There are rumours - no more - that loans to ailing financial institutions are beginning again in Europe.
The Greek bailout is, by all reports, failing.
Markets are falling.
The underpinnings of the banking system are falling apart again.
Of course we can save the banks, again. We can print money. We will have to.
But this time let's get real. This time we don't lend them that money. Or give it to them as quantitative easing.
This time we nationalise.
This time we take control. This time we do so with the aim of cutting out the cancer. This time we do it for the long term. This time we don't take the crap: the bankers do. This time, surely, we get it right. And this time we change the management, for good.
Surely no one can disagree this time, can they?
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I couldn’t agree more. This is probably the single most important issue facing Britain today. Some kind of collective voice, incorporating experts like Richard Murphy along with ordinary folk like me is going to be needed, because banking interests will be lobbying and spinning like crazy to ensure another bailout.
Nationalisation of the banking industry, whether as a temporary or indefinite measure, should have been undertaken from day one!
What happens to most businesses when they fail? Whether or not the failure of those businesss has socially destructive consequences?
“Tough!” we are told – “that is the way the market works! ” Unless you happen to be the banking and financial sector, of course, in which over £1 trillion of public money was spent on bailing them out! The taxpayer socialised the losses and the banks privatised the profits.
If we had taken the sensible decision to nationalise the banks back in 2008, I am farly sure we wouldn’t be facing the financial chaos we have now!
It was simply pure dogma that they didn’t nationalise them.
Yes, I disagree, because I want to know who “we” are. It’s not me, I have never run a bank. Is it you?
That’s the problem with the State, it’s just a word. But I look forward to your book.
Yes, fully nationalise failing banks.
People flocked to Northern Rock when it was nationalised. To deter this, they charged high interest rates on renewing mortgages and loans, so that people went elsewhere, and the nationalised model was not seen to succeed.
[…] Â http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/08/19/this-time-we-must-nationalise/ […]
Yes, I can disagree. Nationalising banks would leave taxpayers owning $trillions of dodgy assets with no prospect of writedown in any way that doesn’t mean more taxpayers’ money going to the very rich. I for one don’t want any part in that.
But that’s simple wishful thinking on your part because without nationalization the whole money system fails – and that’s horrendous beyond imagination
And nationalisation allows the adjustment without catastrophe and nothing else does
You also make the fundamental erroneous assumption that government money is taxpayer’s money. No it isn’t. It prints it at will and tax when paid is no longer taxpayer’s money – it’s the governments and it has absolute entitlement to it
So your analysis is deeply flawed as is the language you use
Write the debts down and turn them into equity! The debts are mostly commercial paper. Create enough money to buy them and replace thelegitimate debt with cash or number money. All you would be doing is replacing these debts with the equivalent money value, therefore not creating any new money. Write any illegitimate debt off as unrecoverable.
Since debt is money your logic is sound
The idea was borrowed from the excellent Web of Debt site ran by Ellen Brown. I also think running a national investment bank or a nationalised banking system along the lines of the state bank of North Dakota, in which all state monies are deposited in the state bank by law, providing capital for very low cost loans, is well worth exploring.
Oh yes…