Why everyone should listen to Alex Brummer – Op Ed

At last, a man in the public arena that talks sense.

Both the official media and the general opinion of the unenlightened general public have for a few weeks now been turning the world into a dystopian place with their continual capitulation to the global governments’ draconian and absurd restrictions on the civil and commercial liberties of pretty much every citizen of almost every nation.

We are witnessing the first ever coup against the people and against the free market capitalist world in human history, with many people quite incorrectly believing that the world will somehow return to ‘normal’ in a few weeks once this absolute hysteria is over.

Wrong! It will not.

The authoritarian practices that are now being implemented across the world, and even in some of the most liberal of nations, have been so easy to enforce and police that it has demonstrated to all government – who in today’s global economic and political sphere all work together – that totalitarianism is very easy to implement and enforce as long as people can be made to believe that if they don’t allow the government to literally rip the shirts from their backs, the whole world will pass away as a result of what is a relatively harmless virus.

Furthermore, the world will not be reverting to the way it was prior to the sudden overthrow of democracy and freedom into a subservient dictatorship with absolutely no economy worldwide, because this will never go away. The vast majority of most business sectors that we all rely on will cease to exist, and governments will seize control of the failing infrastructure that is left.

Nobody is allowed to travel. Nobody is allowed to give custom to shops and restaurants, and thousands of different industry sectors globally are not allowed to operate their businesses. The response? To sit back and tolerate it.

I find this astonishing. There are police officers stopping people and asking them where they are going and what they are doing, and in some countries, brutalizing the public if they dare try to earn a living or buy essential products. Yet nobody questions it or fights back.

In the FX industry, retail B-book brokerages are now experiencing a surge in trading activity, largely because the market volatility is so high due to there being no economy and no previous market data relating to a circumstance such as this with which to backtest algorithms or check historical market behavior in order to attempt to emulate strategies in today’s unprecedented market.

Whilst it is very good that we are a sector of industry which is truly international, borderless and which has all of its infrastructure based on hosted connectivity and dedicated Points of Presence to and from electronic executing venues, giving us all a chance to be relatively immune from the commercial disaster that physical businesses that rely on customer footfall or logistical operations face, we must not rest on our laurels.

Yes, indeed, existing traders are currently producing more volume than usual due to the volatility and the ability for them to be at home and trade the markets with absolute concentration and no distraction, the general trend appears to be that very few new clients are signing up for retail accounts.

Of course, there are ways in which FinanceFeeds can assist your brokerage with that, as we have been working hard to develop a new product range that enables face to face business development without having to move from your desk, however this must be taken seriously.

Alex Brummer, the City Editor of the Daily Mail and a very well respected financial sector commentator and author of many books on economics, and who I happen to have known for many years and respect highly, has this week been one of the only people with a voice to have spoken out publicly.

Alex is an astute and eloquent gentleman, and does not resort to scaremongering or maverick style journalism, however he did not refer to this as a temporary lockdown or a short term blip, he called it, and quite rightly, an “economic wipeout”.

That is exactly what it is, and in my opinion, it has been done intentionally. This is a clear coup by treacherous governments who are clearly in cahoots with each other to remove the free world, and create destitution and dependency.

Alex’s analysis made reference only to the destroyed economy and grounded business in the UK, and has confirmed my research that government welfare divisions are jammed solid with requests that they will never be able to fill for unemployment benefit and bailouts.

There will be no bailout or welfare. Failing businesses around the world are being asked to apply for loans. What? Try asking an underwriter if they will approve a loan for a company that has been closed down by the government and will never get its customers back and therefore cannot make repayments.

Alex states that across the FTSE350 and AIM100 some 120 firms have ditched or suspended dividends over the last four weeks, according to brokers Peel Hunt – at a cost of £11.8billion to investors. Some 40 companies have committed to keep paying distributing £8.5billion, and there are a further 100 firms which have announced dividends worth £13.6billion but not yet determined if they will proceed.

His analysis continued that over the short haul, fund managers and savers will be hard hit by the loss of an income stream and older investors, in particular, rely on the dividends to meet bills. In letter addressed to UK plc, asset manager Schroders argues that, in the current crisis, employees, customers and suppliers need to be prioritised along with keeping enterprises alive – prudence before dividends.

He is right.

Now it gets very interesting, and this is where I can say that I am glad someone respected has put this into the public domain, because I believe this to be the case and the cause.

“Tiger balm Hong Kong has never quite been reconciled to the switch of domicile of HSBC to London in 1992 when it came to the rescue of Midland Bank. The Bank of England insisted regulation and the main share quote shift to London, which seemed sensible enough given the British hand over of the territory to China five years later” said Alex in his analysis.

“Ever since, there has been a tug-of-war between the City and Hong Kong over domicile. As HSBC became more global, with a series of acquisitions in the noughties, including the disastrous takeover of Household in the US, being in London looked logical” he said.

“But when the American ventures went wrong, and it was clear that Hong Kong, China and Asia-Pacific would remain the biggest source of earnings, pressure for a return to Hong Kong returned. Much of this debate looked to have been settled by the recent once-in-a-generation review of domicile followed by almost a year of violent upheaval on Hong Kong’s streets” said Alex.

Correct. Now, we are seeing the communist takeover of everyone’s livelihoods, border controls, no travel abroad, and even if you drive somewhere in your own country you’ll be interrogated, yet there are no riots and there is no backlash. People are quietly walking to the end of the cliff before the authorities push them over it.

Fraudulent government behavior on this scale has never been seen before, and I have spoken to many FX industry executives who agree that this is a coup and that we should be continuing as normal to protect the lifestyle and business environment that the whole world’s working population has worked so hard to establish and develop.

When was the last time you were afraid of going to even a local park or shop in case the government apprehends you? When was the last time it was acceptable in the public’s mind to be trapped and not allowed to earn a living, or to visit your own family?

It is easy to bring in totalitarianism if the world’s authorities can make people frightened and subservient enough.

Yes, there is a virus. But its a relatively harmless virus (unless youre over 60 or have pre-existing conditions), but that applies to all illnesses and viruses. It will never go away, and the authorities are using it as a tool. When told to stay at home or face consequences, alarm bells should have rung and the good people of the world should have said “no!” and carry on as normal.

Our remit is quite simple. We are one of the most innovative business sectors in the world. We can get through this together without it destroying all that we have built up. It is down to us to lead the way forward and show the world’s public that they have an independent financial future, and that this can be done from the comfort of their own homes.

Our infrastructure is dedicated and sophisticated. We do not share subscriber lines with the general telecommunications networks of the world and have our own detailed network of fiber optic cables that run from Europe to Highbridge in Somerset, and then connect London’s financial center to all of the Equinix/BT Radianz venues globally and all of the derivatives exchanges.

Yes, Canary Wharf’s offices are empty, but the workers are able to work from home. We need to be building this up and working hard to defeat what can only be described as the largest global fraud against the world’s population in human history.

Onwards and upwards. Let’s not allow a quiet walk to destitution to take place in the name of absolutely nothing valid.