Bourse capitalism, the European Union, neoliberal austerity and fanatical privatisation will wreck Britain’s infrastructure unless the immediate opportunities the citizen has are seized, and the myth of the unstoppable bulldozer is thus shattered. It’s time to crawl from the wreckage and spike the guns of globalism, Brussels, Stephen Crabb and Jeremy Hunt.
There’s a growing feeling that the worst is over for platinum. The Aussie dollar surged after RBA minutes suggested the authorities would hold off on cutting rates. Bruce Kasman of JP Morgan thinks oil will stay in the $40-$50 range over next year. There was an OK sort of session across Asian equities, with soft Oil teasing 50 Sovereign yields mostly up. For clues as to how the US Presidential election could hit the dollar, investors should study what happened to Sterling during Brexit.
The above are, broadly, tips based on technicals and forthcoming events for those who still think anything in the markets is real, and have the money to invest in it. I picked them out from Twitter this morning, and they’re representative of what one sees every day.
This is the general idea of a bourse [‘stock market’] to raise capital for business, which in turn creates jobs and gives governments money to invest in social infrastructure:
Young companies offer the public a share in their business, in order to give the directors/owners more working capital to develop and market existing and new products. As they do so, investors’ share values grow, and they get paid a share of the profits called dividends.
Unfortunately, this is no longer what happens.
- Investors take advice and bets on platinum prices, currencies, energy forms, Sovereign debt bonds and elections and referendums. Not only is it just gambling, much of the subject matter is directionalised and manipulated to create a profit that hasn’t been earned on the ground. It has close to zero use in real global business, and a -56% relevance factor to smaller new IPO businesses.
- Most shareholders are remote, in the sense of having bought company shares on advice, while taking no real interest in the business. Worse than sleeping partners, their sole desire is to sweat capital: so they’re as likely to dump your shares in favour of platinum or the Aussie dollar as they are to increase their shaareholding.
- What they do want if they stick around – despite all the salutary lessons of 2008/9 – is a margin of at least 25% on the gross year in year out, and dividends. QE enabled companies to do that without any substantial sales growth at all. Across the world now, it is (with Zirp) becoming commonplace for large multinationals to borrow in order to pay a dividend the investor simply shouldn’t be getting. Short-termism still dominates most corporate strategy.
- The demands of bourses led to the rise and rise of the accountant. This is the bloke who knows zilch about the customer or the retail trade, but needs to find the quarterly 25% on the gross four times a year. His main strategies are firing people, screwing raw material producers, and diluting product quality. The larger and more widely quoted the company is, the lower down the list of priorities the end user comes.
- That should let in young competition to give those customer brand or service users a better value, better performing product. This constant refreshment of fat process by new creativity is about the best feature of capitalism….when it happens.
- But it is happening less and less. There are several factors involved. To retain market dominance, push up the share price and increase the value of their own holdings, public companies do everything in their power to squeeze out smaller competition: with massive price discounts, by stuffing the trade with huge stock inventories, or in the end by buying them.
- When they buy – merge with or acquire – smaller competitors, merchant banks move in to “advise” on the process and, generally speaking, analysts like this M&A because they see it as maintaining the share as a safe bet with “economies of scale”. What the customer loses is the creative culture of the acquired company. Also, much of the time the shareholders do very badly out of it. As long as fourteen years ago (in 2002) The Economist audited M&A shareholder values following acquisition, and discovered that in 57% of cases, value had been destroyed. Not diluted – destroyed.
This is what I mean when writing about the current globalist bourse/banking model of capitalism as really multinational monopolism. As I write, Greece is being raped by global monopolism, and its assets flogged off to those who have too much of the world market already. It’s being raped (and its government neutered by the Troika) because bourses have made multinational globalist racketeers so powerful, they own the politicians and call the shots.
I have to laugh some mornings – usually when watching Boombust TV – when I hear those up to their necks in this creeping monopolism talking about the “mismatch between what nervous markets see and what we know is a trend of rising wages and growing sales”. In reality, the mismatch is between what global interbank selling and bourses engage in, what daft ideas like QE, Nirp and Zirp destroy….and what creative business really needs: capital from supportive, long term and actively involved shareholders. They will not get that by IPOing onto a bourse. (But they will get rich doing that, which is why most entrepreneurs do it sooner or later)
If we stay in the EU, we will sign up to TTIP. This will squeeze out everyone from existing sectors, and ensure that separately genuine inventions and innovation get hoovered up by the Big Boys sooner rather than later. Although in the West, mutually based owner/staff/customer company forms are the fastest-growing type of set-up, most of the capital, the banking support and the political trading power resides within the Davos Club.
These businesses use that power to corrupt taxation systems, pay as little tax as they can get away with, and blatantly evade it with the nod-and-wink blessing of the authorities…whose sole desire is to get a quick and easy deal….which is a bad and dirty deal for the average citizen.
So to summarise, globalist bourses and monopolist capitalism
- stagnate innovation
- stifle competition
- leave companies therein open to irrelevant investment whims
- disengage for much of the time from real business needs
- grow unemployment
- dilute wage levels
- often destroy shareholder value
- control political Parties through cash, then
- starve sovereign governments of tax cash
- reduce consumer demand
- cost Welfare Ministries billions in benefits
- mess up time and time again & bring Sovereigns closer to insolvency
- fail to provide enough genuine growth and proper tax levels to fund private or State pensions.
But this is the mechanism upon which the future of the United Kingdom is at present massively overdependent. By contrast, rejecting it is the basis upon which I campaign for more devolution to communal mutualism, reduction of our dependence on globalism, a greater variety of capital support models beyond bourses, justice for the Waspi Campaign and our secession from the European Union within two years of a Brexit vote on June 23rd.
Centrally controlled socialist command economies are not the answer. They have failed to avoid massive corruption or produce widespread wealth in society, be that in China, the USSR, North Korea, Vietnam, Venezuela, Zimbabwe or Cuba.
But there is such a thing as society: it trains, educates and provides health care for employees. Thatcher was wrong, and she’s dead…get over it and move on.
Above all, any Big Central State one-size-fits-all mentality intrinsically threatens the liberty of the Sovereign Citizen, and removes their sense of communal responsibility.
To get to this – once we’ve thrown off Brussels, Camerlot and Washington – we need a unique and new socio-economic movement that blends community bases with internet solidarity.
There is no point at all – in the medium term future – to a political movement. That power base is owned by global corporations.
The three big steps are these:
i. Vote Brexit
ii. Work for a united Opposition to Camerlot
iii. Create a watershed precedent of stopping the neoliberals’ destruction of our infrastructure. This has already happened in London & Bristol mayoral elections. It is thriving at Football Club United of Manchester (FCUM). It must now succeed in stopping Hunt at Health, Morgan at Education, and Crabb at the DWP.
The defeat of Irwin Rommel in the Western Desert during 1942 destroyed the myth of Nazi military invincibility. We are now at another Montgomery moment. If we can destabilise the EU, tear up TTIP, defend British infrastructure and reject Camerlot, the myth of the gloablist superState corporate future will start to crack. It won’t crumble, but it will mark the beginning of its end.
The Slog 