BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Whyperion]

Dead right Peter, nothing will be done. Sunak is hand in glove with too many city institutions to rub them up the wrong way. It would take a very left wing Chancellor to attack the foundation of the higher financial classes!
Do away with 'remuneration committees' and institute a system where executive income is capped at a reasonable multiple of worst paid workers wage. That would leave them a very simple way of raising their wage and if that system of caps was present right through the wage structure a rising tide really would float all boats!

Are you taking the outsourced (overseas) workers hourly rate or the UK shop worker ? I suspect the earnings of many managers of the companies that make stuff in the UK are not far off a reasonable fraction of their employees (or at least have a route to future participation from that pool of employees). Peel Holdings, Ineos might be exceptions . But then back again propert taxation takes that excess pay back to the wider economy

[Stanley]

See THIS Guardian report on the analysis of retail footfall. It is just as bad as was expected and it's difficult to see how many of the present occupants can survive.

[Tizer]

This could have been titled `Banker loses pocket money'!
`Goldman Sachs boss gets $10 million pay cut for 1MDB scandal' LINK

[Stanley]

Indeed Peter. The money continues to move uphill....
I've been watching the saga of Debenhams and Arcadia. All those long serving retail staff chucked on the scrap heap. That plus the other inevitable failures is going to completely change the face of retailing.
I'd like to believe that the small shops will benefit but I think online is going to do better.....

[Tizer]

As well as a long-established Debenhams store we also have a Debenhams admin centre here in Taunton so it's going to be a blow to employment here - and just when a big new housing estate is about to be built and after several others were built in the last ten years.

[Stanley]

I heard mention of a distribution hub as well but wasn't sure of the town.
I fear that unemployment is going to loom larger as we move into 2021. The issue of low wages and benefits also will grow as it is serious enough now to be causing rent arrears and evictions. What happens when mortgage and rent 'holidays' end as they surely must.
Also, and this is an oldie for us as we have been warning against the practice ever since Osborne loosened the regulations, there are constant little reminders and warnings about the number of people being inveigled into get rich quick schemes using their pension pots that are turning out to be total scams. Mind you I have to wonder at some of the stories I have heard. A steelworker the other day who had a pension like mine that increased 3% each year and cashed it in because he was promised a high return, it never happened and he lost the lot. I can't see you or I falling for that one Peter. So what's the answer? Education?
Later.... Black Rock warns of a 'stampede' from fossil fuels causing major job losses in the UK. See this BBC LINK.

[chinatyke]

Also, and this is an oldie for us as we have been warning against the practice ever since Osborne loosened the regulations, there are constant little reminders and warnings about the number of people being inveigled into get rich quick schemes using their pension pots that are turning out to be total scams. Mind you I have to wonder at some of the stories I have heard. A steelworker the other day who had a pension like mine that increased 3% each year and cashed it in because he was promised a high return, it never happened and he lost the lot. I can't see you or I falling for that one Peter. So what's the answer? Education?
Later.... Black Rock warns of a 'stampede' from fossil fuels causing major job losses in the UK. See this BBC LINK.

Financial Advisers, the parasites of personal wealth! It doesn't matter if your funds go up or down, they still make their money!

[Stanley]

Surely 'well earned commission'?

[chinatyke]

Surely 'well earned commission'?

Not well earned if they give bad advice and your funds diminish. In fact it is in an IFA's favour to recommend a bad or illiquid investment opportunity simply because they get paid more commission on that product. Carbon credits and people pushing them comes to mind! Churning is another card the IFA has up his sleeve.

[Tizer]

A steelworker the other day who had a pension like mine that increased 3% each year and cashed it in because he was promised a high return, it never happened and he lost the lot. I can't see you or I falling for that one Peter. So what's the answer? Education?

I have always agreed with the late John Smith when he said we needed to make Britain the best educated country, and Tony Blair echoed it with `education, education, education'. It should be our goal more than ever now; it's the only way to protect people in the modern world - protection from scams, unemployment, poor health and bad choices at elections and referendums.

[Stanley]

Agreed China...
Indeed Peter and as you know I have been shouting about that for many years. It was reinforced with me when I did the LTP. If you read the transcripts you'll find that education was one of the areas I focussed on and most of the people I interviewed were quite obviously let down by not having parents able to pay the cost of uniforms even though they had won a scholarship in examination. That was true even in 1947 when I sat my entrance exams. I'm convinced the price of the uniforms was held artificially high to discourage 'the wrong sort' from taking up the offer.
We still haven't addressed the problem and forgive me for being Left Wing but I still think it's a conspiracy to keep the poor under control. God knows what would happen if we educated them!

[Tripps]

We still haven't addressed the problem and forgive me for being Left Wing but I still think it's a conspiracy to keep the poor under control. God knows what would happen if we educated them!

Plenty to go at there. . .

Too much for typing. I'll speak when we next meet = though that could be a long time hence.

[Tizer]

I'm convinced the price of the uniforms was held artificially high to discourage 'the wrong sort' from taking up the offer.

Wasn't there a school head who said he turned away some pupils because he knew the parents couldn't afford uniform etc and he didn't want them trying to find the money and not feeding their children properly?

[Stanley]

He could always have scrubbed the uniforms and allowed the pupils to come in the best clothes they had.
Lots of artificial barriers. One of them was actually the teachers at the local schools discouraging bright pupils from taking the entrance exams. Assumptions being made that they could never rise beyond worker status so why bother.

[Tizer]

More on the `Reddit army', this time attacking the silver short sellers...
`Silver surges as Reddit army turns to commodities' LINK
My heart bleeds for the hedge funds having to lose tens of billions of dollars!

[Whyperion]

Some thought that some hedge funds (on the other side of the fence?) pumping the reddit tips ? Some have made a bit out of last weeks share movement Silver itself of course has a number of medical and other useful uses, so if you are needing it... Of course as a product its actually owned by far more people distribtuted in both finished form and in mine stocks, so the amount traded is far less than the total available (though the futures trade may be more ).

[Stanley]

The Reddit Army are proving what we have always suspected, that profits are made on the stock market by insiders manipulating the price of stocks. Now Joe public has found how to do it it will rapidly go out of fashion.
I never understood how shorting stocks worked, that's why I'm not a stockbroker. All I know is that it seems dodgy and it's gambling with other people's money. The sole purpose is to make some investors losers and to divert those losses into the short seller's pockets. How can that be ethical and yet the 'rules' allow it.

[Tizer]

Short selling stocks...I borrow $1M of your shares in Acme Inc and then sell them on the stock market. Other short sellers join in and do the same. Investors see this, assume Acme is failing and therefore start selling their Acme shares. It `snowballs' as other investors get the jitters and Acme's price plummets. I then buy back the same number of Acme shares that I borrowed, but at the much lower new price (say $0.5M), and return them to you. I've made a profit of half a million dollars. Time for champagne! . Even if you charged me interest on the loan it won't add up to much because the whole process can take place in days - and with electronic trading even much faster than that. You can see why the moneymakers like electronic trading! What the Reddit Warriors are doing is ganging together (bit like cloud funding) and buying lots of Acme stock to push the price up. I've got to return your Acme shares by an agreed deadline and I now end up having to buy them back at a cost of, say, $2M so I can return them to you on time. Big loss for me. No champagne!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't understand why the government has taken so long to get to this point. Much damage has already been done...
`Buy now, pay later firms such as Klarna face stricter controls' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55895162

[plaques]

On deferred payments it was common practice for some big ticket items, furniture, TVs and the like to be bought with 'No Payment for 12 months' then providing you paid it off then that was the ticket price if not you fell into a credit payment system. The pitfall being that the closure date may have been forgotten or that your circumstances may have changed making credit the only option. For today's super sophisticated young buyers who apparently can't see beyond their noses these delayed options are worth gaming because they are in total control. They aren't QED.

[Stanley]

"I don't understand why the government has taken so long to get to this point."
I may be wrong Peter but I have always assumed that this is because the Treasury hates to do anything that reduces the ability of their mates in the City to make money even if it is by ridiculous rates of interest. [Pay Day Loans....]
Look at the way the big accountancy firms get contract after contract to 'advise' the government or run parts of of the government when they are also advising 'persons of high net worth' how to avoid paying any more tax than is necessary by very questionable methods.
Dealing on a handshake in pre 'big bang' days was good because it could be presented as evidence of probity. In fact it meant minimal paperwork and audit trails.
It's a private club and they don't want Joe Public in there. That's why the Reddit Army is attracting so much attention.

[Tizer]

The US Securities & Exchange Commission initially backed the Reddit attack on short sellers. Suddenly it's changed it's tune and now criticises them for upsetting and endangering the stock markets. My guess is that the Top Dog moneymakers have leant on the SEC heavily.

[plaques]

The Stock market is well known for being like a casino. The short sellers are gambling the stock will fall in price and to some extent manipulating the market by suggesting that after they have done their deal that is what is going to happen, Bingo laughing all the way to the bank. The small Pop Vox Reddit people are buying making the market go up instead of down a totally contrary view to the big boys. No big prizes for them and not illegal so what's the beef?

[Tripps]

I'm not sure they could have done it in UK. Here if you short a stock you must borrow the shares from someone (and pay them a fee), and it all seems to be declared and open. I think you can see how many of a company's shares are out on loan at any time.

In this case - they shorted 140% of the shares on issue for this company Gamestop. I don't think that could happen here.

[plaques]

I see Burnley football club is in the process of being taken over by an Edge fund. A point which I don't really understand is that the takeover is partially finance by borrowing from the club placing them immediately £90M in debt instead of the zero debt they have at present. Takeover

[Big Kev]

I'm convinced the price of the uniforms was held artificially high to discourage 'the wrong sort' from taking up the offer.

Wasn't there a school head who said he turned away some pupils because he knew the parents couldn't afford uniform etc and he didn't want them trying to find the money and not feeding their children properly?

I saw this today, it's from a 1967 edition of the local paper from the town I was born in.

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