The Spider's Web documentary is probably the best film on offshore ever made. And I can say that because I did not have time to appear in it. Now it's available on YouTube. I recommend watching it:
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Sometimes worry that the only way out of the spider web is to hit the restart button, but fear that the immediate consequences are too terrible to contemplate.
On spider webs.
Just read this interesting article on explicit and (worse) implicit subsidies to financial institutions that underlies financial crises- another spider web that implicates accounting firms, regulators, lobbyists, bankers, central bankers, and politicians.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/double-whammy-implicit-subsidies-and-the-great-financial-crisis
Others, more schooled, will no doubt get more from it than I, so thought it worth passing on.
Watched this with great interest having read Nicholas Shaxson’s book. This is very frightening. These people are not going to be reformed without a lot of unpleasantness and force. If ever. I feel we live in a dystopia far worse than anything envisioned in novels because the people doing this have this cloak of respectability. The fact that only 0.1% of the population benefit from the massive inequalities is even more frightening because they have the media, the armies and the law on their side and the write the laws to protect themselves. I read a polemic by Lenin when I was young called – I think – What is to be done? What, indeed, is to be done? The documentary left me feeling that the situation is hopeless.
A very powerful depiction, thank you. The 5 measures must surely be at the heart of any progressive political programme.
This film is truly horrendous in its analysis of how the City of London lies behind a massive level of financial corruption and how it manipulated politics to further its own interests at our expense. However, one of its conclusions is deeply flawed – that tax revenue is used to finance government spending and that tax avoidance is consequently harming the government’s ability to pay for much needed services. Their corrupt practices does no doubt have many negative consequences but this isn’t one of them.
Thanks for the link. Delighted it’s now available for all to see on YouTube. I’d been looking out for it for a while. I hope it will get extensive viewership. At the time of writing there have already been 7,524 views.
The City tarantulas are even more corrupt than I’d imagined, and that’s saying something. They are initiating and overseeing theft from society on an industrial scale. But, as the film points out, it’s an incredibly well oiled machine, tried and tested over centuries, operated by a privately educated, ‘polished’ but ruthless mafia, that is incredibly difficult to indict.
If Corbyn is ever elected as PM, I don’t fancy his chances should he choose to take on directly these criminal institutions. History is not on his side. I know that you, Richard, and John Christensen have been battling for years. And, from your previous blog I understand you ‘have a dream’ which is inspirational. But, having viewed the film, I can’t see how the spiders’ power can be removed democratically. It looks to me that the requisite scenario would be a wholesale collapse of the UK economy which would be utterly devastating for most ordinary citizens while the perpetrators would have abandoned the sinking ship well in advance. The subtle, sociopathic culture that drove the Empire is not just still alive but thriving in the Square Mile.
Maybe there is some credibility to the suggestion that a disastrous no-deal Brexit is being so passionately promoted by a small cabal of very wealthy Tories because “the time to buy is when blood is running in the streets” (William Rees-Mogg ‘Blood in the Streets: Investment Profits in a World Gone Mad’, 1989). Conspiracy theorist? Moi?
my apologies for commenting on an older blog topic from 5th September but i’ve only just got round to reading the IPPR report and just had to ask you something on it, in the hope you may respond on here (as the comments section on your blog about it is closed now).
i got to page 22, where it says “They are public goods, which we pay for through our taxes and achieve through public institutions or policies” – and immediately thought of you and what you’d have to say about that very sentence!
I’m amazed that a fundamental concept on money creation in the economy doesn’t appear to have been addressed – and by continuing to recommend policies under this household fallacy umbrella, no progress can be made on the now mundane responses to any kind of progressive policies, those responses being “but how will you pay for it”.
I was wondering if you’d had any chance to catch up with any of the authors of the report or those involved, and question them on this very issue? I feel like until people start understanding MMT not as a theory but as an accounting treatment that sits at the heart of government spending, even progressive thinktanks like the IPPR will continue to trot out recommendations which still sit in a neoliberal paradigm.
The authors know my opinions
MMT remains a minority understanding, which is quite bizarre given the change in BoE position
watched and thought it was excellent,can not work out why so little interest in it? i posted it on a few sites,response was poor.
It haas been seen a great many times in cinemas
Cinemas?? Your optimism is astounding
It has been shown quite widely to quite large sudiences
Heard it all before and some of the clips in this film are years old Richard.
Another attention seeking piece of propaganda attacking Jersey that will be ignored and shelved with the others.
Life goes on as they say!
If you mean Jersey’s terminal decline as a tax haven continues, I ageee
Taken at face value this film is incendiary. The opening scene about about BCCI (I have never seen this footage before) is something else.
The style of the film reminds me of Princes of the Yen. It is well worth a look.
So, there is indeed something rotten at the centre of our democracy and it is called the City of London. Parliament is just a side show. All these years we’ve been demonstrating elsewhere in London when we should have been doing it at the CoL headquarters instead. We should be there 24/7.
It is a real shame that many people who should see this film will be playing with their apps , on Facebook, watching football on Snapchat or some other thing that enables them to disengage from reality and allow this sort of think to carry on.
It’s good to see Prof Michael Hudson in action again too.
Richard,
It makes me squirm to realise that accountants are in charge of this “asylum”. You are a Chartered Accountant, I am a Chartered Certified Accountant, the antics of the major firms – City of London – must be endorsed by our Institutes?
Time for a new “Institute”? Are there any groups of progressive professionals working to this end?
Bob
Great film… although I have to say that I didn’t find it as shocking as the French made documentary on HSBC. Also worth a watch, if you can find it.
Paul
I’m interested in the HSBC doc.
Where did you see it and is it English?
https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/069080-000-A/hsbc-gangsters-of-finance/
I watched the film; frightening! Does it show us the reason for Brexit? Was Cameron’s vote remain and referendum completely cynical? Was the vote leave campaign pre-planned by the spiders?
But if the spiders could be swatted suddenly, how could the UK economy survive. There is very little else going on now.
Seen and heard it all before making it weary and boring.
Wasted your money I’m afraid because nobody in Jersey cares.
The Treasure Island Book got nowhere, same as all the other hate you keep on trying to drag Jersey down with from the powers of the NET.
It is business as usual.
The Treasure Islands book helped mean the EU have you on a grey list that you do not know how to get off
These comments are so crass it is laughable
Thank you muchly Paul!