We are facing financial market crashes. These are, of course, not the same as real financial crises but the two have a habit of running in parallel. And the reaction? As the FT put it:
Investors sought top-tier sovereign debt and shunned eurozone periphery bonds on Monday as equity markets tumbled and oil prices declined.
Benchmark 10-year yields in Germany, the UK and US fell as bond prices rose on haven demand.
Those of a market orientation love to say that the government does nothing well. Oh yes? So why is money flooding its way now? Could it be that's because the state actually does something very well? It's role, after all, is to be there, picking up the pieces.
That's what it is doing right now for those in financial markets but they, like most people, only value it when times are tough. They need longer memories, a greater appreciation of the need of those who required a haven even when financial markets don't and and an understanding of just why that safety net is so valuable, and has to be paid for.
I doubt the lesson will be learned. But it should be. The fact is we all need a helping hand sometimes, even the financial markets.
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“I doubt the lesson will be learned.”
Apparently, on good authority, it is only local authorities in places like Rotherham, or LA Social Services, Government and other traditional areas of what is still referred to as the public sector which ever utter the words ‘lessons have been learned.’ The corporate private and financial sectors apparently never make mistakes and therefore never ever need to use those words. At least according to those who, for some strange obscure reason beyond the ken of human understanding, voluntarily take on the task of being their cheerleaders.
There’s now’t so queer as folk.
“Those of a market orientation love to say that the government does nothing well. Oh yes? So why is money flooding its way now? Could it be that’s because the state actually does something very well? It’s role, after all, is to be there, picking up the pieces.”
Yes, it’s funny how the ‘nanny state’, which ‘steals from the hard working blah, blah blah’ through taxation to provide social security for ‘scroungers’, and ‘parasites’, and cushy public sector jobs for people who ‘can’t cut it in the private sector’, is there when the masters of the universe in finance make a mess of things (again).
I suppose we can conclude, as the public sector is progressively wrecked by the right, that, just as the Dispatches program showed last night, there’s one law for the rich, another for the rest of us. Tax avoidance, bailouts and tax breaks for the rich, less and less for rest of society. And that includes nearly all of the 4 million who voted for UKIP, and a large proportion of the 11 million who voted for the Conservatives.
Quite.
The decisions of a sufficient number of useful idiots results in a detrimental outcome not just for themselves but also for everyone else. Problem is its a negative feedback loop in which what passes for the fourth estate feeds ever more bullshit to the gullible warping the decision making process even more and large sections of what are supposed to be the opposition, providing actual real alternatives, have given up and mentally gone over to the other side of madness dragging the opposition with them.
‘Useful idiots’ – that’s especially so in the case of UKIP voters, many of whom, judging by the FB conversation I’m having with one whose FB profile is ex Labour voter, have been duped by the hard right into blaming everything on the EU. She’s obviously a well-intentioned family orientated lady, but the crap she spouts about the EU and immigration………..Jeepers. UKIP really is the UK equivalent of the Tea Party, isn’t it?
By opposition, do you mean the Lib Dems and New Labour?
The scene of Fred the ‘shred’ scuttling to the Treasury after breakfasting at the Ritz (£35 for a continental) always comes to mind here.
Agreed.
So what to make of the present government who seem to do all they can to support business and the financial sector but cut social security to the poor and disabled as well as undermining working people’s economic well-being by not carrying out PQE?
Answer: They’re just plain nasty.