This is both street smart and intgllieent.

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate the encouragement. By the way, I’m not posting in a fit of despair, although I realize my post could be taken as such. Yes, I have given up on this corrupt system we live under being righted (I don’t think that would be a good idea even if we could do it, honestly) but I’ve not given up on individuals and families and communities living through the mess and doing the right thing in their own small ways.

The reason I say we *will* let the banksters/financial elites and their pet politicians back into our economy to do their tricks again is that is the historical record thus far. As you well know (and have said) this is a cyclical thing. After a major crash, it takes a few decades or so to recover some level of excess productivity – at least, enough to attract the predators back into the flock with the prospect of another harvest. But because the people in charge at that time won’t have actually lived through the worst of what the predators did the last time they were romping around in sheep’s clothing, they will be susceptible to their blandishments and all the oh-so-tempting offers of “easy money.” And so the cycle will begin once more.

To change this, we’d have to change human nature. Humans do not do well with long term thinking or with long term consequences. This is how we are wired as a species. And that’s why this is the umpteenth time we’ve let bankers, financial elites and their pet politicians lead us down this un-merry path. I wish it could be the last time this happens, but we’d need to find some way to bottle up all the pain we’re about to go through into some kind of time capsule so that future generations will be able to actually experience it and believe us when we say that this was a *really bad* way to run things! Otherwise we’ll all be the old fogies that just don’t understand that they are so very much smarter than we were back then, and so this kind of disaster can’t happen (yet) again…

So that’s my outlook on this whole mess. But, I do get some small satisfaction in withdrawing my support from this corrupt system, one little bit at a time. 😉 I think the less you are dependent upon the current system when it goes under, the better you are likely to do with surviving to see the other side of it. Of course, you also will need a hefty portion of plain old good luck, because there is so much that is not under your own control.

Really enjoying your book, btw. It’s already helped me to connect a few more dots. Thank you.

Hello Cygnus,

We can stop them and a growing number of people are willing to try.

People always say it can never happen because people are too apathetic. And many are. But landslides aren’t caused by titanic forces pushing or by a majority vote by every clod involved.

Once a the hill side has become unstable (check), then sooner or later a few clods are dislodged (check) and they dislodge a few others (working on it) who dislodge yet others and before anyone knows it the rest of the clods find themselves on the move whether they voted for it or not.

Don’t give up.

Of course the System may teeter on for some time( and it has been surprising us here for ages now ), but the continuing suspension of disbelief is taking more and more energy to maintain …

I definitely wouldn't worry too much about producing a detailed 'plan'. The vast majority of the people know there is something wrong, somewhere, but this knowledge is on the rather superficial level of bankers' bonuses and spending cuts, and understanding goes no further than that.

Going back to 1931 ,the collapse of Credit-Anstalt Vienna started off the Great Depression. Those in 'position'(not 'power') hope that they can get away with the actually insolvent banks intact and some Recession — hitting the poorest mostly — and that the situation will return to 'normal'.

On France Inter this morning Frederic Lordon was explaining how the Stock Exchange had become more important than the Real Economy and real jobs for real people, with some ideas for rebalancing. At the moment Capital has instant liquidity but real business needs a vastly greater time-scale obviously. etc.

Now I really must go and do a little paid work !

PS Explanation on cost of bank bail-outs on half a side of A4 please 🙂

A great discussion. Le Monde Diplomatique is a wonderful paper. For many years it was all I read.

I agree with M. Lordon. Simply seizing the banks and making the bond holders take all the loss is both the opnly viable, legal, ethical and socially just way to exit this crisis.

Lordon argues we can wait until we get the next systemic crisis and then simply take the banks ovefr on teh grounds that they are non-functioning and therefore worthless. I would argue that all we need to do is re-insitute mark to market on a Friday morning. ANd by Friday mid-morning we seize every bank at THAT valuation. Which by that time would be systemically zero. We can force the crisis and re-open on Monday with clean capital, new owners of the ATM – Visa would play ball or die before Monday rolled around – and the Bond holders would all be bankrupt by the end of teh following week.

Obvioulsy I simplify. But I don't see any other solution that has any justice to it. All other solutions rob the poor for a generation or more for the sole and only benefit of the rich.

Where some of the bonds are owned by sovereigns we can re-structure those debts. But with a large haircut and a generous time scale.

Perhaps I should wrtite more about this? What do you think? I have hesitiated simply because none of us are in a position to do it and so it risks becoming a bit pie in the sky..

This is a great article and summarizes nicely what you have been saying now for more than two years.

Cheers!

Rob

If you had to write a "tract" for distribution on market day,or to be left in the local public library, how would you translate the £Trillion ( actually made or potentially to be made ..)to the Banks into everyday language ? Obviously no cheques were written for such amounts (!), so what are you and the ONS ( and we ) getting at ?

You yourself and we who read you here know what you mean, it means, but the essentials need to be reduced to, say, a side of A5 of inescapable simplicity ?

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I'm refering to this para —

So I watched and listened some more. A report from the UK's ONS (Office of National Statistics) said rather baldly that they calculated the UK public debt was 4.84 Trillion pounds rather than the govenment's official figure of a mere 903 billion. 4 trillion more in debt than we thought. Of this, the largest single debt was 1 to 1.5 Trillion pounds gone to bail out RBS and Lloyds Group. While Public Service and State Pensions were both more than a trillion in debt. Money gone to bail out the banks now not available to mend the pensions.

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It's an exercise we can all do …