Great, great analysis of the election in your latest Huff Post piece. Congratulations. The British electorate really has dished the powerful.

Two brief points:

Government debt is unnecessary because governments have their own source of credit in its central bank (the ECB could do this for the Eurozone countries). There is no need to borrow from private institutions or the IMF.

Government deficits arise partly because governments choose to ignore the reliable and substantial revenues from taxing economic rents and unearned income. My very rough estimate of a land value tax (proposed by the Green and Cooperative parties) in Britain is £300-£400 bn a year. A modest 10% levy on personal financial wealth would yield £100bn. Greece has compounded the problem by allowing (see Michael Hudson) the wealthy and professionals to avoid tax altogether – a legacy of the CIA-imposed military dictatorship (1967-1974). The Greek ‘crisis’ is ultimately a contrivance and a pretext to justify rolling back social spending.

Invoking the “international community” sounds good, but what if the community were invoked as justification for a neoeconomic policy. A few years ago, the international community might have agreed wholeheartedly with such a proposal. But it sounds hollow now. And it shows Thomsen’s incomplete argument to be bankrupt.