Then some of the real news trickles out. Women will be hit much worse than men. Whoops. Child poverty will increase by 100 000. Whoops. The poor are to be hit much harder than the rich. Whoops. Another 700 000 workers will disappear from the welfare state. And so it goes on. When we get to the wire. When it looks like the the survival of the millionaires and billionaires' system is in question, then all the time-serving gloss comes off.
Time for a dose of reality. You might drive welfare and wages back 20 years in Britain. You might pile another £15Bn of cuts on top of the £74Bn already planned. And the result? Will the God-like market dispense its benevolence on Britain's (read working class Briton's) sacrifices? What is this God that rules our lives and moves in such mysterious ways?
400 TRILLION dollars, 350 TRILLION pounds (1 Trillion = 1000 Billion, = 1000, 000, 000, 000) moves through international money markets, every day. (A lot of it through the City of London.) That is not trade in things. That is not people making stuff and selling it to others. That is the outward appearance of thousands of millionaires and billionaires inflating their money. You might want to argue that 150 years ago owners of big companies played a role in the economy. They used their capital to build factories and employ people. They were disgusting maybe. They extracted every drop of blood and sweat from those who laboured for them, but they were not parasites. They made their money work. The truth is nine-tenths of today's international capital flow could disappear and absolutely nothing would be lost by 99% of us.
This vast slush fund completely dominates 'the market.' Let's open one curtain which has, up to now, been hung in front of some of the clever doings of those prize specimens of wit and wisdom - the leaders of the british big four banks. Mervyn (don't panic Mr Mannering!) and his Bank of England are flustered by the Euro-zone. Do you remember last week? When we were all told the the British banks had greater reserves of the old malulah that their European equivalents? They had all learned a thing or two since the last time eh? But poor old Mervyn thought he better tell us something.
HSBC has 6%, Barclays and Lloyds 15% and RBS (the one we own 80% of) has 32% of their 'core' capital (their savings) in the form of money they are owed by the most troubled European banks that have the most loans to the most crisis torn countries of Southern Europe. Another brilliant set of smart deals! Worse. 83% of the 'core capital" of Britain's big four, is in the form of loans to the most bankrupt South European countries! That's a public school, Oxbridge education for you! No wonder Mervyn is getting anxious about Europe. No wonder he thinks he should tell someone! (All these figures were released by the BoE yesterday.)
Enough is enough. This wretched way of (not) doing things is a busted flush. Where's a decent Labour Party when you need one?
Who are you? And where do you get all this information from?
ReplyDeleteI am Spartacus