2713 days ago
In today's bearcast recorded with my father as the audience, here in Shipston, I start with the Autumn Statement which gets 0/10 from me. Then it is onto Sound Energy (SOU) and the issue of fund manager due diligence. Then Optibiotix (OPTI), FastJet (FJET), Mkango (MKA), African Potash (AFPO), Countrywide (CWD) and the global real estate asset class - yes a Manhattan penthouse and a terraced home in a grim Northern welfare safari slum are related!. Finally a few words about Paternoster Resources (PRS) and as a related issue New World Oil & Gas (NEW).
2715 days ago
I end with a few thoughts about the Chancellor's forthcoming Autumn Statement. I think we are at the "natural rate of Unemployment" and thus what is needed is not massive infrastructure spending and more deficit financing but supply side reforms to tax and welfare. Before that I refer to my earlier death list bearcast and look at the common threads that link AIM companies that will, at some stage, go bust.
3793 days ago
This is a great piece by my pal Dominic Frisby. It is bang on the money:
Our tax code is 11,000 pages long. That is too long. By about 10,990 pages I'd say. Its size and complexity make blunders and fraud inevitable.
But it's worse than that. Our system of tax is immoral, it is inconsistent and it creates inequality.
So I am simplifying it. Here's how.
Why should the individual worker pay more tax than the company? Why should the multi-national corporation with an army of accountants employed solely to deal with the taxman receive better treatment than the local small businessman? Why should any group receive special favour? That is not capitalism, that is not socialism, it is not social democracy - it is crony capitalism.
