark debt traps being paid less than a living wage; which means – for the slow witted and low IQs among us - that they can’t live. What are governments and corporate bosses doing?

Money is a set of political decisions. In a well run economy it is the accurate bookkeeping record of all the wealth and current transactions in the real economy. The real-economy is the real goods and services owned and transacted – money is a set of IOUs that keep track. Money cannot be “lost” but it can be rationed.

When the Egyptians learned how to tame the River Nile and produce surpluses and became very wealthy – a major chunk of their wealth was diverted into assuring the royal families of eternal life by building pyramids. These immense public projects needed immense resources – men, stone, wood, paint, gilding, sarcophaguses, embalming and funerary art. The food, clothing and housing of the workforce was authorised by the Pharaoh of the day, who effectively issued IOU’s (money) to the public granaries, wine-stores, weavers, clothiers etc. for the all the supplies needed for these large infrastructure projects. This monetary expansion, quantitative easing, additional economic activity not only did not bankrupt the nation – but despite the silly underlying concept, made Egypt ever more successful – over a thousand or more years. The activity provided jobs, focused talent and education, created national pride, tourist attractions, medical advances, writing, the arts and military might; and transported the bosses to Heaven - maybe.

Today’s well paid, overpaid, fully pensioned world leaders – in business and government – lack any vision, direction, ideas or understanding of wealth creation. The majority of them are simply scooping up as much cash as possible, as fast as possible, climbing the golden ladder to the steel-ceiling, clambering through and smashing down the trapdoors – onto the heads, hands, children and lives of the rest of the world.  Then they whinge and trot out their self-serving bullshit economics, “…the money has run out”. The money has not run out – it cannot run out – it should expand with our successful real-economy – the richest 1% is choosing to keep what they’ve got and bully and starve the 99%.  They want to stop the clock – freeze the process – with themselves at the top – for ever.

This is the wealthiest society ever and the real-economy is expanding fast. The bookkeeping, money-economy has to be reformed to keep pace. It is time to repatriate the past 30 years of siphons to tax-havens; bring the cash ($11 to $18 trillion) back to the originating economies, invest it in projects in those economies, and thereby re-balance all the economies around the world. Then we can continue to build a marvellous future for all.

7 May 2012.

HELP - How can I spend £3,500 a day?

Boardroom Pay – Shareholders Revolt

This morning in the UK, the Conservative-Liberal coalition licks its wounds after being thrashed in the local elections in which they are losing hundreds of local-council seats to Labour. Will public schoolboys Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Clegg now do a U-Turn and allow the UK economy to expand?

Meanwhile, in Boardrooms, top directors are weeping and nursing their injuries after their wrists have been slapped with a wet flannel by powerful shareholders “outraged” at excessive executive pay. The shareholders are institutions, insurance giants and pension funds etc, that hold big chunks of shares – on behalf of the bewildered public. Those same institutions also dole out excessive pay to their executives – and many share the same conspiratorial remuneration-committee non-executive directors who, for a mere £50,000 a year or so, in three days work, will calculate that quite newly elevated, ordinary, talentless, risk averse plodders MUST be paid £3,500 a day – or they will emigrate to Rockall or China leaving our nations in ruins. And, of course, if they have to spend £3,500 a day on themselves – an onerous task - the executives cannot be expected to actually turn up for work.

…So we might be forgiven for not wholly believing that the wet-flannel wielders mean what they say.

And, of course, the revolting shareholders (or the executives representing the shareholders) decisions are not binding on the criticised corporations, they are only advisory.

How should it work?  The most important socio-economic function of corporate executives is to provide jobs – to create jobs – to manage workers – to run effective organisations. Their joint pay should be a percentage of the wages paid to ordinary workers, adjusted by the numbers of jobs they manage and capped against average pay by, say, 5 times. E.g. – If BT employs 80,000 people in the UK, on average wages of £35,000 a year, the entire executive group, say 100 mangers, should earn 80,000 x £200 or £160,000 each – but capped to 5 times the average pay. If the workforce declines – so does the executive pot.

Shareholder power must be reformed by law to overcome the divide & rule tactics of executives.

4 May 2012.

TAX AND ECONOMICS ARTICLES 29TH APR 13

The rich will always be with us

The UK Sunday Times Rich List was, it seems, published last week, concluding that 0.001% of citizens, about 1,000 individuals among 63M souls, own or are worth £414BN – enough to pay off the UK deficits several times over. Some of the Blessed 1,000 are drones – in hugely overpriced banking, rip-off gambling hedge-funds, fiddling the books and other parasitical activities – and many own vital industries contributing fairly to society.

There are arguments about precise definitions of personal wealth but the Blessed 1,000 undoubtedly wield and direct great economic power. Society needs these rich-nodes of independent wealth to counterbalance and be alternative investment centres to the vast cumbersome wealth of government. While it is true that most major industries are born from long term, futuristic government backed risk investment, (Christopher Columbus, Walter Raleigh, Captain Cook, Empire Building, Scientific Research, The Spitfire, Wars, The Jet Plane (post-migrant recognition), NHS, North Sea Oil, Computer Industry (posthumous recognition), British Leyland (ouch!), the BBC, BT, BP, Nuclear Power, Gas, Electricity, Water, Railways, Agriculture, etc.), the entrepreneurs do thereafter bring the products to the people for their enjoyment – usually efficiently and sustainably. Industrial heroes, industrial leaders, major employers, innovators and entrepreneurs fully deserve their enviable day-to-day rewards, their power and their alleged “wealth”- which in reality is mostly shares in corporate organisations employing millions of people, which few of us would care to work hard enough to own, control and manage. 

The social contract goes awry, as it has done this decade, when the Blessed 1,000 and the Government (“2,000 top civil servants are fiddling their taxes”) shovel their assets into elevated off-shore, off-planet tax-havens, convert as much into cash as they can, pull up all the ladders, slam down the steel trapdoors, cut themselves off from the communities that have enriched them, and refuse to pay taxes or to re-invest in those communities. Currently this self-elevation into the International Super-Rich, into the Drones Class, is denying jobs for up to 40% of 15 to 25 year olds, paying millions of families less than a living wage, trapping them in loan-shark debt, letting infrastructure crumble and sabotaging vital social organisations. Angry critics from the 99.999% might holler a vulgar Manchester imperative “S**t! Or get off the pot!”

In previous centuries, the Blessed 1,000 were mostly pillars of their communities who built Model Villages, Town Halls, free schools, hospitals and infrastructure. That was and is the economic justification for allowing their glorious power to continue. In France they broke the contract and suffered the guillotine, in Russia and the Colonies they suffered confiscation, expulsion and death – and today around the world, radical governments are wresting land and utilities from private hands – for better or worse.

Power and Responsibility are opposite sides of one coin. Power without responsibility will always self-destruct. The rich will always be with us - as long as they act responsibly.

3^rd May 2012