Foolish interference

The perverse thing in this economic crisis is the way the BoE says it will not try to prevent asset price bubbles but it will do all in its power to stop those bubbles popping and so prevent a healthy and necessary re-balancing of the economy.

This is asymmetrical nonsense - either you don't interfere either way (the free market preference) or you interfere both ways (the socialist preference)- doing half and half leads to a fundamental mispricing of risk and consequently a gross misallocation of resources.

Interest rates should be left to float free - like currencies and asset prices. Controlling the price of money assumes that a select few know better than the market - that is arrogant and dangerous nonsense.

An illiberal "do anything and whatever it takes" policy - is an assault on all our freedoms, not least the freedom to try and to fail and to learn from our mistakes.

Father Ignatius Brown

Cheaper food is an illusion - Part two.

I hate to say I told you so but back on 9 July I posted an item about the illusion of cheaper food.

Now, three months later, The Times has just caught up with the idea and produced its own report backing up what I suggested was happening.

You can read the article here, and my latest response, which they might not publish, is below:

Don't you just love the PR spin from the industry spokesperson when they said:"Food manufacturers are trying to help consumers by reducing the frequency of price increases, but unfortunately they are sometimes doing this by downsizing their products."

HaHaHa - "Unfortunately" - they make it sound as though it were an accident - when in fact it is a very deliberate policy that to many people probably looks like blatant deception.

The food retailers are not "trying to help consumers" - they are just trying to help themselves.
Now perhaps you will understand how it is that the big supermarkets have been able to boost their margins and profits during what is supposed to be a major economic downturn - by charging more for less - simple!

Maybe they think that the majority of the British public are innumerate lazy mugs who "ain't bovvered" about "stuff like, you know, like, thinking".

Or maybe they just don't care if consumers know they are being stung because they know that the British public have little real choice because the big retailers have practically cornered the market so that, even without collusion, they appear to act in a semi-monopolistic manner.

The bigger question is what does this say about the real rate of inflation? I am pretty certain the CPI/RPI stats don't reflect this "downsizing" - so as we all suspected inflation is probably higher than the published figures.

Blessings for honesty and transparency.


Father Ignatius Brown

Leave home education alone

Please protect hard working families by preserving their fundamental freedom to educate their own children as they see fit without state interference - sign the petition.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EHEreview/

Thank you.

Father Ignatius Brown

Thank you to Anon...

...for their interesting comment on the blog about Roy Hattersley a few days ago -

Father Ignatius was right about Swine Flu

I hate to say this but, back on 5 June 2009, I pointed out that while antibiotics (as we all know) are no good against viruses they should still be used on people suffering badly from H1N1 to prevent secondary bacterial infections: "(the sort that can swamp the lungs with mucus) - so make sure you demand antibiotics if you get a bad chest infection."

Now, (Wednesday 30 September) Reuters reports on a new study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDCP) that says:

• "Many people who have died of H1N1 swine flu in the United States have also had bacterial infections "
• "Of 77 patients who died of the new pandemic H1N1 virus showed 29 percent of them had so called bacterial co-infections"
• "Doctors may be missing these infections in people severely ill with flu"
• "In previous pandemics -- in 1968, 1957 and 1918 -- many of the patients who died were also infected with S. pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, Staphylococcus aureus and group A Streptococcus, which causes rheumatic fever and strep throat"
• "Routine clinical tests used to identify bacterial infections among patients with pneumonia do not detect many of these infections."

So, if you or a loved one gets swine flu, don't panic but do demand antibiotics if the patient's condition deteriorates.

Note, according to Reuters the the US CDCP are still continuing to plan for a 35 percent attack rate this autumn and an outbreak lasting around eight weeks at its height. Their figures is based on unchanged WHO predictions of the current virus's attack rate and computer models of the the 1968 flu pandemic, which was considered mild. When I last looked the UK was using an estimated attack rate of 22-30%, which might be optimistic but still leaves us facing a potentially serious outbreak (if only in terms of lost productivity rather than morbidity).

Blessings for health and good fortune.

Father Ignatius Brown