ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 39 REAPING THE WHIRLWIND My wife and I have just returned from a couple of weeks in the USA. Among many sources of stimulation, debate between friends and family threw up a number of key issues of economic interest – two in particular stand out, and they are closely related: (i) Whether […]

GOING POSTAL 20/8/18 [Part 1 of “This time it will be different” appeared as Going Postal last week.] PART 2 THE SCOURGE OF CREDIT EXPANSION – THE SYSTEM’S DEMISE COULD BE SOONER THAN YOU THINK The monetary conjuring trick employed after the last crisis, described in Part 1, required central banks to purchase government bonds […]

1 – THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT – Yes, far worse! [ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 35] The last crash 2007/2008 Before the last financial crisis in 2007/2008 sub-prime mortgages were all the rage. The idea was that if mortgage lenders put a pot-pourri of mortgages in a parcel, the risks attaching to mortgages at the […]

Having seen the nature and causes of unsound money, what can we say about sound money? It is money that can be trusted, by anyone and everyone who uses it. Trusted to do what? Trusted to retain its purchasing power. what matters is what money can buy After all, what matters is what money can […]

Let’s look more closely at the role of interest rates Money is one of many forms in which wealth may be held, but money and wealth are not synonymous. Wealth is the accumulation of savings. Savings, in a business, are what is left after meeting all its direct and indirect costs, depreciation, distributions to the […]

UNDERSTANDING ECONOMICS IN ONE HOUR 1 – Overview Looking about us, what we see is the passing show. Despite every appearance of reality, it is ephemeral, ever-changing. It is Prospero’s “insubstantial pageant”. What we see is a “result” of something else, always a manifestation rather than a “cause”. It is difficult to discern the real […]

“ACCOUNTANCY” – FEBRUARY 2018 PENAL SANCTIONS REGIME THAT DOES NOT RAISE STANDARDS The main objectives of the Financial Reporting Council’s sanctions policy are to improve audit performance, protect the public from sub-standard work, maintain market confidence and uphold proper auditing standards. The policy emphasizes, however, that its purpose is not to punish, but to protect […]

“ACCOUNTANCY” – DECEMBER 2017 HBOS, KPMG & FRC – a trio mired in scandal How much credence can shareholders of public companies safely attach to financial statements that carry a “true and fair” imprimatur from their auditors? Big-4 firms hold the lion’s share of public company audit appointments, yet they are regularly found to have […]

Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars A salutary insight into the fallibility of economic thinking at every level. By Emile Woolf  on 4 September 2017   Format: Paperback Godfrey Bloom delivers an apocalyptic message on the consequences of misguided economics in an age of unreason. It carries little ‘good’ news, and its explanation of the ‘bad’ […]

“ACCOUNTANCY” – JUNE 2017 Banks, criminality and accounting: end of the road?  All those banks and other financial institutions that have gone bust, or been bailed out, over the past 20 years demonstrate that the sector’s corporate conduct has been wayward, to put it mildly. That these dodgy outfits are located in the UK, USA, […]