From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

Have you read it yet? Superman meets 1984, Superman wins. Back from the Christmas madness - working so many hours without a day off, that if I did not work for myself it would be illegal. Well we say goodbye to 2011 a rather successful year all round if I do say so myself and so now at work preparations begin for Christmas 2012. Looking Back... 1_ Gold looks to have gained somewhere around $200 per troy ounce so a reasonable 12% gain on the year, more if you caught the bottom of the market in February. On the markets the most exciting news is that there is a global 1 million tonne cocoa shortage which explains why all the sweets have gotten so expensive this year. 2_ Mixed business results - locally trade is abysmal although we managed a record December it wasn't enough to counter the rest of the year. Internet sales up by over 50% though and strong showing from the new 'sell your stuff on eBay' and bullion and coin businesses. Still managed to end the year creditor free an...

The ongoing crisis in the Euro zone has had the expected reaction from investors who are indulging in a perceived 'flight to safety' in the US dollar. I say perceived because the economic effects of a string dollar will lead to decreased exports and increased imports which will damage the already frail US economy. The only option available to weaken the US dollar is yet more quantative easing or in plain terms to print more money. When the supply of US dollars increases whilst the supply of commodities remains the same the simple economic effect is to raise the price of commodities. So why is the price of gold and silver falling? Well firstly the price of gold is always expressed in US dollars so a strong US dollar means a lower price in GB pounds. Secondly there is the herding effect... US dollars look like a good short term gamble and those professional traders are following the sound bet and riding the wave. All waves inevitably break but most of these investors are nimble e...

Deputy Tadier on his blog interviews the knowledgeable and insightful Dr Forskitt on the prospects of political parties in Jersey . Parties are about so much more than elections, how hard could it be to start a proper one in Jersey? Now I am a firm believer that only with the assistance of political parties can any democratic state effectively function as a true expression of the will of the people, a view coincidentally shared by the Council of Europe. So I want to examine what would actually be required for a political party to function effectively and to look at the different roles that a political party will take. 1) POLICY FORMATION Now policy formation is a long and complex process which many people would rather not have any more than a cursory role in, but you need to break it down into bite sized chunks. For example within the policy making function you would need to have a series of sub-groups which would look at specific areas of policy, to make it easy form ten panels each o...

It will come as no surprise to those of us who remember the 1970's and 80's but government intervention prolongs recession and depression. But looking back to the 1920's and 1930's it is possible to see what the likely outcome of government intervention through 'stimulus packages' will be for us. Europe’s leaders met recently to try and resolve Europe’s ongoing crisis. The markets themselves are indicating what the outcome in Europe will be. They are all starting to break down, which indicates that Europe will NOT solve its crisis. For one thing, Europe continues to refuse to deal with the real problem. That problem is that Europe never created a fiscal union to begin with. In short, they left all the member states’ debts out there on the table and did not create a unified debt structure in the way of Eurobonds, like U.S. Treasury bonds. That was a fatal mistake, one of many. They continue to neglect that one mistake and even now refuse to create Eurobonds. So t...

The by-election will demonstrate how much progress UKIP have made as a result of the most recent developments with the EU. The Felton & Hesham by election due to take place on the 15th December 2011 will be the first in the UK since May. The expectation is that the result will run - Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Others but this will be the first real test of the vote following the unveiling of the ongoing crisis in Europe. UKIP is aiming to push the Lib Dem's into third place but the deeper concern is that UKIP could cause a divide in the Centre-Right vote in the UK and become a headache to the Conservatives causing them to lose key marginal seats. "The existence of both the Liberal Party (later the Liberal Democrats) and Labour had ripped asunder the country's centre-left majority, bequeathing a Tory-dominated 20th century" writes historian David Marquand (one wonders what happened to the 'le') in his book the Progressive Dilemma. We have now suffered ...

The Jersey Evening Post reports 'A REPEAT of the ‘flying banana’ controversy has been avoided after a last-minute intervention by the new Chief Minister. Senator Ian Gorst stepped in to stop taxpayers’ money being spent employing a private design company to create a logo for a website used by States employees. Earlier this year, employees were asked to come up with a name for the new States intranet service, a system that allows them to communicate using their computers. The competition was won by a civil servant at Home Affairs, who came up with the name MyStates. When the winning entry was announced, all States employees were told that a professional agency would design a new logo to go with the name. But when St John Constable Phil Rondel heard of the plans, he contacted Senator Gorst to point out that spending money on designing a logo was not appropriate while some Islanders were struggling to make ends meet.' Firstly there is some good news, Phil Rondel doing the usual st...

Removing Car Parking from Town Forces people to shop on the internet. Back in 2009 I made the concious decision to focus my business on the non-local market. I could see which way the wind was blowing. The madness of continued pedestrianisation, the endless tax increases impoverishing the local people. Local retail sales are at 60% of what they were in 2008 so it seems that this was a wise decision. Now I am the cheapest on the internet for what I sell, in the UK on some lines we are the fourth largest account behind only Argos, John Lewis and H Samuel and of course my one store in Jersey's Central Market will always struggle to compete against huge chains such as these. Our internet business has grown 50% year on year for the past three years. We have become bullion dealers, we offer an eBay selling service. Next year we are going to launch yet more businesses. Recession is a time when fortunes are lost and made; there were more millionaires created during the great depression tha...

Shipments will no longer be sent from Jersey, but the profits will keep on coming. How will the government react? Finally the long awaited details of how low value consignment relief have been revealed and I suspected it is a minor change which will only affect those businesses which have sprung up specifically to exploit the regulations. Normal businesses such as my own do not file VAT returns when shipping goods to the EU, the VAT is payable by the recipient on receipt. Just as you or I pay the GST on items imported to Jersey, they are not paid by the company that supplies the goods. Where fulfilment businesses differ is that they voluntarily file VAT returns with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs in the UK and pay the VAT on items over the £15 value (formerly £18). The change is that now these companies will have to pay the full VAT on all items irrespective of the value of the goods. So what is the obvious next development for these businesses? The Company will b...

As was pointed out on thisisjersey,com the caption should read 'Employment - Our Highest Priority' A few days ago the first initiative of Ian Gorst's reign was announced, an 'Action Plan For Jobs' . This coincided neatly with a new initiative in the United Kingdom by the Liberal Democrat party. The reaction of the UK press was 'well it didn't work in the 80's so why are we repeating our mistake?'. So what is businesses reactions to such schemes? Most large businesses have a reasonably high turnover of staff, people leave and new people are being employed constantly, so instead of re-employing they will now take on subsidised employees in line with the government program - net effect a subsidy to the business. At the end of the six month period, the business faces such a harsh regulatory environment that if there is not absolute certainty that the person will be able to complete the role successfully then they will terminate the contract before the pe...

The Welfare State was born from the shared experience of the Second World War. The events pulled the community together to achieve a common goal in war. They admirably attempted to preserve this spirit in peacetime. They succeeded but only as long as those people who had experienced the horror of war remained alive to pass on their hard earned wisdom. Rome fell over centuries, a catalog of avoidable errors bought it to its knees. The same mistakes are being made in the Western World today. The people who fought and lived at that time are dying out, now largely only those who were just children remain. The experience of the later generations has been substantially different; they have suffered no hardship, they have not been drawn together in the same way as a community. The Welfare State has failed to adapt to the modern social conciousness. A perfect example of this has been provided by philanthropist David Kirsch whose Christmas gift of £100 to every person in Jersey has bee...

Ron Paul a man who does not compromise interests A man who is willing to sacrifice office to conviction In the finest tradition of 'Real Leaders' Sometime ago now I examined the principals of individual responsibility  as the foundation of the path to enlightenment  as propounded by every single one of the world's religion. Max Weber (one of the founders of Sociology) wrote "The real leader's task is not merely to compromise interests as if politics were like a market place, but to take a stand on issues that transcend material interests. A person is more likely to care about such issues, and be willing to sacrifice office to conviction, if he is financially independent - he must live 'for', not 'off' politics." Newt Gingrich is one politician who compromises  interests as if politics were a marketplace. There may be some in Jersey who follow his example The majority of political leaders in the former empire have historically attained pre-emin...

Troops are due to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan within two years, but will they be 'withdrawing' into Iran? Many apologies to Jersey readers but in the absence of anything very much at all happening I am going to concentrate on the main areas of Ron Paul's US presidential campaign. There is a longer term purpose to this but all will be revealed in due course. Did I mention I really like what Ron Paul has to say? He's my hero! Not only that but the US elections are having a huge effect on what is going on in the world.  The US elections on November 7th 2012 are what the world is waiting for, for the financial system is being held together for. And of course the  ongoing preparations (including running the propaganda machine) for the invasion of Iran. There is nothing like a war to unite a nation. Of course US intervention in the middle east is nothing like a war... legally anyway. You might also wonder if the two most endebted countries in the world, the US and the UK...

The US Federal Reserve has fooled a lot of people into believing that the grand monetary pump and debt monetization project has been put on hold. The only thing that changed was their talking publicly about it. The money press has been working to the limit, never stopped. The discussion has been kept quiet, but the machinery still operates with vigor. The proof is not statements by central bankers, but the data from the monetary aggregate. The data is compelling. The conclusion to reach is that Quantitative Easing has become the norm, the foundation policy, the emergency action to prevent implosion of the US banking system. Hyper monetary inflation is the New Normal. The increase in the money supply has gone parabolic The end is nigh, but not till after the US elections. The mainstream analysts are only beginning to notice that the credit-based system is collapsing, while the central bankers have been busy turning off alarms, and the inflation engines labor on. Von Mises put it so ...

Shortly after the issuance of this note Zimbabweans stopped entering legal contracts and used silver as a medium of payment on Common Law contracts. So after my recent post regarding my decision to cease employing persons, I received a letter two days later informing me that the Social Security department wished to come and inspect my employee records to ensure that they were being kept in accordance with the law. Naturally I have taken the trouble to review my situation and ensure that as far as possible everything is up to date and as required. There had been a few changes to the legislation since last I looked but one point caught my eye in particular Article 44(a) of the Employment (Jersey) Law 2003 sets out a simple basis of distinguishing a Common Law contract from a Statutory Law employment contract. No consideration arising from any Common Law contracts that I should offer will be made in legal tender, they will be made in troy ounces of fine silver or fine gold, I make no cla...