It's getting serious

Traditional politics is being pulled out of its shape by economics.
George Magnus who wrote "Attention Marxists: Labor's Share Of National Income Drops To Lowest In History" and who is the senior advisor for the UBS investment bank, who predicted the 2008 crash and who advises Presidents says
'The eurozone is hurtling towards a 1930s - style collapse.' (FT 23 September.)

The Labour Party Conference is about to start. Do you expect any solutions? Any proposals about economics or politics to deal with the impending disaster?  The predictions are not good. For politics we get; reduce the influence of the unions inside the Labour Party. (Some have argued that union affiliation has long been a source of weakness - for the unions!) For economics we get Keynes-lite. 'Not these cuts but those cuts. After all poisoning is slower than shooting to death.'

What can WE in the UK do? The whole world seems to be shaking. Who can we blame? French banks? Greeks - for living that Med lifestyle? (We all thought we were going to get some of that with global warming.) US Tea Party nutters?  (Vince Cable.)

Here are some proposals

1. The British state owns 100% of Northern Rock, 83% of RBS (the ex biggest bank in the world) and 41% of Lloyds/TSB/HBOS. We paid £67 Billion - on a bad day at the market - for this lot. (They are worth much less now.) Nevertheless, they are the leading part of British banking.

The group could be made into the Popular Bank of Britain. It could offer cheap, and in some sectors, interest free loans and investment to create the technology for a green Britain, modernise our infrastructure, bring back the rebuilding of schools, encourage cultural growth, IT programming futures, renewal of the cities, work with the pension funds on a social needs programme for the uses of capital.

2. Taming capital IS the heart of the matter. We could come behind the call of various French political leaders and jointly propose with them a Tobin tax in Europe and wider on any transaction of capital which was designed to make money from money (selling loans, mortgages etc.)

3. When the G20 meet this weekend and in November let's take up George M's lament. (See above.) Let's see what allies we can get for the call for a global minimum wage for all who work. Probably none in the room - but millions, perhaps billions across the globe. It would be good (and the only way to avoid disaster) to hear from those millions in this crisis.

New investment, increases in living standards, the only way to restart rational growth. Politics (people, arguments, ideas, democratic decisions over vital issues) can get ahead of economics (read the collapsing market) again. But the only way is through decisive inroads which curb the freedom of capital.