The financial services sector is a grotesque parody of what the financial aervices sector should be.

Its language engineering. We are talking about “scames, schemes, and ripoffs…” as Celente explains it.

Fractional reserve itself doesn’t seem like a scam because of a thousand years of desensitization to it. But a credit default swap? Thats a scam Its all part of a suite of numbers rackets, like what you’d expect from Tony Soprano.

If the Americans had taken a sensible, neutral approach to the bailout, then all these various scams would have been wiped out comprehensively. They kick things down the road for so long, but sometimes the market really does speak. And the market did speak and what it said was that all these high-bonus operators were really just hyped-up bums and con-artists. The derivates industry would have been almost completely wiped.

Most banks under sensible bailout conditions (massive debt retirement through new cash indjection, not regarding any institution in particular) would have been forced to sell off branches and go into retrenchment in order to get hold of the massive amounts of new cash to make good on their commitments. But the bigshots would have all gone under and their creditors would have them in court.

Now they are just filling up their pockets with cash.

Pity that it looks like there will be a renewed push for more PPPs from both the State and Federal government’s. With such a significant private sector market pushing the government down the path of PPPs for thier own benefit, the government no longer has either the capability nor the appetite to resist their advances. So, we the taxpayer, will get to pay more for services.

In Queensland, we might get lucky. If the new PPP projects are delayed then the government might get to witness the pain from the failure of the Airport Link project. I suspect that Clem 7 will be a little down on patronage forecasts but by opening early they have secured themseleves a tidy buffer. In addition the Clem 7 forecasts were reasonably sensible. Airport Link on the other hand had forecasts that were almost double normally accpeted capacity maximums. Combined with the already multiple variations that have been approved suggests that they wont have the same sort of buffer.

While still a couple of years away, when it fails, maybe the government will have a good hard look at itself. Or then again it might just spin it’s way through.

The financial management I was referring to is that undertaken in the big end of town where they get to play the best game of all called “other people’s money”. Amazing what you can do when it is “other people’s money”.

And it’s not a rip off, at least not in competitive markets. If the investment had worked out, the foreigners would have been better off, but their welfare gain would not have counted in our welfare. But as it turned out, they lost. That is their problem, not ours.

Hence the mess we are in?

Now now, Uncle Milton – are you suggesting that the idea of a ‘global economy’ is for various nationalities to ripp each other off?