Brown's Bargain Basement Clearance Sale

Gordon Brown, desperate for cash, has announced a £16BN programme of asset sales in order to bring down the massive state debt built up during the recession.

£3BN of assets are planned to be sold off over the next two years including; the Tote, the Dartford crossing, the Channel Tunnel rail link, and the Student Loan book.

Much like when he sold Britain's reserves of gold at the bottom of the market, his timing is lousy.

The Curate's Egg

The World Economic Forum has ranked the UK as the world's number one financial centre, overtaking the US.

However, it has also ranked the UK as 37th out of 55 for financial stability, placing us behind Panama, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Poland and Colombia.

The number one ranking will doubtless give the government an excuse to use it for their own political ends. However, the poor showing wrt financial stability means that this "success" may well be very fleeting.

Postal Strike

It looks likely that we are going to be lumbered with a post strike this Christmas.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) claims that it is confident that its 120,000 members voting on the ballot will support industrial action, the results are expected at 12:30 today.

Billy Hayes, the CWU's general secretary, said that workers had little choice.

Nonsense!

No one is forcing them to go on strike.

As I have noted before, there are many alternatives to the Royal Mail. This action will result in future job losses for those who strike, as they push the Royal Mail into oblivion.

Ripping Off The Over Fifties

The Times reports that building societies are ripping off the over fifties wrt interest rates offered on ISA accounts.

As from yesterday anyone over 50 will be able to invest an extra £1,500 into their cash Isas, as their allowance will rise from £3,600 to £5,100.

However, "institutions have launched a wealth of accounts to attract older savers' cash — but some are offering poorer rates than their 'mainstream' deals".

Fair comment.

However, as we know, the financial services industry does not discriminate when it comes to ripping people off. The British consumer has been, and continues to be, ripped off by the financial services industry viz:

- bank charges
- PPI
- endowment mortgages
- interest rates
- mortgage charges etc etc

In the eyes of the financial services industry we are all "prostrate cows" ready for slaughter.

House Prices Rise

The Halifax report that there was a 1.6% increase in house prices for September, this being the third consecutive month in which prices rose.

However, before champagne corks are popped, it should be noted that prices are still down by 7.4% year-on-year.

It is likely that the value of property will be subject to some unnerving bounces over the coming months. Anyone hoping for return to the unfettered rises of the boom years will be sorely disappointed.

As I have noted before, houses are for living in; those who try to use them as an investment vehicle, to fund their lifestyles/retirement, may be sorely disappointed.

Growth

It seems that the green shoots of economic recovery, at least in the service sector, are returning. Q3 2009 saw the first period of growth in the financial sector in two years.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) report that the number of firms reporting rising business volumes outweighed fallers by 31% to 24% (a positive skew of 7%).

However, the report predicts that up to 60,000 financial services jobs could be lost this year.

Advice To The Co-operative Bank III

Despite sending the Co-operative Bank several emails and going through the tortuous phone menu to try to remove my number from their database, it would seem that the Co-operative Bank is either asleep or remarkably incompetent.

I am still being plagued by calls from their computerised call centre, asking for a woman who is unknown for me.

Today I have emailed them again, this time using the email addresses of several members of their PR department.

Suffice to say, my experience of this bank leads me to conclude that it is very poorly run.

Here are few emails addresses for their "PR" people. Those of you are also experiencing harassment from the Co-operative Bank may find them useful:

cfsinvestorrelations@cfs.coop
public.relations@britannia.co.uk
duncan.bowker@cfs.coop
catherine.laycock@cfs.coop
andy.hammerton@cfs.coop
russell.brady@cfs.coop

Here is the email of David Anderson, the CEO of Co-op Financial Services david.anderson@cfs.coop

UPDATE

Third call received today from these idiots.

The Great British Fire Sale

Labour, in a dash to halve the country's debt, plan sweeping spending cuts and asset sales of up to £75BN.

In theory, according to Labour (the election is looming), this will negate the need to increase taxes.

Labour are conducting an inventory of assets that could be sold off at rock bottom "recession" prices, including Ordnance Survey.

It is ironic that we will see a return to the heady days of Tory privatisation, under a Labour administration. However, the key difference being this time that the assets are being sold at rock bottom prices and under duress.

Advice To The Co-operative Bank II

Despite forwarding the Co-operative Bank with a copy of my piece the other day about being bombarded with calls from their automated dialler, and despite pressing the correct buttons on my phone to remove my number from their database, they persist in calling me and asking for an unknown female.

Are these people completely incompetent?

I am very glad that I do not have an account with them, but wonder what it will take to get them to stop ringing me?

Shutting Stable Doors

Listen very carefully and you will hear the sound of a stable door being slammed shut by Darling and Mandelson.

Ahead of Alistair Darling's Labour conference speech outlining new rules to curb bankers' bonuses, Lord Mandelson spoke on BBC's Radio 4 programme.

He noted that Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, had introduced new legislation that "sorted out a ragbag of different regulatory processes" in financial services to make them "much leaner, meaner and more efficient".

Aside from the obvious point that the Tripartite system was hardly "leaner, meaner and more efficient", it is clear that if Darling is now having to introduce further regulations, it is clear that Brown's regulations weren't up to the job.

Mandelson will say later today that we rely too much on the financial services industry.

Fair comment, except this has been known for many years.

What exactly will he replace it with?

Later today Darling will outline plans to:

-End automatic bank bonuses year after year.
-End immediate payouts for top management.
-Defer any bonuses over time so they can be clawed back if they are not warranted by long term performance.

All very well.

However, as can be seen with the change of HQ for the CEO of HSBC, bankers will simply up sticks and leave.

The stable door may now be slammed, regrettably the horses have long since bolted!

HSBC Moves CEO

HSBC is relocating Michael Geoghegan, its chief executive, from London to Hong Kong as from February next year.

HSBC state that there are no plans to move the company's domicile from the UK.

However, as the G20 ponder what they intend to do to punish bankers for their hand in the economic mess and as the UK 50% tax rate kicks in, doubtless the fact that Hong Kong has a 16% tax rate may well have a bearing on future plans for the location of HSBC.

Advice To The Co-operative Bank

Yesterday I was plagued by calls from this number 08453550305.

An automated system kept calling with a pre recorded message, allegedly from the Co-operative Bank, asking for an unknown lady (not myself or anyone known to me) to press a button in order to speak to an operator.

Not unreasonably I hung up each time, as it bore all the hallmarks of a scam.

However, on conducting some research into the matter I see that in fact this is the preferred means of contact that the Co-operative Bank employs when chasing its customers (I am not a customer of the bank).

The fact that many people have complained to the bank (see this site for examples), telling them that it sounds like a scam, and as such they hang up, appears to matter not one jot to the bank.

They continue to use this system; plaguing their customers and non customers (such as myself) morning, noon and night.

My advice to the Co-operative Bank is simple:

1 Do not use automated systems to contact your customers.

2 Listen to the complaints for your customers, and innocent third parties.

3 Take my phone number off your database.

In the event that you are plagued by calls from the Co-operative Bank, call 0161 837 8769 and ask for the Chief Executive's Office.

Turner Gets Heavy

Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, last night at the Mansion House launched another attack on the banking industry.

Turner said that bankers faced a future stripped of profitable businesses:

"British citizens will be burdened for many years with either higher taxes or cuts in public services because of an economic crisis ... cooked up in trading rooms where many people earned annual bonuses equal to a lifetime's earnings of some of those suffering the consequences."

He added:

"Top management, in particular of banks involved both in complex trading and retail banking, needs ... to be willing to recognise that there are some profitable activities so unlikely to have a social benefit they should voluntarily walk away from them."

I would make a number of observations:

1 The higher taxes, needed to plug the fiscal black hole, are in part due to the fact that Brown failed to "put something away for a rainy day" during the "years of plenty". Instead he chose to "spend, spend, spend".

2 Where was the FSA during the period of "reckless" lending, when banks "cooked up" these failed schemes?

3 The financial catastrophe is in no small part down to the failure of regulation, emanating from the "bugger's muddle" of the tripartite regulatory system created by Brown.

4 Labour was happy to "schmooze" with the City during years of plenty, and had its fingers in the till earning billions in tax from the profits and pay of the banks/bankers.

5 The country did well out of the years of plenty, we are a far wealthier and more advanced nation than we were 30-40 years ago. This is a direct result of globalisation and freeing of currency flows. The current financial crisis has not set us back 30-40 years; ie we are still better off.

There will always be financial crises, each one different from the other. Turner and the G20 are unlikely to find a panacea that will prevent the next.

A Slap On The Wrists

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), having spent four years investigating public sector construction tender rigging, have fined the construction industry a trifling £129.5M.

This fine represents no more that 2% of each business's turnover.

Seemingly the OFT was worried that a larger fine would push the construction industry further into recession.

Maybe so, but what about the millions of pounds of public money that has been wasted because of this tender rigging?

A Dose of The Clampis

The Times warns that there is a highly sophisticated Trojan virus, Clampi, on the loose that steals online banking log-in details from infected computers.

The Clampi virus is spreading rapidly across hundreds of thousands of computers in Britain and the US.

The virus captures log-in and password information wrt financial sites, and sends it to a server run by the cyber criminals. They can then tell the compromised computer to send money to accounts that they control, or they can buy goods with the stolen credit card details.

The virus has a list of more than 4,500 finance-related websites that it monitors, including British high street banks.

Security experts warned that it was one of the stealthiest and most pervasive threats to computers using the Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Monitor your accounts closely.