I have long argued that when it comes to economics and getting us out of recession, leaving it to the very people who got us into the mess is madness.
If i had a spot on a BBC political show i would make this very point and argue that if you are going to hand out £75 billion to anyone, it should be the people of the country and not the banks but as i still haven't been invited onto BBC Question Time, i rely on 80's musicians to do it on my behalf so a big thank you to Billy Bragg for making my point for me.
My notion has always been that if you handed out the money to British citizens, £75 billion is approximately £1250 each, then they would spend it in the local community which would boost the local economy, stop shops closing, create jobs and keep people in work.
Instead, the £75 billion goes to banks with the idea that they will then lend it to small businesses and dole it out in loans but what happens, as happened when we gave them £200 billion in 2009, is they who keep it on their balance sheets and use it to pay bonuses.
It doesn't trickle down and the only people better off are the bankers who get yet another massive cash injection, a bail out in any other language, and the little guy sees no benefit from the extra billions injected into the economy.
It really isn't hard to think that the world we live in and the economical system that dictates our daily lives seems to be rotten to the core and run by people who don't have a clue what they are doing.
After £200 billion of our money and crippling austerity measures that we are continually told over and over again are needed, the Bank of England is warning that we may still be heading towards the worst recession this country has ever seen.
To quote another singer 'Send in the clowns, don't bother, they're here'. Yep they are and they are running the country. Thanks for trying anyway Billy.
3 comments:
lucy,
the banks took undefendable risks and then the governments bailed them out. but, the masses did not, and do not manage their money properly. period.
i live in a typical middle income town and my friends and neighbors do not have any personal restraint. these good people, and they are good people, have multiple tv's, multiple steroes, multiple cars, many pairs of shoes they never wear, many pairs of clothing they never wear, multiple sets of dishes, there are no more clothes lines, the have the latest mobile devices, multiple computers, they spend more eating out in a week than groceries would cost in a month, they buy huge pick up trucks that get cost $35,000 and get 15 miles per gallon when gas is $3.50 per gallon. i could rant about poor use of money for pages.
giving the money to these people will not fix out problems. they will spend it poorly.
giving banks the money is not emough. they must be made to minimize risk via regulation. they should be allowed a fair profit 5% to 7%.
the banks were irresponsible. so are typical citizens.
q
I agree that many people live outside of their means q, i know many who live in their overdraft and i do worry about others who have an almightly fall coming there way soon but that is how the Capitalist system works. It wants to keep people in debt, it is made crazily easy to get credit and we are bombarded with adverts for how to get credit, mostly aimed at the low paid and those with the least means to repay it. You could argue that the people should not be so weak and ignore the adverts but i would argue it is a kind of entrapment. If it wasn't made so easy, many would not be so in debt. That said, i do understand your side of the coin where if people where not so gullible, it wouldn't be offered.
Totally agree with Q here. Our respective governments sold the bailout to us as being a way to protect the Ordinary Joe's savings, but the fact that it was (highly predictably) given to them with no strings attached makes their irresponsible behaviour more likely in the future, not less. Call in crony capitalism, or socialism for the rich, or whatever. It was basically a con, and blatant theft from the poor to the rich.
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