Perhaps the underlying problem is the socialist policy of spending in non productive jobs. Whether the money is raised by taxes, external deficit/borrowing, internal borrowing or speculative finance may be less important than the economic waste of socialism. Reality rules, eventually...always. Will this now be the inevitable end of socialism or will short memories of gullible fools subject future generations to more? The severity of our problems was only worsened by the coincidence of egotistical Blair and the driven narcissistic Brown, who even now cannot see anything but good in himself.

Posted by TomNightingale at 3:58pm on March 23, 2009

Little more than the self serving rubbish I've come to expect from a unreconstituted marxist - blame the bankers for Blair and Brown's spending binges. TomNightingale above has hit the nail on the head with his point that without the massive and by and large ineffective, inefficient and potentially destructive long term public sector increases we have had to endure over the last decade there would be no pressure nor the need to be so lax in their actions when it came to banking regulation. I wish to add another dimension; in reality this problem could have been contained within the failed banks themselves had the market been truly free - within a free market system businesses can and should die to be eaten by more successful businesses; that is the essence of the free market - jobs would have been lost and reformed by more successful enterprises. By this turn of logic you need very little regulation; the threat of destruction to your business keeps you from growing too fast or adopting a risky business model to too great an extent. Lets add a further dimension to this; the Bank of England, has lowered interest rates to the point where risky lending to individuals with less ability to pay back the moneys they borrow was prevalent. A result was that the institutions that went into this wholesale were getting record profits year in year out for the past decade and less hotheaded banks and financial instutions shareholders cried foul of the apparent "success" of their competitors, coercing them into more risky fund vehicles - the result; it dragged more secure banks into this mess. So, what HAS happened now is that Brown, seeing one of the major sources of not only public sector revenue but also of private sector jobs going down the tubes, has panicked; he is now scrambling around trying to fill the gap and prop up the failing banks because he knows that without there continued lending and expansion the individuals who benefitted from their proliferation- the banking execs, the public sector navel-gazers and the great unwashed who bought into all that unsecured lending - will now have to face a HUGE haircut; not even a rabid Keynesian in all their swivel-eyed lunacy could ever imagine the public sector taking up more than 25% of GDP, not the OBSCENE 40%+ it is currently (and rising!). Things will very quickly go south for Gordo if (nay, when) the money dries up and he realises there is only so much you can choke the productive part of the economy before it dies off. He is currently trying tax by stealth but all that will achieve is future penury; it feels good at the moment and we are enjoying better rates of exchange against the Euro and the Dollar but it will not last - long term our currency will tank, the blame resting squarely on NuLabours shoulders ands its inability to understand that socialist strategy doesn't work and only serves to corrupt that which raises us all from the gutter - the free market.

Posted by Thom at 1:23pm on April 9, 2009

Why are the two posters above banging on about socialism? Since Blair and Brown turned the Labour Party into NewLabour a Thatcherite party, socialism has been a dirty word, and everything they have done since could have been done by the Tories, we even have a repeat of Tory sleaze. Unreconstructed capitalists really can't see the wood for the trees [which they cut down for quick profit anyway]. Brown sold off our gold reserves when they were at the lowest point, embraced the bankers who he clearly believed actually created wealth out of nothing, and he has been taking from the poor and handing it to the rich ever since. Socialism isn't part of the problem boys, it's unsustainable capitalism and the greed which goes with it that's the problem, and these two posters are clearly a part of that; they probably work in the city. Just wave some banknotes around at anti-capitalism protesters and stop trying to blame the situation on socialism, which this country hasn't seen since the early post-war years. Thom, I think you need to take a deep breath and calm down, Brown is YOUR man, and about as far from socialism as one can get. That's been the huge problem for the Tories, NewLabour took over the Tory agenda, which is why they have been floundering around trying to find something original that wasn't already packaged by the NewThatcherites.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 10:59am on April 28, 2009