Kettle and Charge is the new Shock and Awe!
This is what happens when the government considers our children to be “the enemy within”. It seems the government now considers that we and even our children are all a danger to the wealth and wealthy “our” leaders have evidently sworn to serve and protect in preference to us
For anyone who has never been ‘kettled’ it is when the police at a protest suddenly close ranks and refuse to let anyone leave. You suddenly find you are held against your wishes. The police will not explain why, and they won’t allow any exceptions. You suddenly have no control over what is happening, and no discussion is permitted. A decision made by someone you have never seen now exerts complete and total control over your life.
We are all in that position now.
So vast is the debt our government has burdened us with that this one fact will now determine most of the politics of the next decade. Other hopes and desires – the wish for better schools, a better health service, better care for the elderly – will wither in the shadow of the debt repayments. If we are forced to pay back from taxes all the vast sums that have been sucked out of public spending and given to the banks, the country will not recover for a generation.
The economic ‘plans’, forced on us without debate, are all based on the banks returning large parts of the money they have taken from us. This means, whether we like it or not, we all have to hope that the banks make profits as quickly as possible. We have all been ‘kettled’ into having to hope and work for the largest possible growth in world trade and finance. We have to hope that the rich get richer, and quickly. The lords of finance and their servants in politics decided this for us.
There never was any discussion or debate of possible alternatives when the financial crisis began. It was declared, and universally agreed (always a bad sign) that the problem was liquidity, not solvency. That meant the only answer ever proposed was to provide liquidity at all costs. Liquidity being our money to cover the massive losses they had incurred. This, we were told, wasn’t really a cost at all, but ‘an investment’. An investment which would pay back all the loaned, borrowed and printed money long before the debts came due through reinflated levels of growth and asset value.
That was, and is, their only plan. And so absolute is the certainty in the minds of all concerned that none of them can even conceive of looking beyond the closed circle of that logic. No counter-argument is allowed or taken seriously. No warning signs are read as such.
Their so-called ‘free market’ has seized control and locked us in to a course of action in which democratic choice has been foreclosed. The growing realisation that this is what is happening will bring about increased anger. The smug reaction to anger is to label it ‘mindless’. The mindless anger of the ignorant who don’t understand the necessary steps being taken by those who know better. That is the boiled down assumption of all our leaders, all the economic experts and most economic journalists.
The truth is quite different. People like me are angry because exactly the same people who, in 2008, assumed they knew how to run the global economy still assume they, and only they, know what must be done now. And their prescription is as simple as it is arrogant: put it back they way it was.
We are told that the debts accrued by those in charge must be paid by us rather than honoured by them. No debate.
We are told we must get lending back to the old levels. No debate.
We are told we must get the consumer consuming again rather than saving. No debate.
We are told that we must agree and complete the Doha round of global free trade liberalization. No debate.
To be robbed is one thing: to be condescended to by the people who robbed you is another altogether.
That is why many people like me are angry. We are angry because the financial elite are shoving their ideology down our throats. We are angry because we might have wanted to have a say. We are angry because we had different ideas that were never even considered.
Here we are at the point in history when many of us are looking at the imminent threats of climate change and oil scarcity, clearly seeing the dangers of unbridled growth, and yet at this point democratic choice has been kettled. No debate.
And that is why this crisis is no longer just about lack of confidence in the markets: it is now about the legitimacy of our governments. The entire political class has been captured by the same ideology. They all, to one extent or another, believe ‘the market’ is going to save us. No other solutions have even been allowed into the debate.
We shouldn’t waste our time arguing over which party is most to blame. All the parties and the economists and the City boys all agreed, and they still do. In their minds the banks had to be bailed out and their losses made ours. We were taken to war without discussion and on false pretences; the same has happened with this financial crisis. So enough of who is to blame: they all were and are.
They all believe in a system that says we must create demand and then feed it with debt. This necessarily involves increasing demand by the creation of yet more debt. It always crashes and always will. That is how their system works. If we allow it to be the solution, it will create another crash and another. Each time the rich will reap profits on the way up and rape the public purse on the way down. It’s win, win for them and lose, lose for us. Plus ça change!
What makes me angry is that is how they treat violent football supporters.
What makes me sad is that the evolution of the species requires the young to gain as much knowledge as possible.
What made me feel proud was the self policing by the young girl in the afternoon, that's my type of thought process.
I would love to see a video of a protest where everybody does nothing and the only actions are by the 'kettlers'. There would be no grey area then, the brutality would be unquestionable.
There would be no clip the news can show to blur the issue, only clips of questionable ethics in this Bullshi, sorry, Big Society.
golem
i'm hearing a rumor that russia and china have agreed to drop the doller as their bi-lateral trade currency i don't know what they will use instead, in fact it sounds a little odd
i don't know how safe this rumor is
do you have any info on this
Richard,
I haven't heard anything but then again I haven't been looking. Very interesting if they are going ahead so soon.
Brilliantly put. I'm sick of the system being blindly obeyed and not questioned when many of its rules seem so arbitrary.
I was exploring ideas outside of neoliberal economics and found something you may also be interested in; the Sustainable Development Commission's 'Prosperity Without Growth' paper which can be downloaded from this page: http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/redefining-prosperity.html
Also Lord Adair Turner did some lectures at the LSE this year about similar issues where he called into question the continuing relevancy of growth in our economy, you can download the podcasts somewhere on here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm
Hope you find them useful.
I agree with you, every word.
Nevertheless, nobody forced the governments to take on so much debt – many fiscal conservatives warned against borrowing so much and they were routinely derided by neo-liberals as heartless.
I note that government liabilities dwarf the banking bailouts. So who really is the bad guy? If your friend goes to a loan shark to borrow money to gamble you have a go at him, not the loan shark – he's just doing "what he does".
The general tax-take and borrowing has been increasing year by year as the government swelled, making endless promises they could not meet. All since the end of WW1. Why?
Hi Wolfie
The government debt is large, but surely not as large as the liabilities of the banks. Clearly, we'll need to re-learn to live within our means, but just how large are the liabilities of the banks? Nobody really knows.
I believe the CDS market is worth about 30 trillion dollars, but how much of this is truly of AAA status.
Your background is in investment banking, so I suspect you have a better idea than most.
wolfie
borrowing from a loan shark is stupid but not illegal
being a loanshark is quite clever but very illegal
I completely agree with the view that the main political parties are in thrall to the interests and ideology that produced the crisis. As David Harvey has pointed out, we need a 'Party of Indignation' – an anti-capitalist movement prepared to "fight and defeat the Party of Wall Street and its acolytes and apologists everywhere."
Great comment. This is an excellent blog – the best on what is going on that is out there.
I am livid today after reading in the local paper that our childrens hospital – that provides vital care for critically ill children for miles around – Yorks, Lincs, Notts etc – may be hit by massive cuts to its budget by the Con Dems. So I feel your rage!
Wolfie – first of all private sector debt dwarfs public sector debt. I think something like six or seven times in the UK. This was a private debt crisis and it precipitated the crash. It's the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss.
Re government debt – well the neo-liberal mantra of low taxation has probably not helped too much either. If you remember I think even under Maggie for a fair few years the top rate of tax was about 65% and CGT was at 40%.
But we need to spend taxes on PUBLIC services – 22p of every tax pound goes on public sector wages – 38p on the private sector! We are wasting the taxation of the UK's people on propping up a failing private sector – some of which is not even UK based.
In fact in my view this is the starkest indicator that capitalism is in terminal decline. And once we hit peak oil prices (we probably already have) then it really will hit the fan.
Princesschipchops,
I have been hoping you would join us. Welcome. I look forward to your comments.
It seems that now the economics is moving from the movement of huge sums of money in the background to the political and the enforcement on the streets. It is to be expected. I saw the police during the Miners strike and the worst of all the forces were the Met. At the G20 it was only the existence of cameras in the crowds that revealed the scale of the police viciousness and I witnesses what happened to the Climate Camp at night which was quite extraordinary ..like scenes from Robo Cop. Its going to get ugly. The top brass at the Met are itching for trouble.
Somehow the mainstream media are absent at night at this protest despite blanket coverage all day. I noticed that there was no guard around the poppy wreathes laid at the Cenotaph which was within an area that was kettled for a long period. Were they hoping that these would get trampled so they could publish the pictures of desecration? It didnt happen. The "rioters" respected these symbols of other generations bloody sacrifices.
Instead a police van rather mysteriously left abandoned amid the crowd was duly roughed up. But I have no doubt the Info wars are going to be fought without quarter or much regard for truth. The interesting thing is that the small digital camera and blogs like this will be like the pens of the 1787 revolutionaries.
Thanks very much Golem!
RichGB – The government debt is large, but surely not as large as the liabilities of the banks. I believe the CDS market is worth about 30 trillion dollars, but how much of this is truly of AAA status.
The common misconception about at the CD market at the moment is that liabilities are cumulative. In theory the entire derivative market should net off to zero – if only Politicians could grasp this!
Richard in norway – it was just an analogy however it was politicians who removed legislation put in place during the great depression to limit the lending powers of the banks (which I have always been greatly opposed to).
Princesschipchops – private sector borrowing has ballooned because government tinkered with capital requirements and interest rates, thus inflating a classic bubble. The private sector generates income with which it can repay this whereas the government makes no money at all, it can only take it from you and me!
The problem is not so much that tax has been too low but government has become too large and too wasteful with too much of a hunger for interfering with the productive economy, in spite of having little understanding of economics. You seem to confuse banal incompetence with systematic failure. As you say, too much of the tax take is wasted on non-essential (administrative) services and private sector bodies who are merely parasitical.