Get real, Gordon

So we the UK taxpayers are now providing an insurance policy for the banksters. Insurance usually covers events subsequent to the payment of the first premium, but this is different. We are going to be covering risks that were created long before we began to insure them.

Damned if we do and damned if we don't. Do nothing, and banks begin to crash, one after the other. People lose their savings, people lose confidence, good banks haemorrhage cash that is withdrawn to be stashed under the king size. Try to prevent this, and the taxpayers of the future are burdened with a huge National Debt.

Gordon stands firm, a seemingly unwobbly rock of determination in the middle of a roaring torrent of financial uncertainty.

The ultimate worry is that the UK could go bankrupt. He is trying to provide guarantees against a nightmare of debt. The debt arises from stupid bank lending on the housing bubble, a debt that has been multiplied many times over by the financial derivatives market. The total value of the derivatives market was estimated last year at $60 trillion, 13 times greater than the world's capital base, and 10 times greater than the world's GDP. Even Flash Gordon cannot hold that kind of pressure in check. It is now down to a mere $50 trillion and falling (though I read in the Guardian Special Report Friday 30 Jan that they are worth $290 trillion. 50 trillion, 290 trillion, what does it matter?)

Lehmans Brothers Holdings held up to $440 billion in credit default swaps (CDS) derivatives. "Up to", because nobody knows how to put a price on the damn things. The post mortem will not be complete for a couple of years, but so far the the damage has come to a puny $75 billion, because some of the rats jumped out of the sinking ship to infect the rest of the financial fleet, and because the positive and negative values "netted out" - canceled each other.

They are called Toxic Assets (a) because they are so huge, and (b) nobody knows exactly how huge they are. We have a financial system with a bloodstream thick with pustulant unknowns, some known unknowns and much more unknown unknowns, and maybe a few unknown unknown unknowns. I'm thinking of Bernie Madoff and his hedge fund Ponzi scheme here.

The worry is that Gordon and Alistair are setting their faces to weather the storm, guaranteeing that the good old British (or should that be Scottish) dependability will ensure that the banking system makes a good recovery in time.

The question is - is recovery possible?

Money is created through lending at interest. Money arises from debt. Money is a social construct based on confidence. If confidence leaves the system, money loses its value. On top of this basic fact, the derivatives have inflated the debt to the dizzying proportions that we now see.

The basic problem in Gordon's position is that he is compelled to pour yet more money into banking - an essentially unreal economy. He says that it is because if the banking system goes, the real economy goes - which is slightly, but not absolutely true. Gordon should remember the old adage, "Food will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no food".

The Government's money is going to the banks with few conditions it seems. Short Selling has restarted, and we do not read of plans to regulate the financial system, not even the OTC derivatives. Labour is shy of nationalising the banks outright, although that is clearly the way things are going.

The real tragedy is that our money is going into a black hole, into a place where hard earned cash can disappear into the aether in a trice, on the back of negative market sentiment. I would rather see my money invested in a Right to Rent policy, whereby the nation takes over un-payable mortgages, leaving the family in situ, paying an affordable rent. Invested in house insulation, which means that money and carbon dioxide release is saved for as long as the houses stand. Invested in renewable energy technology. Invested in the community, and in recycling, and in the many other branches of the Green Economy. Invested in the real economy, Gordon. Capisc'?

Feeling sorry for Gordon Brown

Poor Gordon Brown. PoorGord.

I am back to feeling sorry for the man, and have to keep reminding myself of all his wrong decisions (10% tax, economic divergence, not seeing the Credit Crunch coming, endorsing the Iraq War, add your own grouches in the Comment slot). And I have to remember that he is capable (if the Americans let him, since our "deterrent" is not in fact independent at all) of giving the order to blast, crush, burn, immolate, irradiate and immiserate untold numbers of fellow human beings by actually firing Trident.

I do not hate him (unlike, it seems, most conservatives, who seem to cherish almost the same passionate feelings about Gordon that the left felt about Maggie. (Mme. Tacheur** as the French called her).

I just have to keep myself from feeling sorry for him. It must be grim to be Gordon. Once a week he has to go for his weekly ritual, the bear in the green padded cell of Westminster yapped at by all the other dogs and bitches in the kennel.

And he hasn't even got his Moral Compass. It's either mislaid, or when it does turn up it alternates between spinning wildly, or waving asthenically like the boom of an abandoned yacht in a windless Caribbean swell.

Still, it will soon be over, Gordon. Come June 2010 you will be free to write your memoirs, and in the light of catastrophic Tory economic mismanagement people will look back at you and think you were not so bad after all...


** Tache, n. Fr = Eng. stain.

Et Tu, Purnell? Then die, Gordon.

You have to feel sorry for poor Gordon. I would not like to be him tonight. He was so keen to be PM, and all he got was this lousy mess. No more Flash Gordon, savior of the world's banking system, just Poor Gord, The Sinking Ship.

Gordon, bear chained to a ragged staff, surrounded by blood-crazed media mastiffs.

So on a personal level, tough luck, mate. Nobody's perfect. There's always your memoirs to look forward to.

But let's not waste too much sympathy on him; let us keep some sorrow for the victims of the wars that he supported and sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan; let us remember his choices on the Trident, the British Weapon of Mass Destruction; his choice to resurrect Nuclear Power, the Creature from the Phosphorescent Lagoon; his failure to close the gap between rich and poor; his actions in restricting our civil liberties; his reclassification of cannabis to Class B; his support for the ridiculous First Past the Post electoral system; his plans to privatise the Post Office and the NHS; his hot air about global warming, while putting blocks in the way of renewable energy systems; his pumping money into the banks, but not thr real economy; his continuing servility to the banksters; his failure to fence off the derivatives; the 10% and all the rest of it...

Right, Gord is Gone. He is an ex-Prime Minister. Phew. Now then:

All hail Alan Johnson, the next PM of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!

This could be good. Here's how:

Prime Minister Johnson, mindful of the need to purge the Augean stables, makes his first act the fulfilment of a manifesto promise: he calls a referendum on PR to be held in early September. He also cancels the summer recess, and Parliament sits to draw up plans for radical political reforms.

Come September, the referendum says Yes to PR. So he calls a General Election - get this - to be held under PR.

OK, there's a problem here. PR will require a redrawing of boundaries, and that will take time.

But. It could be done, after this fashion:
Using the present constitutencies, we can modify FPTP to make Parliament reflect the will of the people. It goes like this: elect MPs under FPTP. Look at total proportions of the vote, and then re-allocate seats to make parliament proportional. Say the Tories are over represented, and LibDems are 2 MPs short of a proportional share of seats. Find the 2 LibDems who came second in their constituencies to a Tory by the smallest margin, and replace the Tory with a LibDem. And so on, until Parliament reflects the will of the people.

Yes, I know, nothing is perfect. There are details to be considered, but give us a chance, I only heard about james Purnell's defection 10 minutes ago.The point to be kept in mind is that we need a Parliament elected under PR asap, because under FPTP we are going to get the Tories in, and the Tories have certain defects. Serious Defects. They have just gone to join up with a climate change denier in the EU, and they want to have tax cuts and public service cuts in the midst of a recession, both of which are recipes for a political disaster of such a magnitude that we will look back on Gordon Brown and say, "Poor Gord! He wasn't such a bad PM."

In short we need PR not just because it is right and democratic, but also because it will save us from a full-on Tory assault on the fabric of the universe.

Gordon Brown, Depression slip of tongue - and monetary reform

Gordon Brown's slip of the tongue, referring to action to take the world out of "depression" when he meant "recession" is probably an indication of what the Cabinet is talking about behind closed doors.

The Economist says ... "there is no widely accepted definition of depression. ...A search on the internet suggests two principal criteria for distinguishing a depression from a recession: a decline in real GDP that exceeds 10%, or one that lasts more than three years. America’s Great Depression qualifies on both counts, with GDP falling by around 30% between 1929 and 1933. Output also fell by 13% during 1937 and 1938. The Great Depression was America’s deepest economic slump (excluding those related to wars), but at 43 months it was not the longest: that dubious honour goes to the one in 1873-79, which lasted 65 months".

So Gordon's slip may indicate the seriousness of what the world is facing. Add to that the impact of climate change, where extreme weather events will cause further economic disruption and added burdens on the insurance industry (see here for a bar graph of rising insurance claims for extreme weather events). UK plc is heavily dependent on insurance - financial services and insurance constitute 22.7% of our commercial service exports - so climate change is going to hit us hard (although not so hard as poor countries who did little to cause the problem).

This may be why depression is in Gordon's thoughts, and gets tangled up with his emergent thoughts. Maybe this is why Joseph Stiglitz said Gordon should let the banks fail and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice.

And this is why we should give thought to James Robertson's proposals regarding a radical restructuring of money. This is James' message:

A CRASH CAMPAIGN - URGENT ACTION NEEDED

The G20 Must Discuss Monetary Reform at its 2nd April Meeting
and We Must Make Sure It's on Their Agenda


The way money is created today as profit-making debt, both nationally and internationally, cannot avoid leading to recurrent highly damaging booms and busts. In normal times too, it results in a skewed system of financial rewards and penalties that motivates almost everyone in the world to get money in socially, environmentally, and economically damaging ways.

This means that not only active citizens should support monetary reform. So should non-governmental organisations (NGOs) concerned with social issues (poverty, welfare, social injustice, health, human rights, etc), environmental issues (climate change, energy supply and use, water, food and agriculture, etc); the problems of ‘developing’ countries; and general economic and public policy issues (world future prospects; local and community economic development; ethical investing, trading and consuming; corporate social responsibility; etc).

The G20 (twenty of the economically most important countries in the world) is replacing the G7 as the top international forum for discussing the world’s economic problems. It is meeting at the beginning of April in London to discuss international co-operation in handling the present global financial crisis.

So far, their policies have ignored the importance of national and international monetary reform. It is vital that they should be persuaded to put these topics on their agenda and we must make sure that this happens.

What to do. People in all the G20 countries should act urgently:

• to mobilise pressure on their governments by early March to include national and international monetary reform in their April agenda, and
• to achieve widespread media coverage in their countries about why those reforms are necessary.
• 
  
• That can be done through many channels. They include writing and other ways of communicating:
• to the politicians who represent us in our legislatures
• to the press and broadcasting media;
• to NGOs that support our concern for development, social justice, environment, ethical economics, or any of the numerous causes that suffer from how the present money system works;
• to other people able to do any of these things themselves, and
• by speaking at meetings about those concerns.
  

In an enterprise of this kind, even the smallest action may turn out to have a big impact.

Please feel free to use any information from the campaign document, which explains why monetary reform is needed and suggests some possible solutions. A pdf version can be downloaded from www.jamesrobertson.com/g20monetaryreform.pdf


Meanwhile, during the next eight weeks, this will have to be a highly de-centralised co-operative project. It is potentially very influential if self-energised and co-ordinated by its participants with one another in their own and other G20 countries - pursuing the shared aim of encouraging and pressuring the governments of the G20 countries to take monetary reform very seriously.

We will aim to make news reports of the campaign available once a week at www.jamesrobertson.com/g20campaignnews.htm

Please forward this notice to anyone who you think might be interested. As the G20 meeting starts on 2nd April, time is of the essence.

James Robertson

The recession: is it Gordon's fault?

Well, is it? The Tories are pointing out that Gordon Brown was Chancellor when it was all brewing; but he stresses it is a global phenomenon.

What is the truth in this political ding-dong?

There are three factors; the business cycle, house prices, and the financial markets.

The capitalist economy has a natural rhythm of expansion and contraction. Gordon unwisely said he had "abolished boom and bust"; clearly he was wrong. Maybe he thought he had avoided the extremes of the business cycle, but that shows he was ignorant of what was really going on.

He could not have been unaware of the growth of house prices, but he did nothing about it, despite the clear recent example of the house price crash of the 1990s. He left it to the market. Had he intervened, by, say, taxing the increase in the house prices, and capping the amount of commission the estate agents were getting (clearly one of the drivers of house price inflation), or requiring the buyer to have a certain amount of deposit to put on a house, and regulating the ratio of income to mortgage loan, or had he used any other such device that are in use in other European countries, he could have avoided the house price boom. He did not, so he is culpable, but we can be sure and certain that his Tory critics would have screamed blue murder if he had intervened in the precious free market. We can also be sure that the Tories would have done exactly the same thing.

Now. The financial markets. The basic position is that new money is created almost exclusively by private corporations making loans at compound interest for private profit. This is not a promising start, since the money system is predicated on debt, which is a power relationship between lender and borrower. Having made some ill-considered loans to people who did not have a good chance of paying them back, money lenders must have had an ely that they were at risk. In response, they bundled the loans up into packages, and sold them on to hedge funds, as a kind of insurance against the risk of default. Ironically, in doing so, they increased the risk to the system many times over. The unregulated hedge funds re-packaged them up into yet more complex bundles, and at each stage, the debt was multiplied, until we reached the point that the "value" of these instruments ballooned to ten times as much as the GDP of the whole world.

This is an irrational situation, psychotic in the sense that it is detached from reality. It arose from treating money, which is a social construct as if it were a commodity. Ann Pettifor has explained this very clearly. The unreality of the financial markets is even expressed in the language that commentators use, when they talk about the "real economy" - real work done by real people - as opposed to the "financial markets" - activity carried out by people who do Something in the City.

So is Gordon to blame? Yes, he is, along with every other politician and commentator who accepted as gospel that the economy must grow infinitely, despite the fact that we live on a finite planet, who accepted that it is OK to make money by buying and selling money as if it were a commodity, and who accept that Free Market Fundamentalism is Absolute Truth.

The Tories are right to blame Gordon Brown; but they would have done exactly the same. In making political capital out of their criticism, they are increasing their opinion poll standing. But Dave Cameron has been captured by the anti-Keynesians in his party, and is therefore foolishly prepared to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, by trying to balance the books in the course of a recession. If the Tories get in, their policies will make the recession many times worse. Brown is bumbling about, throwing good money after bad, trying to pour money into the black hole of debt that is the financial system, rather than concentrating on putting it into the real economy in a Green New Deal, but at least he understands that the Government has to invest in the economy. Dave Cameron does not understand this, and therefore he must be kept out of office at all costs.

As things stand, the Tories are heading for a victory in the next General Election. There is one change that could keep them out, or at least make sure that they do not have an outright majority. We need Proportional Representation. We must create an alliance with the LibDems, Labour democrats, all Labour MPs who have enough political intelligence to know on which side their bread is buttered, we need all democratic and environmental NGOs to short sharp campaign to get the Government to get a PR bill in place before the next election.

There is unprecedented enthusiasm for this on the Policy email discussion list of the Green Party (3 in favour, one doubtful).

So that's agreed then. Let's go; Here's the campaign chant:

What do we want?
Proportional Representation, preferably AMS, but anything is better than FPTP!
When do we want it?
Before the next General Election if time can be found on the Parliamentary timetable!

Gordon does Something Right (Tobin Tax) ; give positive reinforcement

Image : hat tip to Banksy

SHOCK NEWS, HOLD THE FRONT PAGE:

Gordon is saying the right thing for once.
He is calling for a Tobin Tax on financial dealings, the proceeds to go to help poorer countries and to fund future bank bailouts.

Telegraph: Predictable opposition coming from the expected quarters. Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, said: "That's not something that we're prepared to support." Canada's finance minister, Jim Flaherty, said: "It is not something we would be interested in in Canada. We are not in the business of raising taxes, we are in the business of lowering taxes in Canada. It is not an idea we would look at." Dominique Strauss-Khan, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also poured cold water on the plan. “I don’t believe it will be a transaction tax because transactions are very difficult to measure and so it’s very easy to avoid a transaction tax".

On Monday there will be a queue of financiers waiting for their turn at the microphone to condemn the proposal as a threat that will pull down the entire fabric of society, with gullible interviewers drinking in every word, and asking no tough questions about the finance markets and the impact of poverty on human beings.

The Green Party is among the many peoples' organizations to call for the Tobin Tax.
Sarkozy is on our side.


I have put a petition up the No. 10 website:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to persist with his praiseworthy plan to persuade the G20 to place a Tobin Tax on financial transactions, designed to aid poorer countries and increase financial stability.

Submitted by Richard Lawson – Deadline to sign up by: 8 December 2009

Category: Economics and finance

More details:

The PM has put forward the idea of a Tobin Tax at the G20 meeting in November. This is a tax on financial transactions, which will be hypothecated to poor countries, to which the PM has not unreasonably added a clause to put some to meeting the cost of the next bank bailout. The US and Canada have already talked sown the idea, but many poorer countries and nearly all NGOs will welcome it, and we encourage our PM to persist against all odds.

Please sign the petition, and even more, please, send it on to your contacts.

We should give bouquets as well as brickbats, to encourage Gordon to stick with it.

Every decision is multifactorial, and there is that of good in everyone. Gordon while Chancellor listened to Jubilee 2000, and took it on board. Maybe part of him has Finally Got It, and maybe also he realises that this is part of the electorate that he should be courting. Which is cool.

I am not saying he has seen the Light, but I am saying that, like good parents, we should reward good behaviour, as well as criticising the bad behaviour. We do the criticism 24/7, so he takes no notice of criticism.

Our praise and support will be so unusual that he will take notice. So this is one important petition. He is going to get a lot of flak for this from the US, Canada, ? Australia, and a lot of stick from the corporate media here, and from the Tories; so an impressive big petition of support for the Tobin Tax would be very influential.

[Update: the petition has just gone up, 9 days after I submitted it. Presumably they were so unused to getting support and praise that they thought it was some kind of Trojan Horse].

Blogging on Prime Minsters Speech

OK, I've never tried this before.

I'm going to try a simultaneous commentary on the Prime Minister's speech on Afghanistan.

He's speaking now here.

At the present a gent that I (having come in late) I take to be the Lord Mayor is verbalising well. He is extolling the City of London, reminds me of Lord Lawlor.

He's mentioning charities emanating from the City. I probably missed the bit where he thanks the us the people, for their charitable donations of £3000 per head.

Gordon is about to come on.
Toot toot (fanfare).

BG: Hello everyone, thanks. Today I am going to tell you about

• Climate change,
  
• Multilateralism,
  
• global rules for prosperity,
  
• NPT,
  
• Afpak, (stronger counterinsurgency)
  
• and a New World Order.

We face great global challenges.
There are Causes worth Fighing For.
Good stuff can happen:
Fall of Berlin wall, Mandela out of jail &c.
Yesterday's dream becomes todays impossibility and can become tomorrows reality.

We need strong alliances. Multilateral cooperation. Collective action. Recession, climate, &c. International action is necessary.

We must lead in global cooperation.

1 Climate Change.
International legal treaty asap.

2 Secure world economy.

• Restructuring banks...
• Fiscal stimulus
• world economy will double in size in 20yrs.
  

Trade abroad = jobs at home.

There must be a new contract of trust between banks and public.

Must address
Burma, Zimbabwe &c
Global Poverty.

3 Nukes:

• Bargain between NWS/NNWS
• NNWS renounce NW, get NP.
• NWS must make credible road map on Nuclear Disarmament.
  

Iran - end of year deadline to do something about terrorism.

[I'm missing bits. Gordon's breaking up. The feed I mean].

Tribute to soldiers. First bit of applause.

We are disrupting alQaeda (AQ) 7/12 AQ leaders killed. Sapping morale.
28000 Pakistani forces squeezing AQ in S Waziristan.
AQ atrocities.
200 persons convicted of terrorist offences since 2001.
AQ has extensive recruitment network
[RL: Recruiting sergeant No 1 is at the podium now.]

No appeasement. Public opinion is "the mood of a passing moment".
[RL: That's us!!]

We have a new Document on Partnering.
We're saved then! Hurray!!

Corruption is Bad and Something Must be Done.
RL: Opium is the food of corruption.
Passing districts to Afghan control, progressive Afghanisation til the cows come home. (or was that "boys"?)

If Taleban regain power, AQ will flourish.

Global society must become a reality.
Construction of a New Global Order.

We have every reason to be confident about our prospects.
[RL: so that's all right then. I have a bit worried lately.]
Architects of a New World that can truly become a Global Society.
er...
..that's it.

Well. Well-a well-a well.
Good stuff Gordon. You read it well, and you looked craggy and solid as Buaichlle Etive Mor on a windswept November night.

Great words. Who could disagree with most of it, apart from barking neo-cons who are allergic to words like "social" or "Co-operation".
What we need now is to get a few concepts and ideas to attach to the words, and the political will to realise the concepts and ideas, and off we jolly well go...

...except, between the word and the action falls the Abyss of indecision and mental conservatism.

And advisors who advise against even thinking about buying the opium.

Gordon needs to "Get Real" over Trident

Gordon told Nick to "Get Real" about Trident, the UKs independent nuclear deterrent Weapon of Mass Destruction.

No, Gordon, you get real. Your argument about Trident being an insurance policy does not stack up. Nuclear deterrence is totally illogical.

We cannot afford the £100 billion cost of Trident - nor any substitutes. We need to save money. We have a huge budget deficit, remember?

Even cold warriors like Kissinger are calling for a nuclear-free world. The only place for Trident and the UK's non-independent nuclear WMD is on the negotiating table, on the way to a world 100% free of nuclear weapons.

Just been reading a report of the views of Peer Steinbruck, Angela Merkel's Finance Minister, on the response to the recession. He is not part of the Brownian Movement, not one who says, "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is Flash Gordon! Wow!"

He has various criticisms of Brownianism.

Too fast, untested. Not fair, imo. Sometimes quick action is necessary in an emergency, action whose testing in action. This is no time for cogitation.

VAT reductions are crap. Well, yes, the intentions were good, but small reductions, ones that may not appear in prices are marginally important. This was silly. I bet it was some civil servant who pushed that one.

Debt is going to go up. Yes indeedy. But there was no alternative, apart from a meltdown. The whole finance system is predicated on debt. It need not be, but it is. The Great Depression is thought to be worsened because the governments were more interested in balancing the books than charging in to help.

Crass Keynesianism. Depends on what he means here. Does he mean all Keynesianism is crass, or that Brown is peddling a crass kind of Keynesianism. If the former, then he is wrong, wrong, wrong. Keynes is the Man: now is the time for the Government to put money into the economy.

If on the other hand, he thinks Brown's formula of Keyneianism is crass, then I agree. His grasp of planetary realities is weak, as evidenced by the tiny amount in his pre-Budget package devoted to insulation - I am told that it will take 300 years to insulate Britain's houses given the amount he has put forward. Maybe it was 100 years. Whatever. Gordon doesn't Get It. Yet.

The origin of the crisis is credit financed growth. Well, yes. What other kind is there in this world where all money is created by credit? He's said a mouthful here, opened up an area into which we will not go at present because it is a major topic.

The Great Rescue Plan doesn't exist. This is getting interesting. Peer Steinbruck (and presumably Angela Merkel) are what we medics call therapeutic nihilists.
Then, it gets more interesting still:
It's not about to collapse. Ah, that explains it: the German economy is a bit more stable than the US/UK economies, so their perceptions are different.

In England, we have a saying: "He who laughs last has only just seen the joke". Contrariwise, "He who is not running away has not yet seen the bear".

Stenbruck and Merkel think this is a bit of a cyclical downturn, and so no need to do much because nothing much needs to be done.

I hope they are right. If only we could believe they are right. But the facts are otherwise.

Let's end on a bright note:

In his own words, "For me the only stimulus measures that make sense are those that create jobs and have a positive structural effect beyond the economic cycle".
Amen to that. No more money for the banks, unless to nationalise them. No money for the car industry. But yes, money for the structure of the economy itself, for the energy conservation, renewable energy, and the entire green economy. That's where the money should be directed. Into a Citizen's Income, or if that is beyond Gordon's ken, then a Green Wage Subsidy.

Gordon repeats his no-blame mantra in the US

Gordon Brown intones his mantra in Washington: "It is a global recession. It is a global recession".

The Guardian suggests that he will try to pin the tail of failure on the American donkephant: "Brown will not be keen to admit that the British government bears any responsibility for the crisis, insisting it is the result of banking failure caused by a lack of regulation in the US and the rise of sub-prime mortgages".

The fact is that capitalism in the UK and the US is more attached to free market fundamentalism than the versions of capitalism in the rest of the world. The Anglo-Saxon capitalism of Adam Smith and Margaret Thatcher is the Wahabi version of capitalism. The philosophy of individualism, which stands behind free market capitalism, is strongest in Anglo-Saxon cultures. Sure, the globalised economy means that the whole system crashes together, but the US and UK share joint responsibility for masterminding the present global woes.

Brown will repeat his warning of the dangers of protectionism, while Obama nods, and continues to plan for exactly that: the protection of US jobs.

Brown will probably imply once more that he is the leader of the world in terms of remediation of the recession. On this point, his increasingly worrying detachment from reality becomes more obvious. Obama, to his relative credit, has devoted 16% of his stimulus package to ecological measures such as energy conservation and renewables. Gordon has offered a pusillanimous 7% - one tenth of the proportion of the real world leader, South Korea.

Financial stimulus is the right way to go about it, the Keynsian way, but there is more to Keynes than simply shovelling money at an ever increasing rate into the furnace of the financial system. The money has to be sent to the right places, and the right place for money is the physical base of the real economy, not into the ether of an intoxicated financial system.

Energy, along with agriculture, water services, housing and waste management is the physical base of the economy,. To put money into energy conservation is a no-brainer: it saves money, and it cushions us against Peak Oil - the divergence between rising demand and falling suppply of oil. The Green New Deal is the way to go.

The financial system should not be given any more of the taxpayers' hard earned. The banksters are not grateful of it, they are not contrite, they do not realise that their collective Porsche has run out of road. What the financial system needs is a ring fence to be erected between the rotten core of the financial system and the real hard earned cash that people have entrusted to the banks.

Ah well. La lutte continua.

Is political blogging just about gossip? If so, where does that leave the Green Party?

I have been blogging since 2004, have put up 1,300+ posts, much of which were about what I thought was "politics". Recently I have been wondering if I am indeed a political blogger. I have been looking at the top political blogs like Iain Dale and Paul Staines Guido Fawkes, and realised that what they do in fact is purvey political gossip.
Theri stuff is mainly  about political personalities in and around Westminster. So no wonder that Greens, despite having more bloggers per capita than comparable parties, are out of the loop - we're not in Westminster.

In any case, I have no interest in gossip. This is not meant in a lofty or superior way. I just do not care, except insofar as it has a bearing on policy. It looks as if on the balance of tittle tattle that  Gordon Brown has a volcanic temper and maybe is a bully. Well, I have a tendency to lose my rag in meetings, for specific personal-historical reasons, so I cannot cast the stone at Gordon  - but I do wonder whether his temperament might lead us into a war.  It hasn't so far - he has just had to continue the wars started by St Tony of Bliar. Might Gordon start the Second Falklands war, in order to destroy that Conservative 7% poll lag (remember the rule - the corporate media always supports a good war)? It is a possibility - but this decision would be much more likely to be the result of calculations by his spin doctors, rather than an explosion of personal rage. 


Wouldn't it?

Anyway all this leaves us Greens out of the political loop, as usual.

Which is probably a good thing. It is impossible to think while your mind is saturated with the noise of gossip.  And somebody needs to do some thinking about the real political and economic problems we face. So, Iain, Guido and the rest, carry on with the gossip, and leave the thinking to the Greens...

Ed Balls says crisis is the worst for 100 years

Ed "Private Frazer" Balls says the economic crisis is the worst for 100 years: "Children's and Schools Secretary Ed Balls has warned that the current economic downturn will be worse than the Great Depression, reports said.

Balls, a close ally of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, told a conference at the weekend that the crisis was the most serious global recession for 'over 100 years,' according to the Yorkshire Post .

At the gathering in Yorkshire, he also raised fears of a resurgence in far-right groups as there was during the Great Depression."

This deliberate statement, as part of a speech, confirms Gordon brown's Freudian slip last week, and indicates that the Government is aware of the true extent to which the banking system is...I am searching for a non-sexual expression here...ruined by the Ponzi credit derivatives.

It looks as if the banks have gone the way of the Norwegian Blue To clear up any doubt, the banking system has shuffled off its mortal coil and joined the choir invisible. Its metabolic processes are history. It is demised. The banks' account sheets make Mr Micawber look like Croesus. They are Black Hole Singularity. They are tohu-bohu, without form and void.

To summarise: the financial system is built on debt. Banks create money for lenders out of nothing, restrained only by a multiple of the capital that they actually hold, a typical ratio being 65:1, meaning that they were lending out £65million for every million that they held. The derivatives bubble has inflated this debt bubble until the derivatives market is "valued" at ten times the world's GDP. Part, if not all, of the derivatives market is a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid selling scam which is dependent on infinite growth to sustain itself. In shor the banksters have been taken for a ride with all our money. When Ponzi schemes break, there is no compensation for the marks; they lose all, and are lucky if they get the satisfaction of seeing the scammer locked up.

If this analysis is correct, we are in the coming months going to witness the evaporation of our money into cyberspace. I believe this is why Ed Balls, consciously, and Gordon, subconsciously, are letting us know that a Depression of ten or more years looms.

If our money does go up in a great financial bush fire, we are going to need a plan to rectify the situation. This is where James Robertson's G20 Campaign offers a new beginning.

The other aspect of the problem is that Ed Balls was warning of a right wing backlash, as in the 1930s. This is a real threat, and he did well to warn of it.

Right wing politics is a hot air balloon, with two burners: unemployment and housing scarcity. As long as there are white people with no jobs and no homes, the BNP can point to immigrants in jobs and homes and make them scapegoats for the people's anger. The classic response of the Left, to march and counter-march against them, is a hopeless tactic, creating a game of cowboys and indians, or worse, Israelis and Palestinians. The real political solution to the rise of the far right is for Government to make sure that there are sufficient houses and jobs in Britain for all. The Green Party's Right to Rent policy is a start for housing; and the Green New Deal is the tool for creating good work and energy security. The GND+ is an even better tool, that creates even more jobs, but the Handbrake Tendency has seen to it that we cannot vote on that for another 18 months (sigh).

What is the Green Party's policy on the financial crisis? Well, we will be able to vote on a few measures, including a short stab at Monetary Reform, at our conference in Blackpool Winter Gardens, 20th-23rd March. Until then, we have no policy.

This, to my mind, is absurd. Our Manifesto for a Sustainable Society is a great democratic venture in political policy, but it is not holy Writ, and it does not cover political developments that happen after policy is decided at Conference. Clearly, we need a day to day ability to respond to the rapidly changing political circumstances. We do have a Political Committee appointed by GPEX and accountable to them, but its processes and decisions are opaque.
We need to formalise this process, giving Political Committee power to make decisions that go beyond what is written in the MfSS, and report back to Conference. However, it will take two years to get this through, if ever...

So there we have it. We just need Monetary Reform, Right to Rent, GND+, and a Green Party leadership that is empowered to think on its political feet. La lutte continua.

Understanding is vital to saving the real economy

Instead of Austerity, the Green Party wants to do lots of nice things for people, things like NHS, education and Basic Income.

It is quite reasonable for critics and commentators to ask how these nice things will be paid for.
Will it be from more borrowing? If so, what about the budgetary deficit?

The short answer is, no, not from borrowing. It will come from taxation applied to the 1%, and by accurate understanding of how money is created.

First, the deficit, the difference between the Government's income and expenditure. We have been told that it is very serious and that we are very nearly on the edge of bankruptcy, that the only  way is to cut spending, mainly through cutting welfare because they are all scroungers who deserve to suffer etc. We are told that the deficit is a HUGE TERRIFYING NUMBER and that Osborne must make "tough decisions" to bring it down.

In fact, he has borrowed more in 5 years than Labour did in 13.

Of course, this was due to the crash of 2009, which was caused by the banks, but since banks payroll the Tory Party, the blame is heaped instead on Labour for borrowing too much.

However, Labour did not in fact borrow all that much. Here is a record going back to 1977. Blue line = Tory Govt, red line = Labour. 0.0 line means budget is balanced. Above the line we are in surplus, below the line we are in deficit. Mainly we are in deficit. Note that Labour's surplus moments under Gordon are bigger  than Tories surplus moments.

We are being given porkie pies. The weird thing is that Labour do not defend their record. 

Note above that the debt after 2009 is £60 billion before intervention to save the banks, but £150bn with the £90 bn needed to save the banksters' sorry assets.

Note also that Gordon was taming the deficit, prior to 2009. In the figure above, the deficit is anything above the line. Much less under Gordon Brown than back in 1993 under the Tories.

In fact the deficit is getting worse over the years. Look at this

Going back to 1948, there is a definite trend towards a greater deficit. Why? Because the Government has to borrow money from the banks. 

To borrow requires payment of interest. One loan of £10,000 at 5% over 10 years requires payment of an additional £2,728 to the bank in addition to the original £10,000. 

So we are in a vicious cycle. The more we borrow, the more we owe, and the more we have to pay to the banks.

But when the banks foul up, the Government has to bale them out to the tune of £100s of billions, so that the banks are in a position to lend to Government again. Our Government loaned them £90 billion to save them in the crash of 2009, and gave them a further  £375billion in Quantitative Easing. £475billion given to the banks in all. Nearly half a trillion pounds, mostly created by the State, given to the banks to save them, and then we have to go to them, cap in hand and borrow that same money back, as an interest bearing loan, on condition that we flog the poor with austerity while the banksters pay themselves bonuses with the money that we, the people, created through our agent, the Bank of England.

This is, quite simply, a mad situation, and it would be laughable if its impacts on our lives were not so serious.

It is vital for us to understand this madness if we are to save our reality, that is, our society and  environment. 

Slash Gordon Leaves Planet Earth

"The 2% of our total energy that now comes from renewables is much less than in many other European countries. In the Energy White Paper we announced plans to triple the amount of electricity from renewables by 2015. But as the urgency of tackling climate change and achieving energy security increases, the case for more reliance on renewables has become more compelling. And that is why at the European Council this year Britain led the way to an agreement that by 2020 one-fifth of all Europe's energy should come from renewables, a near threefold increase.

The UK worked hard to get agreement to this target and let me make it absolutely clear, we are completely committed to meeting our share. The European Commission will, as you know, come forward with their proposals for how the overall target is to be divided between member states in January. A final decision is expected in early 2009. We do not yet know therefore what the UK contribution will be but it is clear that over the next decade and beyond Britain will need to raise very significantly the proportion of our energy from renewable sources and we must start planning for this now." Gordon Brown PM 19 November.

And the assembled hacks solemnly enter his words into their spiral bound notebooks, all unaware that this is the Gordon whose Government spend April capping the Low Carbon buildings Programme to £2500 per domestic property, thus slashing the take up of domestic solar heating and PV. His ignorant Government is also resisting a feed in tariff, which is the means used in Germany who have 100 PV domestic cells for every one in the UK?

Davos 2009: Gordon Brown calls for global co-operation to beat economic slump - Telegraph

Davos 2009: Gordon Brown calls for global co-operation to beat economic slump : "This is the first financial crisis of the global age. And there is no clear map that has been set out from past experience to deal with it."

What does he mean? We have had recessions before, recessions which have been international in scope. Globalisation means that this recession is more global than in history, but is this all he means, or is Gordon betraying an unspoken worry that the present disease in the global banking system that goes further than this? A disease that has never been seen before?

If so, he is talking about the derivatives which have multiplied the amount of debt in the financial system by orders of magnitude. Nobody, not even George Soros, understands the damn things, because they are absurd, and it is impossible to determine a value for them. They are a huge known unknown infesting the accounts of any banks that have dabbled in investment banking. The derivatives market, or at least part of it, is a huge Ponzi scheme, which flourished when the market was growing, and now the market is collapsing, they are collapsing in on it, like a jerry-built house filled with rotting flesh collapsing in an earth tremor onto the owner and his family. Our political and economic masters who sang the praises of Globalization (US sp.) have ended up waltzing the world economy into the biggest confidence trick in history.

Maybe the financial system will recover in due course. Or maybe the derivatives will get into the financial bloodstream and cause financial septicaemia. Gangrene may set in. Amputations may result.

Maybe we will have to radically redesign the financial system from scratch.

Gordon: cracks showing

Back home again, I return to my hobby of smiting wood.

We green woodworkers prefer to make out own tools where possible. I have 3 mallets, one a great Neanderthal style clunking fist called Gordon, one a lightweight called Dave, and an odd medium sized chap that I called Brian, for no particular reason at the time, but which I now realise relates to Brian Paddick the LibDem candidate for London. Who shared the fate of Ken and Sian, of being beaten by Boris.

Brian is a worthy mallet, being of a new design in that the fibres of the smiting face go in at 45 degrees, thus avoiding splittages. The handle is made of a natural branch, so there is strength at the heart of the mallet.

Gordon is breaking up. There are bits missing, and he is developing a great split.

I know this is of no significance whatsoever, except in some obscure journalistic sense.

Akmal Sheikh, Paul Clarke, law in mindless action

Gordon Brown and other senior British politicians have angrily condemned China for executing a British man said to have had mental problems. Akmal Shaikh, 53, was killed early this morning by lethal injection after being convicted of drug smuggling. (Guardian).

Gordon Brown says: ""I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted. I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken."

Meanwhile, on 18th December, a British former soldier who faced five years in jail after finding a shotgun and handing it in to police in Reigate, Paul Clarke, 27, was given a 12-month suspended sentence for possession of a firearm at Reading Crown Court today. (Surrey Today)

Clarke had found the gun in a bag at the bottom of his garden, and handed it in to the police, but was arrested and told he faced 5 years in jail, because that is the automatic sentence for unauthorised possession of a shotgun. Possibly thanks partly to a Twitter campaign, Clarke's sentence was suspended, but even so a 1 year suspended sentence is a pretty dark cloud to walk under, especially as Clarke believes Reigate police seem to have it in for him because he had an affair with one of their establishment.

Both cases show the inflexibility of bad laws.
In the UK, unauthorised posession of firearm = 5 years.
In China, drug smuggling = death.

There is a difference in degree, and a certain amount of flexibility in the UK, but there is a similarity in kind, and no cause for smugness or finger-pointing on the part of Britons.

Another parallel that is shown up by the case is that the two major states, USA and China, are of a piece when it comes to belief in the death penalty. It is not good that they share this bararous practice.

Jeremy Clarkson - uneducated person with overcompensation issues

Jeremy Clarkson's disablist insult on Gordon Brown is a typical example of the working of the right-wing mind. This is not to say that the Left or the Greens are above using ad hominem arguments, because they are not; but personal insults are the stock in trade of the Right.

Why should this be? Maybe it goes back to the centuries-old ignoble British tradition of maintain an aristocracy, whose assured position of superiority over the peasants made it habitual for them to talk down and insult anyone who disagreed with them.

Not that Clarkson is an aristocrat, but he did go to public school. His father made Paddington Bear toys to send him to Repton.

"One eyed" is a pure piece of disabilism, and Clarkson has apologised for that.
"Scottish" is not an insult (now if he had said "Scotch" it might have been more insulting, but it would have rebounded on Clarkson himself). Needs no apology.
"Idiot" sugggests person of subnormal inteligence, a layman, or uneducated person. This is the kind of insult that would come naturally to the public school Clarkson, but it is an inversion of the truth, since it is Clarkson whose education was terminated by expulsionfor drinking, smoking and being a nuisance, whereas Gordon Brown has a PhD in history. Therefore, apology needed.

This suggests that Clarkson may be overcompensating for a deeper sense of intellectual insecurity.

Not that any of this matters all that much. Greens are critical of Brown, who has many political faults, chiefly his adherence to militarism, and economically because he is pouring our money into the banks without securing much in return, and into the motor car industry, rather than investing in a low-carbon energy strategy; but our criticism is political, not personal. His policies are mistaken, but that is no reason to call him an "idiot".

The pity of it all is that there is unlimited room in the media for discussion of Clarkson's jibes and mistakes, but very little room for serious discussion of investment in clean energy, its potential for creating good work, and for heading off the coming Peak Oil crisis.

In the end, Clarkson is a lightweight comedian, who achieves notoriety by his absolutist delivery of outrageous opinions. Clarkson is not a problem: the problem is the thousands of mini-clarksons who, reinforced by right wing media, ape his opinions in the pubs and on the comment slots, believing that if they say right wing things loudly enough and with enough disdain and conviction, they will become true.

Still, just as the absolute opinions of the banksters in the rightness of their free market enterprise has withered to nothing, in time the opinions of the clarkson-clones will wither in the light of unfolding realities.

Feeling sorry for Gordon (or, Electoral Reform NOW!!)

I keep finding myself feeling sorry for Gordon, until I remind myself of his policies on nuclear power, Trident, the failure of NuLabour to bring about a convergence between the income rates of poor and the rich, his all-mouth-no-trousers approach to AGW, war, Afghan Opium, the Index of Human Rights, Bees, forestry, and so on. The only good thing I can think of about NuLabour is that their ministers are marginally less irritating than the Tories. At least NuLabour don't keep braying at us on the airwaves about how good they are.

And I do not really care if Cameron gets in. Not that I expect him to deliver on his green promises.

No matter who you vote for the Government always gets in (so vote Green, they (almost) never get in. Except for Caroline (and Adrian and Darren, he added quickly, staying on-message)).

In this land of historic democracy, the new PM is influenced by:
1 The Corporations
2 The Civil Service
3 The media
4 Europe
5 ..last and least, the electorate.

Alan Duncan, Conspiracy Theorist

Alan Duncan, the Tory energy shadow, was on telly yesterday talking to Andrew Neil. It was an interesting interview. Neil rolled out some pretty searching questions, and he allowed Duncan to answer without interruptions, even though Duncan avoided giving straight answers to most of them, and was careful to keep up an obbligato of attack on poor Gordon's record.

One of his most electrifying assertions was that Gordon was deliberately fouling up the nation's accounts in order to present the incoming Tory Government with a problem. Yes, he actually said this, and it puts him fair and square into the camp of conspiracy theorists. It is exactly the same in essence, if not in scale, with the theory that Bush arranged the 9/11 attack, that is, that Brown is deliberately destroying the assets placed in his care in order to make things difficult for his opponents.

A conspiracy theory of this magnitude coming from such a prominent member of the Loyal Opposition who may well be in Government within a year or two merits challenge. What evidence does he have that Brown is doing this deliberately, rather than through the normal process of governmental politico-economic blundering?

This ought to be one for our fearless investigative journalists to go for, like a pack of bull mastiffs attacking - well, a bull. Will they do it?

Don't hold your breath.