Gillian Tett and Paul Mason are interviewed in the Guardian this morning. Paul Mason is his usual sound self. What worried me was Tett's response to the economic crisis. The relevant quotes are:
Were you surprised to see two European leaders replaced by technocrats?
Gillian Tett: No — the situation calls for very firm, forward-looking action that is almost impossible in a rowdy democratic political system at the moment.
The problem is you neither have anybody who has the authority to force a solution, nor do you have sufficiently free markets and genuine democracy to get a bottom-up solution. So you're caught in this limbo-land where you stagger from one mini-crisis to another.
I could give the benefit of the doubt, but this seems far too dangerously like an endorsement of a totalitarian solution to the economic crisis for my liking.
A democratic solution is possible. I fully admit it will require courageous politicians, which is exactly why I have written The Courageous State. But even hinting at totalitarianism now is expectionally dangerous.
I hope Tett retracts the hinted suggestion, very soon. But maybe she won't. As Larry Elliott argued within the last week, the suspension of democracy in Europe and the passing of power to a tiny elite of technocrats
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
We’ve been modelling this in Jersey for some time… the comment about you neither have anybody who has the authority to force a solution, nor do you have sufficiently free markets and genuine democracy to get a bottom-up solution describes the situation here pretty exactly. Which is why it’s likely that Philip Bailhache will be the new Chief Minister after Monday :((((
I went back and re-read Adam Tooze’s account of Germany between the Oct 1929 crash and Jan 1933 election of Hitler. Oct 1931: the turning point that failed to turn. Bruning as Chancellor and Hans Luther at the Reichbank, by ruling through emergency decree (with the support of the SDP who wanted Weimar democracy saved), redoubled the austerity when it clearly wasn’t working. If you haven’t read the two letters sent to the Times in 1932, the first by Keynes and others, and then replied to by Hayek and Robbins (Krugman blog: March 29, 2011, ‘Friedrich Hayek, Zombie’), the first calling for extra government spending, the other giving its support for more austerity – as Hayek again did by giving his backing to the Bruning plan in Road to Serfdom 11 years later – then you should.
I’ve read the letters – thanks to Krugman
And I agreed – Hayek has always worked hard to deliver serfdom. It was always his aim.
I thought that the Guardian interview was notable for the urgency which is simply not reflected in the BBC news coverage. It is not just Gillian Tett who appears to be advocating a totalitarian solution, it is also implicit in our tax-payer funded news broadcasts. I have written a new blog to that effect .. which I thought you might approve of…
http://think-left.org/2011/11/11/inadequacies-of-bbc-coverage-of-the-eu-financial-crisis/
Expecting ‘forward looking action’ from the architects of this mess is a little optimistic I think. ‘Technocrat’ seems to be a euphimism for someone who has worked at Goldman Sachs (Monti, Draghi for instance).
What appears to have passed without comment is that there have been coups d’état in Greece and Italy, with democratically elected leaders replaced by German puppets. Presumably Italy’s prime minister’s status as a leftie hate figure has prevented the usual suspects (The Guardian, BBC, etc) from complaining, and as the right, The Scum, Mail etc, like authoritarian régimes, they’re not complaining either. This can only end one way, and it’s not very nice. This isn’t an alternative to a war; it’s a prelude to one.
The press reports that I have been reading for years (FT, Guardian, mainly) have made clear the frightening fact that Berlusconi erroded “democracy” to the point where it no longer existed in Italy. MPs were puppet appointments, the legislative process turned over to one that inked laws granting Berlusconi and his family business empire immunity from the rule of law. Indeed, it was recently suggested by an obit. in the FT on Berlusconi’s time in office that he entered politics in the 1990s precisely in order to protect the private interests of his family business – a business that we all know controls no insignificant amount of the media in Italy. Therefore, I am unclear why one would lament the replacement of this head of state for a technocrat who will be heavily scrutinised, have a temporary term, and a limited mandate. (The Italians dancing in the street to celebrate his replacement would probably scratch their heads as well.) The fact that it takes an EU orchestrated putsch to get rid of the Italian head of state does indeed raise questions about Italian democracy: questions Italians will hopefully try to answer meaningfully through parliamentary reform.