The inescapable political conclusion is quite dramatic. Bringing international financial markets under control is no longer a simple question of regulation, admirable though current EU thinking may be. Nor is it even about a special levy, a Tobin tax or whatever grit is needed both to slow the machine and to make it pay (principles I favour). Sooner or later, the banking system will need to be brought under public control; capital must be subordinated to labour. That involves two things. First, the main banks must be fully nationalised. Secondly, casino banking must not merely be regulated, but parts of it – starting with hedge funds – must be banned.
That economics course at SOAS might not be quite the best place to gain an ideologically neutral understanding of the universe then.
5 responses so far ↓
1 DBC Reed // May 29, 2010 at 1:21 pm
What’s the problem? Seems sensible to me.
2 Pogo // May 30, 2010 at 11:24 am
Well, after all, it worked so well in the Soviet Union…
3 DBC Reed // May 30, 2010 at 3:37 pm
@pogo
An original response.
Nationalising the banks is not a left/right thing.
Hitler nationalised the German banks then in 1941 attacked the Russians ,former allies, killing 10 thousand a day while Churchill, according to Stalin ,let him get on with it.
Why should governments allow private-sector banks to create credit then borrow it from them?
4 Pogo // May 30, 2010 at 8:00 pm
DBC… I know it’s not original, it’s also trite, but when all’s said and done it’s accurate.
Governments have, consistently, shown themselves incapable of efficiently running any enterprise more complex than a whelk stall. The thought of government being the only entity allowed to run something so complex and vital as a bank defies reason.
5 DBC Reed // May 30, 2010 at 11:03 pm
@pogo
Whelk stalls now.Have you ever seen a whelk stall? I have n’t , although I lived close to the cheap sea food end of Brighton front.
Being allowed to create credit,indeed encouraged to do so, is hardly the most difficult
job on earth.But the private banks manage to screw even that up.If the private sector banks were n’t continually endangering the capitalist system,it would n’t be so bad.
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