Getting involved

  By Mystic | August 16, 2012 - 04:59 | ,

Audio -

Written by: Mystic on August 16, 2012.
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  • windslice

    We are diverting away from all the crisis stuff, but I find this positive. It was getting to be too predictable.

    Anyway, that video has sent me reminiscing over the last few years as a Corporate Man. It put a smile on my face, and the girlfriend thought I had gone mad, smiling at a computer screen.

    I’m now going to drift away in thoughts of past lives, with a beer or two to accompany me.

    Thanks.

  • windslice

    Aah, a short sharp shock back to the crisis.

    Checked my email and the BoE has replied to my questions. They are pretty good at responding, although they do ply the “official line”.

    Question 2.

    2. Who receives the interest that the debtors are paying on the loans that are swapped for T-Bills? The banks or the BoE?A. The originators of the loans receive the interest, not the Bank

    Oh! This seems not quite right. The banks collect the interest, leaving the BoE with just the collateral and presumably risk, and then take the T-Bills off to the market and borrow at even lower rates. Another indirect subsidy for those poor bankers.

    And to my question 1.

    1. Apparently through this new scheme the banks can borrow from the MM at a rate even lower than it is today by providing the T-Bills as collateral. I am not sure why that should be, and we are talking about reducing the maximum that the banks pay from 0.5% to a sliver less than that. So to what level do you expect the MM to provide funding to the banks?  

    A. This is for each Money Market participant to decide. The Bank provides T-bills to institutions that participate in the FLS, against a range of collateral; it is up to them what they then do with the T-bill. There is an active repo market in T-bills, so banks should be able to easily swap T-bills for cash. Repo rates for T-bills vary according to market conditions, but tend to be close to Bank Rate

    .I now need to get my head around why a bank would want to repo T-bills for cash. They have from loans to T-Bills to cash on the asset side of the balance sheet. How does that help anything?

    I reckon another email will be heading to the BoE tomorrow.

    I really do not understand this banking malarkey.

    • http://overthepeak.com/wordpress/ Mystic

       MMMF’s have loads of money and need to find something (non-risky) to do with it all.  This is not easy for them~!

      Have you seen that the interest on Gilts bought by Merv has not been paid to the Treasury yet.  Still sitting there ….. up to 30 billion now~!?

      • windslice

        That is a bit incestuous.

        1. Treasury issues bonds.

        2. Merv buys ‘em.

        3. Merv collects interest from Treasury.

        4. Merv returns interest to Treasury.

        Money for nuffin.

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9477121/More-QE-coming-Bank-of-England-minutes-show.html 

        “Last week, the Bank downgraded its forecasts for growth to zerothis year and the minutes reflected concerns about the economy. The Bank now believes that even long-term prospects may have been damaged.

        The minutes said: “Growth was now judged more likely to be below than above its historical average rate in the second half of the forecast period.”

        and

        ““If we thought it would add more stimulus we would do it, but asset purchase through quantitative easing is a more powerful way of aiding the economy … but we’re keeping that under review,” Mr Fisher said.”

        I wish these guys would issue a clear statement showing how all this is going to stimulate the economy.

        Oh, and sorry guys, using nuclear power to force the interest rate to zero just doesn’t not cut it.

  • augustine

    In an unrealated comment,  about shale gas, doesnt all the talk about shale gas mean shale oil is a non  sequitur.  In that it isnt going to bear much fruit so to speak.  And is off the table in that wont supply most of our oil in the future.  I mean it is alot like squeezeing oil out of rock.  It donsnt sound good.

  • Flig_in_Detroit

    I would like to slow my life down.  I feel like I am still in my 20′s but I turned 43 in July.  Kids speed your life up.  One day they are born, the next thing you know they’re seven.  I enjoyed working on the family farm when I was young and I enjoy working for myself in architecture now.  I don’t have any plans for retirement because I don’t believe in it.  This concept of retirement is a passing fad.  My grandparent’s generation was the first to talk about “retirement” and the “golden years”.  I think the more natural state is to work in some capacity until you die. But…work at something that allows your creative side to express itself.  In that way, work isn’t work in the negative sense. 

  • Axel1million

    At fifteen years old I was thinking that the whole of existence was very suspicious.
    No one could answer my questions truthfully. I thought, “these people (adults) don’t even know the reason we exist, they just make stuff up”.
    Lucky, one morning while reading the back of a cornflakes box I found the answer to everything and never looked back since. 

    • Flig_in_Detroit

      We tell ourselves stories to create a “meaning” to all this-cultural stories.  Its OK to buy into the stories as long as we know that they are really just that.  The notion that I am Polish is a story I was given.  Certain food and customs and religious practices went along with that and made life fun and interesting.  Then you delve in a bit deeper and find out you’re Polish mixed with German mixed with French mixed with Iroquois Indian and you start to investigate the stories that go along with those lables.  Then you begin to consider yourself human and you investigate the stories associated with that.  Finally you consider yourself just part of the waving aether and you look around and there isn’t much of a story to tell at a human scale about that so you drink a beer and choose your story for the week to live by. 

  • Flig_in_Detroit

    Sorry I misspelled labels as “lables” above.  Also sorry for getting so far off topic.  I am just in a wierd mood today.

  • snedmeister1

    I can remember thinking how strange time was too, as a young child….

    Not in the same analytical way, but with regard to birthdays and Christmas, or summer holidays…
    I can remember, clear as day, wishing the days to pass for our summer to start….

    It seemed to take an age, but they seemed to last longer when they finally arrived too than a comparable period of time now…( or am I looking back with rose tinted glasses perhaps..?? )…

    Six weeks off, to the young Sned, seemed like a long time, now it passes in a blink…!!!

    Getting involved or clock watching is definitely a factor, but I wonder how much age has to do with it too…?? 

    Every old person in my family that I spoke to as a child, would say “Don’t wish your life away son, it will pass quick enough anyway, the older you get, the quicker it passes”…
    I would get that line whenever I would say how much I wanted the holidays, or my birthday to come around again…

  • Nick_septre

    I have heard your arguments Nick and I have too agree. I am from that curious navel examining period UK circa 60′s/70′s. I rejected the middle class conventions of that period as well, it seemed logical somehow. 

  • http://www.richnewbold.co.uk/ Richard

    What I most remember about being 15 is that everybody else seemed to know something I didn’t – about a great many things – including what they wanted to do with their lives. I was never interested in all that “career” nonsense. At school, all I wanted to do was get to the break or lunch times so I could play football, climb trees or ride my bike.

  • CSArichardo

    I joined the military because it was a ticket to a free education, it appeared to be an adventure and maybe an escape from my small town factory life.  However I expected too much from the leadership and was not prepared to step up and take charge by staying a life time.  It was easier or more fun just to move on, which happened in 1987.  That was the first of a number of positions where I never developed into a careerist.  I would agree that to this day I survived because I got involved in doing stuff which interested or challenged me.  Still do. 

    Note that a free education was actually a great deal, for a miser like me, even though I owed a few years paid labour back to the federal government for the experience !!  

    • Axel1million

       We hear a lot of people complaining about ‘student debt’, but you have demonstrated that there is a way to get educated and get paid for it!
      A little lateral thinking goes a long way.

  • http://www.belfast-architects.co.uk/ Alan

    Defining moments, I think we all remember school lessons like that. Mine were in Primary School. I am dyslexic can spell if I don’t think about it, can’t if I do, (odd) but can decipher with the best of them.   I didn’t start school until I was well over 7 as mother forgot to register I was born! So each morning I would walk 4 miles to school to get caned for spelling.

    Then we had the oppressive nature of the place. One of my first defining moments was reading. Each pupil read a line in turn, mine was something like ‘Nip is a good dog’, but instead of reading it I asked why he was called Nip if he was a good dog. I learnt to keep my thoughts to myself that day.

    I learnt a lot at Primary school, as my interests were
    often seen as problematic and I tended to lack restraint. I would bring in live rats for the Nature Table or make rope
    swings from the trees and I was never a team player. In the middle of
    some pointless game I wandered of to transport a frog to safety. I could
    never see much point in chasing balls. Now climbing trees was something
    else!

    School taught me that authority can be abused, is often oppressive and is run by people who are often weak and deeply suspect. I have never had difficulty understanding how atrocities happen and could envisage those around me committing them and going home for lunch.

    By secondary school I had learnt all I needed to fit in and not be noticed, be insincere.

    • axionication1

      How odd. Dyslexic myself.

      Can, eerily, personally relate to all you have written about school.

      Flash bulb moment for me. As a kid looking in a suitcase that were lined with old newsprint. Seeing the old adverts that at the time would have been absorbed and reacted too with much seriousness. Thinking to myself that everything was a silly story.

  • Emmazedbend

    I was so miserable in my first job that I vowed after that, only to do jobs I liked, I wasn’t blessed with ambition so that is what I have done. Some of my friends have had very successful careers and I wonder how happy they are (to be successful they have had to give heart and soul to it, at the expense of spending time with partners and children).
    As for the time going fast or slow, isn’t it a phenomenon that as we get older time seems to speed up? My osteopath reckoned it could be to do with our brain chemicals slowing down, but I’m not so sure. I did notice when I took up painting that if I copied something once the painting was OK if I attempted the same scene again I made a worse job and missed over half the details; I drew from this that when we are familiar with something we start to edit bit outs unconsciously thinking we know all about it, but when we are unfamiliar with something we place great attention on it and notice all the details. Just wanted to run that past you as no one I know discusses such things; they all seem very content with how life is.

    • http://overthepeak.com/wordpress/ Mystic

       I like the explanation where we see that at age 10 ………. 1 year is one tenth of your life; whereas at age 50 a year is only one fiftyeth.  ……… Not such a big thing and so most of it goes past un-noticed. 
      (lack of consentration)

    • http://overthepeak.com/wordpress/ Mystic

       Come on ….. they are content~!?
      They eat to cover up boredom (among other things).

  • Subtlepath

    I do believe one change of heart has indeed produced another for ya Nick… :-)