Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Grauniad
Been having a few days of Guardian to vary the diet from the DT. So rather than deep thought, I shall recycle a few snippets that caught my eye.
First, we had the eco-protest at some power station last year. Now while I do not altogether approve of mass demonstrations outside peices of critical national infrastructure in these tricky times, it would be good if we could manage without being too heavy handed. In the wake of complaints about heavy handedness, the New Labourite responsible claimed in Parliament that no less than 70 decent police men and women had been injured in the course of their peacekeeping duties. But someone has now played the Freedom of Information card and it turns out that there were no injuries at all in the course of peacekeeping duties, but there were odd cases of toothache, diarrhoea and such like among 1,500 or so police men and women on duty. And the powers that be wonder why we are all so keen on having a Freedom of Information Act.
Second, we had the sad case of a clutch of US newspapers being taken over by someone who had made a lot of money out of property. But he used the wheeze of not buying out the then existing shareholders with his own money, or with shares in his own company, rather by borrowing money from the bank. Now all gone pear shaped. Now the Grauniad claimed - paraphrasing slightly - that this was all down to lumbering a God fearing and decent newspaper carrying a whole shed load of committed, caring, consequential and possibly consecrated correspondants with a whole shed load of debt which it could not carry. All down to filthy capitalist. But I don't think that this is quite fair. In ordinary times, it doesn't make that all much differance how you finance a takeover. It's all about tax arrangements and who is going to carry the risks. Paying the bank interest on its loan is not that differant to paying the shareholders dividends. But in this case, the shareholders had been, generously as it turned out, paid off, and the balancing loan got caught up in the credit squeeze. OK, so an error of judgement, but an error that lots of other people made.
I then start to wonder about where all the money has gone in the huge Ponzi swindle we have just heard about. Now it may well be the case that lots of dosh has disappeared on expenses, kick-backs, commissions and what have you. Money down the drain. And it may well be that Mr Ponzi made a lot of unlucky investments, another error of judgement that lots of other people have made recently. But how can you lose $50bn when you have less than $20bn under management? You must be losing some very big option bets. Perhaps the answer is that the money has gone into the pockets of the winners of those very big bets. The Grauniad alleges that Mr Ponzi's accounts were audited by an obscure firm of accountants with 3 people on the payroll, one of whom is retired. So maybe greedy people investing large sums with the likes of Mr Ponzi ought to do a bit more homework, rather than blaming the regulators for not doing theirs.
And then, I see that global oil supply is going to peak in 2020, according the an outfit called the IEA. Which seems rather worrying on the face of it. But what exactly is behind such a figure? What does it mean? Part of the story seems to be that the recent fall in oil price is causing producers to cut back on the capital expenditure needed to bring new fields onstream. And there is a long lead time on this stuff, so if the price picks up in ten years time, there won't be time to fix things by 2020. All interesting stuff, so hoof it off to the IEA where I am very quickly invited to pay for information. Now working on their lower grade, free site.
And lastly, intrigued to see an allegation that one Liam Byrne, the minister whom I think issued his staff with a 10 page memo about his support requirements. What brand of coffee at what o'clock and that sort of thing. The allegation seemed to be that he has got the Prime Minister to work in an open plan office with about 20 other heavies. Amazing stuff. Not even our very own Prime Minister gets the privacy of his own office any more. Which I find very hard to believe. Such a person has little enough private life as it is without working in a gold fish bowl. Although, to be fair, real rulers like Louis XIV thought that not having a private life was the whole point.
First, we had the eco-protest at some power station last year. Now while I do not altogether approve of mass demonstrations outside peices of critical national infrastructure in these tricky times, it would be good if we could manage without being too heavy handed. In the wake of complaints about heavy handedness, the New Labourite responsible claimed in Parliament that no less than 70 decent police men and women had been injured in the course of their peacekeeping duties. But someone has now played the Freedom of Information card and it turns out that there were no injuries at all in the course of peacekeeping duties, but there were odd cases of toothache, diarrhoea and such like among 1,500 or so police men and women on duty. And the powers that be wonder why we are all so keen on having a Freedom of Information Act.
Second, we had the sad case of a clutch of US newspapers being taken over by someone who had made a lot of money out of property. But he used the wheeze of not buying out the then existing shareholders with his own money, or with shares in his own company, rather by borrowing money from the bank. Now all gone pear shaped. Now the Grauniad claimed - paraphrasing slightly - that this was all down to lumbering a God fearing and decent newspaper carrying a whole shed load of committed, caring, consequential and possibly consecrated correspondants with a whole shed load of debt which it could not carry. All down to filthy capitalist. But I don't think that this is quite fair. In ordinary times, it doesn't make that all much differance how you finance a takeover. It's all about tax arrangements and who is going to carry the risks. Paying the bank interest on its loan is not that differant to paying the shareholders dividends. But in this case, the shareholders had been, generously as it turned out, paid off, and the balancing loan got caught up in the credit squeeze. OK, so an error of judgement, but an error that lots of other people made.
I then start to wonder about where all the money has gone in the huge Ponzi swindle we have just heard about. Now it may well be the case that lots of dosh has disappeared on expenses, kick-backs, commissions and what have you. Money down the drain. And it may well be that Mr Ponzi made a lot of unlucky investments, another error of judgement that lots of other people have made recently. But how can you lose $50bn when you have less than $20bn under management? You must be losing some very big option bets. Perhaps the answer is that the money has gone into the pockets of the winners of those very big bets. The Grauniad alleges that Mr Ponzi's accounts were audited by an obscure firm of accountants with 3 people on the payroll, one of whom is retired. So maybe greedy people investing large sums with the likes of Mr Ponzi ought to do a bit more homework, rather than blaming the regulators for not doing theirs.
And then, I see that global oil supply is going to peak in 2020, according the an outfit called the IEA. Which seems rather worrying on the face of it. But what exactly is behind such a figure? What does it mean? Part of the story seems to be that the recent fall in oil price is causing producers to cut back on the capital expenditure needed to bring new fields onstream. And there is a long lead time on this stuff, so if the price picks up in ten years time, there won't be time to fix things by 2020. All interesting stuff, so hoof it off to the IEA where I am very quickly invited to pay for information. Now working on their lower grade, free site.
And lastly, intrigued to see an allegation that one Liam Byrne, the minister whom I think issued his staff with a 10 page memo about his support requirements. What brand of coffee at what o'clock and that sort of thing. The allegation seemed to be that he has got the Prime Minister to work in an open plan office with about 20 other heavies. Amazing stuff. Not even our very own Prime Minister gets the privacy of his own office any more. Which I find very hard to believe. Such a person has little enough private life as it is without working in a gold fish bowl. Although, to be fair, real rulers like Louis XIV thought that not having a private life was the whole point.
# posted by Jim @ 9:39 AM 
