I can demonstrate, by quoting one simple
letter, why Western economies - particularly Europe - are failing. It’s more
obvious than just the debt built up by politicians whom Keynes let
off the leash of responsibility. It's more obvious than the central banked fiat money system, or
democracy under a tyranny of the majority following the bribes of unprincipled
politicians looking for a free lunch and no risk. It is, indeed, a tangible
thing that covers and smothers you: the massive, moribund, choking, blanket of
regulation reaching around the world, that has been patched and patched and
patched to stitch us up over the last seventy years.
About fourteen or fifteen years ago ‘we’
– my wife and I being one of those joint account type of families - invested
–Jesus, sorry, fell off my chair – we threw $10,000 into a UK investment trust.
The plan – note this Mr Taxman – was long term savings into what in those days
I thought to be capitalist economies, so providing us alcohol for old age.
Trouble is, after at least, two, three, who knows how many inflationary bubbles
called economic booms over that period, our $10,000 was at the end of March
2012, worth only $7,102.39. Over that time the damn thing has driven me nuts:
the investment trust has changed its name at least four times; I once spent the
better part of a day just trying to track it to its new name, as I updated its
once a year belly laugh we called a ‘balance’
for our financial statements. Every time we’ve changed house I’ve had to
hunt through reams of paper to find the address of the latest registrar –
changed at least three times – to send new contact details. So, we’ve decided
it’s better to cash up early: we’re planning to put the whole lot - minus loss,
admin fees and commissions - into short term deposits while we not so slowly
drain it off and drink it, to help get us to old age. And the process has set
me to pondering over a glass of wine or three in the interim.
Here’s a big question: is modern
portfolio theory such a good idea under crony capitalism? That was the central
point I missed at the start of all this, and I’ve been learning to my
detriment: the West is no longer capitalist, hasn’t been for a very long time,
it is, as George Orwell called it, state capitalism, or crony capitalism, or
socialism by any other name: more accurately, it’s statism. Indeed, the
misnomer of Keynesian aggregates has effectively given the statist politicians
an excuse to build national Ponzi schemes which, in a plot that makes a James
Bond movie look daft in comparison, are now set to destroy the world’s savings,
and with them, much of the middle class. And we are the generation for whom the
chickens of truth have come home to roost and expose the battery cages that
taxpayers have been imprisoned in, showing how they are standing on a rank,
steaming hubris of shit. More, against this stench, diversification is no
safeguard, there’s no clear air anywhere which allows the untaxed, unregulated voluntary transaction, while the maxim of hold long has become
the one guaranteed way to lose the nest egg. As bad as my job is, I still thank
Job I’m not a financial planner as Western stat(ist) capitalism gets printed on
the presses into the end game. I sometimes wonder if this’s why Papa Morgan spends so much of his time chasing penguins in icy southern waters
these days: he’s acclimatising to what’s coming for his industry.
Anyway, I detour. We decided to knock
the bugger of this investment off, finally, and donate it to the vineyards of
Marlborough, despite it aggrieves me the excise tax windfall this will be for
an increasingly wowser government. Though it's this process that has
given me the final proof of my premise. In cashing up, after finding the latest
name of our fund, the latest value (oh dear, $6,987.98), the latest registrar,
writing to it (don’t be silly, can’t email them), waiting three weeks, we get
in the mail, just this morning:
“Unfortunately, we have been unable to complete your request. Due to legal requirements and regulatory permissions, we are currently unable to offer a Postal Share Dealing service … outside of the UK/European Economic Area (EEA). Please contact your local share dealing provider, such as a local bank branch who may be able to handle the transaction on your behalf …’
Oh, just great. Another barrier to get
through, another commission to pay. I know why the
West is collapsing: it’s collapsing because I can’t do something so simple, anymore,
as get my own money back out of an investment due to ‘legal requirements and
regulatory permissions’.
Though pity these poor sods at the
registrar concerned, because, defeated on my first tilt at it, I’m going to
have to send this issue nuclear: I’m handing the whole sordid affair over to
the lovely wife. She’s the only person I’ve come across that can move a
bureaucrat with any speed: for note that's what these businesses are now,
bureaucracies - that’s what they had to become after the onslaught of
regulation, after regulation, after regulation, which was all about,
supposedly, protecting me, the investor. Well I certainly am protected, no
doubt about it; I’m so protected I can’t even get what’s left of my money back.
And don’t think we’re immune in New Zealand where we’ve just had the new Financial Markets Authority
legislated to shoot, or kneecap, any investment still showing signs of life –
because life is risk, right, and that must be eliminated - while the SFO was last seen scouring Christchurch for more work to slow up the rebuild,
now they’ve ensured no sane person here would want to be a director of a
company issuing prospectuses anymore.
Have a good weekend.
Postscript: by the by, tax inspectors in
Indonesia are now being given three weeks military training. You see the way this is all going? And look whose using the exact same tactics as the Nazis and Big Brother in Orwell's 1984: hey kids, why not dob in mum and dad to the IRS whistle blower program. What ugly things our social democracies have become.
So many things I’d love to blog about,
but alas, no time. Hopefully I'll get a chance to torture some more metaphors over next couple of days. Um, I wonder if some of my 'learned' readership have figured out yet that most of my pieces are written in iambic pentameter, and are written to be read aloud? Don't ask me why ...
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