mmmhh… check, check and check.

Behold the diminishing marginal utility of debt inherent in Debt Based Fiat Money…

Telegraph article on Hartnett’s humiliation:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8823086/Dave-Hartnett-accused-of-lying-to-Parliament-over-Goldman-Sachs-tax-bill.html .

I read a comment a few days ago which noted that a member of the public had asked on BBC Question Time if £75bn of QE was going to be a good thing given that it was likely to end up on bank balance sheets. The poster obviously saw this as a positive development because bit by bit the receievd wisdom is starting to be challenged. S/he is right. I’m happy to say that I was in the Question Time audience last week and I am pleased to report that it wasn’t only that particular member of the public who was expressing distrust of the banks – there were many murmours of agreement in the audience and a few of us did our best to shout our views in the hope they would be picked up by the microphones. I thought Billy Bragg did very well in pointing out that the current paradigm is broken and that the latest QE was throwing good money after bad. Baroness Warzi then had the front to tell him he was spreading myths that this was ‘another bank bailout’! Check out her lovely levers explanation of government fiscal policy…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b015r14c/Question_Time_06_10_2011/

Elsewhere I managed to get the following letter published in the Independent and Metro newspapers:

“The amount of invective being heaped on European countries in debt is worrying. It is true that the euro project was flawed from the start but the root of the crisis lies in America. US banks created the debt time-bombs, the securities and derivatives sold across Europe.

In 2008, when banks began to implode under their own debts, we the public bailed them out. In the US, Britain and Europe, governments of every stripe had to borrow money to bail them out.

Now, owing to the recession, it is harder to service those borrowings and the duplicitous credit-rating agencies castigate our governments for doing what was demanded of them by the banks in 2008. (It should also be remembered that there are major legal moves being made against the banks claiming massive fraud in selling investments they knew to be worthless).

Blaming this country or that or castigating the EU is utterly wrong-headed and dangerous. This remains the crisis of fraudulent private banking debts being taken on to the public books.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-no-one-voted-for-the-nhs-to-be-privatised-2368561.html

I must say I would not have been able to write that only a few months ago and it was largely born out of a very neat summary written by Charles Wheeler on here last week. So many thanks to him and Golem.

Thus… we can and we must do our best to get our view into the media. Only today I heard UKIP MEP Nigel Farage telliing Russia Today that the Euro bailout for Greece will not go to Athens but to the French and German banks who lent them the money. Given that Golem has had comments from UKIP members on here I think he can pat himself on the back. And didn’t Michael Portillo tell Andrew Neil the same thing on last week’s Politics Show?

Even our dimwitted media can understand this – how long can they keep reporting the same story over and over without getting bored or asking questions themselves? Matthew Wright on the awful Wright Stuff programme was full of support this morning for the upcoming protest in the City of London. Sadly his ignorant viewers were not. Time to change that me thinks.

Having originally proposed a greater presence on Facebook I wonder if we might have a concerted letter writing campaign? Many of the posters on here write on the comments sections of the broadsheets – why not push the message to their actual pages?

When I write a letter I bcc it to the following:

Daily Telegraph: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk

Sunday Telegraph: stletters@telegraph.co.uk

The Times: letters@thetimes.co.uk

The Sunday Times: letters@sunday-times.co.uk
(for publication only; please include postal address and daytime telephone number)

The Independent and Independent on Sunday: letters@independent.co.uk

The Guardian: letters@guardian.co.uk

The Observer: letters@observer.co.uk

The Daily Mail: letters@dailymail.co.uk

The Mail on Sunday: letters@mailonsunday.co.uk

The Daily Express and The Sunday Express: expressletters@express.co.uk

The Mirror and The Sunday Mirror: mailbox@mirror.co.uk

I think Mike Hall, Charles Wheeler, Bill, Princesschipchops, Neil, the Dork of Cork and all the other fantastic commentators here could acheive a lot.

Any thoughts?

Telegraph: “Amazing scenes at PAC [Public Accounts Committee] : UK top taxman Dave Hartnett repeatedly accused of lying and misleading MPs on deal with goldman Sachs. “