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 put the distribution in perspective, the amount of profit that Transocean plans to pay out in the next year is half of what Exxon ultimately paid for the Exxon Valdez disaster off the Alaska Coast.

t’s also more than double what BP has said they’ve spent on the cleanup to date.

Read more here:  http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0517/spill-rig-owner-approves-1-billion-dividend-shareholders/

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.

Read post »

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 to decide where cuts in spending will come.

He was I believe a senior economist with Credit Suisse, and said something along these lines: “the government has already handed control over interest rates (monetary policy) to the Bank of England. Now the proposal is to hand control over fiscal policy to a non-governmental body. That will give us, the markets, great confidence…..”

In their policy statement the Con-Dem alliance (hat tip to the Duke of URL) commit to “establishing an independent commission to review the long term affordability of public sector pensions, while protecting accrued rights.”

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’.” Read post »

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 see if it turns out thus, or is just another load of hot air….

Watch this space…..

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. Read post »