Wednesday 13 November 2013

Follow the Money - 2


In the US Medical bills underlie more than 60% of bankruptcies in the US and the level of student debt has reached an eye-watering $1.2tn. An offshoot of the Occupy Movement has created a US Fund which is buying US medical debt on the cheap, a couple of cents on the dollar, releasing over 3,000 US citizens from medical bill induced bankruptcy, to date. Could a charitable fund buying off UK citizen's debt on the London secondary market have a similar impact in the UK?
I am trying to get my head around this as currently medical treatment debt is not an issue in the UK and it is a form of debt which is unlikely to be paid following bankruptcy or in a voluntary agreement - medical debt could be soon a problem in England as Blair's and now Cameron's slash and burn privatisation policies of NHS England bear fruit.

Yet one of the biggest problems in the UK is personal commercial debt in the form of mortgages/ HP / short term loans / credit cards. In the current political environment it is very unlikely this debt will be sold on to the secondary market as it is making large profits for the credit companies, banks and other lenders, unless the massive debt bubble which sits under the City of London 'pops' and the UK economy goes into complete free fall as it was on the verge of doing in 2008.

I do not think myself and my ex-wife are alone, in the UK, in having spent the years since 2008 kicking debt ever further into touch - stopping and clearing credit cards, store cards and all the rest of the fiscal hangovers of the 80's and 90's, so we are now left with a rapidly reducing mortgage and a 'zero' interest rate deal on our car.


It is clear the growing high level of repayment of personal debt in the UK is stressing the City of London debt recycling based fiscal system, otherwise why would the UK Government be looking to encourage a growth in mortgage lending?

Without the relatively high profit margins from personal debt in all forms I am wondering just how the 'City' can finance its cheap loan deals to its major international clients and compete on the world's lending markets?

Throw in the impact of the current Government's 'austerity' program with its undermining of the welfare state, wage stagnation forcing more folk to take out 'pay day loans', coupled with increasing homelessness and societal breakdown - the tipping point must come soon because there is little left in the UK economy the current government can leech onto. Think, they have already sucked the English regions of dry of investment and pumped the investment into the City of London instead.

Take transport, for example, for every 3% invested in the NE of England by UK Government, 32% is invested on transport infra-structure in London. Only Scotland has not followed this trend, not because the Scots are 'subsidy junkies' but because their natural energy resources are the only fall back the current UK economy has, failure to encourage investment or remove investment opportunities from Scotland endanger the whole UK economic system and UK Government tax income as Osbourne and Danny Alexander found out as a result of their profit raid on the North Sea.

I have a serious concern about what will happen to England when Scotland says 'Yes' next year, and the economic reality unravels with the Union Treaty. Just how sustainable will be all the eggs in the one City of London basket case economy be when over 40% of current UK foreign exchange earnings stop propping up this model in a newly independent England?

What will the deflationary impact on the English economy be if Scotland walks away from sterling after the proposed and much heralded political stupidity and fiscal suicide of the newly independent English Parliament at Westminster?

This newly independent England will be reliant on imports of key resources such as energy from Eire, Scotland and the European mainland. Energy in particular because of the failure of successive UK Government's of the last four decades to deal with the lack of power generation capacity in England, now on the verge of bring about rolling power cuts across London and the SE by 2017, according to warnings from the National Grid.


It is clear, the impact of the Scottish economic surplus within the UK is becoming more and more evident, along with it, the negative impact the loss of Scotland is going to have on a newly independent England's economy.

Is it any wonder the politicians at Westminster are starting to scream and shout from the corner they have painted themselves into with their 'subsidy jock' line. They know the people of England are not going to be best pleased when they find out the truth. The first major cracks in the Better Together mantle are appearing as Westminster MP's and others are beginning to brief the English press about the stupidity of the Westminster created scare stories about too wee, too stupid, too wee Scotland. In the Scottish Affairs Committee Iain Davidson is hearing less and less what he wants to hear from UK Ministers and Whitehall lackeys as they increasingly contradict his position on Scotland as a 'foreign country' more and more frequently. Most recently over contracts for BAE Systems Govan / Scotstoun in an independent Scotland as he was put right on EU tendering regulations this week after being told much the same by Vice Admiral Mathews, the man in charge of the current Type 26 procurement program for the RN.


London has sucked its UK English regions dry - it only has Scotland left with any real international R&D and manufacturing base based on the oil industry (around £3.5 billion in exports in 2011-12) and a growing, internationally renowned reusables sector which, strangely, Cameron is looking to sabotage.

Following the money leaves me with one clear perception. In real terms, it is unlikely much has changed in terms of the reality of the economic trends and impacts of Scottish independence which were first identified in the 1976 McCrone Report. The biggest losers already know what the economic loss will be and the potential impact on an independent England's economy. More over they do not like what they know and are likely to attempt increasingly dirty tactics.


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