NEIL ATKINSON and John Gibbons were joined by Si Steers and and Karl Coppack in another TAW World Cup special with debate also inevitably focusing on Luis Suarez’s ban following his latest biting incident.
Podcast also includes last week’s City Talk show.
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I’d take a shit-ton of money with Sanchez if it’s on but I’m with Neil still. I can understand John’s view where he’s just bored of the whole rigmarole. Think he’d change his opinion in time when Suarez comes back and scores another one of the greatest hat-tricks of all time in Anfield (hopefully in the Champions League – think Olympiacos but with Suarez pretending he’s playing Norwich).
Not happy with Neil going Glasto when the best World Cup ever is going on either. I went 2010 but South Africa was shite to be fair and I wasn’t going to watch England vs Germany on a big screen amongst hoards of southerners.
Hope Colombia batter Brazil. Fuming at Chile for selling out the way they played in the groups against them.
Good podcast, regarding the discussion on Suarez. I think you got the balance just right. It’s a head and heart decision and you both took on one role and got across what fans are thinking right now.
Hi Guys, I haven’t even finished it yet, but just wanted to say what a brilliant podcats this is…Your opening conversation is exactly the conversation we Liverpool fans need to hear…I’ve really tried to engage Liverpool fans on the notion that, don’t we have to accept that it was probably Surez, not Evra that was lying…and that we went to bat, risked our reputation, our energy, our everything on Suarez. But I haven’t found many takers, it seems we want to sweep it under the carpet, it doesn’t fit with the anti establishment non-confirmist schtick we like to exude – so thank you John. Yet at the same time I’m a massive hypocrite like Neil, because not only do I just want to see Suarez play football, it’s time now, it’s time we won the league, too long now, and there is no argument that I can form in my head that makes the winning of the league any easier without Suarez.
Just a reminder what Evra said Suarez said….that Suarez kicked him ‘because he was black…that he didn’t speak to black people’…etc. now whether he used Negrito or what in this context is irrelavant, the key is do you believe Suarez, and at this point I personally cannot…anyway I’m at work, gotta get back, I’ll listened to the rest of it tonight, but good talking…
yes, he’s about all out of favours now. Biting isn’t anything like as bad as most of the other red card offences and has been over hyped by everyone on e-media and also by the conventional media, but there you go. The point is we can’t trust him.
Now, I don’t think we’ll get what we want from barca, and there’s nothing to suggest that Sanchez wants to come to Anfield (he wants to stay at Barca first and foremost and after that he’ll likely go to Pep’s band of merry men) and FSG realise just how important Luis can be on the pitch. He’s an asset both on and off the green stuff for FSG.
So we could easily see him back in red after any ban, whatever length that might be. If he’s on form that could be very significant for the critical top 4 requirement next season (remember CL money doubles the following season) given how he can produce goals – how many players give you 30 goals/season in the league??
However there is the 433 without Suarez which might see us being quite effective – not scoring quite as many but also being more solid due to an extra midfielder. So we might find we’re doing ok so long as we are unlocking defences.
You would always bet on Luis being the better option, but what if he slows down like he did after January this year and his completely magic touch has “reverted to the mean”? What if his legs only have a year of being ok (he’s not blisteringly fast) and at 29 next summer he can’t do it? Does he bite someone every other week from frustration? Peak time to sell ?
Barca are going to low ball clearly thinking it’s a distress sale but we won’t budge I know that. However I don’t think they’ll go up to £80m either. I see them walking away from this one.
ps – The apology was probably required for sponsors rather than directly for Barca. I certainly don’t believe any of the “Wednesday UK meeting” bs that barca are briefing about.
Well, that closing segment was unexpected Neil? Remember London has always been a major [trading] destination going back in history before the industrial revolution really had set in. It’s history is amazing especially the detail about the people and immigrants and the sleaze areas / rise of philanthropy and social policy etc. 3 miles from the centre was fields and people exclaimed “will London never stop growing!” Flats are half a million there now and that’s not in the centre.
It’s just that other port towns were also to come to prominence albeit later (Liverpool, Dundee, the world centre for the Jute trade etc).
Here’s my tuppence worth on it, sorry about the length.
However, when Thatcher said she “didn’t care where a pound was earned” in order to embrace and deregulate the finance industry we set off on the debt train as firms – previously not allowed to merge – consolidated under the American finance ethos of multi-function super institutions with enormous power and a single aim – to increase credit (debt to you and me). Since then total debt and finance industry profits have risen in parallel straight lines going upwards. They need to increase one to increase the other. it will not stop.
When your currency is on something like the gold standard, you need to sell more than you buy to increase your country’s pile of gold (balance of trade). As soon as something critical like energy becomes too expensive, which it did, you’re going to have a permanent trade deficit and money is leaving the country. We get poorer (like now). You need to have more export activity to make that up – Germany and Japan realised this and acted accordingly and have become richer (yes they have problems).
If you’re OFF the gold standard and onto a “debt standard” it’s not so much the balance of trade that is focussed on it’s the GDP growth (economic activity measure) and the debt in proportion to it. ie deficit as a percentage of GDP, total debt as a percentage of GDP. GDP is also related to the country’s asset values and it doesn’t really care what that asset is. houses will do just fine.
Now GDP is a poor measure but it’s favoured because you can basically con people if you rig accounting rules, and ignore unemployment and wage levels – govt’s biggest problems.
Finance and real estate have the highest productivity numbers in terms of GDP of any industry sector. Think about it. You can conduct hundreds of thousands of pounds or more of business with a lawyer, a bank loan and an accountant and a signature. You can great GDP growth numbers by INFLATING THE ASSET VALUE AGAINST WHICH YOU END UP BORROWING. And if YOU avoid debt, your children certainly won’t. It’s a market with growth baked into the cake, so long as noone does anything stupid like build enough houses or spread economic activity around the country favouring other industries.
The banks basically hire armies of PHD’s to create risk models that say there’s nothing wrong with asset values (eg house prices), and continue to provide ludicrous sized loans (they turn those loans into bonds and sell them ie they don’t hold the risk from an accounting perspective so they can continue to lend more and more – see where that goes?).
Same goes for ludicrous company loans for mergers that never made sense. Governments are powerless to act but actually like the end result of rising house (asset) prices which encourages consumption. It just happens to be debt based and we have seen what happens with that – and we’ve seen the response ie bail out the offenders.
But this system
i) makes us more indebted so long as it’s favoured by govt policy (eg our ridiculous housing ponzi scheme),
ii) encourages debt based consumption eg mortgage release which sends money overseas and so makes us poorer
iii) favours those who can access the debt – far more restrictive now since the crash – and hammers those who can’t access it eg rent levels or price of essentials.
Inequality has to rise massively under this system since debt is the major source of money which is only available to richer/older people while the trade deficit raises prices of imports and essentials.
Also, because unemployment in this model is ignored (shareholder interests require cheaper labour) wages will always lag for most of the population.
The finance industry doesn’t require vast factories. It requires a few datacentres and an army of service and supply industries most of which will import goods to provide a service. Photocopiers/facilities management/marketing etc. They don’t make much if anything. They import it.
Hence employment is concentrated around the City. Near one third of the population now lives in the South Eastern region and most jobs are created there. London has become a hub city. There is no interest in the rest of the country, asset values don’t require it.
So that’s the story of what’s going on right now and why the govt is trying to pump another house / asset price boom and why it makes sure that housing supply remains tight. The basic right wing philosophy is so long as someone is making money then it must be the right thing to do. The fact that it’s an ever smaller proportion of people making the money is of no concern to right wing ideologies.
The key is that this debt and consumption train has to make us poorer – buying chinese goods might create a business (that uses service companies and warehouses here) but at the end of the day is sending money abroad. That makes us poorer as a nation and the bottom 2/3 of the population carries that burden. It has to.
Looking forwards – which politicians won’t do, right wing ideologies say you don’t have to, the market will sort it out then – a “successful country” will grow it’s population (it was shrinking when I was little). We will add 15m-30m people over the next century. ie we will need between 2 and 4 new mega cities like London. Currently we’re talking about building one or two new 60K towns around the South East!! That’s it.
Not only should we be actively pursuing tax and industrial policies that changes our current course (just look at what others are importing and favour those industries!!) but we should plan and start 2 new hub cities. Think about the cost of doing that now as opposed to doing that in the year 2080! One to con-join Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and another to say join Bristol, Gloucester and Newport. More will be needed.
Massive projects on very cheap farmland (which has doubled in price since the crisis!!).
Only then will we alter the current ludicrous path, that intends to stuff another 10m-15m into the south east. Let me ask you this – how do you think Westminster policy and national investment will be shaped if that happens in the South East? More or less directed towards the regions out in the rest of the country?
Until the sheeple [are able to] stop thinking just about chasing house prices nothing will alter this course, because you can’t afford to not be on that train. 4 out of 10 people will never own their own house. They will pay for the price rises however through rent and rising costs of real essential goods like food and energy.
Background:
Nixon removed the US (and by proxy the world) from a pseudo gold standard cos he ran out of money and needed to pay for the Vietnam war. Until then if you (the govt) printed too much money, you got a lot of inflation – too much money chasing too few goods. Interest rates would have to rise to attract money in and avoid a currency crisis so business activity would decline under the weight of debt interest.
Now he could print whatever he liked and ignore how much gold they had.
So the Arabs now wanted a lot more of our paper money for their oil as there was nothing backing the currency and they didn’t trust the West. Hence the oil crisis and rampant inflation – the govt had to print money and raise wages to deal with it. My parents house in working class David Brent country outside London quadrupled in value from £3k to £12k that decade.
The Tories then said under Geoffrey Howe they were going to get a hold of money and control it. It was austerity policies and immediately gave us a recession. The US did it too so the slow down couldn’t be counteracted. Their solution was to embrace the finance industry that could show huge GDP benefits of a credit based society.
Initially Thatcher was against selling council houses cheap – people hadn’t earned it. Houses were a reward for the middle classes and their efforts and council housing was a long way from the nicer stuff that richer people lived in.
However the finance industry needed an asset base for it’s expansion. By selling council houses cheap, banks could lend risk free on the asset since it was “undervalued” due to the council house discounts. This ensured a house price boom (which of course led to bust), but the loan base was established and house prices were the only narrative to survive. People thought the discount was for them. It never was, that was a side effect.
The luck then came in the shape of a tech and telecoms boom that masked the economic failures of Reagan and Thatcher. This meant they didn’t have to reverse course in the housing market and bring the state back into it and could continue to push personal debt based housing which they aided by ensuring tight supply – why would the private sector ever build sufficient housing and soften prices?
We now, through globalisation have a glut of manufacturing capacity. We rely on taking money off each other to keep some people happy and stigmatise others while the country gets poorer. We’re even encouraging / selling companies and houses to foreigners now (eg utility company shareholdings) to try to offset the balance of trade and give the illusion of a successful economy. We are getting poorer though and more divided.