Leveller

Alan Johnson in Birmingham, originally uploaded by Downing Street.

What a fucking cunt. The sooner this shite is buried in some landfill like the slimy piece of refuse he is the better.

here we go again…

Originally uploaded by loungerie

American Republican’s say that because Ms Pelosi was mean to them, they decided to throw their toys out of the pram in a fit of pique. Apparently throwing themselves into a major recession it is more important so as to preserve their cherished beliefs in Reaganomic market voodoo.

Perhaps the next time they vote on this they’ll add a clause to grab back the $36 billion in bonuses the city spiv’s paid themselves last year.

EDIT: following the vote $1.2 trillion was wiped of US share prices.

That’s a big whack out of everyone’s 401K and all because Nancy made the Republican’s cry.

send in the clowns

The US Federal Reserve bails out AIG with almost $100,000,000,000 as its stock value crumbles. But what has brought this giant of insurance down? The answer appears to be that the value of AIG’s investments known as Credit Default Swaps (CDS), apparently these are supposed to be a form of insurance policy (AIG’s business is insurance) against bad debt.

At the end of last year concerns were being expressed that the value of these insurances were grossly overestimated resulting in a write down of $4.88 billion.

It seems that not only was AIG’s insurance risk assessment lacking but their Crisis Management Services just wasn’t up to the job either.

Over the last couple of decades companies like AIG have charged huge fees, and paid themselves massive bonuses, for advising on, and selling derivative investments like Credit Default Swaps.

Today many suspect these derivatives are worthless.

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Workers leaving Merrill Lynch

Lehman Brothers file for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch taken over by Bank of America, and stock markets plunge. Will any lessons be learnt? Of course not:

Lets run that again. These banks paid in bonuses an average of $212,000 per employee in the year when everything went tits up. Of course that 186,000 includes all the secretaries, cleaners, and other ancillary staff. Some people at the top of the pile got $millions upon $millions.

Now don’t let these CEOs and the like kid you that their jobs are risky. The average UK worker is in the same job for 5.5 years. The average job span of a CEO is a month or two less. When these guys get sacked in addition to the $millions they get in compensation, they immediately take up paid directorships in other companies, when the average worker losses their job they are out of work for 15 weeks.

JPBR-1707-3-B World Bank

Originally uploaded by
World Bank Photo Collection

Ten days ago news was released of the discovery of a tribe of Amzonian Indians in rainforest in the state of Acre in Western Brazil.

The last tribe to be contacted were the Murunahua tribe in neighbouring Peru, 50% of which subsequently died of colds and other illnesses.

With modern society on their doorstep the clock cannot be turned back, but they should be allowed the time and space to decide how and when they will interact with the 21st century. To that end they need to be protected from loggers, gas and oil speculators, and Evangelical Christians.

BBC Link about bloody time.

Being a higher rate tax payer this doesn’t affect me, but its been appalling hearing about the sum of monies that very low paid people would have lost through the abolition of the 10p rate. The sums that would have been lost weren’t much in absolute amounts £50-£100 but a huge figure to those on minimum wage.

Appalling though that was, the most disgraceful part was listening to various Labour Party apologists claiming the numbers of loser were far smaller than those that thought they were affected. That may have been true, but to say that people should shut and forget about those at the bottom of the pile, the burger flippers, shop and office assistants just out of school, is outrageous.

Its taken the bastards over a year to fix this, at least 12 times longer than it took them to decide to give 100s of billions in handouts and guarantees to city scoundrels.

Now if only I could recall the names of those MPs that defended the original proposals.