Both the British Chancellor, Alastair Darling and the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, have been on the radio this morning, resisting the idea that interest rates are political. Instead they have argued, vehemently, that the Bank of England is independent, and that the Bank must decide whether or not to lower interest rates.
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Sunday 5th October, 2008 The decision tonight by Germany to guarantee 100% of all savings in German banks first flagged up by the BBC earlier this Sunday evening, but modified later, is a clear signal that there is panic afoot. A run on German banks must be imminent. Why? Because the only way to prevent a run on banks is to guarantee 100% of savings. The fact that Germany has done so, or hinted that she will do so, means that her government is taking urgent, unprecedented and unco-ordinated action, to prevent such a financial catastrophe occurring tomorrow morning. Others must now follow to prevent a systemic run on the global banking system. To avoid armageddon.  Wednesday 1st October, 2008
The massive deflation/de-leveraging of credit and debt that is now cascading through the banking system and rapidly deflating the value of housing and other assets in the Anglo-American economies will precipitate large-scale, global economic failure, for years to come.  Tuesday 30th September, 2008.
Anglo-American finance ministers and central bankers, like little Dutch boys, try desperately to plug leaks in the bursting dyke that is the international financial system. In the US, treasury secretary Hank Paulson hoped for $700bn to plug the gaping hole in Wall Street’s banks. In the UK, the government is not just plugging holes, but setting aside competition rules to encourage the monopolisation of finance.  Tuesday 30th September, 2008.
Sir, Your editorial “In praise of free markets” (September 27/28) conflates regulation of trade markets with that of financial markets. This is a flawed analysis, one at the core of most economic orthodoxy – that money, like land, oil, soya beans, diamonds or gold, is a commodity, and therefore that trade and markets in money are no different from markets in, say, soya beans.
20th September, 2008
In the midst of all this tragedy and chaos, one has to savour the moment. The sight of all those free-market capitalists, trained by economists at the Chicago School of neo-liberalism, handing over to ‘big government’ the financial system of the biggest free market economy in the world.
You have to admire the spin. The US Treasury Secretary, Comrade Hank Paulson, pictured here, announced today, Sunday 7th September, 2008 that the US government is natonalising two huge US banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Which means in effect that Comrade Paulson is socialising the losses of the shareholders and investors in these banks - $5.4 trillion of guaranteed mortgage-backed securities (MBS) (mortgage backed securities) and debt outstanding. These liabilities are equal to all the publicly held debt of the United States. This in the words of Prof. Roubini is ‘socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall St.” (see below).
In this big bad world of the Credit Crunch, powerful central bankers – civil servants all – have bent over backwards to help powerful and rich private bankers.
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In the September 2003 edition of openDemocracy I wrote: 
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