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 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 »
03 May, 2010.
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. Read post »
26th April, 2010
Dear readers….this is my latest Huffington Post.
“The humiliating surrender of Greece’s economic autonomy came just last Friday, 23 April, 2010. The democratically elected Prime Minister, George Papandreou transferred to unelected officials in Brussels and Washington the power to determine Greece’s fiscal policy. In other words, decisions about taxation, and how tax revenues should be spent.
Back in 1765 Bostonians such as James Otis and Samuel Adams regarded “taxation without representation as a form of tyranny”.
Today, a nation that served as the cradle of western democracy will effectively be governed by remote, invisible and unaccountable officials. Read post »
6th April, 2010
I wrote the piece below for the Labour Party site Labour List but it got bumped across to Left Foot Forward. While waiting for its publication I did some superficial research on the use of the term ‘banksters’.
It is a term in wide use in the US, where it is associated with progressive political forces, and where the debate pits ‘Wall St’ against ‘Main St’, or ‘Wall St’ against ‘the little guy’ or ‘taxpayer’. See for example, this piece by the wonderful Rolling Stone writer on finance, Matt Taibi, and the associated cartoon.
Two Irish authors, David Murphy and Martin Devlin have written a book titled ‘Banksters – how a powerful elite squandered Ireland’s wealth’. So the Irish are not precious about the term.
But here in the UK the word is not widely used. Its use tends to be associated with the far right, and their anti-Semitism.
Which might explain British nervousness with the term. On the other hand our fastidiousness may just reflect the collusion of our various elites – political, media and otherwise – with the finance sector, and the excessive deference bestowed on bankers, sorry banksters.
Anyway, here follows the piece on how banksters are standing as parliamentary candidates for the Conservative Party.
By Ann Pettifor – posted March 25th on Labour List
There is a ferocious battle being played out around how we should interpret and understand the financial crisis and its consequences. And I am not talking about the crude and quite hysterical response to the budget in the Conservative press today. That we can safely ignore. No, it’s more than that. It’s about key economic issues, and it’s vital that we all grasp them, and fight the good fight on behalf of those who will be victims of orthodox economic ideology.
The orthodox story line goes like this: the most momentous crisis facing the world is government debt – not economic failure and collapse; not the collapse of private investment; not financial instability, or deflation, or currency volatility or the threat of a dangerous rise in protectionism and a new global trade war. And certainly not the rise in unemployment.
By Ann Pettifor – Posted March 24th in the Guardian Comment is free
My more or less immediate response to Alistair Darling’s final budget:
This was a politically skilful budget. Alistair Darling faced the problem of the ongoing deflation of an economy de-leveraging its debt in unseemly haste, and dragging down economic activity, prices, profits, incomes and jobs as it does so. He also had to tackle the substantial decline in full-time employment over the course of the recession, only partly offset by increases in part-time employment. Thirdly, he had to counter the threat to Britain’s long-term energy and climate security.
A response to the "Triple Crunch" of financial crisis, climate change and oil depletion. Read the report published by the Green New Deal Group and nef (new economics foundation).
Welcome to my blog about the financial crisis. I'm Ann Pettifor, author and analyst of the global financial system, and co-author of the Green New Deal. I predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis back in 2003, and am known for my work on sovereign debt and international finance, including Jubilee 2000. Currently a fellow of the new economics foundation and director of Advocacy International.