2007 NEW EPOCH NEWS, Telework News, Electronic Revolution, Future-Shock, News Blog, Thursday, 22 December 2011     E-Wars, IPR, BIG-BROTHER, ORWELLIAN, P2P, MOBILE-PHONES, HOME-OFFICES, INTERNET LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIETY.

 NEW EPOCH NEWS – THE SECOND EPOCH

How the Information Society is progressing

22 December 2011

Contribute by e-mail to:  noel@noelhodson.com

 

The first era, including the past ten thousand years of written history, has been characterized by tribal politics and the acquisition and maintaining of wealth by force – essentially a system of gang-warfare. It is a physical and psychological fact that using our brains is the most energy consuming activity we undertake. To avoid thinking we cleave to ‘isms – the lazy person’s what-to-think-guide. Nevertheless, over thousands of years, in rebellion against prescribed and proscribed thought, enough people have used their brains innovatively for developed nations to now be able to claim that “We have worked hard to abolish work – and have succeeded.”  

 

In industrialised nations, due to generations of hard work, valour and sacrifice and, recently, the Electronic Revolution - the Knowledge Economy - there is overproduction of most consumer goods and services. Real wealth and the products of the Real Economy are flooding developed countries. The world has never before produced so much real wealth. But the traditional, tribal, Money Economy mechanisms, used to count, account and to share wealth fairly, are inadequate. The Real Economy, over millennia, has been and is maintained by the efforts of the majority of the population while the Money Economy, the legal paper which represents real wealth, is 75% owned by just 4% - some of whom have contributed little to the commonwealth. Despite sweeping, historic, social revolutions to diminish the plagues and powers of aristocrats, aristocracy has resurfaced with a vengeance, this time rooted in America, under the guise of capitalism and free-market forces for the good of all the people. As global society deposes the last of these dynastic dinosaurs, they will lash their powerful tails with potent and destructive rage.

 

The 3 economies, Real, Monetary and Knowledge are badly out of alignment, out of sync and disjointed. The Electronic Revolution will bring a new, fairer, more open reality.

 

Though we would all rather drown in Global Warming floods than cooperate with each other - humankind is on the threshold of the era of intelligent-cooperation. This second phase, era or epoch is characterised by the Electronic Revolution, automated production, free-information, constant, instant global communications and, most revolutionary of all, by individuals thinking for themselves. It is bringing global social responsibility and radical changes; for example, it is probable that voting for and empowering charismatic individuals – gang leaders in politics and business - to decide our futures, will soon be replaced by voting on issues – democratically, well informed, electronic-voting on everything from household waste, to health care, to car production, to travel systems, to global warming, to taxation, to wealth distribution, to whether we should replicate the deadly 1918 “Spanish” flu virus, or go to war, or help the sick and the poor.

NEW EPOCH NEWS notes the key steps of progress and the resistances to entering the second phase.  We live in interesting times.

 

Home to http://www.noelhodson.com

 

SW2000 Telework StudiesSW2000 Intelligent Transport

Telework Transport Environment Economics

 

 

 

 

 

 

cash wars – letter to the guardian – 22nd december 2011. 5

dire warning - CASH WARS (9) we are doomed – 1 december 2011. 6

OCCUPY - CASH WARS (8) find the traitors and deserters – 28 November 2011  7

OCCUPY LONDON - CASH WARS (7) – 9 November 2011. 9

OCCUPY WALL STREET - CASH WARS 6 – 7 November 2011. 10

OCCUPY WALL STREET - CASH WARS 5 – 1 November 2011. 11

OCCUPY WALL STREET - CASH WARS 4 – 27TH OCTOBER 2011. 12

CASH WARS 3 – 7TH OCTOBER 2011. 13

CASH WARS 3 – 22ND SEPTEMBER 2011. 14

CASH WARS 2 – 19 SEPTEMBER 2011. 14

CASH WARS – 16 SEPTEMBER 2011. 17

stone age to space age economics – 23 may 2011. 18

g20 global banking – 12 NOV 2010. 19

times up – 22 feb  2010. 19

gambolling bankers – 3 dec 2009. 19

2010 - a pivotal year for mankind - climate-change, internet-freedom, & global banking – 3 feb 2010. 20

who will control the internet? – 3 feb 2010. 21

how can the money-system and the real economy be reconciled? – 3 feb 2010  23

will we drown? are the ice caps melting? – 3 feb 2010. 26

think globally, act locally – 3 feb 2010. 27

Stupid government abuse of the Information Society – UPDATED 16 JULY 09  29

Bankers and banking – 10 JULY 09. 30

Cyberspace can still stop Emails – SME’s & the Internet - 9 JULY 2009. 31

Universal internet access - Power to the people – 6 May 2009. 33

Historic, momentous, epoch changing, world turning, inspiring, uplifting, hopeful… Words fail us - 5 November 2008. 34

Surveillance Crisis – Cyber War - 23 October 2008. 34

Financial Crisis – Part Two – 7 October 2008. 35

Financial Crisis – Saved from my radical self by judicious editing – 18 September 2008. 37

Give us back our money!– Letter to The Guardian newspaper - 15 September 2008  38

It’s those pesky kids again, stealing valuable works of art - 25 July 08. 39

Mobile phones and cancer - 25 July 08. 40

Open letter to the Prime Minister. 16 July 08. 40

23 June 08 – Will the world’s thick-headed transport and energy planners ever get it?  42

7 April 08 – Famous Journalist liquidated?. 43

12 March 08 – Point and Counterpoint – Worried about the “Credit Collapse” ?  45

19 February 08 – Capital repatriation flood begins with a trickle. 49

11 February 08 – Offshore Exiles – Repatriate, Repatriate, Repatriate. 50

11 February 08 – Kids on-line. 50

17 January 08 – Greenfield and Darwin. 50

11 October 07 – Breathless Big Brother/ Sister. 51

3 October 07 – Oxford Brooks & Big Bucks for Bus Owners. 51

25 September 07 - Teleworkers – one-third of UK workforce. 52

25 September 07 – The MIT $100 laptop gets to market. 52

17 September 07 – “IF WE DON’T PAY WORLD-CLASS SALARIES, THEY WILL TAKE THEIR SKILLS ABROAD!” SHOCK – HORROR! 52

19 AUG 07 – GLOBAL FINANCE – OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! 56

18 AUG 07 – PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF THE GLOBAL BANKS?. 57

18 AUG 07 – LEARN TO COUNT. 57

13 AUG 07 – FUNDAMENTAL REDSIGN OF TRANSPORT AND CARS. 58

2 JUL 07 – TAX FORCE & POVERTY. 59

13 FEB 07 – E-DEMOCRACY WILL BE TONY BLAIR’S LEGACY. 59

29 NOV 06 – THE SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL, OXFORD. 60

2 NOV 06 – THE SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY HAS ARRIVED IN THE UK - OFFICIAL. 62

2 OCT 06 – MICROSOFT CHALLENGED. 63

2 OCT 06 – "LET THEM EAT CAKE". & HEARD THIS WEEK AT A DINNER-PARTY …"IT IS THE NATURAL ORDER THAT 5% WILL ALWAYS OWN 90% OF THE WORLD" 64

11 AUG 06 – WIRED DEMOCRACY – AN HISTORIC PRECEDENT. 65

12 Jun 06 - British Sex on the Net – Time Magazine. 65

9 MAR 06 – PESKY PIRATES THREATEN BLUE MOVIES. 66

24 FEB 06 – $80M CASH STOLEN FROM THE BANK OF ENGLAND. 67

24 FEB 06 – SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL – PORNOGRAPHY FOR THE NANO-TECH GENERATION. 67

18 JAN 06 – BIG BROTHER SUED. 67

3 JAN 06 – US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES INTRUSIONS CRITICISED.. 68

3 JAN 06 – SPAMMERS CURBED?. 68

3 JAN 06 – MIT DEVELOP STACKABLE CARS. 68

3 JAN 06 – ENRON CASE THREATENS DIRECTORS WITH 25 YEARS. 69

7 DEC 05 – A diversion into Intelligent Design.. 69

4 NOV 05 – BIG BROTHER in the workplace – A backward step. 70

4 NOV 05 – Microsoft invest in VOIP & “Live Office” 70

4 NOV 05 – Alt. Energy .com.. 70

24 OCT 05 – Time is running out, maybe – The oil fuel crisis. 71

19 OCT 05 – GALILEO is Watching You.. 71

12 OCT 05 – Hands off our Internet! 72

10 OCT 05 – GOOGLE and free libraries. 72

7 OCT 05 – God guides George Bush. 72

7 OCT 05 – Youngsters make their own news. 73

7 OCT 05 - $100 laptops run on LINUX. 73

23 SEPT 05 - Tracking Offshore Funds. 73

5 SEPT 05 - Hurricane Katrina.  The Scrooge society. 75

26 AUG 05 - To google or not to google. 76

26 AUG 05 - Music files go legit’ 77

28 JUN 05 - E-Wars. 77

18 JUN 05 - E-Wars. 78

31 JUL 05 - The Future – Accurate social and scientific predictions. 79

17 MAY 05 - Brain Tumours from cordless & mobile phones debate continues  79

14 MAY 05 - US Supreme Court to Rule on film and music controls. 79

10 MAY 05 - Feature Films on Mobile Phones. 79

24 APR 05 - Music Industry pur-sues schoolchildren swappers. 80

9 MAY 05 - Internet Pornography, Masturbation and Self-Abuse. 80

16 MAY 05 - Electronic Paper Screens. 82

16 MAR 05 - 344 Million customers a month.. 82

15 MAR 05 - Men at Home Alone. 82

16 FEB 05 - Nokia and Microsoft Make Music.. 82

16 FEB 05 - Who is listening? The Mafia or the Government?. 82

13 FEB O5 - BT channels money to fraudsters. 83

12 FEB 05 - More WEB Music Downloads. 83

3 FEB 05 - Spammers mock the US laws. 83

See top right this page  – News Archive Feb 04 – Dec 04 -   Spam busters, Cable & Wireless, Exodus and SAVVIS – Wed. 8th Sep 2004. 84

20 JAN 05 - VOD – PVR – DVD’s – NTL – BBC – ETAL. 84

20 JAN 05 - Super Fast Broadband.. 84

7 JAN 05 - Carbon Trading.. 84

7 JAN 05 - Cell-phones change body’s cells and genes. 85

1 JAN 05 - MELTDOWN.. 85

The transport letter the Guardian dared not publish – Tuesday 21st December 2004. 85

Pirating films – Wednesday 15th December 2004. 86

Round-up – Thursday 25th November 2004. 87

SPAM fried by court – Monday 8th November 2004. 88

Banks overdose on spam phishing scams– Monday 8th November 2004. 88

WorldCom directors in Court – Monday 8th November 2004. 88

Pirate Movies – The big players start a war – Thursday 28th October 2004. 89

Drowning in Ignorance – Friday 22nd October 2004. 89

EPICUS – Embryonic E-Democracy & Money Laundering – Friday 22nd October 2004  90

 

NEW EPOCH  NEWS: ARCHIVES   FEB04-DEC04   AUG03-FEB04   JUN02-AUG03

 

 

 

cash wars – letter to the guardian – 22nd december 2011

 

 

 

The OECD estimates $18 trillion is held off-shore, which from my tax-planning experience I estimate equates to about 7.5 million tax dodgers globally, or less than 0.5% of the global workforce. I ask the influential and informed signatories to the letter “Tax avoidance must become taboo” Guardian 22 Dec 2011, and my own MP, Rt. Hon Andrew Smith, firstly, to ask Parliament to identify the few elected representatives, senior civil servants and other executives who have assets in tax-havens, however cunningly hidden, and secondly, to press for a 500 person tax-recovery-team from the Intelligence Services, examining “false-accounting” and paid 2.5% of recoveries, to repatriate the UK’s portion of the $18 trillion, which I estimate as not less than $3 trillion.  This amount will fully restore our banks and repair all fiscal deficits.

 

Noel Hodson

Oxford (full address below)

 

See how it works - Where has all the money gone?

http://www.noelhodson.com/Money-Wars-2012-V5SHORT.pdf

 

You Tube version – 21 Dec 2011   http://youtu.be/mlUjncgWG-w

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

dire warning - CASH WARS (9) we are doomed – 1 december 2011

 

 

 

The Guardian articles (Global central banks step into stave off second credit crunch – 1st Dec 2011) were today followed by a dire warning by The Bank of England about vanishing global liquidity. Both omit to ask the vital question “Where has all the money gone?” For three decades the real-economy has never been more automated or productive. The annual productive surplus, some $18 trillion, has gone to tax-havens; e.g. recently Olympus cameras sent $640 million from London to Cayman, with UK tax-relief granted on the alleged “invoice”.

This cash is all “off-shore” sloshing around in the “free markets” – held by 2% of the population - who want the 98% of honest folk to borrow it back at high rates. Most of this $18 trillion can be rapidly repatriated under existing tax laws by challenging the alleged commercially priced invoices, the allegedly arms-length relationships of the parties, and the alleged management of the funds by alleged tax-haven residents.  

The Telegraph listed MP’s expenses.  Will the Guardian list the offshore deserters, including Members of both Houses and senior civil servants?

 

Noel Hodson  

 

 

 

 

OCCUPY - CASH WARS (8) find the traitors and deserters – 28 November 2011

 

 

22 NOV 2011. To: The Rt. Hon Andrew Smith MP – Oxford East, UK

 

Dear Andrew,

 

POPULAR PROTESTS – UKUNCUT – OCCUPY ETC.

 

I think that implementing the recommendations (below text and attached PDF) will repair the global (in fact the USA-UK-Euro) economic crises.  Please pass them to the relevant UK government elected representatives and civil servants.

 

The underlying premise for immediate action is that the $18 trillion cash in tax-havens is the surplus from the Real-Economy from the past 25 years. And that repatriating it by claiming back-taxes for the source nations will fix all the deficits and on-shore bank liquidity in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, UK, USA, Japan etc.  The UK should move very fast before the USA investigators mop up all the off-shore liquidity in back-tax-claims.  

 

Could you ask both Houses of Parliament and the Civil Service – “Do any of you, or your families, business colleagues or agents, have any interest in off-shore bank accounts, tax-haven bank accounts or tax-haven companies, trusts or other such arrangements?”

 

Thank you for your work and intervention about my row with Barclaycard.  You received an assurance from Hector Sants, CEO at the FSA that the bank was at fault – and, two weeks later without explanation, my Barclaycard was credited with the 9 misappropriated “Continuous Payments” that the villainous on-line Californian “Merchants” had nicked via Barclays.  The FSA decision ought to be broadcast for the sake of all those who cannot fight back.

 

Best wishes - Noel

********************************

 

November 2011. In industrialised nations, due to generations of hard work, valour and sacrifice and, recently, the Electronic Revolution or the Knowledge Economy - there is overproduction of goods and services. Products of the Real Economy are flooding the world. Mankind has never before produced so much real wealth. But the traditional, tribal, Money Economy mechanisms, used to count, account and to share wealth fairly, are inadequate, warped, crooked, socially unfair and distorted.  It is time to tame the paper-tiger.

 

Brave protestors such as OCCUPY need clear and powerful demands.

 

(1) Repatriate and Tax all Off-Shore Funds. The $18 trillion in tax-havens (OECD 2010) is the surplus from the Real Economy generated by the 99% over the past 25 years. This will repair all fiscal deficits, feed the hungry and restore national banking systems. Such monies can be taxed under existing laws. Tax all annual incomes over $200,000 at 90%.

 

(2) Cap Interest at 5% - Reduce the Cost of Money. Thatcher and Reagan abolished the interest cap on ancient usury laws. Interest is now charged from 5% on mortgages to 3000% by loan sharks. A 5% per year legal cap of interest & charges on all loans will reduce most prices by 25% and substantially reduce inflation.

 

 (3) Pay an hourly rate equivalent to a Living Wage: equivalent in the region where the workers live. All Quantative Easing should be used to bring in a Living Wage worldwide. This will eradicate most poverty and bad-debts.

 

(4) Stop speculation & gambling:  Gambling is an addiction which has wrecked our vital markets and money-systems. Ban banks from speculating & create a 2 months buy-sell-buy transaction gap.

 

ACCURSED NEW ARISTOCRATS

 

There is a global war between Haves and Have-nots. The Haves hold $18 trillion offshore (OECD 2010), mostly siphoned, with tax-relief, through fraudulent bookkeeping.

 

The mysterious so-called “Free Markets” control this hoard. They drive-up the interest on bonds and restrict cash in circulation. Their agents are the trans-border banks. They gamble incontinently in commodities, currencies and shares – wrecking systems we all rely on.

 

The Haves gouge out ever increasing “rewards” while suppressing the wages of the Have-nots; taking incomes now 230 times the wages of the low paid – driving the poor to borrow at 15% to 3000% interest, and ultimately to lose their jobs & homes.

 

The Haves mythologize “The City” and “Wall St”, which enable their stateless, trans-border, tax-free status, claiming it earns fortunes for the host nations. The reverse is true; London lost in 2008/09 more than all the alleged gains of the past 25 years – hence the global crises. Governments should track these tax-relieved “losses” to identify back-to-back transactions.

 

The 2008/09 Wall Street de-leveraging, took many trillions out of the money-supply, further enhancing the value of cash held and slowing transactions in the Real Economy.  The few billions of dollars, Euros and pounds put back by Quantitative Easing have not replaced it, sabotaging the Real Economy.

 

All national fiscal deficits can be met by rapidly repatriating and taxing the offshore cash to the countries of origin. In the longer term it is inevitable that all financial activities will be regulated globally, which may require nationalisation – at least for a decade or two.

 

QED

 

 

OCCUPY LONDON - CASH WARS (7) – 9 November 2011.

 

9 November 2011.

Open letter to Simon Jenkins, at the Guardian.

Dear Simon Jenkins,

CITY ETHICS

I agree with much of what you write about “empty philosophising” but the confused purblind groping for fairness might one-day, over the rainbow, lead to an efficient, sane, global financial system. The essential problem is that existing laws and implicit ethics are commonly flaunted by all players, resulting in false accounting on an historically unprecedented scale.  Bankers, auditors, lawyers, directors, officials, business colleges and regulators are so accustomed to cheating society and the real-economy that many now falsely believe they have Law and God on their side.  If we cannot trust the IOU bookkeeping that underpins money, it loses all value.  I cite the vast frauds of Enron, Parmalat, Olympus and Madoff, with their crooked auditors, as the merest visible tip of the $18 trillion tax-haven funds (OECD 2010), which are the surpluses from the work of the 99% in the real-economy since Thatcher in 1979. In the UK the financial sector pays 1.2 million operatives – the same size as the NHS; whose bosses force up the cost of money, gouge out the surplus to tax-havens, like Olympus has, and enfeeble the UK economy by stealing both our taxes and capital via false documentation – that fools only UK Tax Superintendent, Dave Hartnett, (will he allow tax relief on the Olympus $600M payment from London to Cayman?).  No matter how fast we work and produce, the gangsters steal the rewards faster than we can store and share them.

The immediate practical steps are to cap usury at 5%, which will reduce all prices by about 25%, eliminating inflation and most bad-debts; to repatriate the $18 trillion tax-haven funds, and tax them, which will repair most nations’ deficits; to have a minimum 2 month buy-sell period to stop insane and mechanised gambling; and to establish a fair living wage tailored for each economic region, which will greatly boost the global economy.  

 You might profitably write about the UK elite, including our elected representatives, Lords, Ladies and senior civil servants, who use tax-havens; and the immense costs to society of the UK financial sector and how those costs can be substantially cut.

 Noel Hodson

PS – Do you have an off-shore account?  Does The Guardian pay you in the UK or overseas? Will you ask your MP to raise the question in Parliament “Which members (& families, friends, lawyers, chums) have off-shore-tax arrangements?”

 

OCCUPY WALL STREET - CASH WARS 6 – 7 November 2011.

 

LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN:  Gary Younge sees that “As Wall Street wormed its way into everyone’s life, so Occupy protests grow…” (Who knows where the occupations are going – it’s just great to be moving.  Guardian 7 Nov 11). And he speculates on where Occupy is going.  In this era when the world has the wealthiest, automated real-economy ever, I believe Occupy is unconsciously intent on fair-shares; by eliminating all the deeply embedded, debilitating, insatiable tape-worms; by arresting financial sociopaths to re-establish business ethics; and thus by decimating the price of money – the immense and unnecessary costs of the global financial consortia.  

 

The immediate practical steps are to cap usury at 5%, which will reduce all prices by about 25% and eliminate most bad-debts; to repatriate the $18 trillion tax-haven funds, and tax them, which will repair most nations’ deficits; to have a minimum 2 month buy-sell period to stop insane and mechanised gambling; and to establish a fair living wage tailored for each economic region, which will greatly boost the global economy.  

 

Will change be achieved without violence?  Each month my doubts grow that the incumbent elite will appease the mob to create fair-shares. The global powder keg is the USA, where every household is legally heavily armed and where the wealth gap and blatant unfairness is most endemic.   

 

Noel Hodson

 

 

 

OCCUPY WALL STREET - CASH WARS 5 – 1 November 2011.

 

To Global Economic Protestors & Religions – Take Aim.

 

Our first common objective – “GLOBAL 5% CAP ON LOANS”

 

St Pauls Cathedral, Church of England, Christian congregation and all religions may find common cause with Occupy, Uncut and the 99% economic victims across the world by reinstating or restating the laws against Usury, with a 5% interest per annum cap on the costs of all and any loans.  5% is 10 times the 0.5% Base Rate that, for example, Credit Card Banks buy money at.  A 5% cap allows banks to buy money for £1 and sell it for £10.

 

Currently the banks buy for £1 and sell for £16 £32 to £34 £68. Money lenders to the poorest buy for £1 and sell for £3000  £6000.

 

Usury laws have featured strongly in all formal religions and governments for thousands of years. Limits were swept aside by Thatcher and Reagan in the madness of Monetarism; characterised by the 1980’s Big-Bang in the City of London, which heralded the obscene, sociopathic greed that we now recognise is sabotaging the world today.

 

Reducing the cost of money will powerfully stimulate economic activity, reduce bad-debts, refill bank balance sheets and - reduce all prices in all economies - and thus prevent runaway inflation. Interest and Charges add high costs at every stage, from primary industry such as farming and mines, through manufacturing & distribution, up to consumer delivery to homes.  On average, prices would fall by 25% if Usury caps of 5% are re-introduced.  Reducing the cost of money will free millions of families and individuals from crippling debt.

 

By citing The Bible, The Qu’ran, The Talmud, Upanishads, Veda, Analects, Tripitaka and other holy books, the world’s major religions could lead a campaign to control usury. It is known to be a social evil that siphons wealth from the poorest to the richest, enslaving individuals, households and nations in debts they can never repay or escape. 

 

From the politicians’ perspective – How many votes would it lose to re-introduce a 5% cap?  Who will object?  To enforce the law, penalties need to include confiscation of any ill-gotten gains and long prison sentences for all the officers of culpable lenders.

 

Tomorrow, the date of Christians’ All Hallows Eve; as we welcome our 7 billionth neighbour, make a GLOBAL 5% CAP ON LOANS your first common cause and demand.

 

Noel Hodson

Oxford 30 Oct 2011.

 

 

OCCUPY WALL STREET - CASH WARS 4 – 27TH OCTOBER 2011.

 

 

OCCUPY needs to have clear, simple global targets, aims or demands. I think these three will repair much of the damage and inequality - and greatly improve the global and national economies:

 

(1) Repatriate and Tax all Off-Shore Funds. The $18 trillion in tax-havens (OECD 2010) is the surplus from the Real Economy generated by the 99% over the past 25 years. This vast amount will repair all fiscal deficits including the UK’s, Ireland’s, USA’s, Greece’s, Japan’s etc; and will restore liquidity to national banking systems. E.g. The current Olympus scandal of siphoning $400 million, with tax relief, from the UK to Cayman is symptomatic of how the $18 trillion surplus has been gouged from the 99%  - this is done using false accounting (is there really a huge financial Mergers & Acquisitions consultancy beneath a coconut palm in Cayman? If not, then the transfer pricing is fraudulent, bent bookkeeping). Such monies can easily be repatriated and taxed under long existing laws. Use MI5 MI6 the CIA, Mr Dave Hartnett, etc to track and return the funds – then have the court arguments about the transfer pricing paperwork.

 

(2) Cap Interest at 5% - Reduce the Cost of Money. Thatcher and Reagan abolished the interest cap under usury laws that go back to biblical times. Since Thatcher, interest is now charged from 5% mortgages to 3000% by loan sharks. A 5% per year legal cap of interest & charges on Credit Cards, Personal Loans, Business Loans, Hire Purchase, Leases and all loans will greatly reduce costs at every stage of the supply chain (e.g. interest is 25% of the cost of building a house, or car etc) and thus reduce inflation. Households will be able to repay their debts as Cameron urges.  In the UK each ¼ percent rise or fall in interest rates amounts to £2.5 billion transfer of wealth from/to poor to rich (borrowers to lenders).  This Interest-Cap will turbo-charge the global economy and bring full employment for our 1 million jobless youngsters.

 

(3) Pay an hourly rate equivalent to a Living Wage: equivalent in the region where the workers live. All QE should be used to bring in a Living Wage worldwide.

 

QED

 

That will do for a start.

 

Noel Hodson

 

 

CASH WARS 3 – 7TH OCTOBER 2011.

 

 

LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN UK, 7 OCT 2011.

The immediate reason that “Britain is in the grip of ‘worst financial crisis’ – Bank chief: “There’s not enough money” (Guardian 7 Oct 2011), is the massive reduction of leverage or credit creation by banks around the globe in 2010 following the 2008/09 collapse. This removed trillions of dollars from global liquidity, particularly in the US and UK. The few billions from quantitative easing are not yet nearly enough to compensate. This suits the off-shore super-rich as it drives up the power of their cash (The Free Markets). It was and is messy and confusing to allow private banks to print money (leverage – credit creation) outside the control of The State which guarantees the currency (honest bookkeeping). It is healthy to restrict money from time to time – to stress-test the reality of the reflection of the Real Economy by the Money Economy, but all busy communities have to have enough cowrie shells, wampum beads, doubloons, pounds, pieces of eight, dollars or euros in circulation to enable and record trade – and this record is a primary duty of government. It is time to remind ourselves that money is nothing other than a bookkeeping system of IOU’s. Too many people, banks, speculators and governments have been grotesquely fiddling the books for too long. Too many deserters and traitors have siphoned money generated by their neighbours’ honest hard work in the Real Economy into tax-havens (about $18 trillion according to the OECD). This is bent bookkeeping that can easily be corrected.

 

Alongside the inevitable nationalisation of the money supply and all financial organisations, the crisis can be quickly fixed: (1) Repatriate the $18 trillion to repair all fiscal deficits in  the UK and worldwide (2) Cap usury on all existing and future debts at 5% p.a. to swell the spending power of the poor and to significantly reduce every price in the economy, thus holding down inflation (3) Use QE to lift the Minimum Wage to a Living Wage of £11 an hour, enabling the poor to escape debt through work (4) Legislate that all financial companies file a daily set of published accounts, which are collated to enable a realistic overview of events, instead of lurching ignorantly from crisis to crisis (5) Stop all short term gambling with our cowrie shells by insisting on real delivery of the commodities or financial instruments and a two months minimum holding period (6) Combine all the world’s currencies into one accounting package – a single world currency - to enable sensible control of the money-supply to enable and accurately record the global bookkeeping. With today’s computers (in honest hands), this regime is possible. Bookkeeping is not rocket-science.

 

Noel Hodson

(full address below)

 

 

CASH WARS 3 – 22ND SEPTEMBER 2011

 

 

 

LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN 22 SEPT 11 - Following your 22 Sept 2011 headline “$400bn plan to save ailing US economy” BBC Radio today reports that nevertheless the US, UK, Greek and EU money systems are still DOOMED and collapsing. And hysterical politicians today said that the UK National Health Service is DOOMED and collapsing. And the sea-level is rising inexorably – submerging 80% of DOOMED UK property. We employ 600 allegedly intelligent MPs at £100,000 a year apiece, advised by another 600 allegedly experienced Lords; all allegedly advised by hundreds of top civil servants, the cream of our education system; advised by super-intelligent economists. It is understandable, as feeble governments will not legislate, that “The Free Markets” being a bunch of unregulated, thoughtless, greedy, myopic, irresponsible, selfish, neurotic gamblers will panic second by second. But our highly paid governors should either do their jobs and calmly provide a stable currency and economy – or resign en masse in favour of competent managers - the Chinese government perhaps.

 

Noel Hodson

 

 

CASH WARS 2 – 19 SEPTEMBER 2011

 

EMAIL TO PLLY TOYNBEE - GUARDIAN

 

CC Will Hutton; Andrew Smith MP 2008; 'Jim Messina, BarackObama.com'

 

 

 

Dear Ms Toynbee,

 

CLASS WARFARE

 

In case you don’t receive these President Obama briefings, below is today’s.

 

At the risk of me becoming tedious, tendentious and preachy, I think these measures will also be aimed at repatriating the offshore $18 trillion (current OECD and Christian Aid estimate). It requires no new legislation for the EU, US or UK tax authorities to examine the Transfer Pricing paperwork used for the past 25 years to siphon off the $18 trillion.

 

e.g. An Oxford UK dentist earns £300,000 profit per year. He/she sets up a staging-post company in Jersey - “Dental Mechanic Designs (Jersey) Ltd (DMDJL) – with the usual machinations of appointing a half-witted clerk as MD, Secretary etc. and of “having no control”. – DMDJL sends invoices to the Oxford practice totalling £250,000 a year for fictitious “designs”. That nice man at the top of the UK HMRC, Dave Hartnett, does not question the Transfer Pricing – so it is allowed as a deduction for tax purposes and the dentist pays UK tax on £50,000.

 

This continues for 10 years so DMDJL gets £2.5M which the allegedly non-controlling dentist continuously transfers to a numbered Swiss bank account (or Barclays International etc) and gets an unlimited debit card useable anywhere.  The dentist frets that the £2.5M is not keeping pace with inflation – and so lobbies hard to stop inflation by freezing workers’ pay and scrapping the minimum wage. The £2.5M is now static in value – which is an affront to the dentist’s human rights – so he/she invests it by buying Greek Bonds at 3%, guaranteed by the EURO, before realising that the Greeks are shiftless & lazy and need discipline – so the dentist, now part of The Global Free Markets, lobbies for the Greeks to be taught a lesson – to balance their fiscal budgets – and to pay 7% on the Bonds. Simultaneously, UK Tax has lost out on 40% of £250,000 x 10 years or £1M of revenues AND its banks lose £2.5M of liquidity – and so cannot lend to SME’s. (NB it requires only 7.2 million “dentists” worldwide to account for $18Tn offshore – a tiny fraction of the working population).

 

However, a sharp, experienced government lawyer, B Obama, reviews the Transfer Pricing paperwork and confers with The Ordinary Man on the Clapham Omnibus to ask if the clerk in Jersey could in fact have provided the invoiced services and if the dentist is truly “at arms length”.  The answer is “don’t be ridiculous” so B Obama replaces Dave Hartnett with an underpaid but honest school-teacher and applies the long existing laws – as follows - to assess the dentist’s back taxes:

 

(Arithmetic guesstimated but truly indicative)

 

Readjust Schedule D income from dentistry:

 

10 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + 5% compound interest p.a. £62,889 + penalty £100,000 = £268,889

 

9 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £55,132 + penalty £100,000 = £255,132

 

8 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £47,745 + penalty £100,000 = £247,745

 

7 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £40,710 + penalty £100,000 = £240,710

 

6 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £34,009 + penalty £100,000 = £234,009

 

5 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £27,628 + penalty £100,000 = £227,628

 

4 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £21,550 + penalty £100,000 = £221,550

 

3 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £15,762 + penalty £100,000 = £215,762

 

2 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £10,250 + penalty £100,000 = £210,250

 

1 years ago – under reported profits £250,000 – tax 40% £100,000 + %5 compound interest p.a. £5,000 + penalty £100,000 = £205,000

 

Total - £2,326,675

 

QUESTION – IS THE DENTIST GUILTY OF FALSE ACCOUNTING AND CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE INLAND REVENUE?  IF APPLIED, WHAT WOULD THE PRISON SENTENCE BE?

 

Then HMRC investigates the undeclared income on the investment of offshore funds – which will be very approximately £250,000 x 2% = £5,000 a year, which on the same basis as above is 2% of the dental work taxes, interest and penalties = £465,335.

 

Amount diverted to Jersey £2.5 million.

 

TOTAL BACK DUTY BILL – REPATRIATED TO THE UK -  £2.8 million.

 

The vast majority of dentists, surgeons, lawyers, company directors, politicians, bankers etc will pay up rather than risk going to prison. In the USA they may not be given that option. The UK benefits from collecting the tax, interest and penalties, which balances the fiscal books – and improves UK liquidity. The same existing tax laws govern inter-company transfers and transfer pricing.

 

Crises over – as long as The City /Wall St is not allowed to either gamble it away or to pretend to lose it in “markets” while in fact conducting back-to-back contracts (lose it in the UK /US and secretly and simultaneously gain it in the Bahamas).

 

The EU, UK and USA have all the investigating intelligence agencies and computers required to track these transactions. The immense benefits are worth some patient book-keeping work.

 

Yours truly,

 

Noel Hodson

 

 

From: Jim Messina, BarackObama.com [mailto:info@barackobama.com]
Sent: 20 September 2011 00:38
To: Noel HODSON
Subject: "Class warfare"

 

2012

Noel --

This morning, the President proposed the "Buffett Rule," which would require those earning more than $1 million a year to pay the same share of their income in taxes as middle-class families do.

This proposal makes sure millionaires and billionaires share the responsibility for reducing the deficit. It would correct, for example, the fact that Warren Buffett's secretary currently pays taxes at a higher rate than he does.

The other side is already saying it's "class warfare" -- that's their rhetorical smokescreen for providing millionaires and billionaires special treatment.

As the President said this morning, "This is not class warfare -- it's math."

The wealthiest Americans don't need further tax cuts and in many cases aren't even asking for them. Requiring that they pay their fair share is the only practical way forward. The Republican alternative is to drastically slash education, gut Medicare, let roads and bridges crumble, and privatize Social Security. That's not the America we believe in -- but many in the Republican leadership actually prefer those policies, which explains their refusal to act.

That's why they'll say "tax increase" over and over again, trying to muddy the waters and trick ordinary Americans into thinking the Buffett Rule will hurt them. And if we don't speak out right now, they just might get away with it.

If you stand with President Obama in this fight and want to see the Buffett Rule passed -- say you'll get his back now.

Of course, the Buffett Rule won't really touch most Americans -- only 0.3% of households will even be affected.

And without it, the only way to reduce our debt is to savage the programs that seniors and middle-class families rely on.

That's exactly what the President refuses to do -- in fact, he's said he'll veto any bill that changes benefits for folks who rely on Medicare but doesn't raise serious revenue by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share.

This isn't just a commonsense approach to cutting the deficit -- it's the only way to make sure we can provide security to people who work hard and play by the rules.

So right now, I'm asking you to say you'll stand with the President on something that won't be easy. Get the President's back today:

http://my.barackobama.com/Buffett-Rule

Thanks,

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

 

 

CASH WARS – 16 SEPTEMBER 2011

 

LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER, UK

 

Your advice to Chancellor Osborne (World Economy – All in this together, Guardian 6 Sep 2011) would have even greater impact by re-stating the fundamentals which are often obscured.

 

(1) There is a global war between Haves and Have-nots. The Haves hold $18 trillion offshore (OECD), the majority of which has been siphoned tax free from national economies by fraudulent Enron-style bookkeeping, which would not stand Court scrutiny. This $18 trillion should be repatriated and taxed today by applying existing tax-laws. The Have-nots are kept in ignorance of this vast hoard.

 

(2) The mysterious “Free Markets” are the controllers of this illicit cash, with licit pension funds, who try to invest the cash risk-free, at high rates – mostly in Government Bonds. They manipulate national debt markets to drive-up the interest on bonds and to further restrict cash in circulation which enhances the value of their cash. The Haves are enabled to hide and move this flood of money by the trans-border banks. Failing a safe-haven in Bonds, they gamble in commodities, currencies and shares – destabilising vital price systems that we all rely on.

 

(3) Globally, the Haves gouge out of national economies ever increasing “rewards” while suppressing the wages of the Have-nots; currently taking 230 times the wages of the low paid – driving them to borrow cash at 15% to 3000% interest, and ultimately to lose their homes, as is happening in the USA.

 

(4) The Haves mythologize “The City”, particularly in the UK, which enables their stateless, trans-border, tax-free status, claiming it earns fortunes for the host nations. The reverse is true; London lost in 2008/09 more than the accumulated alleged gains of the previous 25 years – hence the crises and bail-outs. However, over the 25 years, The City took personal “rewards” of more than £300 billion, mostly offshore and tax free – paid for by hardworking families.

 

(5) The 2008/09 collapse on Wall Street and consequent de-leveraging, took many trillions out of the money-supply, further enhancing the value of cash held and slowing transactions in the Real Economy.  The few billions of dollars, Euros and pounds put in by quantitative easing has not replaced it, bringing the Real Economy to an emergency stop.

 

The national fiscal deficits can be met by rapidly repatriating and taxing the offshore cash to the countries of origin. But in the longer term it is inevitable that all financial activities will be regulated globally, which should start with nationalisation – at least for a decade or two.

 

PS – Do the economists calling for lower taxes on pay over £150,000, earn more than that? It would be ruinous for the UK to lose all its economic experts.

 

Noel Hodson

 

(Mr) Noel HODSON

Business Expansion Services 

16 Brookside, Oxford, OX3 7PJ, UK

Tel +44 (0)1865 760994

http://www.noelhodson.com/SW2000/Take-the-Plunge-Home.pdf

***********

The FOODTUBES Project

http://www.noelhodson.com/Ftubes/19APR2011-Foodtubes-ISUFT-OnePage.pdf

 

 

stone age to space age economics – 23 may 2011

 

 

To TIME MAGAZINE

Re - Fareed Zakaria’s article A Flight Plan For the American Economy. May 30 2011.

 

Fareed  Zakaria’s article (May 30th 2011) on the US economy notes that GDP is a historically high $13.5 trillion – but with 7 million fewer jobs. Globally, the smarter we work, the fewer jobs there are, but the faster production rises. Who is going to buy the overflowing goods and services when, say, half the workforce is redundant and living in tent-cities? Europe plans to mop up the ever-growing permanently unemployed in Lifelong Learning. We are at a dangerously unstable tipping point between salaried economic participation, disenfranchised poverty, and sharing our vast wealth with our children and with strangers. Or we can stupidly lock our fists into today’s cookie jars.  The old model has to change. We urgently need to deploy the World’s top-brains and our supercomputers to plan the transition from stone-age to space-age economics.  

 

Noel Hodson

Oxford UK

 

 

 

 

g20 global banking – 12 NOV 2010

 

12 November 2010.

 

The G20 summit leaders could make the world a far better place and fix most of the current economic problems by: creating a single world currency; nationalising all banks and financial services; using the launch of the single-currency to repatriate trillions of criminal off-shore capital to the countries of origin, which will meet all budget deficits and feed the starving; direct the coming dollar and sterling quantitative easing (QE2) into a decent minimum wage – for example in the UK £12 an hour, £480 a week, topped up from the present minimum by QE2 for 2 years then taken over by employers (and please don’t whine that it will bankrupt the nation). This QE2 would reduce mortgage and credit card defaults and quickly go into the banking system to help re-build bank balance sheets, thereby it would stimulate the economy. 

In the meantime – it annoys me to buy goods and services from UK companies that have moved their HQ’s to tax havens, to which they freely transfer bonuses, capital and profits via imaginative transfer pricing invoices and so deplete national cash-flows. Will the Guardian please publish a list of brands to avoid?

 

(Mr) Noel HODSON

 

 

times up – 22 feb  2010

 

 

22 FEB 2010 Time Magazine

In saying that Japan, India and China owe their economic success to following the American model, away from big government, Michael Schuman (Essay, TIME, March 1 2010) is blindsided to the long-termism of Asia - planning and investing for generations ahead - compared to the short termism of our "free" market model, which is now so extreme that 90% of transactions look less than than one minute ahead. Addicted gamblers, who use our vital markets as casinos, have wrecked the money system several times.  All margin trading should be banned and all investments should be for a minimum of six months, fully paid for and delivered.  I think the US system needs a dose of big  government to restore sanity and to avoid major crashes occurring at decreasing intervals.   

 

Noel Hodson

Oxford UK

 

 

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gambolling bankers – 3 dec 2009

 

 

3 Dec 09 Guardian Newspaper

 

Bankers argue that bonuses are critical to retaining "investment" bankers. These specialists, most natural mathematicians who be-dazzle and baffle their colleagues, make and lose vast amounts by gambling, second by second, on futures, commodities, currencies, shares and indices. They use our normal bank assets, such as savings accounts, as stakes. Their activities have been deemed to have "no social or economic value".  In fact, such speculation drives up global prices, distorts reality and periodically collapses the world's money-economy; economists cannot yet count their total 2008/09 losses. The bonuses are often siphoned to tax havens. Gambling is as addictive as drugs and alcohol; like most addicts, these gamblers will do anything to sustain their habit. We should bless Mr Darling for finding a trigger to have them all emigrate, taking their unique skills as far away as possible.   

 

 

2010 - a pivotal year for mankind - climate-change, internet-freedom, & global banking – 3 feb 2010

 

This year will witness strenuous battles for control of our climate policies, our money and our internet. These 3 vital elements, among others, are under savage and determined attack as the electronic-revolution disturbs and discomfits the primitive, established habits of the intelligent ape. So far, mankind has applied apelike tribal and gang rules, often violent, to take everything and anything we desired, regardless of consequences.  Now we, the self-acclaimed pinnacle of God’s creation, are being obliged to grow-up and, as President Obama quoted in his inauguration speech, “It is time to put away childish things”.  No overindulged, overweight, greedy, thoughtless, selfish, narcissistic, physically powerful teenager wants to be initiated into becoming a responsible adult human-being.  I believe this year, 2010, is a pivotal year for us. Will we try to do ‘Business as Usual’, or will we move into the era of intelligent-co-operation? Thanks to the internet and the world-wide-web and Wikipedia, we all have the required information and we all can see the global picture – if we choose to look.  Three further quotes to take time to reflect on, “An Elder is one who pre-considers the consequences of actions for the next seven generations” and, “We hate to have to think – thinking uses more energy than any other human activity.” And, from another USA president, President George Bush Senior, “The internet means there are no longer any secrets – privacy is dead.” – Or, to put it another way – There is nowhere to hide.               

 

In an era of almost limitless automated, mechanised, computerised productive capacity; the wealthiest Real-Economy ever, we must learn to share, to cooperate …or else. We live in interesting times. I think 2010 will be a memorable, historic year for mankind.

 

Below – is news of the three elements, as we enter the New Year.

 


 

 

who will control the internet? – 3 feb 2010

 

From Oxford Institute for the Internet - OII

18 January 2010

 

I would like to draw your attention to a Policy Briefing written by our Visiting Associate Tony Wales, former General Counsel of AOL International, responsible for the company's worldwide legal affairs outside the US. It looks at socio-legal and regulatory issues arising from the UK Government's Digital Britain report (June 2009) and Digital Economy Bill, which includes detailed provisions for enforcement action against unlawful filesharing (where Internet users share music, video and other entertainment content without the permission of the copyright holders) by imposing new policing obligations on ISPs and other online intermediaries.  - Bill Dutton, Director  http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/  

 

***********************************

To OII. Thanks for your thorough briefing on the Digital Economy Bill.

 

If Lord Mandelson and the music and film industry do succeed in their crazed, world-domination objective of obliging ISPs to spy and report on all 2 billion Internet users, allegedly to stop a few children and impoverished adults swapping products, which the distributors lack the competence to protect; will OII then steer its followers to the new alternative internet routes and hardware peripherals, which will spring-up, free from government, business and advertisers supervision? Noel Hodson

 

PS - Unauthorised copying or sharing of my website and texts in whole or in part will be reported to the Peter Mandelson IPR Revolving-Door Media Trust (Bahamas) Inc. and result in Oxford University losing all internet-connections, paying large fines and having its officers imprisoned.

 

 

LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN:

Comic Swaps & Copyright 23 NOV 09 - As a boy, did Lord Peter Mandelson never swap his Dandy for a Beano, his Superman for a gob-stopper, or show his Titbits to a pal? Did swapping wreck the publishing industry? Now he wants to track and criminalise 2 billion internet users, who may or may not copy and pass on content. The simple remedy for the music, film and Murdoch news providers is to get off the net; withdraw their precious content. Or should millions of internet users retaliate by suing all media companies for their use of plagiarised and copied content? This is a Pandora's box that Peter should not open - unless, of course, he is being guided by the hand of God.  - Noel Hodson (Mr)

***************************************************

 

19 Nov 09

 

Email to: Mr Rupert Murdoch.

 

CHARGING FOR ON-LINE CONTENT

 

Part of my business is forecasting the future of the Internet. I also advise businesses on novel solutions. If you use this information, please pay me a reasonable, commensurate fee - or - publicise my novels; see the address-block below. 

 

 1) I pay an annual subscription to New Scientist. They post me a weekly magazine and give me full access to an excellent website. This business model should work for The Times and other quality or specialist newspapers. 

 

2) VIP FILTERS - As the Internet grows and adds other alphabets, many, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, are designing "intuitive" search engines.  They recognise there is a pressing need for VIP-FILTERS to narrow search results down to the top 100, rather than e.g. "Email Rupert Murdoch - 2,560,000 results".  News Corp does not have to wait for the new technology. Your teams/or machines can review and feed VIP DATA to subscribers by web-searching, archiving popular, intelligent information, and interposing a NEWSCORP search engine, which becomes the first search the (VIP) subscribers try. This turns today's media business model on its head. You copy free information off the web, repackage it, vet it and sell it on high-cost subscription to elite customers in particular niche markets, in specialist languages if needed (including the arts, sports, finance etc).  Robert Maxwell did a similar judo-throw on the Oxbridge academics when his Pergammon Press cheaply acquired rights to their rare research papers and sold them globally at £500 a time to scientific libraries - he was never forgiven. 

Subscription Sales:  Yes, you have to invest in a sales campaign - but you have an edge via your media businesses - and via existing niche-group viewers and readers.

 

2a) VIP-MOBILE hand held screens.  I am reasonably sure there is also an existing market for ultra-high quality, Sony-book-reader-size, mobile hand held screens with good sound and picture quality (good enough for e.g. Opera (n.b. The Met now broadcasts live) - Ballet - Snooker - Football etc).  Allied to the quality data from VIP FILTERS, owning such a mobile phone would be a high level status symbol. The technology parts exist but you need a 15 year old nerd to pull it together for you.  NEWSCORP-VIP-MOBILE would quickly be the top-end mobile-phone-internet-search of choice in many diverse niche-markets - say, £100 a month subscription.  From there it would spread downwards.

 

Almost daily, I search for reliable statistics and calculators - make a STATS-VIP-FILTER for me.  Yours sincerely - Noel Hodson

 

***************************************

 

how can the money-system and the real economy be reconciled? – 3 feb 2010

 

 

26 January 2010 To S Lanman, Journalist. Bloomberg.net

 

"The standard Taylor Rule would have recommended that the Fed raise the rate to a range of 7 percent to 8 percent through the first three quarters of 2008, “a policy decision that probably would not have garnered much support among monetary specialists,” Bernanke said. A variation of the rule used by the Fed focused on anticipated rates of inflation, not actual rates, he said. "

 

Dear Mr Lanman -  Stealing from the poor to give to the rich, via the Base Rate, was most effective under Margaret Thatcher 1979-1989, when Sterling cash-rich depositors doubled their money every 7 years, risk free, without having to get out of bed. Wealthy international Americans must have really wanted to thank Mrs Thatcher as our property crashed, businesses went bust, families lost everything and we suffered the highest UK unemployment ever.  My engineering business was paying 23% on a fully personally secured trading overdraft - until we too went bust. And the cash-rich still didn't get out of bed.  In 2010, in the UK, every 1/4 percent upward shift in interest rates siphons £2.25B from the poor to the rich. The Taylor Rule, with a 7% increase would amount to at least £63B per annum of wealth transfer - or theft.  It is my last, life's ambition to see the wealth transfer go the other way - from the rich to the poor.  You should advise, via your News Channel, investing in guillotines and knitting needles.

 

And move to higher ground. – Regards - Noel Hodson 

 

****************************************************

 

PUBLISHED IN THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER - UK

3 Dec 09

 

Bankers argue that bonuses are critical to retaining "investment" bankers. These specialists, most natural mathematicians who be-dazzle and baffle their colleagues, make and lose vast amounts by gambling, second by second, on futures, commodities, currencies, shares and indices. They use our normal bank assets, such as savings accounts, as stakes. Their activities have been deemed to have "no social or economic value".  In fact, such speculation drives up global prices, distorts reality and periodically collapses the world's money-economy; economists cannot yet count their total 2008/09 losses. The bonuses are often siphoned to tax havens. Gambling is as addictive as drugs and alcohol; like most addicts, these gamblers will do anything to sustain their habit. We should bless Mr Darling for finding a trigger to have them all emigrate, taking their unique skills as far away as possible.   -  Noel Hodson (Mr)

 

**************************************

 

LETTER TO THE DAILY TELEGRAPH NEWSPAPER - UK

17 November 2009

 

Sir - Defenders of City bankers, including I fear, parts of your 17 November editorial, and several readers' Letters, seem to be blindsided to the trampling herds of elephants in the room. The City lost so many billions of clients', savers' & pensioners' money in 2008/2009 that our cleverest economists cannot yet give a total, other than that globally to date $14 Trillion ($14,000,000,000,000) of tax dollars has been transfused into the system. The population, saddled with decades of new national debt, is justifiably enraged and would gladly throw the culprits to the dogs - not pay them to stay in office.  - Noel Hodson - Oxford

 

********************************

LETTERS TO THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER - UK

The Toxic Homeless - 13 NOV 09 - UN Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik (...America's housing shame - 13 Nov 09) met with dispossessed LA families, representing the feckless, reckless poor, who Wall St. and The City claim wrecked the global system by defaulting on loan-shark contracts and triggering toxic debt; so far needing $14 trillion tax-dollars to patch it up.  $14 trillion would pay-off 56 million $250,000 mortgages - half the homes in America. Or, coincidentally, $14 trillion is about the amount the OECD and Christian Aid estimate is held in tax-havens. Which is the most likely cause of today's global national deficits? Should we punish the poor or claw-back the offshore assets? - Noel Hodson (Mr)

 

27 OCT 09 - Please deliver this heavily capitalised, expletive message, via Letters, to City pundit David Buik, of BGC Partners, who complains about proposed Tory limitations on bonuses (Osborne angers City with plan to curb cash bonuses - Guardian 27 Oct 09). He says "... (Osborne) is far too rigid if he wants London to maintain its presence at the top of the financial tree". 

 

Hey, David ! Wake Up ! do we have to hit you with a brick! The City of London is at the bottom of the financial tree - wallowing in the mud. Maybe you missed the global meltdown and the massive government bail-outs. You and your pals just lost ALL the !!*frigging!!***  London City profits, gouged out in bonuses over the past 25 years. You have lost billions and billions and billions and billions - hundreds and hundreds of billions - of our hard earned UK money - not your own *!***!!**g money …but everyone else's. Millions of pensions have been decimated. You have lost so much of our money - you can't even count it all!  If HM Government (the taxpayers) removes its Bank Deposits Guarantees and daily injections of Quantitative Easing - all the City banks, brokers, wheelers, dealers and speculators would disintegrate. Our currency would collapse. It would be a hellish, violent social chaos.  Never mind having more! You should pay back all the past 25 years of bonuses, £300 to £500 billion, siphoned off under false pretences; and you should earn the Minimum Wage until it is all repaid!  You have made London a laughing stock as a proficient financial centre.  We can only pray that government can repair the immense damage. Televised public beheadings might assuage some of the nations' justifiable rage.  In the meantime please emigrate and take your unique skills to where you imagine they will be appreciated; try Rockall.

 

**********************************

 

will we drown? are the ice caps melting? – 3 feb 2010

 

(Un)Settled Science - Hole in the AGWzone Layer!

by James P. Hogan  'james@jamesphogan.com'

     

January 14, 2010

 

Dear James Hogan, 

 

I have followed the climate-change and extreme-weather debate for more than 10 years - and I do recall the many scares you refer to; such as the numerous terminal threats to mankind (scientifically) analyzed in the 1960's in The Doomsday Book by Financial Times science journalist Gordon Ratray-Taylor.

 

It seems to me that the present Who-Dunnit squabble is a science-village gossip diversion from the main questions - Are the Ice-Caps Melting? …And… Can we Slow the Process?

 

The weather fluctuations, including unusual cold spells, were predicted at a meeting I attended about 12 years ago at the Climate Change Study Unit, Oxford; through melting North Pole ice adding extra masses of cold water to the oceans.

 

I don't think it matters a tinker's cuss whether or not it is anthropogenic - what matters, if the ice is melting - as seen on TV -  is, can we fix it.

 

In the meantime - read my novel, Over the Rainbow, move to higher ground and move your money on-shore. 

http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/novels-table-15FEB07.htm

 

Thanks for an interesting paper. 

 

Noel Hodson

******************************

     

To The London Evening Standard

8 Dec 09

 

Three climate-change economic myths need correcting:

(1) We can't tackle the additional work: The UK could work 133B hours a year, we actually work 37B hours. There is 72% spare capacity to tackle the crisis.

(2) It will cost the world economy a lot: On the contrary it will create useful work, economic activity and extra wealth around the globe.  What we really mean is "I might have to change my income-stream and leisure activities".

(2) Who dun' it? Mankind or Nature? :  It does not matter a tinker's cuss who or what caused it.  Are the ice caps and glaciers melting? Will it cause disruption, deaths and chaos? Can we fix it?   

 

Noel Hodson (Mr)

*********************************************

 

 

think globally, act locally – 3 feb 2010

 

 

Sebastian Johnson, Oxford Strategic Partnership, c/o Oxford City Council, Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates, Oxford OX1 1BX

21 Jan 2010

 

Dear Mr Johnson,

 

One of my colleagues has brought the OSP to my attention. I have looked through the 2008-12 aims, which are worthy and ambitious.

 

Twenty-five years ago, we corresponded with Lord Weinstock at GEC, for a year or so, discussing integrated interlinking transport for Oxford, from electric bicycles, to pedestrian street conveyors, to City-cars to heavy freight systems - all to be manufactured at the Cowley factories.  Today, I am focusing my efforts on a pollution free, underground and CO2 saving goods transport system, Foodtubes.

 

On my local, Headington, transport front, you may like to consider adding for discussion the attached idea for the John Radcliffe Hospital - and perhaps for other similarly large centres of traffic movements.  In my view the JR developers ought to foot the bill for relieving traffic jams.  I would also recommend a single, free, hop-on-and-off bus service from Oxford Centre up and down the London Road to the A40 Park & Ride - as frequent as necessary - to eliminate the queues of rival buses, sometimes empty, competing for bus stops and causing gridlock.  - Best wishes - Noel Hodson

 

NB – The £33M cost of the underpass would be recovered in 2 years from saving the time and fuel of commuters.

 

 

 

The JR-Road Tunnel

 

1 Dec 09

 

As winter gridlock freezes traffic on the London Road, from St Clements to the Ring road, a proposal to link the JR Hospital car parks to the Oxford ring-road resurfaces. 

 

Local firm, SW2000 Intelligent Transport, claims that delays to the 10,000 vehicle movements a day, in and out of the JR, costs the JR staff, ambulances and visitors 15 minutes and an extra litre of fuel a day; 10,000 gallons a week; an extra 19 million gallons of toxic exhaust a week; losing £25,000 in productive time every work-day. Add the other non-JR road users and this traffic congestion costs the community £18 million a year in time & fuel;  plus the impact of toxic exhaust gases, which endanger health and increase global-warming.  

 

The JR should build its own road tunnel link to the ring-road; that is what ring-roads are for.  Oxford's traffic planners could be inspired by Switzerland's visionary 35 mile long, 150 mph, double rail tunnel under the Alps, being built this year to banish freight vehicles from Swiss roads; and by the dozens of long tunnels on the Italian Autostradas; or, nearer to home: by the 249 miles of Victorian tunnels built for the London Tube; by the prize winning 31 miles Channel Tunnel built 250 feet deep beneath the sea; and by the 2,300 metres, air-side-road-tunnel (ART) built in one-year under Heathrow, in 2008. 

 

 To bore a 1/3rd mile - 550 metres - traffic tunnel, from the Ring Road to the JR car-parks will cost about £33 million; which is less than two years of the costs imposed on the travellers and the besieged residents of Marston and Headington. The tunnel would be a low-cost, hugely valuable, permanent investment.  

 

The JR-Tunnel can readily be built with modern boring machines, as used at Heathrow, in less than a year.

 

The long-term value, for ambulance crews, for sick patients, for JR staff and visitors, of having rapid, direct access - and of reducing daily traffic jams for the whole community - is incalculable.   

 

END

 

Stupid government abuse of the Information Society – UPDATED 16 JULY 09

 

16 July 09

 

Popular, successful UK authors and illustrators of children’s books who regularly visit schools are refusing invitations because they now must be computer registered as Child-Workers, pay £65 a year to the Home Office for a licence and be vetted as potential paedophiles and child abusers.  The authors, including Phillip Pullman, say the rules are insulting and create fear between children and adults.  The Home Office says the £65 will enable even more intrusive checks on unblemished, blameless, helpful citizens.  

 

*****************************************

14 July 09

To: Counsellor Jiang Fan (Commerce), Chinese Embassy, LONDON

 

Dear Counsellor,

 

Electronic Surveillance

 

Over the past 3 months, I have read media and science reports saying that computers, telephones and other communication electronics, which are made in China, are being fitted with computer-chips (hardware) and programmes (software) to track the owners' and users' telecommunications. Please send me a list of these bugged machines so that I can make sure I do not buy any device, made in China, which could potentially track and report my use of it.

 

Yours truly, Noel HODSON

  

 

 

*************************************

Bankers and banking – 10 JULY 09

 

Letter to the Guardian - 8 July 09

 

Alistair Darling and the Treasury are not addressing three monstrous and dangerous faults in the system (This mortgage can damage your wealth - Treasury's bank reforms propose risk alerts - Guardian 7 July 09).  First, casino banking must be confined as it was, to individual crazed gamblers risking their own money, not shareholders', depositors' and taxpayers' money. Banks should invest not gamble, with a minimum holding period of, say, six months between shares and commodities transactions. Second, some credit card and personal loans charges rack up to 50%. Loan sharking should be capped at 10% above Base Rate, subject to long prison sentences and fines.  Third, it is alarming for UK savers and the City of London's reputation that while the US authorities send Bernard Madoff to prison for 150 years, for losing £31 billion of savers' funds, the UK sends the ennobled Sir Fred Goodwin, held to be responsible for losing £28 billion of RBS savers' funds, to Monte Carlo to enjoy a tax free pension of £450,000 a year for the next 40 years.  

 

Cyberspace can still stop Emails – SME’s & the Internet - 9 JULY 2009.

 

'cristina.matinez@ec.europa.eu'; 'gerald.santucci@ec.europa.eu.'  

 

This email couldn’t get through to the European Commission.

 

3rd email send - maybe the internet will work this time.

2nd email send - Cristina Matinez seems to be off-line.

Would Mr Santucci's PA please forward this note to the authors of the draft paper on SME's:

20090708-fines-position-paper-draft2 - Public Consultation

 

9 JULY 09

 

20090708-fines-position-paper-draft2 - Public Consultation

 

Dear Ms Matinez,

 

I advised UK SME's on finances for 25 years; promoted Teleworking for 12-14 years; launched the first teleworked business-expansion-service (BES) franchise in Europe (Morton Hodson & Co Ltd) and I am currently promoting a CO2 saving, alternative, freight transport infrastructure, "Foodtubes".

 

I have the above draft paper and recommend further thought might be given by the authors to:

 

1) AUTO-COMPLIANCE - If launching a new small enterprise today, little has changed in 30 years. SME's realistically, continually complain about the cost of "red tape" or compliance with regulations. The Internet could carry out all compliance, registration and reporting tasks, transaction by transaction, and enable all SME's to automatically set aside taxes etc. 

I proposed such an automated one-book-entry system in 1990, called The Electric Cheque Book.  It would save significant amounts of productive time and large direct financial costs. It would provide highly accurate statistics on all SME business activity. What was difficult with 1990 's technology, could now easily be done.

 

2) CONFIDENTIALITY - "Forget Privacy - Privacy is Dead" - said the first President Bush (Senior) about the launch of the Internet and the WWW. However, today's SME's do need to know that the Advanced Telecommunications they are being encouraged to use are private and confidential. Last month, the Chinese government insisted that computer manufacturers build in tracking, spying and reporting hardware and software - and this month the UK learns that newspaper journalists have easy access to all our mobile phone calls.  The EC should publish a weekly list of ISP's, telephone-companies, tools and software that still preserve confidentiality. e.g. I will never knowlingly buy another computer or telephone that has Chinese installed components. 

 

3) VIRTUAL CURRENCY - A large percentage of SME's trade is done with other SME's. The Internet needs to provide a currency that enables such business-to-business trades. Given the present banking chaos and the complexity of bank loans and financing, such a virtual currency will eventually lead to a new banking system and the creation of a global business currency; this should be the "Business-Euro" and it should exclude all previous bad financial practices, cartels, greed, loan-sharking, casino gamblers, etc. The costs of operating such a virtual money system would be a fraction of traditional banking costs. 

 

4) RE-DEFINE PROFITS & LOSSES - In the long term and in contrast to paragraph 2 above; the Internet does open all doors to and provides previously well guarded secret knowledge about capital ownership, trading margins, business models, pay structures and executive rewards. It is inevitable that such information will become accessible to all.  The EC should create a socially-responsible new definition of Profits and Losses for pension, taxes, environmental, employment, wealth-sharing and all other purposes. The presently applied legal definitions as expressed and used by governments, tax-collectors, accountants, auditors and lawyers, come to us from the 18th Century based on 18th Century politics and philosophies. It is high time the definitions, the accepted protocols, were updated for the global Internet era, taking into account social responsibility and eliminating the exploitation of human and scarce resources. 

 

Please circulate this note to all relevant persons.

 

With regards

 

Noel Hodson      

 

 

 

Universal internet access - Power to the people – 6 May 2009.

 

It seems that the Information Society is thriving and has not yet been diminished by censorship - So far so good.  But we should be alert to the numerous threats from would-be censors of every shape, size, hue, religion, political belief, greed and insanity; and we should be rapidly developing internet protocols and delivery technologies that will protect everyone’s right to share and use the network.

 

In the year of 2008 (taken from a New Scientist article 2 May 2009)

 

210,000,000,000 (210B) emails per day were sent.

78% of Emails were spam.

 

Google searches 1 trillion web pages. (1,000,000,000,000)

 

ALL USERS – number approx 1.58B via computers (mostly fixed telephone)

                          Plus 1B via mobile phones

 

China              253,000,000 internet users -19% of the population

US                   220,000,000 internet users -72.5% of pop.

Japan               94,000,000 internet users  -74% of pop.

Brazil               67,500,000 internet users  -26% of pop.

India                60,000,000 internet users   - 4% of pop.

Germany         52,500,000 internet users  -64% of pop.

UK                   43,200,000 internet users  -69% of pop.

 

92% of the population in Greenland have internet access.

 

Internet growth is 50% per annum.

 

On-line advertising spending - $65,000,000,000  ($65B) globally.

 

Danger of Hi-jacking:  The use of Non-Latin alphabets, including Chinese, Arabic, and Cyrillic could divide the internet if such alphabets lead to the creation of national or regional website directories which are not accessible to the central ICANN directory – and thus would not be searchable by existing methods.  This could enable regional government control.   

 

POWER & ENERGY – Bobbie Johnson writing from San Francisco for The Guardian – 4th May 2009 - tells us that a single Google search uses as much energy as driving a car one mile (really?) and that US data centres used 61 billion kilowatts of power in 2006 (what does that convert to in litres of diesel?), enough to supply the whole of the UK’s power for 2 months and/or 1.5% of electricity used in the USA. Google has invested $2.3B into infrastructure in 2008 (presumably to supply electric power and use less of it). And Microsoft engineers are also on the case. However, my opinion is that the energy used sending an email is a tiny, tiny fraction of delivering a physical letter – and that internet searches and data preservation use a minuscule fraction of the equivalent physical libraries and physical searches of libraries.  Maybe we should mothball libraries and give access only over the internet – to save the planet.  

 

Historic, momentous, epoch changing, world turning, inspiring, uplifting, hopeful… Words fail us - 5 November 2008.

 

Senator Barack Obama today is President-Elect of the USA. 

 

Whatever happens tomorrow; this extraordinary, transforming event truly announces the second epoch.

It is so unexpected that Microsoft’s spell checker doesn’t recognise his name.

 

 

Surveillance Crisis – Cyber War - 23 October 2008.

 

The UK newspaper, the Guardian, today runs an editorial “Surveillance – Data with destiny” and expresses concern that the UK government is debating if it should permanently record all telephone calls, emails and internet-searches to protect us all from terrorists. The article asks whether such intrusive and personal records would ever be abused. Doh! 

 

Most computer savvy people are convinced that all communications are already being recorded; in the UK, by interception and analysing centres such as Cheltenham GCHQ. It is likely that all computers are built to keep a hidden permanent record of everything they do, which experts can recover. Think how much data can be saved in seconds to a flash-memory stick.

 

THE FUTURE:  So the “proposed” laws will merely ratify the existing status quo. How will angry and younger people react to such total surveillance?  They will wage cyber-war. The seeds of civil disobedience are already evident. The inescapable computer law of ‘Rubbish in – Rubbish out’ will sabotage the governments’ best efforts to track everyone all the time. The integrity and value of the data relies on accurate identity and location. Hoodies, youngsters on the streets, hide their heads from CCTV cameras – the next stage will be masks.  Petty crooks clone or steal credit-cards and financial identities, use and discard them. There is a lively internet trade in cloned number plates to disguise vehicles; the favourite numbers belong to politicians, judges and celebrities. Free and pay-for software, which hides computer internet identities, abounds on the internet; some of it may even work. People buy, borrow or steal other’s mobile phones, use and discard them. There is probably software that hides telephone number identities – or if not, there soon will be. Traffic cameras photograph license plates (cloned) and drivers’ faces; (masked drivers). To overcome these deceptions, government will have all vehicles carry embedded chips; all music and film downloads will be reported by embedded chips. The kids will re-program the chips or simply dig them out and throw them away. Clever kids will dispose of all spy-ware in their cars and computers – or steal or swap other people’s machines. The ubiquitous CCTV cameras are vulnerable to crude physical attack and as they are put on taller poles and buildings, the kids will find ways to disrupt the cameras with electrical signals – or catapults. Gangs of otherwise compliant citizens will flood systems with false data.  Otherwise law abiding citizens will habitually give erroneous information when form filling.  Computer centres will be attacked and wrecked. Outlaw internet systems will be created that are not monitored. Do you seriously doubt that a percentage of one billion pissed-off internet users couldn’t do these things? Chaos will reign supreme.

 

As the Nazi Party proved beyond doubt; when the State oppresses people relentlessly, the terrible irresistible government pressure and force eventually confronts, or perhaps it creates, the utterly indestructible diamond intelligence and spirit of the oppressed – and it is the State machine that is ultimately smashed. 

 

The pity is that much of the data being gathered for benevolent purposes is of great value to society, but revolutionary cyber warriors will not discriminate.  Will governments learn to act intelligently?

 

Financial Crisis – Part Two – 7 October 2008.

 

On the day that the town sized population of Iceland (250,000 souls) nationalise a bank and are financially ranked willy-nilly alongside China and America by hysterical journalists; markets continue to crash, pundits to pontificate, bankers to grieve, global politicians to dither and super-rich city executives to fearfully hide their ill-gotten gains. Mr Richard Fuld, CEO of wrecked bankers, Lehman Brothers, with only a slight and modest hesitation, yesterday told US Senators that he felt “horrible” about letting down everyone who had lost fortunes, but, Yes, he felt OK about the $500 million he had siphoned out for himself between 2000 and 2008. Death is too easy for such a modern Midas.

 

This crisis is an Information Society issue. We cannot properly communicate and trade globally in milliseconds if spivs, gangsters, loan-sharks, bribed officials and bent accountants and lawyers install themselves at key points in the system like parasitical tape-worms, deliberately spread Disinformation and, under the obscurantist cover of gobbledegook numbers, they fiddle the books, create false back-to-back transactions and siphon off billions and trillions of the people’s common-wealth – without being taxed.

 

It is worth repeating, to counter the many hired PR, media, Wall Street and City lackeys who parrot-fashion report otherwise - This crisis is NOT CAUSED BY US MORTGAGE DEFAULTERS. If missed monthly home loan payments were the basis of it all, billionaires President Bush and Senator John McCain would have stepped up like good citizens, put their hands in their own very deep, well lined Trust Fund pockets and personally made up the arrears of the poorest in society, to save the world from meltdown – perhaps with a little help from the US Treasury.  A few million dollars a month, supporting home owners in difficulties, would have made the underlying assets strong and non-toxic.  The root cause is actually the 28 years of Regan/Thatcher economics, monetarism and unrestrained manic gambling, feeding gargantuan amounts tax-free to the rich while freezing pay and support for the poor – and fiddling the books to hide the damage being done to gouged corporate balance-sheets.  It should all be clawed back.

 

Western governments, unthinkingly anxious about escalating credit card and mortgage consumerism (by the poor), saw in the alleged sub-prime crisis an opportunity to screw and make an example of some of them; young first-home families and poor late-home buyers, all with large mortgages, via the loan-sharking, boiled frog syndrome; frightening them into prudence and frugality with a property crash and homelessness; without having to hike up base rates and thus stoke up inflation, as Thatcher did to crash the UK economy and create 4 million unemployed. In disseminating for a year the frightening rumours that homes would plummet in value, the governments did not realise what destructive demons their fanciful middle-class doom mongering would unleash.  

 

If only they had properly audited their own nations’ transactions and verified them with global comparisons. The world must learn to count accurately. This fundamental neglect has not been due to lack of computing power. Money is nothing more than a reliable book-keeping system. It has been badly abused and is no longer an accurate account.

 

How can the Information Society fix the global system that is bust?  

 

1) Nationalise ALL financial institutions – world-wide.

2) Properly audit and publish all corporate and national balance sheets; eventually include all businesses.

3) Publish all the balance-sheets every day and explain trans-border variances and sinister siphons. Cap fat-cat salaries.

4) Create a single-global-currency and oblige everyone to convert all their assets.

5) During the conversion process – confiscate and repatriate all proceeds of crime, fraud and tax-evasion.

6) During the conversion process – recoup all “City Bonuses” of the past 25 years and examine their legality.

7) Create a global Domesday Book of all significant assets and who owns them. Start with Land, mapped onto GOOGLE EARTH.

8) Convict and punish all fraudsters – whoever their friends are.

9) Banish all speculators from all vital markets – energy, money, water, food, homes, air, metals, shares etc.

10) Record all the above on computers and publish daily on the web.

11) Reform all political systems as E-Democracies – voting on issues, not for leaders or Parties.

12) Introduce a global minimum wage of $10 an hour; sufficient to support a modest home loan.

 

These actions are radical; but lesser interventions and structures will not suffice.  

 

Financial Crisis – Saved from my radical self by judicious editing – 18 September 2008.

 

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE:

 

17 Sept 08 – Excuses, Excuses, Excuses - The continuing, if not escalating, USA and UK financial crisis is repeatedly punctuated in the media by failed brokers & bankers and their press-officers blaming it all on the fall in property prices. But it is illogical that the booming real-economy should wreak havoc in the money-economy. The reality is that massive amounts of our cash have been siphoned off - much of it via tax-havens - to enable global gambling in impenetrable derivatives, beyond the understanding of senior executives, by unsupervised crack-heads; which has so confused the regulators, auditors and the corporate world that few, if any, understand the banks' Balance Sheets and have lost all track of the relationships between the real-economy and the money-economy.  The alleged property "crash" is a tiny percentage of housing stock being auctioned off. 95% of property is not in forced sale and it retains its (real) value to the owners & tenants. And when traditional banking returns, in a month or so, property, land, factories, machines and other real assets in the real world, used and needed by real people, will still be the banks' main securities for loans. It is the banks' loss of liquidity through once illegal gambling that has depleted mortgage funds, halted property transactions and driven up food, oil and other commodity prices. The real-economy, where real-work is done, is fine. It is the money-economy that needs fixing - and it is a primary duty of government to fix it. We cannot leave our currency in incompetent hands. I suggest the wholesale nationalisation of all City interests, to stabilise currencies, and the immediate repatriation to their source-nations of all off-shore assets - calculated by the OECD to be $10 to $13 trillion. That will more than repair all the deficits.  

 

THIS IS WHAT THEY PRINTED – MAYBE IT IS AN IMPROVEMENT:

 

Risk, recklessness and financial stability. The Guardian, Thursday September 18 2008

The continuing, if not escalating, US and UK financial crisis is repeatedly punctuated in the media by failed brokers and bankers blaming it all on the fall in property prices (Banks: the contagion spreads, September 17). But it is illogical that the booming real economy should wreak havoc in the money economy. The reality is that massive amounts of our cash have been siphoned off - much of it via tax havens - to enable global gambling in impenetrable derivatives; which has so confused the regulators, auditors and the corporate world that few, if any, understand the banks' balance sheets, and have lost all track of the relationships between the real economy and the money economy.

The alleged property "crash" is a tiny percentage of housing stock being auctioned off; 95% of property is not in forced sale and it retains its (real) value to the owners and tenants. And when traditional banking returns, property, land, factories and other real assets in the real world will still be the banks' main securities for loans.

The real economy is fine. It is the money economy that needs fixing - and it is the duty of governments to fix it.
Noel Hodson
Oxford

 

Give us back our money!– Letter to The Guardian newspaper - 15 September 2008

 

Lehman Brother's bankruptcy filing and the massive tax-payer bail-outs for Merrill Lynch and insurance giant AIG, indicate a subterranean fault line of foolhardy transactions over several decades, which will cause frightful after-shocks in the money-economy (Banking crisis - Guardian 15 Sept 08).  It is a primary duty of government to maintain stable currencies as "a means of account and a medium of exchange" which accurately represent what we value in the real-economy; which is more productive, automated, flexible and reliable than at any time in history.  The real-economy has never been healthier. In fixing the money-economy and wealth distribution, government must (1) rid the global system of addicted gamblers - margin and "derivatives" speculators - particularly from money-markets, food-markets, energy-markets, carbon-trading and other vital supply chains, and (2) must claw-back all overpayments made to executives in the last two-decades - which Polly Toynbee's timely new book defines as 'Unjust Rewards' - including all tax-haven accounts.  The rationale for repatriating these assets (OECD calculate $10-$13 trillion)  to their source communities is that much of it has been siphoned off, by stealth or brass-necked greed, by controllers of large and small companies, which are now insolvent or collapsing in value. In UK Company Law - and in the US as Conrad Black learned - such massively disproportionate self-awarded dividends, salaries and bonuses constitute criminal frauds against the creditors and shareholders of depreciated firms; and also in fact defraud all the employees and ordinary citizens who trusted them. These two measures, affirmed by new and existing laws, would repair the cash deficits, discourage executive theft and give us back monetary stability.

 

Noel Hodson
16 Brookside
OXFORD OX3 7PJ, UK

 

 

It’s those pesky kids again, stealing valuable works of art - 25 July 08.

 

The media is full of the news that all the major UK ISPs are collaborating with “The Music Industry” to spy on kids and punish them, their parents, their families and their friends for swapping music tracks on-line.  This, for example, is from Time Magazine today:

If the voluntary (UK) code sketched out Thursday fails to curb piracy sufficiently, regulation could still follow. One possibility: the government could force ISPs to install fancy filtering software that blocks illegal file sharing activity. Measures recently proposed in France take an even stricter line: as part of an agreement reached last year — and due before the country's parliament this fall — ISPs could be required to switch off offending accounts for up to a year.

That Britain's approach is less draconian — the BPI, for its part, supports the French approach — reflects the difficult market for the country's ISPs. Internet providers' margins are disappearing, and competition is fierce. ISPs' need to keep customers sweet is "why we have this compromise solution," Mulligan says.

 

So what will be the consequences?  Firstly the music swappers will do it off-line, away from the prying eyes of governments and media corporate executives and their lawyers. Secondly the swappers will adopt, adapt or create identity scrambling software to baffle the ISPs’ filters. Thirdly the youngsters or adult internet freedom fighters will set up their own outlaw ISPs, beyond the reach of the authorities. Fourthly rebellious musicians will flout the spying systems, change their business-models and issue new swappable music. How soon? Well kids are very quick and there will be fortunes to be made – so the rebellion will start today and make an impact this year.

 

The established ISPs will of course make conciliatory noises and claim they are being forced (by law?) into spying on their customers; and they will hope to make a fraction of a penny for every royalty they help to collect from licit downloads. But ultimately and quite soon the ISPs will lose the confidence of large numbers of their other customers – who will fear that they too are being spied on by ISPs who have sold out to high pressure sales operations.  Nuke the Spooks!

 

 

Mobile phones and cancer - 25 July 08.

 

Time Magazine ran this story today, which follows up the fears raised by earlier research spanning several years that cell phones (and cordless phones) might cause cancer of the brain. It is an issue of public importance that ought to be resolved by a major government sponsored study. 

 

(PITTSBURGH) — The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

 

 

Open letter to the Prime Minister. 16 July 08.

 

Dear Prime Minister,

 

For a man with great power, the vision to see that the ice-caps are melting (Guardian 16th July 08) and with little to lose electorally, you are being extraordinarily timid about tackling Britain's and the world's problems. If I were in your place, I would immediately:

 

1) Lead - do not wait to follow others - in creating all the energy Britain needs and will need from tidal, wave and wind power, which we have in super-abundance. Do this today via a government agency to buy all such green electricity at a guaranteed price, say 10p a unit, for 20 years. Germany has successfully done this for solar power. This cuts our oil-dependency and our import/export overdraft to nil.

 

2) Lead - do not wait to follow China and India - in creating stop-global-warming radical transport and buildings infrastructures. These include electrifying all roads and a new industry to build minimum-weight-vehicles, without internal combustion engines, drawing conductive power from road laid cables. This is not new technology - just neglected. Also adopt my hugely efficient FOODTUBES transport. Rid the nation of all overweight vehicles including empty buses and 475 tonne Inter-City trains. Tarmac and electrify the railways for the new vehicles to use. Though worthy things to do, there is little need to rush to insulate all homes and re-use plastic bags etc. as we can make enough pollution-free energy from our seas to be profligate. Britons do not need to live like monks.  

 

3) Lead - do not wait to react to crises - in controlling food supplies and prices.  The banks, the City, Enron, Parmalat and Wall St etc. etc. etc. have proved that private enterprise cannot be responsible for the essentials of life such as water, energy, money, land, houses and food. The coming era will urgently need massive re-nationalisation for a long period to protect the essentials of life from Thatcher's cavalier, cavorting, chortling "free-marketeers".  Food is far too important to leave to laise-faire, cum-day-go-day, magical-market commercialism - a hungry public becomes a very dangerous mob. 

 

4) Lead - not wait until after other OECD countries do it - in immediately nationalising the collapsing money system.  As even the USA has discovered, our currencies cannot be delegated by government and left in the hands of rapscallions, playing silly games and gambling with people’s homes, jobs and lives.  Claw-back all unjustified mega-pay packages with a 25 year retrospective 95% surtax. Also, repatriate to the UK all tax-haven funds which have been exported from Britain. Christian Aid and the OECD Paris, reckon there is from $10 to $14 trillion offshore - enough to pay off all the budget deficits and even repair the US mortgage industry.  This may upset JP Morgan and friends, but you might enjoy discomfiting their shy executives, peeping from behind palm fronds and sipping sweet pina-coladas at their beach homes in the Cayman Islands.

 

And, you might enjoy making these changes. All other problems, like your MP's John-Lewis-List and getting Aunty Nellie's hip treated 1.03% sooner, can be delegated to minions. Drop all ambitions to be "popular", focus on statesmanship, make your place in history, rebuild Britain, put the world to rights and have a good time.  What have you got to lose?

 

Noel Hodson (Mr)

Coordinator, FOODTUBES

"THE TRANSPORT INTERNET - REALLY FAST FOOD"

Runner-up - 2008 St. Andrews Prize for the Environment

http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/foodtubes-project-team.htm

http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/NCH18NOV07LewisMediaGroupV8.pps

 

SW2000 Intelligent Transport

16 Brookside, OXFORD, OX3 7PJ, UK

Tel +44 (0) 1865 760994

website  http://www.noelhodson.com

The present and future of Global-Warming - read:

http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/novels-table-15FEB07.htm

 

23 June 08 – Will the world’s thick-headed transport and energy planners ever get it?

 

For an InterCity train with 150 passengers, it would be greener to stop the train and give every passenger a Rolls Royce to continue their journey.  Why? Because a UK InterCity train, the great-iron-horse-that-crosses-the-prairies, weighs 475 tonnes, before any passengers get on it, which is 3.14 tonnes per passenger. A Rolls Royce weighs a mere 2.5 tonnes and its engine and rolling efficiency is far better than the steel on steel slipping and friction of trains.  Tarmac the railways! When will traffic planners understand the inescapable schoolroom physics of energy, weight and friction – and insist on MWV (Minimum Weight Vehicles) principles in all transport designs – including those damn great, diesel spewing, often empty buses which block urban streets. Doh! 

 

Before our planners are re-educated in minimum energy Gulags, US and NASA scientist James Hansen may achieve his wishes reported in today’s Guardian of (1) putting all oil executives on trial for killing the planet and (b) having America completely wired to enable green energy to be fed into the national grid – regardless of who makes it or where the generators are. Is the USA still in the hands of ENRON type exploitative companies? Germany buys green energy with a 20 year guarantee and through this has become the world leader in applied solar energy technology. In addition to extending national-grids, OECD countries should also wire all road lanes with induction cables and - back to the MWV’s – all road vehicles should be stripped down in weight and propelled by green electricity. An electric vehicle with an external power source does not need: a heavy battery, a tonne of internal combustion engine, a gear box, drive train, fuel-tank or a 300 pound driver chewing a hedgehog sandwich.

 

On the IT and ACTs front – little new stuff is happening – other than national and local authorities inevitably abusing the existing technologies by spying on their citizens. I think the IT world is in for a period of navel gazing before the next generation of really private, personal PCs, telephones and fast-internet products are created by the upcoming, ever more spied-upon teenage generation.  Every bedroom, bathroom and WC should be officially monitored for illicit activities and self-abuse; after all, if you have nothing to be ashamed of you can have no objections – …And sleep with your hands outside the sheets! 

 

For heavens’ sake - Nuke the Spooks.

7 April 08 – Famous Journalist liquidated?

 

 

Dear Letters Editors - I was hoping to post this comment/essay in your Comment & Debate section but many searches on Guardian Unlimited for Larry Elliot do not locate him or today's article. Has it been expunged by the Ministry of Truth and Larry liquidated?

 

If not - where is it?

 

SEARCH:

"Larry Elliot" Monday April 7 2008 - We're in a winter of discontent again - but this time big finance is the villain. Page 28 Comment&Debate.

 

********************

 

7 April 08 - Economies in Crisis

 

The global economy is not in crisis. In fact, the global, real economy has never produced more goods and food, more efficiently, more automatically, with so little human labour, in our entire history. We have never been wealthier. Once we stop people burning things for energy (coal, oil, gas, trees, crops, cooking oils, sugar, uranium rods etc) and harness the almost limitless energy from the sun, geothermal and tidal energy - supplemented by our western overweight kids on treadmills - the world will be fine.

 

What is wrong is that the Money-Economy is out of step, out of alignment with the real economy, and has been hi-jacked by myopic, greedy, aggressive, neurotic, power crazed, IQ challenged, compulsive gamblers; gambling with our money - our sweat and toil.  Money is "a means of account - and a medium of exchange". It exists to make it easier for us to swap the real-goods and services we create and to be a handy record of who owes what to whom. It is a paper trail that should be impeccably reliable (or gold, silver, cowry shells or whatever else we decide to ac-count with.  To protect the bits of paper we have legitimately collected, friendly bankers offer us their safes and vaults.  That is the money-economy.  The City exists to keep accurate track of the paper and to be a focus for collective investment into major social enterprises.

 

But, many of the bankers and their friends, relatives, fans, admirers, copyists, main board directors, dependents unto the fifth generation and tribes of compromised auditors, brokers, debt-raters, loan sharks, lawyers, judges, politicians and book-keepers have been cooking the books in ever more imaginative ways and found that dipping their fat, sticky fingers into the global tills and raking out handfuls of money at an ever faster rate, is not only not challenged as criminal behaviour, but is applauded and awarded by the vast majority of the political system and the media. If you have defrauded your neighbours and work-mates and half-inched a thousand times more loot per hour than they are awarded in a week - you are deemed to be a hero.  A little less obviously than grasping wads of money, our politicians and top civil servants guide their careers and policies towards the revolving doors held open for them years before their early retirements. Every unearned, unwarranted shilling that these sociopaths grab is an inflationary act and, worst of all, their ill-gotten gains impoverish, demean and insult the vast majority of patient citizens who work for a reasonable reward.  The unstoppable money siphon from the average, poor and starving to the already wealthy, super-rich and grossly over-rewarded - has to be stopped; globally.

 

So, it is the money-economy, not the real economy that is broken and needs to be fixed. 

How? (1) Retrospectively cap executive rewards with a 98% tax band, back to Thatcher's last stand.  (2) The present money-system is broken, so introduce a new system that bans speculators and gamblers by ensuring minimum time holdings of real stocks and commodities, and remove all obfuscation - make it simple - and register all business transactions daily for public record (a good laptop should cope - or maybe a few laptops). (3) Without warning, introduce a world currency, EURODOLLARYUEN, and oblige everyone to convert their wealth, on record - or lose it.  Repatriate all offshore, tax haven assets to the countries where the real-economy created them and ensure they are properly taxed or are confiscated.  This will pay off most global deficits. (4) Introduce capital distribution mechanisms such as BIRTHRIGHT to share the wealth base fairly and a minimum wage to provide a decent family living for a 40 hour week (not less than £10 an hour). This will abolish poverty. (5) Consign the present incumbents to lunatic asylums equipped for their eternal pleasure with super-casinos, where they can play to their hearts content with old money.

 

Or - the solution at a stroke - abolish money. Read my book AD 2516 to see how that will work.

 

In the meantime - Move to Higher Ground.

 

Noel HODSON