Britain's Winter Of Discontent And The Age Of Rebellion  

The UK press has turned exceptionally bearish lately, so for those who enjoy a little financial doomerism, here's a roundup from the gloomy north

According to The Guardian, at least one British government minister is somewhat pessimistic about the country's future - Labour stakes its reputation on second gamble.

The tone towards the banks is becoming more aggressive. Gordon Brown and a phalanx of ministers will say they share the frustration of the public at the irresponsibility of past lending practices, the slowness with which they have revealed their debts and their stubborn refusal in the past few months to release credit.

The tactics, however, betray a nervousness in Labour circles that the public will simply not understand why there is a second tranche of help going to Britain’s bankers, who have already received billions of pounds of loans, guarantees and capital. There is also a worry that Brown’s inadvertent title as saviour of the world might be slipping.

Opinion polls show government popularity falling in the new year. David Cameron may be internationally isolated in his opposition to a fiscal stimulus, but it does not seem to be hurting him. A YouGov poll in the Sunday Times showed Cameron’s Tories rising four points to take a 13-point lead.

Privately, something close to desperation is starting to develop inside government. After watching the slide in bank shares on Friday, one cabinet minister did not altogether joke when he said: “The banks are fucked, we’re fucked, the country’s fucked.”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph has an odd reputation, and seems to be on the nose with fringe folk across the political spectrum, but he's in his element in this type of environment - UK cannot take Iceland's soft option.

The British government faces an excruciating choice. It cannot let Royal Bank of Scotland and its fellow mega-banks go to the wall. Yet it risks being swamped by the massive foreign debts of these lenders if it takes on their dollar, euro and yen exposure by opting for full nationalisation.

Britain has foreign reserves of under $61bn dollars (£43.7bn), less than Malaysia or Thailand. The foreign liabilities of the UK banks are $4.4 trillion – or twice annual GDP – according to the Bank of England. The mismatch is perilous.

It is why sterling has crashed 10 cents from $1.49 to $1.39 against the dollar in two days. The markets have given their verdict on Gordon Brown’s latest effort to “save the world”.

Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on British debt have reached an all-time high of 125, just below Portugal. The yield spread on 10-year Gilts over German Bunds has doubled to 53 since last week.

Standard & Poor’s has quashed rumours that it will soon strip Britain of its AAA credit rating – an indignity averted even after the International Monetary Fund bail-out in 1976. But there was a sting yesterday as it responded to the Treasury plan for the banks. “Market confidence in the sector has eroded to such a degree that it is not clear whether these measures by themselves will bring about a material improvement,” the IMF said. “As a result, full nationalisation of some banks remains a possibility in our view.”

Spain was relegated from AAA to AA+ on Monday, and Spain’s public debt is a much lower share of GDP.

“If Spain can get downgraded, then the risks for the UK are self-evident,” said Graham Turner, of GFC Economics. “The increase in the UK gross public debt burden – 11.8 percentage points in just one year – is troubling. The market rightly fears the long-term fiscal costs of a collapsing banking system. Rising Gilt yields are the main impact of the botched move from the UK Treasury.”

Mr Turner said the British Government had taken far too long to resort to quantitative easing – printing money – and had wasted months with fiscal frippery as debt deflation throttled the banks.

The parallels with Iceland are disturbing. The country was ruined by the antics of its three big banks. They built up foreign liabilities equal to 900pc of GDP. Operating as hedge funds, they borrowed in dollars, euros and pounds to speculate. However, the state lacked the foreign reserves to match this leverage.

But Iceland at least had the luxury of letting banks default – shifting losses on to the rest of the world. It refused to honour foreign debts.

“They drew a line,” said Jerry Rawclifffe, who tracks Iceland for Fitch Ratings. “They created new banks, parking the old losses in resolution committees. It is not easy for other governments to walk away. They have a duty of care.”

Indeed, if Britain walked away from UK banks’ $4.4 trillion of foreign liabilities – worth eight times Lehman Brothers – it would destroy the credibility of the City and take the whole world into deeper depression.

“The UK cannot go down that route because it would set off an asset price death spiral,” said Marc Ostwald, a bond expert at Monument Securities. “The Western banking system is already on life support. That would turn it off altogether.”

Not to be outdone, The Times is predicting an age of global rebellion will commence any time now - World Agenda: riots in Iceland, Latvia and Bulgaria are a sign of things to come.

Icelanders all but stormed their Parliament last night. It was the first session of the chamber after what might appear to be an unusually long Christmas break.

Ordinary islanders were determined to vent their fury at the way that the political class had allowed the country to slip towards bankruptcy. The building was splattered with paint and yoghurt, the crowd yelled and banged pans, fired rockets at the windows and lit a bonfire in front of the main door. Riot police moved in.

Now in the grand sweep of the current crisis, a riot on a piece of volcanic rock in the north Atlantic may not seem to add up to much. But it is a sign of things to come: a new age of rebellion.

The financial meltdown has become part of the real economy and is now beginning to shape real politics. More and more citizens on the edge of the global crisis are taking to the streets. Bulgaria has been gripped this month by its worst riots since 1997 when street power helped to topple a Socialist government. Now Socialists are at the helm again and are having to fend off popular protests about government incompetence and corruption.

In Latvia – where growth has been in double-digit figures for years – anger is bubbling over at official mismanagement. GDP is expected to contract by 5 per cent this year; salaries will be cut; unemployment will rise. Last week, in a country where demonstrators usually just sing and then go home, 10,000 people besieged parliament.

Iceland, Bulgaria, Latvia: these are not natural protest cultures. Something is going amiss.

The LSE economist Robert Wade – addressing a protest meeting in Reykjavik’s cinema – recently warned that the world was approaching a new tipping point. Starting from March-May 2009, we can expect large-scale civil unrest, he said. “It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds of millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse not better; and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international.”

Ukraine could be the next to go. The gas pricing deal agreed with Moscow could propel the country towards a serious financial crisis. Russia, too, is looking wobbly. A riot in Vladivostok may have been an omen for things to come. What will happen when the wider economic crisis translates into higher food prices? Or if Gazprom has no choice but to increase domestic gas prices?

Cryptogon reckons this is all part of the NWO plot to bring about a single global currency - Britain Could be Facing National Bankruptcy. Who knows, maybe he's right...

Is Britain using the Euro yet? Nope. Not yet. Just wait…

I’m not so convinced that this is incompetence, like the article implies. National currencies are the enemy. And Gordon Brown is such a tool (yes, tool, not fool). What do you expect from a crook who sold half of the British people’s public treasure at the bottom of the market?