I guess your list was partly tongue in cheek, but I think that gradually shifting tax off labour and onto land value would be a simpler way to achieve similar aims. We should aim to make employing people as cheap and as easy for a company as possible. The aim should be ti keep house prices roughly where they are now for a few decades by gradually increasing land taxes and shifting tax off labour. The banks will hate this, which is probably why it wont happen!

Rob

Comparisons with proper engineering stress tests are a bit misleading because the results of the tests change the system, (i.e. imagine the political consequences if lots of banks HAD failed the tests) although the Maginot Line is a fairer analogy. Similarly, the markets would've got uppity if they'd decided not to do the stress tests at all. This fudge looks like the best of a fairly bad bunch of options to me.
Stress tests are a good idea; the main problem is that they weren't implemented rigorously enough during the boom years. I'm not sure what changing the rules for them would achieve at this point.

Also, (and I accept this is nitpicking but it's a new fact I've just learnt so I want to show off…) : Ostrichs DON'T bury their heads in the sand according to this

Step-7 is not explained properly. It's intention is to bring property prices down, providing an avenue for people moving from highly priced to lower priced homes. The landlord would be forced to rent out the house to meet costs and make a tidy profit before it re-enters the market.
In reality, this will only work with new properties, but the building industry won't complain.

How on Earth do we move from a heavily leveraged population to one that can survive with Basic Income? The Financial Class would gobble it all up and then lobby for the Basic Income to be increased.
Clearly, as Great Grand Dad has been saying for years, we need to change our ways; but the Financial Class does not want this. Their survival depends on us being perpetually insolvent. Unless their power diminishes we will forever be trapped in Golem's Toxic Debt Wasteland.

Time for another deliciously naive, cunning plan methinks:
Step-1: Set up banks that are free of debt and are not allowed to partake in high-risk investment activities.
Step-2: Wait sufficient time for people to transfer their accounts to the new banks.
Step-3: Allow all banks to continue without bail-outs.
Step-4: Bring in Basic Income for people reaching 18 years old.
Step-5: Bring in Basic Income for people emerging from bankruptcy procedures.
Step-6: Replace state pensions with Basic Income.
Step-7: Buy-to-let houses can only be sold for half the current market value.
Step-8: Re-assess everybody's collective credit card limits. The credit limit should take in to account how many cards a person has. People with balances above their newly calculated credit limit should pay a lower interest rate on the excess.
Step-9: Eliminate all people who create annoyingly silly plans like this one.

Yes, yes, I'm going out the door now …

From the New York Times. Just so you will know what kind of opposition we're up against. The heavyweight professors of elite universities say you're wrong and they support the financial classes "scientifically proved" solution; that everybody else pays must their debt or else…

comment on IDS welfare reform editorial at Gdn

I wonder what IDS would say about this article ?

When I asked what the American Dream means to them, Mark looked despondent. “It’s not a dream,” he said. “I would hate to sound like one of those Tea Party people but I really do want my country back. I just don’t feel like that is going to ­happen.” His words reminded me of a famous quip by George Carlin, the late, great American comedian – “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

There is free registration to read a few articles at the FT …

Jobs just aren't going to fall from the sky in a magic re-run of all previous Recessions, so we need radical policies such as the Basic Income refered to by neilwilson just above. A New Deal for safeguarding the mass of people in a changing world. And yes, the quality of life could even be better !

So is IDS blindly tinkering with good intentions, or fully conscious of where we are going and just concerned with personally staying at the top of the pile ?

Seeya !