Viva l-Labour: government debt up by €377.5 million/hofra now at €282.6 million from €28.57 million
Published:
November 28, 2014 at 11:03pm
At the end of last month, government debt was a rollicking €5,375.8 million. This is €377.5 million more than it was this time last year.
The deficit (what our friend Alfred Sant used to call the hofra) is now €282.6 million. It was €28.57 million this time last year.
They sacked Michael Pace Ross for nothing. The National Statistics Office released these numbers today.
Cyprus here we come, chanting Taghna Lkoll all the way.
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And the Henley’s contract is still unavailable.
As is the pre-election contract with China.
Their stint in power so badly misused.
As I asked once before: is this the best they could come up with as strategy after decades in the Opposition?
Mario Vella can’t even keep his stable clean.
Q. Is there at least one single thing in Muscat’s road map that is going right?
A. What road map?
The one and only road map that was surely worked and costed to the last detail was the pecking order of the ‘moviment tal-moderati u l-progressivi’.
For once, and purely by accident, Joseph Muscat was right and told the truth: when he changed the name from MLP to “Muviment”.
Since his election to government, every Tom, Dick and Harry attached even slightly to the Labour Party has been moving fast and steadily in the direction of the feeding trough.
And boy, are they feeding and lining their own nests (mixed metaphor, I know, but paints a good picture.)
To be fair, no debt across the EU can go down. It’s the way the system works – a debt union operating on perpetual debt and rising interest payments.
You see, contrary to what Simon Busuttil told us in his budget speech, the ‘financial crisis’ is anything BUT over and the eurozone is NOT ‘in a better shape’.
As IMF director Christine Lagarde said last week, ‘high debt, low growth and unemployment may yet become “the new normal in Europe”’
http://blogs.cfr.org/kahn/2014/11/18/g20-worries-about-growth/ (that’s the Council on Foreign Relations blog – I hope you all know what and who the CFR represents so you’ll know that this article is in globospeak).
So there, you wanted a normal EU country and Joseph is meeting those demands inasmuch as debt is concerned.
Greenspan heritage.
And wasn’t Greenspan but a stooge of the ‘New World Order’ cabal? Interesting year for the dollar next year. Seems like the ‘world reserve currency’ hasn’t been as good as gold, after all. And when all those treasury bills come roosting home, the Americans will not know what hit them.
That’s bad news for the euro, for it will be QE time, as Draghi has long been hinting.
Incidentally, tomorrow the Swiss will be voting on whether to revert to the gold standard. The No side is expected to win, but it is a harbinger of things to come.
Will people started differentiating between real money and fiat money? Will they spot the global Ponzi scheme?
Not a snowflakes chance in hell.
The ignorance that served Mintoff so well, is still very much alive and kicking. The switchers have diced the future of the island to serve their psyche.
Muscat repeated on Reno Bugeja’s Monologues yesterday one of his favourite lies: that when he came to government, Enemalta was bankrupt. This is a lie, because Enemalta has extensive assets. It may have faced temporary insolvency, but not bankruptcy.
So why exactly did he decide to carry on with his plan of cutting electricity tariffs by 25%? Did he think this would solve Enemalta’s problems?
Enter the Chinese. According to Muscat, they saved Enemalta. If you want my opinion: they saved him, because how else would he have cut the tariffs if according to him, Enemalta was bankrupt? The Chinese bailed him out. Had it not been the Chinese, he would be bankrupt.
Yet, more than one year after his visit to China where he announced the Chinese investment, he still hasn’t signed any agreements.
Reno Bugeja asked “Were the Chinese tough in the negotiation?” And Muscat said they were. Let’s wait and see what else from our national wealth he surrendered in return for his bailout.
Back to the Mallia Inquiry. Who is moving the case in support of the allegations against Mallia and his subordinates?
I guess the answer is either no-one or the police.
Now the police obey their Commissioner and the Commissioner is on a performance contract and so looks up at he who evaluates him, namely the Minister.
Who is the Minister? He is Mallia, the same man that the Prime Minister felt should be investigated by one, two three judges but who still enjoys the Prime Minister’s confidence.
Not only liars, but so bloody obviously fools of the first order to think that we cannot count to four.
I can hear the echoes of “that’s bad interpretations of the figures” coming.
Kellu ragun Simon Busutill qabel l-elezjoni meta kien jghid “il-pajjiz jitfawh gas down ghal gol-hajt”. Daqs kemm kienu jidhqu bih.
Sfortunatament ghandna partit tal-bigilla imexxi dan il-pajjiz.
https://www.facebook.com/partitlaburista/photos/pb.162461360451180.-2207520000.1417201523./506931166004196/?type=3&theater
This is what we were being fed by Labor about the deficit.
And callers on a recent Smash TV programme were going on about the debt that the PN had run up and how Mintoff had left so much money ‘fil-kaxxa ta’ Malta,’ forgetting that in the process he had beggared this island and reduced it to third world status.
The PN increased the deficit but had projects and well-being to show for it. This lot is increasing it without any project or benefit in sight, except government jobs for the Taghna Lkoll crowd.
Utter idiots, il-kaxxa ta’ Malta kienet vojta. I am still amazed at how Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami managed to build the infrastructure in the dire financial situation Malta was in.
Mintoff did not only beggar Malta – but, more than that, he buggered it outright.
Kollu tort ta’ Gonzi.
So we have a hofra in the public finances which is getting deeper and wider. That’s in the public sector.
Now look at what is happening on the Malta Stock Exchange.
The equity index at 8 March 2013 stood at 3324.122.
The same index at 28 November 2014 was at 3273.709.
It is an index dominated by banks, regarded as key drivers of the economy.
How does this reflect the economic growth which the prime minister referred to in Parliament just this week?
It is not as if companies have been bleeding themselves with the payments of dividends and returning their capital to shareholders, so they should have been growing, and the market should be valuing them higher. But this is not the case. That market is not going anywhere and is not showing any signs of economic growth and positive energy.
And the index of the last few months shows that it is back on a downward trend, which shows that the expectations are not good.
Now have a look at the annual financial report of Bank of Valletta released recently. An increase in customer deposits of almost 1 billion Euros, with an increase in loans of about 200 million Euros. Never in its recent history did that Bank experience anything like that, where deposits surpass loans by such a wide margin. It shows weak investment and that consumers are preferring to save. How can the economy grow if the money is left idle with the banks?
And HSBC, in its recent interim statement to the market, reported:
“Loans and advances to customers remain broadly unchanged as new lending was offset by
early repayments in the low interest rate environment.
Customer deposits increased during
the period.”
Same trend there. Or is it worse, because loans to the economy remained stalled?
If banks are not lending, who is making the economy grow?
And in the present scenario, what are depositors getting for their money in the banks? Nothing or next to nothing. Interest rates are at one of the lowest levels ever.
So what does this say about who is paying for the economic activity right now?
The answer is simple: Savers and investors.
Not only is the economy not growing through sustainable new investment. The economy is currently digging into equity and savings, and investors and savers are not getting an adequate return for their investments/savings. In the case of investors, they are actually loosing on the value of their investment.
Meanwhile, salaries have not come down. And government spending continues to rise, at the expense of taxpayers and the national debt, which is increasingly being financed by the banks.
And there is more. Local media have reported that European Union tests on banks revealed some underprovisioning. Which means more bad news for the banks – nothing that they cannot withstand, but this will definitely be reflected in their returns to shareholders.
The public sector continues to recruit and spend as Joseph Muscat seeks to meet pre-electoral promises ahead of the local council elections due in March.
I am expecting the situation in public finances to take a severe negative turn from March, when the lower tariffs for business and industry kick in. Expect a panic in the Finance Ministry some time by June. The current Minister of Finance will not be there for the whole term of 2015 to see through the budget written by Joseph Muscat and his closest aides.
In tennis terms – Game, set and match. Excellent comment, well done.
Well said, what you have aptly stated can easily be felt at ground root level, where customer spending has been exceptionally low.
All one needs to go is to speak to shop owners and supermarket owners. If Maltese are spending less on food and pharmaceuticals, than the situation is exceptionally worrying.
Although Ciccio’s comment is very long, it is spot on.
Muscat has put another 4,400 people on the state payroll since he became prime minister, and a further 300 on the payroll at Air Malta. The tragic effect of this will be felt in around 2 years’ time.
If these people weren’t put on the public payroll, then we would be looking at record unemployment figures and not the other way round. Now what we are looking at instead is a rocketing public sector wage bill.
The Greek government had done the same thing, and to retain the votes of people they couldn’t employ they upped the minimum wage to €20,000 a year instead.
If the new power station is ready and running any time in the next two years, the largest consumer of energy – the government itself and the Water Services Corporation (which uses electricity to make water through reverse osmosis), will be buying electricity at sky-high prices, making it impossible for the government to reduce its spending.
The problem is that it will have no choice but to buy it, and the national debt problem will rocket even further. There is a multitude of other problems which the government seems not to bother about.
So your comment of ‘Cyprus here we come’ unfortunately is very true.
A feature of these scams which people haven’t taken seriously enough yet is that they get drawn in by the illusion of gains and profits to be made, but they end up sustaining and feeding the system to the point of negative returns.
The people running the scams will have been the only ones to have pocketed. But these are not clean earnings.
Then, they will realise.
Ic-cucata hi, as they say, that we’re all paying for their choice to be selfish, even if we saw right through it.
The hofra gets deeper as Muscat tries to reach China.
Muscat’s government may indeed have a gaping hofra in its finances but the biggest hofra under his watch is the chasm in its moral standards. Minister after minister we’re getting to know them better. We knew that they were and still are an incompetent lot but they never cease to surprise us all the worse.
the system will run until they run out of other’s people money.
PL = Mismanagement and Financially irresponsible. The blue ehed boys and girls are getting richer with well paid government nobs and the pensioners and low income earners are getting poorer.
There was, is and never will be an economic vision. We have gone back to the old mentally of construction.The Spanish thrived on this sector only to fall flat on their faces and needed a bailout.
Jien >>>>>>> Int >>>>>> Ahna Maltin midjunin.
X`fihhhaaa din? Asks Joseph in typical peasant accent.