Tag: bankers

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Toothless Watchdog

The International Monetary Fund, the IMF, has described the chancellor’s plans to make draconian cuts as, quoting from the Daily Mail here, “strong, credible and essential”. This is being trumpeted in some quarters as being a ringing endorsement of Osborne’s policies – but from whom does it come exactly? Many would suggest the IMF themselves have little idea of what’s what economically, their own credibility standing open to question since along with the majority of economists they were conspicuously NOT howling iceberg at the tops of their voices in 2007.
What good are they then, and what merit has their opinion?

BB

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Same Old Cable Service

Vince Cable is in the news again for criticising the banks. Is he raging against the whole idea that only the privately-owned banks and government itself can create legal tender, highlighting how hopelessly unfair this system is to the rest of us and offering a fistful of credible alternatives?

Well, no – he’s moaning about banker’s bonuses again.

Go Vince. 

BB

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No Reserve Banking

It’s suggested that the banks have had a stern warning from the Toronto G20. I say that’s nonsense. What would really upset the banks is the re-introduction of narrow banking, and I see no signs of that, or genuine competition like encouragement of public bank ownership and I see no signs of that either. I think that FRB is outmoded, any kind of reserve is outmoded and unecessary for a public bank as business needs what it needs and an enlightened culture will understand that it can be funded by the printing press without limit so long as money is created to support sound business in appropriate amounts. Any inflation would be technical not functional, and transient. Anyway, the banks have survived the G20 with their government guarantees intact, have they not? They can still take customers’ money, put it on the financial equivalent of the 3.30 at Kempton, award themselves huge bonuses if they win and apply for the taxpayer to bail them out if they lose. Banks uber alles! This is anti-social nonsense and it needs to end.

BB

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Government Loans

I’m watching David ‘Dave’ Cameron live on TV at this moment, earnestly (and quite rightly) explaining how the interest we pay on loans to the government are overwhelming us. True enough, and the subject deserves an airing. However, I note he isn’t pointing out that much of the National Debt is to banks, banks who haven’t actually loaned money they already had to the government but instead have loaned money created out of thin air using their authority to do so granted to them by that same government. This doesn’t get a mention, where the National Debt actually comes from. The banks conjure money from the air under license from the government, loan it to the government at interest and we, the taxpayers, have to find real money out of our pockets to pay it back with. Nice work for the banks, you might think, and it is – but what about us the electorate – aren’t our politicians supposed to be working for our interests, and not the banks? Shouldn’t all debts created under this Alice In Wonderland system be voided in full? Where’s the discussion about why we, or any nation, should have such a thing as a national debt in the first place???

BB

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Taxing The Banks…

The problem with the banks is not bonuses or their pricing, it’s that they and they alone are allowed to create money. This gives them a unique advantage over the rest of the population, seeing as we all need it and no-one else is allowed to create it (save, of course, our government, who choose not to supply the electorate with money where it’s needed, either at interest or for free, but instead pack people off to the banks where they’re encouraged to borrow it at interest).
This very much needs to change. Tax the banks, rail against the banks, and they simply won’t care. The only thing that will hurt them is to supply the population with an alternative and cheap supply of money. That’ll be the end of three hundred years of effective rule by the banking community. Are we hearing anything at all about any of this from our proposed leaders? Not a word. Irrelevant, all of them. Client politicians who will nicely provide the banks with client government in the same way when the Romans invaded the then Britons were provided with client kings. Punch and Judy politics? Not even that – just a puppet show.

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Give Over, Darling

Chancellor Alastair Darling is this morning reported as stoutly declaring his intention to limit bankers’ bonuses. Does he stoutly declare how he’s going to do that, I wonder? If the bankers want to pay themselves more money, they will. They won’t call it a bonus, it’ll simply be called a renumeration instrument, or some-such. Business as usual, then, for the banks, something else Darling is said to be declaring he’ll end. What nonsense! When the banks wanted to get round financial insurance legislation they took the insurance concept, added a bell and whistle or two and called it swaps. Same deal, just no regulation. Darling isn’t going to regulate these people; they’re cleverer than him!

More indication he’s superfluous, then. Anything really important and politicians can’t affect it or effect it. Who runs the place, then, elected politicians or unelected bankers? When it’s all going well you might kid yourself it’s the elected politicians and that  you actually have any say in how things are run thorugh your vote. When push comes to shove, it gets pretty obvious you simply don’t, doesn’t it? And along with these stout declarations are other declarations, equally stout, about regulating the banking system so that the financial meltdown (supposedly averted but in reality merely postponed) can never happen again. These might have more weight were they not issuing from the smug motley crew of politicians and bankers who allowed this situation to ferment in the first place. Given they were the people who led us into this, it’s doubtful they’ll either wish or be able to lead us out. To whom can we turn now for leadership?

BB