472 days ago
In today’s podcast I look at interest rates, unemployment, a prescient Bearcast on Wilko last November, and flying small caps, what next and what should you do?
725 days ago
There are folks who think that inflation can be cured without pain. Those are the same folks who urged record money printing during the scamdemic. That is what caused inflation not, as they claim, President Putin. Writer Jesse Felder puts them straight.
770 days ago
I look at unemployment data and why it is utterly misleading whatever the wretched Tories claim. Lies, damned lies and statistics. Then at what share prices can tell you: Versarien (VRS), Nightcap (NGHT) and Argo Blockchain (ARB).
850 days ago
Certain readers of this website (naming no names, PL) reckon that, to make money, we should follow the inbred public school twits of the fund management community. Au contraire.
1249 days ago
Once upon a time the Conservative party recognised that what the economy needed was a successful private sector creating jobs and generating taxes and that the best way to achieve that was for the Government to get off the neck of employers. If only we had a Tory Government. Instead the regime of Carrie Antoinette and her husband Lyin’ Boris has a raft of new plans to encourage flexible working. They might seem harmless.
1302 days ago
What did the wretched Canadians do to deserve Justin Trudeau as their leader? The man who wears his Eid socks to the Pride Parade, or is it the other way round, is a virtue signalling loon par excellence. His latest outburst is on the gender unemployment gap.
1429 days ago
I refer not to Mark Drakeford, our First Minister. He is clinically insane so should not be judged too harshly for the scandal that is evident at the Welsh Assembly. For its members ( an MS) are set to get an inflation busting 2.4% pay rise next year taking the stipend of an ordinary MS, let alone a minister, to £69,273. This is a reward for failure. It is certainly not the sort of performance related pay we wicked capitalists in the private sector like to advocate.
1448 days ago
That is the claim, as you can see below, from Tortoise which claims to be “the UK’s youngest, fastest growing newsroom.” As you might have guessed, it is sort of left leaning and whatever it claims about integrity today, it talks utter victimhood piffle on Covid.
1527 days ago
The news on jobs was bad on September 15 2020. Since the start of the Government’s fascistic reaction to Covid, 700,000 folks had disappeared from company payrolls. More, who are self employed, are now without work. As Furlough draws to a close, we all know that hundreds of thousands of other workers will be handed a P45. Meanwhile, wage rates in most industries seem to be falling as companies look to cut costs wherever they can as they battle to survive. But on this grim day, there was evidence that some are more equal than others.
2228 days ago
I see that London’s hapless Mayor Sadiq Khan is tweeting like a man possessed, pleas for folks to travel to his great City this weekend for a mass exercise in anti Brexit Remoaning. I would have thought he has more important things to do.
3133 days ago
If something good happens to the economy Dodgy Dave Cameron and team Project Fear tell us that it is thanks to the EU. If something bad happens it is down to fear of Brexit on June 23. And the media just laps up the lies. That brings us to unemployment in the UK which rose in March by 21,000 to 1.7 million. 31 million folks are in work. The increase is therefore just over 0.05% of the workforce , in other words tiny and possibly even seasonal to some degree, but the press bought the line that it was down to businesses not investing in jobs on Brexit fears.
One or two journalists had the decency to add that it might also have been caused at least in bit by the world economy slowing. But they clearly did not think that one through did they?
Yes the world economy is slowing so we saw poor jobs news from across the globe last month with China alone announcing that six million state workers in coal and iron and elsewhere were going to get P45s. In the US the unemployment rate rose from 4.9% to 5%. And those were the brightspots. In Brazil and most of the EU the P45s were flying.
So I put it to you: unemployment is increasing in the US, Brazil and China (as well as in the zombie Eurozone), is that because:
3188 days ago
Warning: The podcast contains both bad language and also a lot of abuse directed at Australians.I start with the guys who run Slater & Gordon and accept that they can't be thrown to saltwater crocs who have not eaten since Christmas. shame. Its all down to geography. I then move onto the liar David Lenigas, Rare Earth Minerals (REM) and LGO Energy (LGO). Then to Bingo Bango Bongo (BGO) WTF is going on? Petroceltic (PCI) - the new Afren in every respect - and then to 4D Pharma (DDDD), Finally I dwell on the spectre of mass unemployment in certain sectors in China, the UK and the USA and what it means.
PS If you are a Slater & Gordon ambulance chasing lawyer now facing a P45 I have no sympathy - I look at the compensation you got for your clients - notably Savile victims - and how it related to your obscene fees, the costs to society of your activities and thus wish you a long stint on the dole.
3858 days ago
Wandering through the streets of Athens today I happened upon a book stall set up by the side of the road. Pride of place at the top of the heap was the Greek version of one of Jamie Oliver’s works.
Youth unemployment at 65%, unemployment at 30%, massive cuts in the standard of living, corrupt politicians, German imposed austerity, the music of Nana Mouskori, Nazi Occupation in World War Two, a bitter Civil war afterwards and now Jamie. Surely it is time to say that poor Greece has suffered enough and that it does not need this one last misery heaped upon its suffering people?
3876 days ago
In a couple of days I shall be on the road again, picking up the Mrs at Athens airport and heading off to the Mani. It is three hours to Athens, an hour to get lost in the City and then five more to the Mani. The Mrs will, no doubt bring CDs so for the last five hours it will be a mix of Nashville with the odd George Michael track (her choice not mine). But until we meet up I will listen to the radio as I love Greek pop.
The beat and some of the strains clearly have a Turkish influence (I hope no-one here is reading this) but there are also very European themes and so I am a big fan. Perhaps that is in part because I do not understand very much of what is being sung.
With English pop I know that 99% of the lyrics are inane piffle. With Greek pop I am sure that the same is true but I can kid myself that the pained lyrics are about the struggles of the War of Independence, the misery of 58% youth unemployment or the tragedy that has been joining the Euro. I know I kid myself but it makes for great listening. Sadly as I start to learn Greek the cost will be that I can no longer kid myself.
The track below from the High Queen of Greek pop Despina Vandi was one that the Mrs and I had on our wedding play list last year.
3909 days ago
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has once again shown himself an utter moron with his plan to levy an extra tax on bankers’ bonuses and curb tax relief on pensions for higher earners to “end youth unemployment.” He is a moron because his plans will not work but he is at least playing well to the crowd.
In today’s Britain bankers are hated. So saying that you will tax them more heavily will win votes. Balls should go further and announce plans for windfall taxes on other groups who are almost universally despised, such as paedophiles, Piers Morgan or members of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary party. It would win votes but like his bankers tax plan such schemes would not work.
Why will it not work? Firstly bankers will find ways around it to move either their bonuses or indeed themselves offshore. If a Government interferes with market forces by penalising one section of society of whom it disapproves what next? A super-tax on accountants or lawyers working for Pinsent Masons (I quite like that one)? Mess with market forces and in a mobile global market you will lose out. Just look at what has happened in France
So the take on that will be less than Balls expects
3925 days ago
No folks there is no mistake in the headline. And no, I have not been infected with the mad lefty virus following my brief visit to the Socialist benefits paradise that is Wales. You read it here first: The Guardian has on one issue got it bang on the money, the British Chambers of Commerce is just wrong. The issue is youth unemployment.
I start with the pantomime villains, or should that be clowns, that is the small business organisation.
3938 days ago
There has been a curious silence on the woes of Greece for the past few months. You might just have thought that its problems had gone away. Oh no…
The economy is still buggered with youth unemployment at 65%. In the long run it is demographics that will kill Greece as a nation. Quite simply, the mass exodus of young folks in search of work will see the average age (already 44) increase sharply. The retirement age for many is 52 and life expectancy is 81. I am sure you can work out why this will kill off Greece.
4033 days ago
The latest cunning wheeze from the Labour Party to create unemployment and send small businesses to the wall is the “Living Wage” – it is madness writ large. It will not reduce poverty it will create it.
4190 days ago
In four weeks’ time the happy band of brothers that is the EU will welcome a new member – its 28th. Welcome aboard Croatia you do not know all the fun you have been missing.
The unemployment rate in Croatia is 20.9% (against a Eurozone average of 12.2%) while youth unemployment is already 51.8%. So in terms of making this a greater “common market” what will be the added trade benefits to Britain of welcoming this economic basket case on board? Er…exactly.
But of course it means that Croats can now pack their bags and seek employment or claim benefits elsewhere in Europe. The first flight (one way) out of Zadar, Croatia to London Stansted after July 1st is on July 3rd and costs 47.99 Euro with Ryanair. You kind of sense that it will be sold out soon.
As an employer I welcome more cheap labour. Persuading a native Brit to come off welfare and earn £16,000 as a waitress is pretty much impossible and so the EU provides an answer. I gather that there are some good looking birds in Croatia and so I am not grumbling.
But I am not sure that on balance, the addition of another country which will be a net taker from EU funds really makes the case for the UK staying in the Evil Empire any more compelling.
As for Croatia presumably with its economy already fucked it can do a few Greek style fiddles and compound its misery by applying to join the Euro. At which point youth unemployment of 51.8% will seem like the “good old days.” Although perhaps not quite as good as the the glory days the last time it linked up in an Axis lead by Germany.
4514 days ago
I will give you a clue. The official unemployment rate is 22.5%. Actually that is not a very good clue because like every other economic statistic churned out here in order to obtain/maintain Euro membership it is, ahem… a lie. If I offered you a spread of 25-26 would you buy or sell? Buy you say? You win.
The figures are massaged in a number of ways but here are the main three.
