ALB
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Actually “Another Ernst Roehm . . . same fate awaits” was one of the comments on Sputnik here:
Not quite. But Minsk must be better than Siberia.
Looks as if he has been taking advice from the Grand Old Duke of York as well as from Montgomery;
In his 1962 book Bonaparte in Egypt J. Christopher Herold wrote:
“During the voyage to Egypt in 1798. When Bonaparte in his pose as intellectual was holding debates on all kinds of themes, a three-day discussion of property was inspired by Rouseau’s theories about inequality. General Caffarelli maintained that property was only ‘usurpation and theft’, and produced an elaborate blueprint for its abolition.” (p. 53).
This suggests that Napoleon was aware of the case for “communisme”.
More on Caffarelli’s views in this article in French entitled “Un socialiste inattendu: Le général Caffarelli du Falga.”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40939686
Maximilien Caffarelli died in 1799 at the age of 43 as a result of a wound sustained in the campaign.
(Thanks to the late comrade Jack Bradley who gave me a note in this years ago.)
More on the stab-in-the-back myth as to why Germany lost WW1 which Putin has adopted to explain why Russia didn’t win it either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
A writer in the Guardian has also picked up Putin’s reference to 1917:
“Putin compared Prigozhin’s actions to the “intrigues” that he said brought down the Russian army, and then the state itself, in 1917. He’s not wrong – this is not unlike the way Russian army units left the front en masse during that military collapse.”
I don’t think that’s the parallel. I would have thought it’s more like the Kornilov attempted coup in September 1917:
In his emergency televised speech today Putin seems to be likening Prigozhin’s action to the overthrow of the pro-war Kerensky provisional government in November 1917 or to the overthrow of the tsar in March that year:
“Therefore, any actions that split our nation are essentially a betrayal of our people, of our comrades-in-arms who are now fighting at the frontline. This is a knife in the back of our country and our people.
A blow like this was dealt to Russia in 1917, when the country was fighting in World War I. But the victory was stolen from it: intrigues, squabbles and politicking behind the backs of the army and the nation turned into the greatest turmoil, the destruction of the army and the collapse of the state, and the loss of vast territories, ultimately leading to the tragedy of the civil war.”http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/71496
This was the argument of the Russia Whites (and also of the German nationalists who argued that Germany would have won had its army not been stabbed in the back).
Putin is clearly a raving Russian nationalist. What sort of other person could really believe that Russia would have won the war on the eastern front if there hadn’t have been a revolution against the Tsar in Russia in 1917?
Which makes it the more odd that so many Stalinists (such as our late scotch friend) and Trotskyists should be supporting Russia in the current war.
Stopping the war and slaughter on the eastern front was about the only good thing the Bolsheviks did. (Ok, they also smashed the power of the Russian Orthodox Church — which Putin has restored.)
Because I have a bank account with Nationwide, which is a “mutual” owned in theory by its members, like all other account holders I get their annual report and a chance to vote in it. This has just arrived.
It confirms what the papers said.
“Net interest income” was up from £3,562 million in 2021 to £4,498 million in 2022.
“Administrative expenses” only increased from £2,234 to £2,423 million. Result: profits went up from £1,597 to £2,229 million, an increase of 40 percent.That this will be due to interest paid to depositors increasing much more slowly than interest paid by those with a mortgage is confirmed by the fact that the the amount lent as mortgages increased by only 1.7 percent.
Anyone with an account with Nationwide can see the figures for themselves. They are on pages 21 and 22 of the booklet they will have been sent.
You also get a chance to vote on the salaries of the directors and top managers. The chairman got £525,000, the chief executive £889,000 and another executive £690,000. Nobody’s labour power is worth anything like that. They are creaming off a share of the profits. I always vote against.
Sputnik is reporting this as attempted coup:
Some of the comments are interesting with some taking an anti-Putin and pro-Prigozhin position.
Deposits by savers are not the only source of funds for banks to lend. They can also have recourse to the money market. They call this “wholesale” borrowing as opposed to “retail” borrowing from savers.
This is referred to in today’s Times:
“The extent to which banks profit from the spread between savings and mortgage rates depends on how they fund their loans. Banks that have more savings on their books than mortgages and therefore use the deposits to fund their home loans will profit more from a wider spread . However, banks with more mortgages than savings will use money markets to price their loans.”
A banker is quoted as saying that “margins on money market loans were generally about 0.5 per cent plus another 0.5 percent for risk.”
That would explain why banks and building societies would prefer to finance mortgages from deposits by savers rather than by borrowing from other financial institutions via the money market.
In any event, even if not all mortgages are made from deposits they still have to be funded from some source, not from thin air.
The other point to bear in mind of course is that banks (unlike building societies) make loans for other purposes than buying a house.
So much do banks need deposits from savers that they compete with each other to attract them. They also compete for ordinary deposits on which they pay no interest as they can lend this money too. If banks really could create money “out of thin air” by a “pen stroke” then they wouldn’t need to.
Note that “net interest income” is not the sane as profits. It’s a bank’s income. A bank’s profits are this less their costs (buildings, wages, computer systems, etc).
Found a way to read that article in the Sunday Mail here:
The figures are different from those in the i paper — they are for six banks not seven, but even for those in common they are not the same. But the definition of “net interest income” is the same:
“the difference between what the companies charge borrowers for loans and mortgages and what is paid to savers in interest”.
Which they give as £44 billion, £8 billion more than in 2021.
In any event, both papers take it for granted that banks are financial intermediaries, borrowing money at one rate to lend at a higher one. Not, as one of those who commented claimed, companies that “magically make money with a pen stroke” and then lend it — if that was the case their income would be much, much higher as they wouldn’t have to pay anything to savers since they wouldn’t need any.
I couldn’t read that article as you had to subscribe but it was the same in yesterday’s i paper under the headline “Banks rake in £4.8bn extra profits in ‘appalling rip-off’”. The article compared the “net interest income” from seven high street banks in 2022 compared with 2021, explaining
“Net interest income is the profit made by banks from charging higher interest borrowing costs on mortgages and loans, compared to what they pay out in interest on savings accounts.”
In other words, banks generate an income by borrowing at one rate of interest and lending at a higher rate, their profits being what is left after paying their running costs.
A table shows that between them the seven banks did have a “net interest income” higher by £4.8 billion in 2022 than in 2021. No doubt that would have been mainly due to not raising the interest rate paid to savers at the same time as they raised the rate they charged lenders (following an increase in the Bank rate).
But the total figures are also revealing. In 2021 their net interest was £27,998,000,000. In 2022 it was £32,761,000,000. The point is that there is no claim or pretence here that this was created out of thin air. It is clearly stated that it comes “from charging higher interest borrowing costs on mortgages and loans, compared to what they pay out in interest on savings accounts.”
“Since I was a child, I have always had many Jewish friends. They say that Zelensky is not Jewish, but a disgrace to the Jewish people.” (Putin)
https://tass.com/politics/1634177
I wonder what he thinks of Macron and Blinken who also support a regime he considers Nazi?
I hadn’t realised that she had taken up an anti-Russia stance right from the start. That’s understandable in the sense of condemning any side that starts a war. But to say, a year and a half later, that the Russian attack on Ukraine was “unprovoked” is another matter. It is taking sides.
What was going on before Russia invaded was that both Russia and NATO were provoking each other in the course of which the West called Russia’s bluff. . .
She has also taken the Ukrainian line that Russia blew up that dam. But we don’t know yet who did or what really happened. Even some pro-NATO commentators are withholding judgment. Apparently she knows better.
She could have taken the more cautious approach taken in this article, but she hasn’t:
https://www.leftvoice.org/sabotaged-dam-in-ukraine-a-reactionary-act-no-matter-the-culprit/
