Apologies for the long absence from here. I have been travelling on a rather long journey which was work related and took me from London to Hong Kong, to Shanghai then back to Hong Kong, back to London and out to Dubai and then finally to Abu Dhabi.
Three weeks were spent in a collection of taxis, planes, trains, hotels and offices. It was rather fun although I am not sure my wife would agree. ! I also learned that jetlag, in the broadest and least defined sense of the word, can be a scary thing that can suddenly catch up with you despite the best of intentions to the contrary.
Anyway I am now back in a London that has struggled to Springtime only to fall back to its wintery ways now that the clocks are about to go forward to summertime.
London is preparing for the G20 next week but more so it is preparing for protests. The protests are expected to focus on the City of London, the financial heart with the Bank of England at its centre. The "day of rage" is said to be Wednesday, April 1st or April Fools Day.
Maybe it is all going to turn out to be an April Fool. Britain has a long history of failed revolution after being one of the first countries to experience real revolution. It is so conservative at its core that it even after beheading its King, it is the nation that brought back its monachy.
After Karl Marx published the communist manifesto in London in 1848, the Chartist movement rallied and fear stalked the city that revolution was about to come to Britain. In actual fact the numbers of people who had joined up as special constables dwarfed the numbers who had come for revolution.
I suspect this April Fools Day will follow the same trend. Some of the protestors plan to storm banks and city institutions. However every office is now making plans similar to those being made in my office. It is officially "business as normal" but everyone is being instructed to come in dressed casually to avoid the small minority who want to "burn a banker".
It is difficult to imagine real political violence being turned on City workers. However in a time when the windows of former bank bosses are generally seen as fair game, no one can rule out that an extreme few will "push the envelope" out to doing something more radical.
A legion of private security guards is being hired to supplement the police. The battlelines on Wednesday are expected to be drawn first at the City railway stations- Moorgate, Liverpool Street, Cannon Street and London Bridge.
Whether self-conscious jean-wearing City workers will have to run a gauntlet of street fighting anarchists remains to be seen. I think it will be relatively peaceful although somewhere in the City the mandatory Starbucks looting will probably occur. Looting of a Starbucks seems a "tick the box" on all political protests these days. Rather bizarrely a Starbucks near the Israeli Embassy was looted when the protestors couldn't reach the Embassy during the last Gaza conflict.
My office has a group of ex-Ghurkhas acting as security guards so I suspect we stand a good chance of riding things out.
Nonetheless next week looks set to be quite a memorable week for London and the G20 and the travelling roadshow of protestors come to town.
Showing posts with label Credit Crunch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Credit Crunch. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
The hour before dawn ?
It is stating the obvious to say these are extraordinary times in both in London and across the world.
It is far less obvious whether this current crisis is ending or just beginning.
Yesterday the Royal Bank of Scotland Group lost 40 % of its value. Today at one point it regained much of this while HBOS rose 60 % before falling back later. That banks with stable Scottish heritage should be fluctuating in price like fruit in a wholesale greengrocer underlines the depths of this crisis.
The solution from London at least is to "part nationalise" (in the words of the FT) all the major banks. While that may bring some relief to share holders and those seeking to borrow money it is doubtful that this is a real solution. Not least it represents a suspension of free market principles and as this crisis is now largely about confidence it does little to inspire that. It also increases the tax payer's exposure. While the banks seem more than happy to accept state support it seems more doubtful that they will accept the other aspects of state ownership. The tabloids are already rumbling with calls for cuts to bonuses, control over penalty charges and cuts to mortgage rate. Whether the banks will find the taste of a public bail out so sweet in the long term seems doubtful.
A temporary suspension of taxation would have cost less and would have been better for the real economy than throwing "good money after bad" in the banking system.
Like any crisis the hour before dawn is always the darkest of the night. What is unclear to me today is whether this is a dawn or just a flickering candle lit at enormous expense.
That the city which has one of the oldest stock markets in the world is today "celebrating" a partial nationalisation of its banks suggests the coming of dawn is uncertain. London is where Karl Marx is buried. I hope it does not prove to be the grave of contemporary free market capitalism which despite its many faults has brought prosperity and benefits to so many around the world.
A part of me remains optimistic. Even at its worst this is another 1929. Even 1929 passed and a dawn came. Let us at least hope the dawn to this crisis comes a little quicker than then.
It is far less obvious whether this current crisis is ending or just beginning.
Yesterday the Royal Bank of Scotland Group lost 40 % of its value. Today at one point it regained much of this while HBOS rose 60 % before falling back later. That banks with stable Scottish heritage should be fluctuating in price like fruit in a wholesale greengrocer underlines the depths of this crisis.
The solution from London at least is to "part nationalise" (in the words of the FT) all the major banks. While that may bring some relief to share holders and those seeking to borrow money it is doubtful that this is a real solution. Not least it represents a suspension of free market principles and as this crisis is now largely about confidence it does little to inspire that. It also increases the tax payer's exposure. While the banks seem more than happy to accept state support it seems more doubtful that they will accept the other aspects of state ownership. The tabloids are already rumbling with calls for cuts to bonuses, control over penalty charges and cuts to mortgage rate. Whether the banks will find the taste of a public bail out so sweet in the long term seems doubtful.
A temporary suspension of taxation would have cost less and would have been better for the real economy than throwing "good money after bad" in the banking system.
Like any crisis the hour before dawn is always the darkest of the night. What is unclear to me today is whether this is a dawn or just a flickering candle lit at enormous expense.
That the city which has one of the oldest stock markets in the world is today "celebrating" a partial nationalisation of its banks suggests the coming of dawn is uncertain. London is where Karl Marx is buried. I hope it does not prove to be the grave of contemporary free market capitalism which despite its many faults has brought prosperity and benefits to so many around the world.
A part of me remains optimistic. Even at its worst this is another 1929. Even 1929 passed and a dawn came. Let us at least hope the dawn to this crisis comes a little quicker than then.
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