Democracy is a great system, except that those in power do their uttermost to subvert it, circumvent it, and twist it to their own ends, and quite often succeed. Take the current state of play between the parties in Britain. In March this year the Electoral Commission recommended there should be no increase in spending limits for candidates between now and the general election on 7 May. It also proposed that there should be only an increase in spending of £2.9m for the ‘short’ 3-week campaign leading up to the election. So what did the Tories do? Ignoring the official recommendations of the Electoral Commission, they pushed through increases in permitted spending twice those proposed by the Commission. This works hugely well for them because they have amassed an electoral war chest vastly greater than Labour’s, and will now be able to turn most of it to their own unilateral advantage. Continue reading
Tagged with Hedge Funds
Hedge fund control of Co-op Bank & Royal Mail should never be allowed to happen
On Tuesday two US hedge funds took control of the Co-operative Bank and in effect ended its 170-year history as Britain’s largest mutual. Yesterday an aggressive hedge fund, deceptively entitled The Children’s Investment (TCI) Fund, acquired the largest stake behind the government in the Royal Mail. It is led by a man known for his anti-state streak in dismantling public provision which gained him and his fund the title of ‘locusts’ in Germany.
The obvious and immediate question to be asked is, whilst these are the normal machinations of unrestrained market capitalism, do these enforced takeovers serve the public interest or simply their own interests in extracting the largest possible short-term gains, irrespective of the consequences for the wider community? If the latter, as is obviously the case, then the non-bank financial sector of which hedge funds and private equity are prime examples, require radical reform. Continue reading
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Why hedge funds do better than bent bookies
Hedge funds have got one major advantage over bent bookies. In their case, race fixing is entirely above board. Let me expand on this point, by way of an analogy for what has been happening in the Irish, Greek, Portuguese and Italian economies of late.
Let’s say you take a bet on a horse to lose the Grand National, something that those of us who do the gees gees know as a ‘lay bet’. But in this case, you get access to the paddock, and have every opportunity to bribe the jockey or dope the nag. You can even throw ball bearings, or perhaps the odd suffragette, under its hooves once it is on the track. Continue reading
