QE quadruples FTSE 350 pensions deficit in one year

Telegraph "Pension deficits at the country's biggest companies have quadrupled in 12 months in the wake of the Government's quantitative easing policy."

The unwitting move towards a global gold standard

FT "Professor Lew Spellman, from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, has an interesting new post out on the changing role of gold in the global economy. It relates to the notion that a shortage of safe assets may be driving an epic hunt for “safe collateral” — driving down yields on traditional fixed-income investments — because there are more debt liabilities/obligations than safe collateral in the system. In a zero-yielding environment like this, he believes gold begins to look remarkably attractive. This is especially the case if gold remains a liquid store of value, which is widely accepted as collateral across the system. What’s more, there’s little to differentiate it from a zero-yielding Treasury bond. In fact, the Treasury bond eventually expires, while gold doesn’t. ....." (H/T Guido Fawkes)

Immigration boom under Labour changed face of Britain faster than any major country except Italy, Oxford experts reveal

Daily Mail "The immigration boom under Labour led to the face of Britain changing faster than any major nation except Italy, a study by an Oxford University think tank revealed. During the five-year peak of the influx, the UK’s migrant population soared by 22 per cent – double the average of G8 countries, figures from the Migration Observatory show. Over the past two decades, Britain’s foreign-born population has increased from 3.8million – or 7 per cent of the total population - in 1993 to almost 7million, or 12 per cent per cent in 2010."

Abu Qatada is a microcosm of everything that's wrong with Britain's dimwitted immigration and welfare systems

Telegraph
"Abu Qatada’s case was a microcosm of everything that was wrong with how the British state dealt with a range of issues, such as immigration, welfare, Europe and extremism. He arrived in Britain from Jordan, with his five children, and was able to claim asylum on account of “religious persecution”, not because the Jordanians were extreme but because he was.

As I wrote in last week’s Spectator, Britain does little to help Christians in the Middle East escaping persecution but neither do we help our fellow liberals of any religion. Rather than helping our friends, we help our enemies; only the most dim-witted individual would claim that radical Islam is not a threat to Britain.

Why do we do it? Partly because Britain is tied to international treaties on refugees, treaties that are not only unworkable but present the evil idea that people necessarily have “rights” to live in another country"

Absolute Proof Say’s Law has Returned and Keynesian Economics is Dead

Catallaxy Files
"If you have any lasting doubt that Keynesian economic policy is utterly dead beyond revival then read the following two passages. The first is from Keynes’s General Theory. This is the very passage in which Keynes overturns Say’s Law by introducing aggregate demand into mainstream economic theory where it had never been found before."

If It Can Happen Down Under

The American Spectator
"Australia is a nation where freedom of speech has appeared as solidly established as anywhere in the world. Today, however, it is under a massive threat. This is all the more shocking because it is as head-on assault on Australia's entire political culture of liberty and democracy. In the latest development, the governing alliance of the leftist Australian Labor Party and the extreme leftist Greens have received an official report into media regulation recommending draconian controls."

Australia- Reaping the results of 4 years of Labor financial mismanagement!

CCS
"The total Government debt will end up around $200 billion.
So here’s a very basic calculation .. I used a home loan calculator to work it out….. it’s that simple..
$200 billion is $2 hundred thousand million. The current 10 year Government bond rate is 4.67 per cent. I worked the loan out over a period of 20 years. Now here’s where it gets scary …. really scary. The repayments on $200 billion, come to more than one and a quarter billion dollars – every month – for 20 years. It works out we – as taxpayers – will be repaying $15.4 billion in interest and principal every year .. $733 for every man woman and child – every year. The total interest bill over the 20 years is – get this – $108 billion.


Remember, this is a Government, that just 4 years ago, had NO debt. NO debt."