Posted in Finance

What do Britain’s private sector firms contribute?

investment, pic by 123rf.comThe main factors that account for economic growth are increases in the workforce or in the amount of productive capital in the economy. A far smaller contribution is made by improvement in productivity as a result of innovation.

Since mid-2009 the British economy has grown. But this is wholly accounted for by growth in the workforce, which is made up of both an increase in the number of people in work and in the number of hours they work. As a result the average person in work cannot experience any improvement in living standards as economic growth is simply made up of more people working longer hours. Worse, those on very high pay, senior executives and shareholders, have claimed any benefits of that moderate growth in the British economy. Average real pay continues to decline. Continue reading →

Strip the private banks of the power of money creation

Banking trade screensThe House of Commons held a very important debate this last week on the creation of money, a process which the Big 4 banks have monopolised and thus privatised the money supply.   The abuse of this power over the last 3 decades has been enormous, and I used this debate to propose an entirely different system which would remove this power from the present banking cartel in order to ensure that what was maximised was the national interest, not the banks’ own selfish interests.   I said this: Continue reading →

The Osborne forked tongue is cranking up for the Autumn Statement

T'Gideon' Osbornehe Chancellor’s response to the £1.1bn windfall handed to him by the fine on the banks is a classic in Osborne double-speak. We’re told the money will be “used for the wider public good”. He means tax cuts as an electoral bribe. He says “today we take action to clean up corruption by a few so that we have a financial system that works for everyone”.

Today? Why not when the corrupt manipulation of the £3.5 trillion a day foreign exchange markets was uncovered years ago? “Taken action to clean up corruption”? – almost nothing has been done to prevent another banking crash and the foreign exchange market remains, breathtakingly, unregulated. “Corruption by a few”? – the truth is the whole industry was (and still largely is) rotten to the core as the chatroom exchanges between the traders of all the main banks clearly reveal.

“A financial system that works for everyone”? – one can only wonder at Osborne’s gall in spitting out a lie with such bravado, which he knows is a lie, and probably knows too that everyone else knows it’s a lie. The bankers’ bonuses, overseas speculation, contrived tax avoidance, and mortgaging of prime property in central London works works in no-one’s interests except their own. Continue reading →

Why should rich posh crooks (aka bankers) get away with it?

The banks: how am I here again? Standing outside RBS, Paul Mason asks why action is not taken against crooked bankers. They plead not to over-regulate them, not to imprison them or they won’t be able to recruit the talented people they need. Talented at what, you may ask. Ripping off their costomers? Certainly not providing the capital to invest in the growth we’re crying out for.

Video credit: Channel 4 News

Facing eviction by Christmas, by publicly owned banks with no public service ethos

Trust me I'm a banker - BBC ScotlandWhen because of the bankers’ crash RBS, Lloyds, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley went bust and were taken over by the State, one of the worst indictments of the Blair-Brown governments – copied and exacerbated further by this current Tory government – was that the losses were borne by the taxpayers, but they continued to be organised and managed as though they were still in the private sector.

That was the rule operated when RBS and Lloyds were taken over in 2008-9, at a direct hit for taxpayers in bailing them out at £68bn (let alone the subsequent hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money disbursed on loan guarantees, special liquidity schemes and asset protection schemes). But rather than treat them as state-purchased assets to be managed in the national interest, an artificial quango was appointed under the title of UK Financial Instruments to act instead as executors in their commercial interest until they could be returned at the earliest possible moment to the private sector. Continue reading →