Hey Guv can you lend us a fiver?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

oh that will be ok then

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Interconnectedness, too, has increased. With the bailout came a deluge of liquidity, courtesy of Ben Bernanke: the Fed bailout was tantamount to dropping billions of $100 bills from helicopters over Lower Manhattan. That money got spent on financial assets—that was the whole point—and as a result, financial assets started moving in conjunction with one another. If my shares are rising, your shares are almost certainly rising too. And your commodities, and your municipal bonds, and your Old Master paintings. Because of this increase in financial correlation, if and when another crisis hits, it will be uncontrollable: it’s certain to strike absolutely everything, all at once. And though some people think Congress can simply regulate the problems away, there’s no way to legislate solutions to problems that are endemic to our financial system.

Meanwhile, Wall Street pay is back at record highs—that didn’t take long—and the financial industry once again accounts for more than 30 percent of U.S. corporate profits. This doesn’t look like low-margin utility banking, where you take a small fee for matching buyers and sellers, borrowers and lenders. Beware. This is big-money gambling, back with a vengeance, and riskier than ever.

The reality today is that the rich—especially the very, very rich—are vaulting ahead of everyone else. Between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the U.S. went to the richest 1 percent of the population. That lopsided distribution means that today, half of the national income goes to the richest 10 percent. In 2007, the top 1 percent controlled 34.6 percent of the wealth—significantly more than the bottom 90 percent, who controlled just 26.9 percent.

The rise of today’s super-rich is a global phenomenon. It is particularly marked in the United States, but it is also happening in other developed economies like the United Kingdom and Canada. Income inequality is also increasing in most of the go-go emerging-market economies, and is now as high in Communist China as it is in the U.S.

and more food for thought here

but more and more people can not afford food ...

[Serial_Apologist]

and more food for thought here

but more and more people can not afford food ...

For a brief spell - mid-'80s to early '90s - I thought maybe I'd got it all wrong, and got on my bike...

"...and your Old Masters..."

Would you let your servants read this kind of stuff?

S-A

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

city bonuses totalled £14bn last year

[Segilla]

It's a pity bonuses aren't made subject to a supertax. During WWII Supertax was 19/6d (97.5p) in the £.

[teamsaint]

It's a pity bonuses aren't made subject to a supertax. During WWII Supertax was 19/6d (97.5p) in the £.

but if we had that all the rich bankers would leave the country..and that would be awful wouldn't it?

Oh no, I remember now, it wouldn't. instread this country could get on with employing its ordinary people to build badly needed houses, and provide all of lifes essentials (food, healthcare, energy)instead of pandering to the whims of a wealthy elite.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

teamsaint your sentiments, and mine, are today crystallised in the Telegraph BLIMEY!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

latest evidence of the growth in inequality if such were needed

Over the past three decades, this is precisely what has happened in the UK. In 1977, of every £100 of value generated by the UK economy, £16 went to the bottom half of workers in wages; by 2010 that figure had fallen to £12, a 26 per cent decline.4 Indeed, the trend may be even starker: inclusion of bonus payments reduces the bottom half’s share to just £10 in 2010.5

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

.... fergie has cleared her debts again, HRH Andie divvied up ...[presumably not from the civil list?] so that's all right then ...

[Serial_Apologist]

teamsaint your sentiments, and mine, are today crystallised in the Telegraph BLIMEY!

Terry Eagleton wrote an article in Red Pepper several years ago, in which he said something to the effect that people on the left should not automatically dismiss the political right en masse as without conscience etc. They just differ on solutions. I think there's more to it than that, but having argued every day till he was bluer in the face than seemed possible, my lifelong Tory father managed to change his viewpoint, right at the end of his life.

Maybe there's hope for us all, after all!

[Serial_Apologist]

The writer of that Telegraph article sees the problems in terms of goodies and baddies, rather than that capitalism as systemically dysfunctional and unstable and an ideological conditioning device per se. William Morris came to understand this deeply. But to give the columnist credit, I don't think many of us on the left conjectured how far downhill the system could take us, notwithstanding all our "first they came for the jews etc etc" rhetoric.

[aeolium]

Thanks for that interesting article about inequality, Calum.

teamsaint your sentiments, and mine, are today crystallised in the Telegraph BLIMEY!

I think also those on the left should acknowledge in their turn that there is some force in the arguments that those, principally on the right*, have made against the implementation of the euro which has been pretty disastrous and has arguably made the position of the seriously indebted weaker eurozone countries much worse.

* though not just on the right - e.g. Paul Mason, who certainly is not

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for that interesting article about inequality, Calum.



I think also those on the left should acknowledge in their turn that there is some force in the arguments that those, principally on the right*, have made against the implementation of the euro which has been pretty disastrous and has arguably made the position of the seriously indebted weaker eurozone countries much worse.

* though not just on the right - e.g. Paul Mason, who certainly is not

The ruling class has always been divided between those seeking to create internationalist structures capable of overcoming national boundaries - so long as removing borders and obstacles to currency flows and cheap sources of labour are propitious to this end - and those for whom nationalism (dressed up as patriotism) can as a last resort act as a fall-back position. Thus for many on the left, opposition to the Euro, as also the EU, derives not from "little Englandism", but from a political longterm strategy on the part of the European capitalist class to build an economic bloc capable of competing with world currencies which would strengthen their hand, globally.

S-A

[teamsaint]

maybe, just maybe, things will turn before its too late. The telegraph also ran a piece recently about the huge dangers of YET MORE centralisation in the banking systen at the Bank of England.
It really is time to refocus our energies on creating systems that provide for our needs, paid for by our work(and savings).

But I fear that the vested interests of the few have us all distracted too much, too often on everything from fear about our jobs through fake terrorism threats to x factor and football.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i feel it is too late ... how can young persons fund a family, a house, education, health and a pension and still eat in our present economic circumstances ..... both economic growth and the cause of civilisation are dependent on a relative prosperity for the middle classes [in the American sense of middle class] ... this prosperity is the real demand driver of growth and finances the advances in social provision, education, sciences and culture as well as sustains the rule of law and an open society .... and we are broke and getting poorer with increasing inequality ....

we do have to stop the taxpayer financing the downturns in the global casino and tax it until the bankers faint ...... the argument used to be that they paid billions in taxes, but they dodged paying billions, and have just cost us a lot more .... they are now paying themselves in excess of the £14bn they paid in 2010 ... i wonder how much Mr Letwin was paid at Rothschilds?