Posted by admin on April 19th, 2012
Four years into a depression and the politicians and their advisors are still running in circles. The Financial Times complains that there has been no satisfactory inquest into the way the West locked itself into the crisis from which governments are unable to escape. But now, in Britain at least, the knives are out…
Posted by admin on March 13th, 2012
You need to be a linguistic analyst to function as a fully paid up citizen of our version of democracy. Why? Because unless you learn to decode the language of politicians, the chances are that you end up paying dearly for the vote you cast to support your favourite party. An example is the row in Britain’s coalition government over whether to levy a special tax on homes worth more than £2m.
Posted by admin on February 14th, 2012
It’s Athens, rather than Rome, that’s burning as the politicians fiddle. But this time we are likely to see other capitals going up in flames before the final dénouement of this Depression. And yet, it need not have happened; and nor are the horrors of the coming years inevitable.
Posted by admin on January 25th, 2012
The bad news that’s good news hits the headlines every day. Commissioning editors send their camera teams to the four corners of the world to film the most grief-stricken events for that night’s TV news programmes. Mass murders, volcanic eruptions, drought-created distress – you name it, they love it. And then there’s the bad news that they keep out of the headlines, off our TV screens…
Posted by admin on December 29th, 2011
The media panned the people who set up camps in the centre of cities under the Occupy Wall Street banner. But the people who chose to protest by sleeping on concrete pavements have done more to deepen the debate about the global economic crisis than the feather-bedded academics who are paid to think about these things. That’s a fair conclusion to draw from the statement by the Financial Times, which admits that the OWS activists “have altered the terms of the political debate”.
Posted by admin on November 10th, 2011
If a bookmaker decided he wanted to buy a savings bank and use the deposits of customers to gamble on horse racing or the performance of Indian cricketers at Lord’s, what would government do? It would outlaw such a “commercial” venture. But governments in Europe and the US allowed this to happen with the Big Bang “liberalisation” of the financial system in the 1980s. Those governments lost their gamble. That’s why most of them are bankrupt today.
Posted by admin on October 25th, 2011
The leader of Britain’s political opposition, Ed Miliband, now talks of the conflict between “predators” and “producers”. At a press conference he was repeatedly challenged to elaborate on the meaning of those words. He failed to give definitions: an example of why government policy-making is in chaos – not just in the UK, but in every country in the world today.
Posted by admin on October 19th, 2011
It’s taken central bankers four years, but they have finally conceded that the western economy is locked into a depression, not a recession. What they have yet to admit is that their policies will protract the crisis. The rest of us need to prepare for a drawn-out trauma with no end in sight.
Posted by admin on September 12th, 2011
In our name, politicians lie. When questioned about dissention within the ranks of government, they unite to deny differences over policies. Then, after being thrown out by the electorate, they admit in their memoirs that the journalistic inquisitors were correct. They had to lie, they claim, for the sake of good governance. If we tolerate this behaviour, then it’s true – we get the politicians we deserve.
Posted by admin on July 29th, 2011
The best of the world’s brains can be found in Washington DC. But given the lack of wisdom which the leaders and law-makers display, it’s clear they don’t use them. The financial model which they oversee is bankrupt, yet the only principle which unites them is the need for more of the same.