Thieves in the Temple

I know nothing about banking, stocks and shares, credit default swaps or any of the other financial dealings which take place in the ‘free market’.  What I do know, is that bankers, investment brokers, traders or any of the other fancy names they give themselves, have contributed not one new hospital bed, care home, school, university or anything of benefit to you, me, or the rest of society.  The only thing they have achieved is bringing misery to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary people who just want a decent life for themselves and thier families……

The EU ‘bailout’ fund is an astonishing 13 digit number.  That’s over one hundred  thousand million Euros.  And where is all this money coming from?  It is coming from me and you.  And for what?  To support an unsustainable, capitalist casino open only to the elite.  There isn’t anything upon which they will not gamble in the pursuit of profit.  Even the food that we eat is subject to thier dealings.  The only people who benefit from the international casino are same few people who weild the power.

It infuriates me every time I listen to the news to hear that some huge multinational corperation is cutting jobs.  Not because they’ve made a loss but because their profits are down.  In every way financial institutions are responsible not only for the misery they cause to the developed world but, for the deaths of thousands of the worlds impovershed populations, who don’t even have clean water to drink, let alone enough food to eat or access to health care.

It simply has to stop.  How?  I don’t know.  Either, we go about it in a dignified manner, accept defeat and draw a line under the old system, re-nationalise public services and start from zero, or sooner or later the populations of the world will start to fight back and there are a lot more of us than there are of them.  Western democracy is no better than the dictatorships of Iran, Syria, North Korea or any of the other ‘axis of evil’, it is just framed in a different context.

Certain industries should be run for the benefit of all and not for profit.  This was the case until not so long ago.  Electricity, gas, water, hospitals, public transport; all used to belong to the public, were built using the public’s money and run soley for the public.  The Thatcher government changed all of that.  Remember, “If you see Sid, tell him”?  Tell him what, that we’re selling what belongs to the nation to the highest bidder so they ring out as much profit as possible?  This was sold to general public as great opertunity to introduce competition under the assumption that the privatisation of our nationalised industries and the competition it would bring to the market would mean lower prices for everyone.  The problem with this ideology is that, by it’s very nature a competition will ultimately have a winner.  The basis upon which the winner in this competition is judged is profit.  As the competition progresses, one condender will gradually consume the next as thier profits increase. Unlike any ordinary competition, which requires a contender who is faster, stronger or has a better technique, any contender in the financial competition requires more money to enter the game.  It is unlikely that such a contender would remain as the winners, by the very definition of the rules of the game, will have consumed the competition already.   The eventual outcome, as has been aptly demonstrated by the energy companies, is that the ‘field’ is reduced to so few competitors that the ones which remain end up with a monopoly.  As these companies sole objective is to make a profit for its shareholders, there is no incentive for them to supply their product at the lowest possible price to benefit the consumer.  This holds true for almost all business……

Over the last 50 years our country, the countries of the developed world and those of the developing world have become more and more corrupt in the pursuit of money.  This has benefitted probably 5% of the worlds population.  25% probably just about get by only because they have access to financial services but, the truth is that 70% of the wotlds population live in abject poverty……

It is a house of cards and sooner or later it will all come tumbling down……