I am not a sheep, I have my own mind
I have had enough of being told what and how to think
Whilst we are still allowed the remnants of free speech,
I will speak out.
I also reserve the right to discuss less controversial matters should I feel the urge.
'The nation's largest bank holding companies have continued to improve their ability to withstand an extremely adverse hypothetical economic scenario and are collectively in a much stronger capital position than before the financial crisis, according to the summary results of bank stress tests announced by the Federal Reserve on Thursday.'So say the US Federal Reserve Why am I not feeling terribly reassured?
"The main reason the FTSE didn't drop is because it is already overvalued. Does that make sense? No, well then you weren't listening last week when Charlie Bean (of the Bank of England) told the world that the purpose of QE was not to fill the banks with cash, but to raise the value of the assets they held. This would boost their balance sheets and plug them full of Tier 1 equity. [As an aside, if that was the reason, I fail to understand why the BoE didn't simply subscribe for £175m of bank equity paid for in the same way, by printing electronic money transferred into the selling bank's account at the BoE, but I digress].
So QE is all about hyping markets and that spills over into the FTSE. More recession means more QE, and more QE means more cash chasing the same gilts and equity, which means higher asset prices (or lower value of money depending how you look at it). So the economy is still in a mess but the FTSE stays at the same price because the market expects more dodgy government money to be on its way any time soon."
"Aviation expert David Gleave said he would have no concerns about flying on a Boeing 777 as new "operating procedures", such as boosting the engine on approach to landing to keep the heat up, had been implemented.
"All the regulatory authorities are satisfied the new procedures which they will adopt or already have adopted will cure the problem as a temporary measure," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"Then new components will be fitted in time which will remove the need for the new operation procedure."
A Boeing spokeswoman said it had issued a set of guidelines for pilots to prevent long-term build-up of ice and these procedures had been approved by the regulatory bodies."
"the NTSB report said: "While the procedures may reduce the risk of a rollback in one or both engines due to ice blockage, they add complexity to flight crew operations, and the level of risk reduction is not well established.""
"It is good to see that in these difficult times, there are still people willing to take a measured risk. I refer of course to the world's airlines who will continue to fly Boeing 777's despite a known fault that has led to one crash and one near incident.
Our aviation correspondent reports:
The cause of the crash at Heathrow of BA 038 in January 2008 has been identified as fuel starvation or what engineers call "no fuel getting to the engine". Investigators have identified the primary factor leading to this problem, which they has been described by leading technical experts as "a big lump of ice in the fuel tank", which arose from an adverse thermodynamic environment at high altitudes. The effect of the blockage was to limit the flow of fuel to both engines.
With over 750 planes put in service in the last 15 years, that works out at about 2 incidents in 2.8 million flights, or about 10 times the probability of winning the national lottery.
The Boeing 777 is widely used on transatlantic and intercontinental flights. Industry experts say that in the event of a similar mid-flight incident, where ice accumulating in the tanks might be dislodged by turbulence or other activity, then the pilot would be unlikely to be able to manoeuvre the plane in the same manner as Capt. Sully Sullenberger, who recently landed an aircraft in the Hudson River shortly after take off from LaGuardia Airport.
The most likely manoeuvre after a total loss of power, including failure avionics and controls, would be a 35,000 ft "plummet", putting down on the surface of the sea at a velocity above industry norms, causing likely damage to the aircraft fuselage, after which the aircraft would probably "sink like a stone", industry sources commented."
"When risk assessments were made in banks the one question that was not asked was "What happens if X market goes away?" because the likely answer was "it ain't gonna happen, but if it does we all go to hell in handcart, you , me, the Governor of the Bank of England and the whole economy". The risk was put in the very low risk category, not factored into any pricing models and generally ignored. On a deal by deal basis that made perfect sense because the loss on any deal was limited to the values related to that particular deal. On an aggregate basis the numbers were so huge that no bank would contemplate the losses resulting from any individual deal, so deals got done and the market consensus was that these sorts of things did not and would not happen. Which meant that the market grew and grew and the issues that were ignored were precisely those that occurred because nobody was worrying abut them."
