Brown's bid to depict himself as the saviour of the world economy and champion of Joe Taxpayer against Big Finance fell flat at the weekend.

So keen is the British prime minister to airbrush out his decade as a "light touch" finance minister that he embraced the heretical idea of a levy on financial transactions as one way to make banks pay for future bail-outs -- the so-called Tobin tax.

The idea was swiftly slapped down by the Americans and Canadians, although it enjoys warm support in Europe. But Brown's Damascene conversion may have more to do with British politics than international finance.

Facing public fury over the tens of billions of pounds spent on bailing out British banks, Brown needs to reassert leadership on the global economy and show he is on the side of voters, not bankers, if he is to have any chance of averting likely defeat at a general election next year.

He and Conservative opposition leader David Cameron are vying with each other to sound more beastly towards the bankers -- to the horror of the City of London, which opposes any form of tax on currency or derivatives trading.

The prime minister also hopes to rekindle the belief that his experience and judgment are sought after on the international stage. His call was warmly welcomed by France, which has campaigned for a tax on speculation to fund development aid.

The Tobin tax may have gained some respectability in Britain after the head of the Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, advocated it as a way to slim down the bloated sector. However it will take more to convince the Americans.

Since any effective transaction tax would have to be levied in all financial centres to avoid evasion, a U.S. refusal could doom the idea, as Brown must have expected.

His Downing Street office has swiftly rowed back, saying the so-called Tobin tax was only one of four options he outlined, and highlighting instead the idea of an international agreement to make banks pay an insurance fee on risky trading.

This has more chance of drawing wide support, since the United States is already considering such ideas domestically and the IMF is working on proposals to be presented next April.

Voters won't necessarily look at the fine print. So it is not far-fetched to think Brown was deliberately underlining a difference with the United States, in which he is on the side of taxing speculation, to rally his Labour Party's faithful and go one-up on the Tories.

If some sort of global banking insurance levy does come about, Brown may claim at least a share of paternity. But his aura as a sage of global finance appears to be fading fast.

Do you have a question you would like to ask Chancellor Alistair Darling? Now is your chance.

At 1:30pm British time on Wednesday, October 21, Reuters is hosting an exclusive Web 2.0 interview with Darling and we want you to send us your questions to put to the top man from the Treasury.

From the crippling global recession to the debate over bankers’ bonuses, it has been a tumultuous year at Number 11 Downing Street. You may want to quiz the Chancellor on one of these topics, ask him about the government’s plans to prevent another downturn or how Labour plan to defy the polls and win the upcoming general election.

During the interview we will put as many of your questions as possible to the Chancellor and will be running a liveblog of the event, much like we did during this social media interview with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

Leave your question in the comments box below or via Twitter (using #askdarling) and join us on Wednesday for our Web 2.0 interview with the Chancellor.

- Stephen Hunt is managing director of Rockingham Retirement. The opinions expressed are his own. -

If we keep going the way we are, disaster looms for millions of over-60’s in the United Kingdom.

The same way that a comment about having licked the boom-bust cycle was not only totally wrong but rather crass and irresponsible. The same is true about having beaten inflation.

Yes, we may be in a period of very low inflation — even deflation — but to think that inflation is not going to return at some point in the future I think is as flawed as believing we have beaten the boom-bust cycle. Coupled with a government policy of printing money, inflation is as inevitable as the Tories getting back into power. And if inflation comes back on the Tories’ new watch they can always blame Labour.

You have to remember that with so much debt in the UK and the U.S., global inflation won’t do respective governments any harm in the long run as far as their debt is concerned.

Let’s consider the facts. We have a hugely aging population. The baby boomers are all approaching retirement and the ratio of pensioners to workers will reduce significantly, putting a huge financial burden on those in employment. So don’t expect too much of an income in retirement from the state on the government’s pay as you go system.

So what about private incomes? Well, largely due to Mr Brown, many final salary schemes have now converted to money purchase. Now, in a final-salary scheme most had index-linked income, which is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Many have now switched to what are called defined-contribution schemes or money purchase, which means the person retiring has to buy an annuity. “What’s the problem with that?” I hear you ask. Let me give you a list:

1.  Most people (65 percent of annuity sales) do not shop around when they retire, taking the default annuity, which costs the UK annuity buyer a billion pounds a year.
2.  Those who do shop around often get poor advice and are not given the best annuity for them.
3.  Those who do take out an annuity are committing themselves to probably a 20-year plus product that is totally irrevocable. It’s like taking out a 20-year mortgage that is fixed for those 20 years regardless of any changes in circumstances — even not having a house anymore.
4.  If you or your partner dies with an annuity, the insurance company profit.

I could go on.

I do find it incredible that someone can save hard their entire working life, make sacrifices while in work to have a better quality of life in retirement and then just throw it all away when they retire.

The following is fictitious but has happened to thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people in the last 10 years:

Mr Brown has saved all his life and has a pension fund of £100,000. Putting this in perspective, his house is worth £200,000. He takes an annuity from his current provider at retirement paying him £7,700 a year set up on a level single life basis with a five-year guarantee.

One of life’s luxuries for Mr Brown was that he did enjoy a smoke.  Unfortunately this meant he only lived for six years in retirement.

His wife was very disappointed. Ten years ago when Mrs. Brown wanted to start taking a winter holiday, Mr Brown said no, they had to save for their retirement. Mrs Brown made just as big a sacrifice to save as Mr Brown did. What’s more when Sally Brown, their daughter, wanted a new Amstrad 1640 PC, the answer was no; it was important to save for retirement. Sally also made sacrifices for her dad’s £100,000 fund.

When Mr. Brown died after six years he had received just £46,200 in payments. His wife and daughter received nothing, zip, not one penny.  Why? Because Mr Brown took the default annuity from his current provider. So who gets the remaining £53,800? His insurance company.

This is not just a story, this has happened — and happened to thousands of people. At Rockingham Retirement we believe it is wrong and something should be done about it.

For starters every person going into retirement should be forced to shop around; even bad advice is better than no advice. For those who say there is not the capacity of advice for everyone to shop around, this is total rubbish — and even if it were true, does it make it right?

You retire once in a lifetime and if you do not get it right it could be the biggest mistake you will ever make, not only for those taking the income but their partners, their children, their grandchildren and whoever else is important in their lives.

- Col. Richard Kemp is a former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and the author of Attack State Red, an account of British military operations in Afghanistan published by Penguin. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Disillusionment with the inability of the Kabul administration to govern fairly or to significantly reduce violence played a role in the reportedly low turnout at the polls in Helmand.

It is critical that this changes if we are to avoid another Vietnam. The South Vietnamese Army, well trained and equipped, lost heart once the U.S. withdrew, collapsing at the first push, partly because their corrupt and ineffective administration was not worth fighting for.

That an election was held at all in Afghanistan’s most violent province is an achievement. But despite a major operation to drive out the Taliban, the insurgents deterred large numbers of voters. This illustrates just how steep a mountain NATO has to climb. But it does not mean we cannot prevail against them in Helmand.

As President Obama says: “This isn’t a war of choice; it’s a war of necessity.” Home grown British terrorists have only demonstrated an ability to kill our people when they have attended serious training and had face-to-face direction from war-hardened jihadists.

The Al Qaida leadership and their camps were driven into Pakistan in 2001. U.S. pursuit across the border using unmanned aerial vehicle strikes has been remarkably effective, resulting directly in the recent reduction of the UK terrorist threat level.

Al Qaida is not just a “global franchise” but also a solid organization that needs places to meet, to plan and to train terrorists. It cannot all be done on the internet.  Substantially unable to function now in Pakistan, the leadership is actively seeking a new base – perhaps in Yemen, Somalia or North Africa. In any of these they would be much more exposed. Their real desire is to return to Afghanistan. NATO forces are preventing that.

But we cannot do it forever. Success equals reducing the insurgency to a level that can be managed by a viable Afghan government backed by a capable security force which can prevent the country becoming a base for attacks on the West including Britain.

How long will this take? The answer to that is how long do we have?  The next U.S. election is at the end of 2012 and the patience of the British electorate will have no greater longevity.

Even as I have defined it, we will not achieve success fully in that time-frame. But we must be very clearly succeeding in a way that we are not now. And certainly in the British forces, we cannot continue with anything like the current rate of casualties over that period.

To counter the Taliban’s present devastatingly effective tactics of mines, roadside bombs and booby traps we need better surveillance and better intelligence, achieved in part through greater active support from the local people. We need to control the night as well as the day. While we build the Afghan army, this can only be done with more of our own troops. A lot more.

Casting aside inter-service rivalries, every sinew of strength of the British armed forces must now go into Afghanistan.  Even that will not be enough.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown must take close personal direction of this war through a war cabinet that will drive every relevant government department to achieve real progress in the short time we have left. And crucially to communicate our war aims to the British people with far greater effect.

- Guy Aitchison is a contributing editor at openDemocracy and writes regularly for its UK blog, OurKingdom -

The Labour politician and intellectual Richard Crossman once described the British constitution, with a sovereign Parliament at its centre, as a “rock” against periodic “waves of popular emotion”.

As MPs reflect on the recent expenses scandal during their 82-day summer break, many will be tempted to congratulate themselves for once again weathering the storm of public outrage.

At the height of the crisis the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition were competing with each other to propose ever-more radical constitutional solutions to the catastrophic loss of trust precipitated by the Telegraph’s revelations of MPs’ shameless, and in many cases fraudulent, abuse of taxpayers’ money. Gordon Brown called for “a written constitution”, David Cameron for giving “power to the powerless” and Nick Clegg, whose party has long been calling for reform of a “rotten” Westminster system, demanded change in “100 days”.

The impulse of all three party leaders to respond to the furore with promises of democratic reform showed they understood public anger was about more than simply duck houses, moats, dry rot, and other abuses of expenses, however petty or extravagant: it was symptomatic of a much deeper disconnect between the public and politicians that has been building for years.

The problem comes from an over-centralised and antiquated British state whose monarchical constitution is totally unsuited to represent the interests of a modern pluralist society. Parliament itself is a creature of the executive that has permitted the systematic erosion of rights and freedoms under a barrage of illiberal legislation and failed to prevent disastrous decisions like the Iraq war.

Our absurdly unjust electoral system means that, when the Prime Minister exercises his royal power to call an election, the effective choice of voters is confined to two parties born out of ancient class antagonisms but now purged of ideology by party managers chasing “floating voters” in the handful of marginal constituencies that determine who wins.

Local government meanwhile lacks independence or any meaningful power with 90% of its funding coming from the centre. In these circumstances it’s no wonder the public feels alienated and cut off from the political system with so many choosing not to vote (40% in recent general elections).

But now that the two main party leaders have shown signs they understand the problem, where is the revolution we’ve been promised? Unfortunately, there’s every indication that much of what was said in the heat of the crisis was mere rhetoric aimed at appeasing angry voters until the whole thing blows over.

Cameron has quietly dropped his earlier talk of reform emphasising the victory of his party in a general election as the best solution to the democratic crisis. The comfortable victory of the Tories in the recent by-election in Norwich North will only strengthen defenders of the status quo within his party, despite the abysmal 45% turnout.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, served up a pathetic Constitutional Reform Bill in the last few days of Parliament which makes a few tweaks to the House of Lords without taking us much further towards a democratic second chamber. There’s apparently talk from inside Number 10 of a possible referendum on the voting system at the next election, but the only alternative to first-past-the-post being muted is the unproportional AV system which would do nothing to ensure the seats a party has fairly reflects the number of votes it receives.

It’s almost impossible to feel inspired by such weak proposals for reform aimed at party advantage and offered in a controlling and calculating spirit without popular involvement. It’s clear that if we’re going to seize the political moment opened up by the expenses crisis and secure the kind of modern constitutional democracy polls consistently show voters want then we cannot rely on politicians to do this for us.

What is needed is a popular force of opinion outside Parliament demanding change at the next election. This means citizens meeting together in living rooms, pubs and town-halls across the country to discuss the kind of democracy we want before joining together independently of parties, corporate media and the formal structures of political power, to pressure parties and candidates at the next election.

In the coming weeks the Rowntree Trusts will be launching an open politics network that aims to help galvanise such a movement. It will assist citizens to organise, draw up and articulate a clear demand for change at the next election, reinforced by the involvement of thousands across the country. If it succeeds, we, the people, will exercise a moral hold over the next Parliament and make real change happen. The alternative is a return to business as usual with an angry and helpless electorate even more alienated from a political system they feel does not represent them - and politicians smug and insulated in their “rock”.

- Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School and a co-author of “Verdict on the Crash” published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The opinions expressed are his own. -

The unending saga of MPs’ expenses has to be seen in perspective. Of all the dishonest things that politicians do, inflating their expenses is about the least damaging. At their worst, they lie to us whenever they think it politic to do so and knowingly favour policies which suit their own interests rather than those of the country. How can this happen? After all, in a democracy the interests of government are supposed to be aligned with those of the electorate, aren’t they?

It might work if we were all rational, but alas, we are not. Only too often, we want the best of both worlds. Nobody is offering us endless sunshine with no hosepipe bans. But there are always politicians prepared to tell us we can have low taxes without reducing government spending, longer sentences without overcrowded jails, near-total job security without high unemployment (the French are especially keen on this), and so on. Why do democratic politicians repeatedly make these promises which they know to be impossible? And why do we keep believing them, election after election, in spite of the repeated failure of politicians to deliver the impossible?

The question is as topical now as ever. In spite of their frightening levels of indebtedness, neither the UK nor the U.S. government has yet said how it proposes to pay off debts in the future – in fact, Gordon Brown is adamant that spending will carry on more or less unaffected. Yet surely voters on both sides of the Atlantic can see that at some point they will have to pay higher taxes and/or accept substantial cuts in Government spending? If so, why do politicians persist with the charade?

The answer lies, I believe, in the nature of the competitive process through which politicians appeal to the electorate. Suppose 80 percent of the electorate know that a choice has to be made – we cannot have both spending and lower taxes. If, say, half of these “informed” voters favour lower taxes and cuts in government spending if necessary, it is fair to assume they also predominantly support the right wing party (Conservative or Republican, for example). Similarly, the other informed segment of the electorate prefer higher taxes and will overwhelmingly vote Labour or Democrat.

Now it is axiomatic that a two party system is a battle for the centre ground, inhabited by the floating voter. In the example here, it is a fight for the 20 percent of the electorate who either still cling to the hope that we can have the best of both worlds or, possibly, who know we cannot, but nonetheless cannot face the decision (and who may have the same attitude to their own credit card bills). In order to capture their votes, politicians must continue to offer pipe dreams. If they can include a reassuring wink to their own side (“when the crunch comes we’ll do the right thing”), so much the better.

At some point, the process must come to an end, as more and more voters realise the truth – that neither they, nor the Government can go on borrowing indefinitely. The game is over when, either the segment of the electorate still in denial has dwindled into insignificance, or maybe when politicians risk alienating their own supporters by the patent dishonesty of their pitch. If the reports are to be believed, Prime Minister Gordon Brown thinks we are still some way from this point, while Chancellor Alistair Darling begs to differ.

– Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

“All political careers end in failure,” the late British Conservative Enoch Powell famously said. And perhaps all political cycles end in scandal.

The outcry in Britain over politicians’ expenses that has claimed ministerial scalps and threatens the survival in office of Prime Minister Gordon Brown reflects more than just anger over taxpayer-funded duck houses.

Parliamentarians have become scapegoats for a deeper malaise combining the twilight of the Labour Party’s long reign, the worst economic slump since the Great Depression and the shaming of the City of London’s financial titans.

This is not to belittle abuses of the public purse by individual lawmakers. But they do not fully explain the nervous breakdown that has gripped Britain in the last month.

Seen from abroad, many Britons seem to feel their country has been politically, financially and morally devalued. It is easier to vent frustration at MPs having their moats or tennis courts cleaned at public expense than to accept that Britain has been on a binge for a decade and faces a long, costly hangover.

Bits are falling off Gordon Brown’s fag-end government in the same way that befell John Major’s hapless last Conservative cabinet in the 1990s and James Callaghan’s washed-up minority Labour administration in the 1970s.

Parties that stay long enough in power get lazy, sleazy and accident-prone. Remember the political funding scandals that tainted the sunset years of Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac in France, and of Helmut Kohl in Germany. Or the “back to basics” sex scandals and bonfire of mad cows that did for Major.

What makes the current mood in Britain particularly toxic is the cocktail of political brown-out and economic distress.

In the last 18 months, house prices have tumbled in a country where home-ownership is central to wealth. The pound has lost a quarter of its value against the euro, as Britons discover when they go abroad. Banks have been nationalised or propped up by the state. Unemployment has surged. Government debt has gone through the roof and taxes are rising.

Britons who own homes, shares and/or private pension savings are worth less and face an enormous bill for the clean-up. Many home-buyers who joined the party late have “negative equity” — they owe more in mortgage than their house is now worth. Consumers are groaning under unsustainable debts.

There is also a dawning awareness that after 25 years of deregulation and fast fortunes, Britain is going to have to do something other than financial capitalism to earn an honest living in the coming years.

Financial Times economic commentator Martin Wolf put it starkly when he wrote that the UK had “a strong comparative advantage in the world’s most irresponsible industry” and needed to diversify away from finance. The bill for rescuing banks will be comparable to the fiscal costs of a big war, he said.

Such introspection does not come easily to a proud old nation fond of lecturing foreigners, especially continental Europeans, on how to run their economies.

The French, Germans and Italians can be forgiven a smirk of “schadenfreude” (pleasure at others’ misfortune) after years of being hectored — not least by Gordon Brown — about economic reform, deregulating financial services and labour markets, privatising pensions and modernising the welfare state. But they should not feel too smug, since most are facing an even deeper recession than Britain this year.

Now that politicians have replaced bankers as public hate figures, it is safer for British party leaders to outbid each other with proposals for reforming parliament than to tell the public the ugly truth. Whoever wins the next election, most Britons will earn less, pay more tax, retire later on a smaller pension and enjoy less public spending on schools, hospitals and transport.

The bankers will cost Britons far more than the politicians. It will make the cost of removing dry rot and changing chandeliers in MPs’ second homes look like small change.
(editing by David Evans)

Nicholas Jones is the author of Trading Information: Leaks, Lies and Tip-offs (Politico’s, 2006). He is a member of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.

Whatever reservations there might be over the way the leaked information was obtained, the publication of hitherto secret details about the endemic abuse of MPs’ expenses was without doubt in the public interest.

I have voiced my concerns in the past about cheque-book journalism and the practice of some newspapers in using dubious methods to influence the news agenda, but the Daily Telegraph deserves to be congratulated for seizing the moment and exposing the greed and double-standards of our elected representatives.

What strengthens the public interest justification for buying a purloined copy of the details being processed by the House of Commons fees office was the fact that MPs had collectively done all they could to try to thwart the release of the data.

Their attempt to frustrate the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act was a stain on Britain’s great democratic traditions and the sight now of MPs across the political spectrum tumbling over each other to pay back their ill gotten gains is proof if any were needed of the importance of investigative journalism.

As Police investigations are now in hand to identify the individual who was hawking the information around the offices of the national press, journalists face a dilemma. Should we stand by our colleagues at the Daily Telegraph who are adamant in their refusal to even discuss the source of the information? Or should we join the hue and cry which Speaker Michael Martin seems to favour in order to unmask the leaker who had the audacity to hold MPs to account?

My sense is that we should show some collective solidarity with the journalists of the Daily Telegraph. While there does seem to be every indication that money changed hands and that an individual or individuals have profited from these unprecedented disclosures, I think we should be cautious.

The last unseemly witch hunt by journalists against one of their own – the despicable Downing Street-backed operation to identify Andrew Gilligan’s source – ended with the tragic death of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly, a salutary reminder perhaps of the need occasionally for journalists to let events take their course rather than turn in on themselves.

– Neil Collins is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

“You wanted to see me, prime minister?”

“Ah, Gus, do come in. Rather awkward. Something we didn’t think of in the Chancellor’s pension proposals — I always said Alistair didn’t have the intellectual firepower to take my job.”

Sir Gus O’Donnell sighed. “But prime minister, that’s why you appointed him.” “Yes, well never mind that now. This is about your pay increase as Head of the Civil Service. I’m afraid that we’ll have to limit you to two percent. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Of course, prime minister. I already get 285,000 pounds, and we all have to make sacrifices.”

“Yes, well, yours may be more than most. Two percent is 5,900 pounds, and you’ve already earned two-thirds of your final salary because you’ve been here since God was a boy — oh, sorry, that’s what they call you, GOD, isn’t it?

“Just my little joke, and to think they say I don’t do jokes. There’s been a tremendous fuss about 50 percent income tax, but that’s not the half of it.

“Now as I understand the new pension proposals anyone earning over 150,000 pounds is being penalized. It seems that if you’re in a final salary pension scheme, you’ll have to pay income tax on the capital value of any pay rise.”

“I’m not quite with you, prime minister.”

“Then you’re not as smart as I thought you were, Gus. Let me spell it out. Your 5,900 pounds entitles you to an extra 3,933 pounds when you retire in October 2012, on top of the 190,000 pounds a year you’ve already accrued.

“It’s not quite in the Fred Goodwin league, but the cost of buying 3,933 pounds a year, inflation-proofed, for a healthy 60-year-old is about 100,000 pounds. After Darling’s Budget, you’d have to pay tax on that gain as if it were a payment in kind.”

“So you’re saying that a pay rise of 5,900 pounds brings me an extra income tax liability of 50,000 pounds? That’s outrageous.”

“I’m pleased the penny is starting to drop. We can always make a rule for ministers, civil servants and high court judges — after all, we’ve done that before — but I don’t care to think what the Daily Mail would make of that.”

“But prime minister, the Finance Bill hasn’t even got to Committee yet.”

“Precisely, Gus. And while we’re about it, we might do something to apply the same rules to the self-employed as those already in company pension schemes. Even I find that one hard to swallow, and it’s inviting a Judicial Review. Now get onto those idiots at the Treasury, and tell them not to be so stupid, or they’ll be hearing from me.”

– Neil Collins is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

LONDON, April 23 (Reuters) - The UK Government needs to raise four billion pounds a week, every week, in the financial year to next April, to bridge the gap between its tax income and its spending.

Raising such stupendous sums — getting on for 15 percent of each week’s British national output — has never been tried before, and nobody really knows whether it can be done.

The optimists point to the financial year just ended, in which the government raised 146.5 billion pounds, as evidence that this year’s plan for 220 billion pounds can be met.

But during last year’s financial panic, savers decided that the return of their money was more important than the return on their money.

This year will be different. Given the dire outlook for the economy, UK government stocks look horribly overpriced. The benchmark five-year issue returns 2.54 percent, and the corresponding 10-year stock 3.45 percent.

These miserable yields are a consequence of the “flight to safety” coupled with the Bank of England’s desperate programme to inject cash into the economy. Its chosen route of Quantitative Easing has led it to buying existing government debt to prevent the money supply falling.

This has produced the bizarre spectacle of the government’s Debt Management Office issuing stocks which are virtually identical to those the Bank is buying. Essentially, the UK Treasury is selling paper to itself, with the traders making hay from the price difference.

Already the doubts are creeping in about whether this expensive circle makes sense, and next month the Bank has promised to review it.

The best plan would be to follow the example of the Americans in Vietnam, to declare victory and go home. At that point, or when QE is finally abandoned, the DMO will be on its own, leaving Britain’s finances at the mercy of the international bond markets.

While the UK’s credit holds, even four billion pounds a week is not too much for this vast, global market to find. Yet as the western world’s banks discovered last year, if your credit is not considered good enough, the markets can close to you almost overnight.

The DMO has no experience of anything like this. Those at the Bank who can remember when the UK government last had a credit crisis have either retired, or were fired when Gordon Brown wrenched management of the market from the Bank and created the DMO in 1998.

It promises to be a steep learning curve. Selling gilts when they look like a safe haven is one thing, selling them into a buyers’ strike is quite another, and a buyers’ strike is only too likely once the true cost of Alistair Darling’s fantasy Budget becomes apparent.

Prices would collapse as the yields demanded by the buyers rose, raising his borrowing costs still further. Transmitted to the currency, this vicious spiral is a threat to sterling itself.

Like the traders themselves, the DMO should make hay while the sun shines. Its simple wish list of stocks might be blown clean away when the weather changes, so at the very least, it should lock in those low yields now by issuing partly-paid stocks, with balancing payments due later in the financial year — or even next, since the financing problem is not going away. The deeper question is whether the DMO has the guile and low cunning to take on the traders from a position of extreme weakness, but at least showing some imagination would be a start.