That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘economics’

A little birdie told me recently that a large bank in the city is due to announce another record quarter of profits, and with that another round of record bonuses will follow. The Daily Heil will no doubt bleat on about fat cats and that sort of thing but here’s why they should just sit quietly in the corner with a large box of shutthefuckup.

In the first quarter of this year the bank in question made £1.2bn profits and set aside half of that for bonus payments. It’s fair to assume that as my source described both the profits and the bonus this quarter as record breaking it will be in excess of that figure. The bonus pool for the year is rumoured to be as much as £14bn.

And around five and a half billion of that is going straight to the treasury.

That’s a lot of schools and hospitals.

Or it’s payback of about 3% of the national debt that Gordon has kindly run up for us.

I just finished buying some tickets on Ticketmaster and at the end they offered me a choice of how I would like my tickets delivered. There were two options:

1. Get a link sent to me by email, click the link and then visit a page where I can print out the tickets myself. Cost: £2 processing fee.
2. Do absolutely fuck all and let Ticketmaster print the tickets and mail them to me. Cost: £2 processing fee.

Come on cockmonkeys, you’re not even trying. Option 1 clearly costs you less in time and effort than option 2 but you offer no incentive. From the consumer point of view the benefits of 2 are not balanced out by an increased cost so even the most retarded internet user is likely to go for option 2.

Sure, option 1 is more cost effective for Ticketmaster but I don’t give a scampering fuck about their bottom line so if they are cutting the cost of delivering the tickets and giving me the choice I expect there to be a reduction in the amount I pay in return.

Sheesh, c’mon Ticketmaster, it’s not rocket surgery.

Lord Myners, Financial Services Secretary:

There is still the option for Sir Fred to do the right thing

Yes, yes there is. There is also still the option for criminals to hand themselves in, benefit cheats to hand back the cash, Gordon Brown to resign and George Bush and Tony Blair to set themselves on fire in downtown Fallujah.

The BBC is currently running articles about the stillbirth rate in the UK and how as many as 6500 children die each year before they are 4 weeks old. I understand that losing a child in this way must be truely horrific but with child mortality rates dropping, life expectancy increasing and a global population of around seven billion I have to ask: do we need another 6500 kids every year?

Analyst from Ernst & Young:

Increasing the supply of central bank money via purchases of government securities should help to loosen these restrictions and boost the supply of money and credit.

This is what we call “printing money”. Essentially you either get hyperinflation because nobody buys the debt (cf. Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Turkey, Zimbabwe); or you get a long, drawn-out stagnation  because of failing banks, high house prices and bankrupt businesses* (Japan).

If you’re really really careful and get it exactly right, you might just start crawling out of the recession in a few years (no examples)**.

* where have I seen this before?

** source: Thribb, E.J.: The Bumper Book of Economics for Schoolboys, Oxford University Press, 1st Ed. (1968)