In the 1960s banking assets accounted for some 50% of GDP. By the late 2000s they had risen to about 200% of GDP. In the case of Britain with its grossly over-extended international banking sector, they had risen to 500% of GDP. The reasons for this were partly to enable large companies to start doing [...]
Posts under ‘Finance’
Fat cats won’t lose a moment’s sleep over Osborne’s banking bill
May 9th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Arguably the most important bill in a weak and flaccid Queen’s Speech today is the Banking Bill. But it is a fiasco. It has one central objective – to prevent too-big-to fail banks from being bankrupted by the recklessness of their investment bankers and requiring another gargantuan bail-out at ruinous cost to taxpayers and deep [...]
One rule for Goldman Sachs, and one for everyone else
May 4th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Praise be to UK Uncut. It’s only due to them that we’re now learning what really lay behind the Blair-Brown policy of ‘light regulation’, now gratefully continued by the Tories, and the world of difference between the treatment of the hyper-rich on the one hand and the defenders of the poorest on the other. The [...]
Osborne’s smack in the face for all victims of cuts
May 3rd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.So Osborne, we now learn, is determined to sell off RBS and Lloyds before the election to prevent Labour, if it wins the next election which looks increasingly likely, from keeping them in the public sector and breaking them up in order to reconstruct them as agents to drive a national economic recovery. That says it all about the government’s [...]
HMRC let Goldman Sachs off tax to avoid “major embarrassment” to Osborne
May 2nd, 2013 by Newsdesk.In the legal case against HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) over the ‘sweetheart’ tax deal with Goldman Sachs, details have emerged of a controversial cover up to avoid political embarrassment at the heart of government. It came to light in the High Court that the former tax chief, Dave Hartnett, chose to waive the £20 [...]
Osborne again shows his preference for uncompetitive capitalism
May 1st, 2013 by Michael Meacher.So Osborne is still determined to return RBS and Lloyds to the private sector before the election. This is despite all the arguments to the contrary – that the private banking system produced the financial crash in the first place with utterly calamitous results, that no significant measures have been put in place to prevent [...]
Against legal loan sharking
Apr 22nd, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Payday loans have become something of a sexy political topic. Stella Creasy has done a great deal of work to get it in the spotlight and Ed Miliband kicked off Labour’s local election campaign with a pledge to give councils the power to push payday lenders (and bookies) off the high street. Like the SWP, I’m [...]
Why are the banks that failed us so catastrophically still coddled?
Apr 3rd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.It is almost unbelievable that the banks which (i) cost the taxpayer £68bn in immediate bailout costs, (ii) have pushed up Britain’s national debt to its current level of £1.16 trillion, (iii) have inflated the budget deficit to service this debt to its current £120bn, and (iv) have thus given Osborne the excuse to launch [...]
Policy turns against bank bailouts, and not before time!
Apr 1st, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The Cyprus deal should mark a turning point in the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crash. Until now bail-outs of Eurozone banks have been almost entirely at taxpayers’ expense. The same applied to Brown’s bailouts of UK banks which cost taxpayers £67bn plus a further several hundred billions in loan guarantees, liquidity support and asset [...]
Four economic boosts when all we’re offered is “responsible capitalism”
Mar 30th, 2013 by Michael Hanratty.On Thursday, I wrote about how in the wake of Osborne’s latest budget, Labour continues to buy into the incompetent neoliberal myths that the government uses to justify their programme of austerity. If only the problems stopped there! Sometimes, when it looks like the left is offering an alternative, it can still fall into the [...]
