d_t_w

I agree, all markets go up and down. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

What I think I underestimated is the length the government or reserve bank will go to in order to protect borrowers at the expense of everyone else.

Similarly first home buyer grants or stamp duty concessions, they sound appealing to young couples struggling to enter the market but have repeatedly been shown to do nothing but inflate the market further.

When confronted with a golden goose that pumps money into the economy no politician wants to take a long term view of impacts, particularly when it's their generation making easy money at the expense of those who follow.

My language is a bit loose, of course the BoE is independent and controls the rate.

But the government sets the BoE remit to use the rate to keep inflation within acceptable bounds, and Gordon Brown decided to move from RPI (which includes some measure of mortgage payments) to CPI (which doesn't).

It does seem madness that we would control monetary supply without consideration of inflation in the largest asset group that lose monetary policy impacts (actual house prices, not just mortgage payments), but then I'm no economist so what do I know.

d_t_won U.K. Parliament Gives Theresa May Permission to Start Brexit

I agree with your sentiment, but it strikes me that there is safety and opportunity in behaving badly when the bulk of your peers are swept away in an orgy of debt fuelled spending.

Ten years ago I bought a small flat in London to live in. I paid a respectable deposit and didn't over-leverage. We were at the end of decade long property boom, there were huge concerns about the level of borrowing and ability to repay, predictions of mass repossessions if the BoE raised rates by even a quarter percent, the BoE would regularly "jaw-bone" the fact that the rate must rise[1].

The bank wanted to lend me 5x the amount I borrowed. I could have bought an entire 3 bedroom house rather than just a 1 bed flat situated in the same property. I borrowed within my bounds, priced the debt relative to an upward BoE rate, played it sensible.

What a missed opportunity! In retrospect I should have taken all the cash the bank wanted to throw at me and bought the whole house. I would have been able to manage the repayments fine, and financially I would be light-years ahead of where I am now.

All because the government will literally burn anyone to keep those vested in the housing market safe (particularly I reference the U.K/NZ/AU, I assume the U.S.A is similar).

Behave badly in droves and the government will never raise that BoE rate. They will burn savers, they will continue to inflate the housing bubble, they will set fire to the hopes of anyone under the age of 30 buying a house to live in. Literally anything to save the retirement nest-egg of a generation of baby-boomers, aided and abetted by a generation of baby-boomer politicians.

Only external factors will bring an end. In the U.K that may be Brexit (as external as that is), in AU that may be Chinese capital controls.

Until those external factors are applied you're fine misbehaving. For me, behaving respectably was a mistake.

[1] The rate today is 0.25%, an all-time historic low. The rate when I bought was 0.5%, at the time an all-time historic low.

Saving in the U.K the last decade? Sucks to be you: https://qz.com/750443/the-bank-of-england-just-cut-interest-...

What outcome did I prefer?

d_t_won U.K. Parliament Gives Theresa May Permission to Start Brexit

What part of the brexit process do you think is not best described as an aberration with respect to the normal democratic process of the U.K?

I'll give you one clue. It's extremely rare to hold a referendum of such huge consequence.

Heck, I'll give you a second clue. It's even more rare for politicians to then behave as if the result of a non-binding referendum is binding.

I could enumerate for you the remaining peculiarities, but if you're curious you'll find plenty for yourself.

I do understand that people often like to point to simple cases like this and say "That's Democracy!", inevitably those people don't have a great understanding of the meaning.

d_t_won U.K. Parliament Gives Theresa May Permission to Start Brexit

It's Representative Democracy (via a Constitutional Monarchy) in action, that's wildly more complicated than taking profound action on the basis of a simple majority referendum.

Regardless of your political beliefs and opinion, this is best described as an absolute aberration with respect to the normal democratic process of the U.K.

http://www.starbucks.co.uk/blog/starbucks-commitment-to-the-...

As ludicrous as it sounds, when Starbucks was caught not paying any tax in the UK for over a decade it claimed VAT, NI and PAYE (later excluded) as taxes that it has paid.

Imagine for a moment that you enter into an extremely complicated tax arrangement aimed to reduce your tax burden, quite aware of the risk that at a later date the authorities will judge you to owe that tax regardless and you will end up with a massive bill.

Tax judgements often don't occur immediately. Just ask any one of the 50,000 IT contractors in the UK that are facing this exact situation right now with respect to EBT arrangements. Some owe tax dating back over more than a decade.

They knew the risk, they took it, they lost. No-one is naive here, certainly not Apple.

"Apple pays VAT"

Apple do not pay VAT, consumers pay VAT.

You don't also count the PAYE each of Apples employees pay as "tax that Apple pays" do you?

IT Contractors in the UK right now are facing demands to pay retroactively for tax stretching back over a decade in some cases that they purposefully avoided at the time using a scheme called EBT (or, being paid in loans by a trust because loans aren't taxed).

They had advice at the time that these schemes were legit (though every adviser would deliver that with a wink), any adult human must have known there was a large risk HMRC would disagree eventually (just as Apple knew they were running a risk), and now they face demands to pay the tax they failed to pay in the first place.

Are they the victims? Certainly they will tell you so. Sympathy I have for them? Nil.

d_t_won Master Plan, Part Deux

A message to Apple from anyone who doesn't have rocks in their head:

You shift profits to avoid tax, don't play coy.

The era of tax being optional for multinationals is drawing to a close. You make your profit, you pay for access to the market, no exceptions.

I don't know what you think this hyperbole adds to the conversation?

d_t_won Master Plan, Part Deux

"He wasn't voted in; the other party was voted out"

He won the 2013 federal election as the leader of the Liberals, that's fairly conclusive.

"The leadership here isn't dire"

We disagree.

"Besides, if you use 'dire' for something as beige as Turnbull, what have you got left for something like Erdogan's latest activities in Turkey?"

Criminal? The question is whataboutery.

d_t_won Master Plan, Part Deux

"Coal is the future" - Tony Abbott, Australian PM, 2014.

There are many things to take from Musk's master plan part deux, but the most important for me is the intent and aspiration.

I live in Australia, the leadership here is absolutely dire both political and economic. A relentless cycle of vested mining interests and climate change deniers espousing at length on the cattle exports to Asia suffering if marriage equality is passed.

Maybe Musk succeeds, maybe not, but here's someone with vision, a plan, and he's going to have a fair swing at it.

d_t_won The rectangularness of countries

I came across this post on the Berlin Conference years ago and the title has stayed with me:

http://everything2.com/title/Never+Trust+a+Straight+Line+on+...

d_t_won Friends don't let friends do Java

The options are pretty clear, but I'm not sure what exactly you are suggesting, is it:

"The UK will be able to negotiate access to the common market without acceding to those four freedoms"

luckily the example stacktrace is from a blog written in 2006, so it's all perfectly cromulent.

d_t_won To Compete Better, States Are Trying to Curb Noncompete Pacts

Broadly speaking they're unenforceable in the EU as well, anything beyond 3 months restriction in the UK would certainly fall under restraint of trade.

Employers include them in contracts to scare people, and generally it works.

No, Britain (and any other Westminster style parliament) are party political systems, not presidential. You vote for a party, the party selects its leader.

Of course your average voting citizen has not even a bare understanding of civics 101 and quite often in these circumstances various elements of the press demand a new election in order to make certain the PM has a mandate, if it suits their purposes.

Personally I think it's quite likely to turn out as you suggest, Boris is going to fail to negotiate even the slightest terms from Europe and will call a snap election at some point where the parties themselves will campaign on in or out, where both Labour and Conservatives will be in.

So Boris has laid out his platform, and he has chosen option one, he claims Britain will retain access to the internal market while also putting an Australian style points based immigration system in place.

He also claims "EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU", which should worry observers, since he appears to be promising everyone a pony.

My guess is he expects to use the threat of an exit to negotiate some control over migration, and never to trigger article 50.

Is there any appetite for humouring Boris in Europe? Well Germany is, as ever, practically minded. France and others? They seem quite prepared to demand a pound of flesh.

It will be a wonderful magic trick if Boris, as laid out in his platform, can have everything he wants at no cost.