General Election June 2017

Wow, this is a car crash for Theresa May: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08rz03p/the-andrew-neil-interviews-election-2017-theresa-may

Don't worry, 40 years ago I would have been using the same word for Ted Heath.
If you were around, then, you would remember the playground jibe;
'Why does Ted Heath wear swimming trunks in the bath?'
'Because he hates looking down on the unemployed'.

The cynic in me fears that the Manchester Arena incident is going to be used as an electioneering tool by May...

Hasn't she been responsible for the budgets of the Police and security services for most of the last decade?

It won't, not directly anyway - but you can well imagine this will push some people towards the right wing and authoritarian parties. We could see a small UKIP bounce, perhaps.
Hopefully the focus goes from this horrific attack back onto issues of social care etc back on the campaign trail.

Theresa May really needs to stop the whole 'blame it on corbyn' when she gets backed into a corner.

Well they can't blame it on the previous government because they were (mostly) the previous government.

Thanks.

I think I'll leave it. It's the divisive policies of the Tories that exacerbate the tensions in communities that fuel this level of alienation and radicalism.

Also, see my relevant post in the news thread.

I'm not really sure he's high enough up in the company to really benefit from such a policy. He's a fairly small cog in a large multinational company and the Legal and General investment isn't that big.

According to Wikipedia they own less than 10% of Legal and General and that is probably less than 5% of the overall portfolio value.

I don't know about May's position directly. However, I bet that someone in any company who is married to the Prime Minister gets a lot more attention from that company, regardless of what their managerial position is.

Owning 10% of a massive investment company seems significant to me.

what do you think that 10% is worth?

Legal and General is valued at roughly £150 million. I'd happily own 10% of that.

Everyone knows that it's the company that he works for right? Not him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Group_Companies

AUM Increase US$ 1.5 trillion (August 27, 2016)

UK
Legal & General (8.06%)[48]

It's worth a fair bit in the small scale, but the same company also owns 10% of Lockheed Martin, 6% of Amazon, 10% of Royal Dutch Shell, 5% of Credit Suisse, 5% of Mittal, 5% of Volkswagen, 16% of Ryanair, etc., etc

Those are all worth much more than Legal & General and there are many more investments as well. Pretty much any policy is going to impact on the investments on some way.

Whether he should be working in an investment company at all is one thing but I don't think this particular policy is the issue.

A role like that can suggest there's a conflict of interest, though there may not be.

It's a little bit unfair, of course, but my first though with people in roles like that is "the stockmarket has screwed over your bog standard worker several times, can I trust you to have my back, or will be risk be paid by me like with the banks?"

See also May. Even though it's perhaps unfair. I mean, just cos we think people are "like us" doesn't mean they are, Davis Davis did an undergrad in IT [my sector] and my, oh my...!

So, what is his role and view on regulation of taxing, the stockmarket and does he have May's ear on that?

Theresa May struggles "to comprehend the warped and twisted mind" of whoever was responsible for the Manchester attack.

If only there was a morally bankrupt oligarch responsible for the depraved behaviour of their craven ideologues, from whom she could seek insight...

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I assume he's in favour of appropriate levels of regulation. Note that a huge amount of regulation existed prior to the financial crisis.

I'm not really sure how the stockmarket screws over your bog standard worker. It's an incredibly effective way of providing investment to enable companies to grow.

Given the size of the financial services industry in the UK I also find the idea of wanting to tax and limit its competitiveness globally hard to understand.

It's the speculation, unregulated algoritmic trading [with nobody knowing exactly what is happening and who carries the responsibility], speculative trading on things that aren't actually there/not backed by enough assets and lack of regulation that is part of blame for the 2009 banking crash.

We pay for that, still.

The great depression was also caused by a stock market crash. It's wealth that's often not backed by assets, or at least not in a 1-1 manner. So when the debts are called in, or there's a tumble-effect it can all fall down badly.

And what exactly is the link between stock brokers and brexit? [alu foil hat alert, but it's somewhat relevant if proven correct]

I am not anti-stockmarket, but hedge funds with all sort of complex constructions, market panics etc. do make me somewhat nervous.

Of course the stock market is also related to euro clearing and some functions are perfectly healthy, it's not black and white.

blame for the 2009 banking crash

Not really - debt was highly leveraged, financed with cheap money, intentionally obsucated and repackaged debt instruments, and a ridiculous amount of unidentified (or ignored) systemic correlation and concentration risk.

When the housing bubble popped, and credit prices shot up, everyone was left with their pants down.

Not much of it was speculation, nor algo trading. Unmanaged risk, yes.

Ok, fair enough two separate issues then.

That's not to say that uncontrolled algo trading can't be harmful - but that tends to be at a micro-level, impacting individuals, companies and maybe sectors. Speculation can have big impacts too - Soros and the Sterling devaluation, for example, or the devaluation of Turkey.

I'm not really sure how the stockmarket screws over your bog standard worker.

Who buys stocks? Pensions, speculators, etc... people hoping for an increase in value.

Except... they don't buy stocks, instead they pour money into funds and the funds buy stock.

The problem is that funds charge fees that extract a standing amount on either per-trade value or total stock held.

What you get is essentially something that looks like this (extremely simplified view):

• Value in a company no longer goes to workers, but goes to shareholders
  
• Shareholders are funds
  
• Funds extract fees
  
• Downstream shareholders (pensions, speculators) extract what they can
  
  

And you see that the system is entirely designed to send a stream of money upwards, deposit the largest amount in the hands of a very few fund managers, and then distribute the rest downstream.

A very small fraction of money is deposited within the company during an IPO or stock issuance event... the vast majority of the real world value washes around on the ever changing tidal flows of the stock market constantly depositing cash as a silt on the fund managers and large shareholders.

Because of all of this, the worker is never enriched, whilst those who are able to influence or predict the tidal patterns are repeatedly enriched.

Legal and General is valued at roughly £150 million. I'd happily own 10% of that.

L&Gs market cap is around £15bn, so your 10% looks even better!

Well said :)

Le Manfriend had a thought that stock holding, instead of private / worker owned, companies also tend to maximise profit over workers. For example the company is fine, it really doesn't need to do this to preserve it's future, but work is moved to lower wages countries anyway.

Would be an interesting hypothesis to test.