from the hip

England’s debt is currently about 44 percent of GDP. In a BBC interview today, Mr Strauss-Kahn, the chief of IMF, was asked about the level of debt in the UK. His answer was interesting:

Shaun Ley, of BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend, asked Mr Strauss-Kahn: “Markets seem to have made their own judgements about this: it is cheaper to get insurance against big multinationals like BP and McDonald’s defaulting than it is to get insurance against UK government bonds going under. That is quite disturbing, isn’t it, when a country is viewed in that way?”

“Yes, it is,” Mr Strauss-Kahn said. “That is a good example of the fact that we are facing something which is almost unknown.”

He also said:

“We are in the biggest crisis we have experienced for 60 or 70 years and we have to take that into account,” he added.

So, that’s IMF’s viewpoint. I wonder a little bit about what kind of data the people on Wall Street or CNN have, who says this crisis will be over during the first quarter of 2009, that the IMF, OECD and the rest of us do not have?

First we learned that the recession was deeper in the US than had previously been told. Now we learn the same about the UK. It is somewhat strange that the bias of these numbers seem to consistently be in the same direction?

Anyway, here is what Times writes about this issue today:

OFFICIAL figures this week will confirm that the economy has been sliding into recession for months and could show that the downturn is deeper and started earlier than first thought.

Revised figures for gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter are set to show a fall of at least 0.5%. Several analysts believe that subsequent information, particularly on the dire performance of manufacturing, will see a sharper quarterly fall of 0.6%.

Whitehall officials are also braced for a revision of earlier data, which could change the timing of the recession.

Economists are getting gloomier about the outlook. The Centre for Economics and Business Research, a consultancy, predicts that Britain will contract by 3% in 2009 and a further 0.7% in 2010, implying a long, deep recession.

Capital Economics, another consultancy, now predicts a fall of 2.5% in GDP next year, with a further drop of 1% during 2010.

This compares with the Treasury’s prediction of a decline in GDP of between 0.7% and 1.25% next year, followed by a recovery in 2010, when it expects to see the economy grow by between 1.5% and 2%.

As you can see, the new figures, as well as the updated outlooks, point in the direction of a recession that is both deeper and of longer duration than has so far been indicated by official sources.

The Danish newspaper Politiken has an article today that is a character analysis of the candidates for the post of Mayor in the great city of London. The next mayor will be either “Red-Ken” Livingstone, the current mayor, or the challenger, Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson is described by Politiken as a popular, conservative party clown with a pronounced upper class accent. Johnson likes to participate in comedy programs on TV, and makes lots of statements that he later has to apologize for. Like the one about the population of Papua New Guinea being cannibals. According to the polls, he seems to be leading the race for the moment.

The other challenger, supported by Elton John, is a homosexual ex-police boss, Brian Paddick. Polls, unfortunately, indicate that he has no chances of winning.

Red-Ken is an admirer of Venezuela’s president Chavez and Cub’s Fidel Castro. He is known, according to Politiken, for having stated that President Bush is the greatest known threat to humankind.

Tony Travis, a professor at the London School of Economics, says that as people in the UK are so concerned with celebrity and personality, Boris Johnson has a good chance of winning.

What an election! Seem to me like the good folks of London will have to exercise their democratic powers by choosing among bad and worse.

Alternatively, if Politiken is wrong, the next mayor of London, whoever he may be, seems to have a slight image problem in Denmark.

I always get very suspicious when governments, at whichever level, are eager to block, halt or close down fraud investigations. Now Gordon Brown is eager to close down the fraud investigation against BAE Systems.

It is a strange case. Tony Blair pressed Robert Wardle, the director of the Serious Fraud Office, to drop the investigation into secret payments by the arms company to Saudi Arabia. Then the case was brought before the high court. On Thursday, the high court, according to Guardian, 

rejected claims that the inquiry had had to be closed down for security reasons because “lives were at risk” if Britain no longer received intelligence on national security from Saudi Arabia.
…  Lord Justice Moses, .. with Lord Justice Sullivan attacked the government’s interference as unlawful.
In their ruling, the judges said: “We fear for the reputation of the administration of justice if it can be perverted by a threat … No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice. The rule of law is nothing if it fails to constrain overweening power.”

Gordon Brown and the Conservatives in England are trying to hide something. For the moment it is difficult to know exactly what. But that it is something that would be hard to defend publicly is clear.

I don’t think Gordon Brown will be able to stop the investigation. I don’t like it when politicians place themselves above the law and above the high court.

From freeinternetpress.com:

The court said that the Saudis should have been made to understand “the enormity of the interference with the U.K.’s sovereignty, when a foreign power seeks to interfere with the internal administration of the criminal law. It is not difficult to imagine what they would think if we attempted to interfere with their criminal justice system”.

The high court will reconvene in a fortnight to decide what remedy to award the two groups of anti-corruption activists who brought the judicial review of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) decision to end the inquiry.

The UK activist groups Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House have done a great job in bringing this before the high court and winning. They deserve support in the continuation of this story as well.

I certainly will support them!

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Here is a little background on the case:

The arms company BAE secretly paid Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia more than £1bn in connection with Britain’s biggest ever weapons contract, it is alleged today.

A series of payments from the British firm was allegedly channelled through a US bank in Washington to an account controlled by one of the most colourful members of the Saudi ruling clan, who spent 20 years as their ambassador in the US.

It is claimed that payments of £30m were paid to Prince Bandar every quarter for at least 10 years.

No, even that doesn’t bother me very much. Until recently, under UK law, even this was legal. Indeed, it was tax deductible, so legal was it.

This is the bit that does worry me though:

It is alleged by insider legal sources that the money was paid to Prince Bandar with the knowledge and authorisation of Ministry of Defence officials under the Blair government and its predecessors. For more than 20 years, ministers have claimed they knew nothing of secret commissions, which were outlawed by Britain in 2002.

See also: BAE corruption investigation switches to Tanzania

Or so they claim. The Danish newspaper BT writes that more than every second Dane, 54%, have had sex in the kitchen according to a representative survey. And sex in the kitchen is even more frequent among the people living in Copenhagen than in the rest of the country – six out of every ten in Copenhagen.

According to the Danish newspaper, this almost makes them the world champions of kitchen sex. However, they are not quite on the top, the Japanese and the Swedes both beat them by a narrow margin. But the Danes also proudly announce that they are way ahead of the British – only 40% in the UK have ever done it in the kitchen!

I trust the Danes will strive to improve their position in the future.