Lots Going On.

First off, its seems that Italy is now firmly in the sights of the financial speculators, with rumours that Italian Banks are seriously exposed to risk and will fail a new stress test when it is implemented. This is more extremely bad news for the UK, as we've made the financial sector the powerhouse of our economy.

As I blogged 3 years ago or more, whilst we continue to have financial uncertainty, the economy will continue to be in the toilet. You cannot have serious economic growth without a serious amount of confidence in the financial sector. Whilst banks remain over exposed to toxic debt and the financials in the City of London remain exposed directly and through derivatives, growth will continue to flatline.

I said all those years ago that it will take more than a decade to recover from the crash of 2007/8 and here we are almost half a decade later, still in the doldrums. We are to all intents and purposes in a great depression and its about time we started acting like we were. We need to start making solid financial foundations by changing the economic mix back from high-risk virtual financials and services over to real-life, low-risk buyable economic generators like  manufacturing.

Unfortunately instead. our government insists on giving away money it doesn't have to finance "bail-outs" and "rescue packages"; all of which are just throwing money away. Our finance sector is heavily exposed thanks to credit default swaps and other forms of loan insurance.

We really are in a pickle, especially as the government continues to put its head in the sand and ignore the root of the problem and the real size of it.

Before the election I said the government had to come clean about the size of the crisis in order to get the country to follow it. Unfortunately they continue to fob the public off with illusions, half-truths and lies. Instead we get diversion tactics and smokescreens such as the phone hacking affair.

Yes, the "phone hacking" affair, which has been blown out of proportion by the government, eager to kill a number of birds with one stone. First is the aforementioned diversion, second is a chance to scare and muzzle a serious political threat, third is the chance to stop Rupert Murdoch from gaining too much influence via the media and finally it provides an opportunity to legislate the press.

If this was a low-ranking issue, all of the evidence would have been released, but there's the fingerprint of media management all over this affair. The constant drip-drip of anti Murdoch evidence, designed to keep the affair in the media spotlight is a sure sign of news manipulation/management.

The outcome of it all will be interesting to observe, but I fear the worst.