Whats the point trying to achieve when Labour just want to tax?

i dont think you get the point - most people will try and sell at say, a 10 year high, or close to that level. id recommend you borrow a book on economics from someone

the discussion to ell off RM started a long time ago - also back when it was making regular losses bankrolled by the tax payer. in fact the only way the market would entertain a floatation was if gov retained the cumbersome pension obligation.

oversubscription was based on an estimated price ( which ranged lower than the actual) cables point was if this price had been made 33% higher, subscriptions may have been less from the public and higher from financial institutions. i see that argument.

i dont agree with the idea the sell off was wrong - there was a alot of caveats in the sale to maintain royal mail service nationally and stucture aslo ( these effect eventual value). and im alo skeptical as to the future proftiabilty. after the claims of 'underselling' came profit warnings from royal mail themselves. whoose to say they wont make more losses in the future?

What didn't I understand aboput hoe the gold acution take place?

I asked you how it could be sold legally without a market announcement. I think theat indicated my understanding. You've not repklied to that question.

How could the gold have been sold legally without informing the market?

we are not talking about probability theory here, simply the idiocy of selling in a trough rather than a peak and the deliberate ( or complacent ) driving down of market prices and dumping action. please read the thread properly

Actually its you thats wrong here, any basic book on finance will tell you that asset prices are martingales, so the fact its a 25 year high or low has absolutely no bearing on future price movements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

please read the thread properly

I would entertain such defences if the numbers we were dealing with weren't so extreme. A 100 mill undervaluing and 3-fold over-subscription? Sure. But a billion and 20 fold respectively? I simply cannot see this as anything short of gross incompetence.

Universal service is only going to be enforced until 2021, along with the guarantee of deliveries 6 days a week. Besides, imposing these caveats on a private company runs the risk of exposing it to unfair competition. .

It doesnt matter, because the current price of an asset gives no information whatsoever about its future price. It doesnt matter whether you sell at a 25 year low or a 10 year high, because markets are broadly efficient (assuming you believe mainstream finance theory)

The market impact of selling a large volume over a short period of time is a completely different thing.

No its not a differnt matter at all -we have discussed labours incompetence as two fold ( or 3fold ) in their timing to sell and their dumping of half of reserves. neither action was intelligent. Quady doesnt understand this concept . gold is a long term asset not a speculative one in the hands of government- it serves primarly to provide national guarantee - so it makes no sense to sell at a 20 year low- regarldess of what your probabilty theory says, thats irrelevant

sorry i dont deal in 'would haves and could haves'. im talking about what we know. it wasnt necessarrily more regulations that were needed - it was smarter and more dilligent drafting and application of them - something average labourite doesnt understand




you sound confused - perhaps you dont read news, current government have just got first ever agreement of shutting down european tax havens for british funds- switzerland already agreed return of billions of british funds - labour had over 12 years to do this. Conservatives also closed the stamp duty loop hole foregin buyers were avoiding stamp duty when buying houses - again something labour couldnt be bothered to do - more billions. why didnt labour - either they were crooked or they were incompetant, you decide which.

flexibilty in working ours and rates occurs accros eruope and the world too - uk still outperforms vast majority of eurozone in terms of employment due to the current government. it also has the fastest growing economy post financial crisis in eruope - these are point Labourites cannot comprehend, they argue on basis of dogma not facts .

exactly and a lot of people were surprised that they were allowed to sit in the deal - others were skeptical that any sort of strong valuation would stand up on flotation with these caveats in place- which is why i say i can see the uncertainty intially about the flotation price. given all that was known about the sale and also RM and its loss making histroy, i think it wasnt a particulalry bad deal for the tax payer - albeit it could have been more lucrative, if perhaps Cable as more of a gung ho risk taker, but he is not that character.

Doesn't the reduction of debt and the buying of bonds count as long term priorities?

Gold reserves of course come nowhere near to acting as sufficient national guarantees.

*snip*

but that is the intention of reserves, to guarantee the countries debts, banks currency etc. if you dump half of it for no reason apart form presumably fuel reckless spending then you are an idiot.

is that a joke - labour has a priority of reducing debt? lol

Well personally I think it is important to accept and learn from past mistakes - such as supporting more banking deregulation in opposition. All parties should face up to the part they played in the crash. .

Yes but they haven't stopped people putting money into tax havens or closed the corporate tax loopholes have they? .

Except the current government was handed a growing economy and reversed that, slowing down the economic recovery. They're just making up for lost time now. The economic recovery is built almost entirely on borrowing (hypocritical) and the housing bubble, which is totally unsustainable. Economic recovery also has little to do with the point I made - that the government are jigging the unemployment figures with zero hours contracts and unstable work with poor working conditions that traps people in poverty.
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You obviously aren't going to listen to anything I try and tell you because you have some weird deep seated anger against 'Labourites' .

I'm not going to respond as you can't have a civil debate and instead chose to call me confused, when what you said wasn't even particularly relevant to my post, and chose to post irrelevant points/arguments instead.

You changed my emphasis to suggest that this was a primary consideration, as opposed to a priority ahead of preserving gold levels. I merely point out that you cannot straightforwardly assume there is a net gain to the country to holding off selling gold for an indeterminable amount of time.

Would you have purchased gold when Brown was selling it off, as a minor point?

You mentioned the so called mansion tax, if a person owns a house worth over £2,000,000 they might find an additional £3,000 per year tax irritating, but not as if you will lose all motivation to work over that money, equally money means less to you, the more of it you have. I mean a single mother who works as a carer or a cleaner, works damn hard for low pay, she will never get rich, but it doesn't deter her from doing overtime and working during her holidays, because she is working for her family. Equally a person who is very wealthy and who already has both their basic needs and material desires met, could easily retire early and live off savings and investments and live an extremely comfortable life, without actually contributing anything to the wider economy (literally the opposite of the premise of your argument). In this case, the single mother is working harder...

At the same time, a very wealthy person might have hobbies and interests which contribute to wider society despite bringing no personal, financial benefit, by funding medical units, scientific research or social projects and the motivation for the individual is a sense of self-actualisation rather than profit.

The point I'm making is that relatively small increases in tax certainly won't destroy the capitalist system and anyone who thinks it will, just doesn't understand people and there does need to be more done to investigate what really does make people more industrious and what brings out the best in people generally.

i think the mansion tax idea as its proposed is a daft one, purley becuase a flat tarrif band is nonsensical when house values fluctate widly accross the region. most people have pointed out the flaw that in greater london an elderly couple can be sitting in a house for the last 30 years , now valued comfortabley in the 1.5 -2.5 million region. i find it ridiculous that labour can bemoan the 'bedroom tax ' for taxing benefit claimants for having extra rooms in a council house, but have no problem taxing old people for having extra rooms they paid for some time ago. the hypocricy of dogma.

the idea it self is dumb, uk has stamp duty to tax ( heavily) those that can afford to buy a £2 million pound house already - waht is the need for ' mansion taxes'?