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Five days after appearing before Congress to testify about its responsibility in one of the worst oil spills in US history, the Swiss company that owned and operated the oil rig that sunk into the Gulf of Mexico announced that it would shell out $1 billion in dividends to shareholders, ‘Raw Story’ reports. ……..To
So Sir James Sassoon has joined the Eton boy, Osborne, and the Barclays banker, David Laws, at the Treasury, as Commercial Secretary – a post invented and designed for him. Sir James was vice chairman Investment Banking at UBS Warburg between1985-2002, where he specialised in privatisations. The capture of the Treasury by the City of London is now complete. The war on industry and the public sector can now begin in earnest. A banker appeared on Radio 4’s PM programme this evening at about 5.30 p.m and celebrated the new coalition’s plan to remove control over government spending from the newly-elected government. He was referring I believe, to the proposal for a full spending review, by (he suggested) an ‘independent commission’ to report by the autumn, and 13 May, 2010 With a backdrop of bankers looting the EU’s Treasuries (via a bailout that rivals George Bush’s TARP) let us consider one of the most significant Dem-Con appointments (and a non-appointment) to the British cabinet That of someone who until now was invisible: David Laws the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury. His Wikipedia profile (updated on the day of his elevation, and before he had taken up his ministerial responsibilities) depicts him as the man that speaks for his party on matters relating to kiddie-winkies and families and, no doubt, motherhood and apple pie. He is also commended for his conciliatory role in negotiating the Scottish Parliament coalition. No mention here of his real background. For, according to ePolitix, David Laws was once Vice President of JP Morgan and Co and based in the United States, before becoming Managing Director of Barclays de Zoete Wedd in 1992. Now, in my book the most obvious candidate for the job of Chancellor, or Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was surely Vince Cable, a man credited for his prescience in predicting the financial crisis, respected for his ongoing analysis of that crisis and regarded as a “scourge of City ‘fat cats’.” Continue reading… › 10 May, 2010. Does the Left in Britain have a future? Michael Meacher MP has launched a new website – Left Futures – ‘to refresh Labour’s moribund grass roots’, and yours truly has posted there. Meacher argues that ‘the current economic crisis’ presents the Left with an ‘intellectual opportunity’. Let’s 8th May, 2010. My latest Huff Post blog Britain’s political elites are doing deals this weekend, trying to form a government. Gingerly making their way across the shifting tectonic plates of public opinion; wary of being tripped up again by voters. For, let’s face it, the British electorate are no fools. As the governor of the Bank of England apparently warned last week, they are mad as hell. Austerity measures will not be tolerated, and will keep any governing party out of power for a generation . So there is a lot to lose. Continue reading… ›
This is my latest piece for the Huffington Post. It might seem extraordinary, but in the midst of deficit-cutting mania it’s a rating agency, Standard and Poor’s, that is talking common sense about government debt. By doing so they are challenging members of the international Austerity Party – a political party that dominates economic debate across the world. Continue reading… › |
In the September 2003 edition of openDemocracy I wrote: 
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