The Prime Minister lied to us again today. After claiming during the general election that there would be no large re-organisation of the NHS, he announced one today. Claiming that this did not mean privatisation, he announced that the NHS will be run by GPs, who are, ofcourse, private enterprises.
Ofcourse, GPs have no experience of running billion pound enterprises, so inevitably they will hire medical management companies to run their businesses. I predict that within three years, the NHS will effectively be managed by a handful of foreign controlled "healthcare partners" and privatisation will be a "fait accompli".
Another example of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats saying one thing to get elected and doing the exact opposite when in power.
Monday, 17 January 2011
Sunday, 16 January 2011
The Banking Con
The bankers who are urging us to "move on" from the bankers' bonus issue are right. It is not the bonuses we should be focusing on, but the artificial profits these bonuses are based upon. We all know that the majority of financial transactions in the City have nothing to do with financing trades in goods and services, but are pure speculation, or gambling if you prefer.
But it is gambling with loaded dice. Through the use of interest rate swaps and other derivatives, massive bank to bank financial transactions can be manipulated by a small banking elite. Bank profits are boosted by massively increasing the cost of banking overall just by the sheer number of transactions and the shepherding of the resulting profit into the investment banking arms of these banks. The winners are the international banking elite who "justify" their bonuses on the back of these manufactured trades. The losers are the banks customers, including investors, who get higher costs and lower returns than they otherwise would. The fact that investors do not complain about these lower returns shows just how profitable banking can be. Eventually these manufactured trades get so complex and the artificial profits so high that the whole system collapses, but hey, by this time these banks are "too big to fail" and gullible governments step in to bail them out.
Having worked at a firm of money brokers, I have seen just how enormous this banking con has become. Governments need to work together to call the bankers bluff by introducing a punitive Tobin tax on speculative transactions, as well as outlawing artificially created trades which benefit no one except the bankers themselves.
But it is gambling with loaded dice. Through the use of interest rate swaps and other derivatives, massive bank to bank financial transactions can be manipulated by a small banking elite. Bank profits are boosted by massively increasing the cost of banking overall just by the sheer number of transactions and the shepherding of the resulting profit into the investment banking arms of these banks. The winners are the international banking elite who "justify" their bonuses on the back of these manufactured trades. The losers are the banks customers, including investors, who get higher costs and lower returns than they otherwise would. The fact that investors do not complain about these lower returns shows just how profitable banking can be. Eventually these manufactured trades get so complex and the artificial profits so high that the whole system collapses, but hey, by this time these banks are "too big to fail" and gullible governments step in to bail them out.
Having worked at a firm of money brokers, I have seen just how enormous this banking con has become. Governments need to work together to call the bankers bluff by introducing a punitive Tobin tax on speculative transactions, as well as outlawing artificially created trades which benefit no one except the bankers themselves.
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