For years I worked as Finance Director to a number of large organisations. The view from my position was way different to that shown in the media and Government–or understood by the man in the street who relies upon those sources for information. What amazes me about the problem with sub-prime lending is that it has been fueled by commoditising the debts–i.e., the sell off of debts created to international organisations. The initial objective of commoditising was to spread risk and speed up the flow of money. It was driven by the greed of money brokers and Directors in the City (as in Wall Street), and the relentless drive for profit & growth by the Banks. What it has allowed is a number of unscrupulous/greedy lenders to lend badly and sell on the risk to other greedy Bankers who didn’t worry too much about who had borrowed the money.

Sub-Prime lending tends to be at premium rates and the profits, whilst mortgages are being paid, can be considerable. The current relatively low interest rate environment fooled people into borrowing excessive amounts. Rates can hardly go lower, but they can go a lot higher as anyone over 40 can tell you! Demand for cash has resulted in banks being so short of money that they cannot follow the reduction in the Bank Rate as the fewer savers demand a better return for their scarce resource–cash. Think like a broker who is only focused on this month’s volumes and his annual bonus, and Directors focused on satisfying shareholders at the next AGM, and you can see how short-termism resulted in the long term risk being ignored or “minimised”. This has helped fuel property prices to unsustainable levels, creating a false “feel good factor” and drove unsecured credit demand which in turn fueled an unsustainable spending spree and growth. Gordon Brown surfed the wave and polished his reputation as a great Chancellor–which he is not.

Now the bubble is bursting and a contraction of possibly immense proportions will occur. Taxes have been levied and the public sector has expanded on the basis of this bubble. With the coming of a recession it will be unaffordable. Brown sold off our Gold Reserves at the bottom of the market–now Gold is at new highs, a sign of impending recession and an indicator of the UK’s weakness having sold off the “family silver.” Add to this mix the acceleration of fuel/food demand in China and the East, the impending Peak Oil crisis, food shortages and billions pouring into the Middle East, funding Islamic Terrorism and we have a heady mix!

My advice? Clear your debts, take up an allotment, get a small car and a bike. If you live in an inner city–move! If it were legal I’d also say GET A GUN!

Another reason the collapse of the British economy and its transformation in just ten years to a banana republic is the massive taxation and waste NuLab has piled on this country. Quangos alone now consume over £180 BILLION, all of which has to come from the taxpayer! Add in all the other waste, the thousands of ridiculous laws and red-tape strangling what is left of our manufacturing sector, and it’s a wonder that we have any firms left at all!

Hello John, To me, as a fellow “oldie”, it is very gratifying to note that your now-veteran brain is as razor-sharp as ever. I hope all visitors to this site will carefully read - and re-read - your analysis of the causes of the coming recession. The greedy bankers have done it again - just as they did in 1929. I absolutely agree that the natural monopolies must be taken back into public ownership, along with education and the NHS, with Bliar’s PFI consigned to the waste bin where it properly belongs.

The solitary item on which my view differs from yours is that I do not believe that we can ever manufacture goods in competition with foreign states who can produce them on an extremely low or, in the case of the Chinese Lau Gai, virtually zero-labour-cost basis. Our approach, I believe, must be to make consumer goods which really are durable, as distinct from semi-disposable, and are easily repairable in the long term, thus greatly reducing our foreign debt and clamping down on the currently profligate wastage of energy and material resources involved in constantly re-manufacturing consumer goods and recycling, so far as is possible and at a further energy cost, the materials used in their construction. Foreign plasticrap needs to be not subject to tariffs but totally excluded on all of those grounds.

My very best regards to you. Long may your chimney continue to smoke.

“We must give protection for industry and jobs by selecting tariffs on foreign manufactured goods that we can make competitively ourselves.”

This is going to be extremely difficult given the low base that the Old Gang and their City friends have reduced us to - but there is going to be no choice . We absolutely need protectionism, stringent capital and credit controls, selective support for home industry and bringing it back under national control where it has been treacherously sold off.

Brown’s latest suggested wheeze apparently is to swop bank mortgage “assets”(no doubt the toxic-waste SIVs) for taxpayer backed government bonds. This is lunacy. They have already pumped billions of pounds of “liquidity” into the thieves den. This is like plying George Best with more and more whiskey, there is only so far that this can go before the liver and then the replacement liver packs in.

I totally agree with Tancred: “Clear your debts, take up an allotment, get a small car and a bike. If you live in an inner city–move! If it were legal I’d also say GET A GUN!”. We’ll need some way of protecting our allotment crops for one thing.

If there is silver lining to all this it is that the collapse of liberal economics will certainly result in the death of the whole pernicious liberal creed, in short order.

I don’t think that the slump is by accident. I feel that the whole world economy is being forward planned. Call me an alarmist or a conspiracy theorist but if you see the lists of who attends Bilderberg meetings you will get nervous as well.

http://www.bilderberg.org/2007.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbakN7SLdbk

“In their anxiety to ride out downturns, governments allowed an unsustainable credit bubble to be inflated.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/17/dl1701.xml

Comments reveal public anger and distrust.

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They’re waking up, aren’t they?-Ed

Noel, thank you for your kind words and I am doing my best to keep the rather battered chimney still smoking.
I was not suggesting that we could ever manufacture low value goods in competition with low labour cost Asian manufacturers. This was the point in suggesting we should apply selective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods “that we can make competively ourselves.”
I like your suggestion that we should make products that are really durable, as distinct from semi-disposable.
John Bean

I`m a little confused. That`s about protecting British jobs. What jobs are those? Any industry that has been capable of being unbolted has been shipped abroad on the back of a lorry. Those that haven`t have been replaced with cheap foreign workers (because the local British population is apparently too lazy - err, too expensive). Our `industry` is, in the main, the financial sector, and that`s on it`s back. Major retailers know we are heading for a financial meltdown and in some cases have been closing stores or reducing staff levels. So what industry are we talking about? Sure we still have a small aircraft industry which in the main is supplying plane parts to Toulouse, and our car manufacturing is on the brink of complete extinction. The steel industry is virtually dead too, so what have we got that`s worth fighting for? When I left school at 16 there was still a buoyant British industry, there were jobs for adults and apprenticeships for kids. Our electronics industry was still more-or-less intact, and our car industry was competitive against foreign imports. But not anymore! How many of you have the wrecked remains of empty factories in your area? How many of you wax lyrically about the jobs these factories used to provide? Under this corrupt regime we have become a country of past memories and wasted opportunities. Fertile ground for our take-over by the Stalinist expectations of the E.U. They`ve taken our dreams, now they have come for us.

I just cannot understand this pickle that we find ourselves in. Wasn’t Mr Broon the “Greatest Chancellor” this planet has ever seen, nay, even the known universe?
International finance!!! The words smoke and mirrors come to mind. All of this heartache caused by the loan of money that doesn’t exist.

A Big Shining Lie that Brown and his hapless rubbing rag Darling are forever peddling is that the financial crisis was entirely made in America. Anyone who has had loads of junk mail from finance companies throwing money at them and who has a bit of sense will know that is a total lie. And the financial cancer causing agent was cooked up in the City thieves kitchen:

“Edward Cahill, the banker in charge of collateralised debt obligations at Barclays Capital, resigned last week, and others in his department are understood to have departed. The best known is John-Paul Parker, who is credited as the inventor of “SIV-lite”, the controversial structured investment vehicles at the centre of the worries in financial markets.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/aug/31/money

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They may be running, and leaving a disaster scenario behind them, but these people have probably taken umpteen millions out of the system in the interim, in bonuses etc. You will NOT see THEM on the bread-line!-Ed

Regular as clockwork, once a month, in separate cover from my statement, my (well-known and long-established) credit card company invites me to take out truly massive personal loans. Credit crunch - what credit crunch? Only two days ago I received my regular unsolicited invitation from the card company to get myself further into debt. The banks and the card companies (one and the same, actually), need savage regulation, not just now but for all time. I fear that events will overtake us, though; their day is almost done. No, the BNP is not going to form a government within the next few months, but the global capitalist debt-fueled expansionist economic system is collapsing under its own weight, and John Bean’s article is absolutely superb as it draws our attention to these trends. Tancred:- yes, if only it was legal (things will change under the inevitable BNP government), some means of defending oneself and one’s family from street scum is advisable, for the Police do not defend us. However, it is part of the EU/Common Purpose plan to render British society so terrifyingly dangerous a place that the law-abiding man in the street will welcome the planned EU armed occupation, in order to restore law and order to a society in chaos. Noel’s suggestion that we make products that are durable rather than semi-disposable is spot-on. So is another post’s suggestion that the import of cheap plastic goods be totally banned.

The first thing the EU did was commandeer our fishing waters, destroying our massive fishing fleet. British farmers were made to grub out our apple orchards, then came steel manufacturing, heavy industry, textiles, car and commercial vehicle manufacture, shipyards, docks, aircraft technology, plus a lot more. VAT was of course only 7.5% then. They will just keep on tightening the vice until we have nothing.

At which point they may just find out how tough and nasty the fight can be when fighting those who have nothing left to lose!–Ed.

Peak Oil–a lot can be done to help ourselves with solar panels that give free hot water–they really do work and are now affordable, despite the VAT and tax the Government put on them. Other Countries give good grants for these installations, but not here. In my opinion everyone should have a unit fitted to their roof they are brilliant, think of the energy saving throughout the Country. Check it out. http://www.eco-nomical.co.uk
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We need decent subsidies for solar panels. New home builds should have these fitted as a matter of course-Ed

The potential slump that’s now being talked about is fascinating to observe, especially as one notices the ever more frantic and laughable efforts to reassure the public that everything’s all right. Senior Labour Party ministers currently sound like Goebbels in 1943 attempting to instill in the sheeple the belief that they’re really going to win the war. These people are in fact totally confused themselves about what to do to get out of the current mess, much of which is closely related to our insane housing market.

I heard some senior government minister telling us this week that he wants to help first-time buyers get on the so-called ‘property ladder’, yet in the very same interviews these characters will express their determination to avoid a housing market crash - precisely the thing that’s going to help first-time buyers. As the occupier of a flat that was ‘worth’ £35000 in 1995 and is now ‘worth’ about £135000, I do wonder exactly why our rulers seem to think that this kind of price inflation, backed by an apparently endless (but soon to end?) credit boom, is good for the country. I suppose it keeps them in power for a little while longer as the contented, property-owning sheeple keep voting for them - at least until the other big party gets another go at making the same deliberate mistakes.

The odd thing about what has become the dominant financial and economic orthodoxy is that it’s more or less the same set of insane ideas that in the appropriate circumstances allowed the rise of ideologies like fascism (though today the system is many times larger and much more complex). I say ‘odd’ because our opponents are the ones who will always remind us of their over-used dictum that ‘those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat it’.

This system is a set of mechanisms that has the innate potential to breed political movements which would make us in the BNP look like a bunch of lefty liberals. I’m sure our opponents must be aware of this possibility, but they seem to think the best policy is to put up with a highly-imperfect system (from which many of them benefit financially of course) and attempt the crushing of ‘inconvenient’ organisations like the BNP when they do inevitably rise up.

Of most interest in the current ‘credit crunch’ debate is the so-called fractional reserve banking system - though nobody seems to be mentioning it unless they write on websites such as this. As I recall, it was this question which first prompted my serious interest in nationalist politics back in the early ’90s. It’s definitely worth investigating material on-line, such as ‘The Money Masters’ which somebody on this website recommended recently. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of many of the claims made in these films, but it’s thought-provoking stuff made all the more interesting by the fact that you won’t hear such theories from any of our mainstream media. I wonder why…

David Topple
Secretary
SW BNP

EnglishmanFirst- Yes, I too have solar panels on my roof. They were fitted in September 2006. At that time, our annual oil consumption would normally have been 3 tanks of oil. At today’s money, that is about £2,600. However, we now use just 1.5 tanks in that time, saving £1,300. I had no subsidy of course, and was lucky that I could afford to buy the system myself. Even at today’s prices, this system, which is almost zero-maintenance (one tiny little pump is the only moving part), will have paid for itself in only 5 years. It is very gratifying, even in the middle of winter, on a sunny day to see the water temperature rising on the hot water tank!

I also believe that every new home that has a south-facing roof should have solar panels installed, by law. Governments, with their privatisations, have, in reality, not been keen on encouraging genuine energy-saving, as reducing electricity and gas consumption would seriously upset the share-holders. If they WERE serious about reducing energy consumption–and the bottom line–reducing everyone’s electricity bills, then our government should have started, years ago, subsidising the replacement of tungsten filament bulbs with low-energy bulbs. Again, I replaced every incandescent in my house two years ago. Not cheap–this is a big house and we work from home, too. In that time, I have seen the number of KW hours used fall by one third. And no bulb has had to be replaced yet either! The next biggie will be LED lighting. I would hope that a BNP government would start with a programme of replacement of fluorescent and sodium-vapour street lighting with solar-powered LED systems. LEDs use 1/25 the energy of a regular bulb for the same light output. They use half the energy of a sodium lamp. Their BIG advantage is that they will last a MINIMUM of 25 years before needing replacing (around 5 years longer than a street lamp). The light they produce is directional (depending on the type of lamp and shade), and so light pollution (that orange glow) is DRAMATICALLY reduced. Here’s where North America is racing ahead of Britain:

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/4/12/10

and

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/asquared_michig.php

The following extremely serious and telling report concerning Chinese arms shipments to Zimbabwe might seem off-topic, but is in fact very much to the point:

“It lists the consignment as including 3.5m rounds of ammunition for AK47 assault rifles and for small arms, 1,500 40mm rockets, 2,500 mortar shells of 60mm and 81mm calibre, as well as 93 cases of mortar tubes.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/18/china.armstrade?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

What we see here is the rise of a new imperialism in precisely the same circumstances that have occurred in the past: a desire to acquire and control resources in an area of weakness and extreme political instability. This new imperialism could not be more dangerous because it comes out of a virtual serf-state with no historic doctrine of individual rights whatsoever. But this spectre has been raised almost entirely by greed-crazed Western capitalists, seeking excess profits, who have funneled financial resources into China and closed down our own productive capability. They have awakened the Dragon. With our industries dismantled, not only do we face economic ruin, but our ability to protect ourselves militarily is deeply compromised. We were made aware the other day by frei_saxon here of the closure of the ex-ROC factory at Puriton in Somerset. This means that we can no longer make for ourselves artillery shells, mortar rounds and small arms ammo, precisely the ordnance that the Chinese have seen fit to supply to Mugabe.

And yet the deluded puppet Brown, justly described as a “tiny dot” by Mugabe, is forever banging on about the alleged virtue of globalisation and internationalism. In economic and military terms this is a disaster for us. Pretty much everything he says is misconceived and wrong. He appears to have the temperament of a missionary, judging by his love for African photo-opportunities and his penchant for giving away large sums of money that he borrows on our unwilling behalf for that purpose. It would have been better, with his background, that he had been a missionary. With luck he would have ended up in the cooking pot, and we would at least have been spared his idiot presence.

I know this attitude isn’t very popular in today’s BNP, but I strongly hold the view that China and not Islam is the biggest danger to Britain and the West. The Islamic world might have its militants, but China has a vast industrial complex that the Islamic world sadly lacks, and is backed up by a huge and powerful military complete with nuclear weapons. I have been informed that most British engineers and scientists are generally supportive of free market, laissez-faire economics even if it means the industries which employ them collapsing before their own eyes and countless highly-skilled jobs lost. Completely suicidal. I have not encountered many scientists and engineers in the BNP during the ten years I have been a member.

There are dangers within and without Britain. Most would hold that the Muslim threat within represents the greater immediate danger, but I suspect many share your views regarding the danger without.–Ed.

The governments of other ‘free market’ countries have done much more to protect their workers and industries than the spineless crew that inhabit Westminster. This week, for example, Japan has blocked a hedge fund seeking to take a 10 per cent stake in one of its electricity producers, and the protection given to European firms against foreign takeover is well known. At present our government is selling off our nuclear industry, and the likelihood is it will be European, Japanese or American firms buying it - though there is just a chance that Centrica, which owns British Gas, may get a stake.

There are powerful arguments in favour of increased protectionism, and a gradual return of energy and water companies to public ownership is an obvious and affordable policy. A British government with sound fiscal management could acquire stakes in such companies over a period of years just by spending a small proportion of tax revenues.

One reason for China’s recent massive economic growth is that China has artificially kept its currency fixed at a low level, so again the imposition of tariffs is justifiable. The strangest thing is that human-rights obsessed leftists are happy to close our industries and throw our workers into the poverty of minimum wage ’service economy’ jobs in order to import cheap goods that are produced in gulag-like conditions by workers who are little more than slaves, from one of the most authoritarian states on the planet.

“A British government with sound fiscal management….” There’s the whole problem with your argument–though it’s a problem for which the BNP has a solution.–Ed.

“The governments of other ‘free market’ countries have done much more to protect their workers and industries than the spineless crew that inhabit Westminster……” pblake

That’s because they don’t believe in liberal economic ideology when it comes to protecting their own interests, liberal economics as practised here and in the USA is City/Wall St slash and burn capitalism, the British government just kow-tows to them, it is absolutely in their pocket. The Germans are righly contemptuous of “Anglo-Saxon” capitalism dismissing it as “Manchester” capitalism. Capitalist models are not all the same, despite the efforts of British liberals at portraying it as so.

“There are dangers within and without Britain. Most would hold that the Muslim threat within represents the greater immediate danger, but I suspect many share your views regarding the danger without.–Ed.”

Well this is begining to dawn even within liberal academia apparently, though I would have thought liberal academia an oxymoron because one associates academia with rigour and liberalism with mush, at least acdemia should be rigorous
Thus one Dr Carling, whilst spouting the usual trash about the BNP, seemingly recognises what it has long maintained, that what we are being subjected to is alien colonisation:

“Because of the Pakistani population’s desire to create “ethnic colonies”, he said, the best Bradford could hope for in the long term was accommodation rather than integration.”

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Fascism-and-Islamism-thrive-in.3810805.jp

However he is only a step on the road to truth because as a liberal he proposes “accomodation”. Plain-speaking folk know that to be surrender

Dissident Congress raises a valid point regarding the threat to Britain - and the West - posed by China. They are bent on colonising Africa in order to grab a raw material source for their expanding industry, which we were a prominent initial sponsor! However, as our Editor here put it, “the Muslim threat within represents the greater immediate danger”.

In regard to British Engineers and Scientists, we do have some representation among our membership, but could do with more. I recommend that you should read the articles from Tony Holroyd who writes in “Identity”, and also on this website in the past, from time to time. I hope to have an article from him on an energy alternative in the May issue of “ID”.

-Thankyou, John.
We certainly look forward to that one from Tony-Ed

The British government to which I was referring that could exercise ’sound fiscal management’ would be a future BNP government. Similarly I was suggesting that a responsible British government (and the use of the word ‘British’ is a bit of a hint), should exercise a more responsible model of capitalist mixed economy than we have seen here for many a year. Even the Americans protect their strategic industries more effectively than we do.

All global commodities - oil, metals, minerals, food and even water are becoming ’scarce’, and the growing global population will make this situation more dangerous with every passing year. Britain must become more self-sufficient and immigration must be stopped as a matter of national survival - and that is even without consideration of the kind of political and social threats posed by Islam and immigrant crime.

“I know this attitude isn’t very popular in today’s BNP, but I strongly hold the view that China and not Islam is the biggest danger to Britain and the West.”

Two very different adversaries: Islam threatens our culture, while China may well threaten us militarily. Actually, since Arabia is in the middle of Europe and China, we could have a proxy-war in Arabia and perhaps kill two birds with one stone.

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Perhaps the greater potential for Sino-Islamic conflict lies in Africa. Mugabe and corporate interests in other states are inviting China in while workers/unemployed within Chinese industries want them out. Either way, the Chinese will come into conflict with the Muslims in the north sooner or later. - Ed

Of course British jobs should go to the British, we as the indigenous population should be made first priority. But sadly that is not the case.

It is so frustrating when you buy something and the person at the till can’t understand what you are saying. Perhaps they are in the wrong job - in the wrong country…

Ooh can I tell a little story relating to schools and Blair’s PFI …..
Once upon a time ….. ok seriously I trained as Teacher of R.E. and part of my PGCE training took place in a recently amalgamated upper and lower girls school on the Wirral. The school had that Sept moved into a newly supposedly purpose built school building finaced through the PFI. It was a huge building. Not long after it opened it was found that there may be some future problems with the roof so extra doors had to be put in to support the weight! The windows weren’t insulated properly so teachers ended up stuffing the gaps underneath with newspaper. If that wasn’t enough the size of the building was inpractical. There was a massive staff room on the 4th floor but hardly anyone had time to use it! A teacher told me that in the old school she used to meet a friend for dinner in this building she hadn’t seen her for 2 weeks! Talk about purpose built. The building also did not entirely belong to the school. Pupil’s work was restricted to cases and specially placed boards. The walls were not supposed to be marked as the building had other uses outside school hrs.
This was PFI, what happens when Balls lets loose on the so called academies.