Diet update, supermarkets, horses and Bank on Dave

73.9 so, very slow loss, but inside the so-called normal range.
A revolutionary government is needed more than ever. Supermarkets are not only making people fat, they are selling food products that may well contain worm-meat for all they know, or care. The horse-meat scandel was exposed by the Irish authorities, not the UK Food standards agency. Why aren’t the supermarkets that sold contaminated own-brand products being prosecuted, or closed down? Do you think a small butcher would have the same treatment?
The Financial services authority ordered the tiny savings and loan company known as bank on Dave to stop taking savings, because they thought that it looked as though he might have been operating in an unregulated manner. They have since decided that there was in fact no breach of the regulations and he can once again take deposits. So why haven’t the big banks who actually broke regulations been stopped from taking deposits?
Do government agencies actually do any good? Well not the FSA or the FSA. They’re just FSA’s aren’t they?

With-profits investment with a life assurance company

The short version here is that with-profits endowment policies worked very well before the mid 1980’s. You paid a fixed amount in over 10, 15 or more years and you got a fixed amount out at the end of the term, plus bonuses added each year and a final bonus at the end if things were going well. Over the years the larger companies built up very large reserve funds and these were a good garantee that even in bad times you would get the garanteed amount plus the bonuses already allocated. The full amount would be paid out if you died during the term. Stability was the word here. Companies had a record of 100 years or more of faithful service. Then the stock market got more unstable as the get rich quick follow the crowd, boom and bust took over. The Financial services authority (FSA) took over and started giving orders. It put its own pensions in the hands of Equitable Life, which didn’t pay commission to brokers, interfered with broker commissions, did nothing to control Equitable life or warn of its perilous financial position in the 1990s. When share prices fell in 2000 it ordered insurance companies to invest less in shares, just at the time they were a bargain. In finacial services steadiness is required, regulation also needs to be steady, but if a limit on share investments is to be intrduced it needs to be when shares are doing well. Properly regulated with profits investments are excellent for their proper purpose, which is fixed term, for money you understand you can’t have till the term is up, or if you do you might lose some of it. The Revolutionary government will encourage Mutual Assurance companies to offer with-profits policies. I say this in the full knowlege that they are not really recomended by anyone.

Financial Services Authority

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) will be abolished by the Revolutionary government, and the banks will be regulated by the Bank of England as before.

The banks will be restricted to banking. Depositors money is to used for loans to real businesses, such as factories, retail shops, haulage companies. Real physical businesses, not fronts for financial concoctions. A proportion may be lent to builders and for bridging loans, home improvements, and the like. A reserve must be invested in ‘safe investments’ such as UK government bonds, large establshed UK company bonds, deposits with the Bank of England. No gambling type activities on the FOREX hedge funds futures etc. Banks may own the buildings they use and have a tiny property investment portfolio. They may make new loans for house purchase or provide consumer credit.The amount banks can borrow will be controlled.

Mortgages will be provided by building societies, and consumer credit will be provided by credit unions, or savings and loan companies.

Is the pound safe?

Are any currencies safe? Well of course not, no currency is fully backed on anything real certainly not on gold. Most counties could not pay their debts if they couldn’t reborrow or simply print more money. Printing money devalues it. Raising taxes doesn’t pay off a country’s debt because it tends to shrink the real economy and put people out of work.

Banks can’t pay their debts that’s why they need continuing taxpayer support. They make lots of money from gambling type activities and so they can afford to pay high wages and bonuses, and pensions. That’s why they deserve taxpayers support. ? !

They also give swap loans to small businesses. They are basically a hedge fund. Interest rate goes up you win, but the bank can cancel, interest rate goes down you loose. Interest rates have artificially been reduced by the bank of England to help the banks lend more to small business. No sorry, that should say, to help banks extract more money from small business. The FSA says these swaps are useful and appropriate products in some cases.

I was a financial advisor at the time of the big bang in the city of London and the formation of the FSA, in the mid 1980’s It has all been  a disaster. The revolutionary government will scrap the FSA, and hand bank regulation back to the Bank of England. At least they might not be so rude to anyone with less than 50 million pounds who wants to set up a bank as the FSA seem to be. The banks will be restricted in how they can use depositors money. The city of London will be regulated, so that it’s word will again be its bond.

Let’s start by using banks less, (helpful banking)

First, what do I know? well a couple of examples.

I was an accredited financial advisor in the 1980, during the period of the 1987 stock market crash and the begining of the Financial services authority. I have obtained a refund from my bank, not for payment protection insurance, but for the monthly fee, for an account with extras such as car breakdown cover, which I didn’t want, need, or ask for.

I was in Geneva last week, and while I was there, I changed some out of date swiss banknotes into current notes at the Bank of the Canton. This was my first experience of a Swiss bank, and I found them efficient and helpful. That is to say they took the old notes, gave me new ones, and sent the old ones off in a cannister in a vacuum tube.

Two months ago I changed some Jersey banknotes in an English bank, around the same value as in Switzerland, about £200’s worth.

They were polite and in the end helpful. That is to say they asked for my passport, and several ID questions, and did I have an account with them, because they had to pay the money into the account. As I already had more than 200 pounds in my account, they kindly let me draw it out again.