Hooray! Red Ken thinks the unthinkable, but evidently prudent, on behalf of

[Joe Chi Minh]

his foot-dragging, historically hostile adversaries of NuLab and New Tory parties: to lose no time in nationalising the banks - those unable to raise private capital.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/11/marketturmoil-banking

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Apparently, some in the Treasury are thinking it too:

Financial crisis: Nationalisation fears as ministers prepare to control banks

The Treasury is prepared to take controlling stakes in Britain's biggest banks and to put government representatives on their boards to halt the financial crisis, it was disclosed.

The Government will do "anything it takes" to prevent the financial system collapsing, including taking more than 50 per cent stakes in banks, sources said.

The radical proposals go significantly further than Gordon Brown's original bail-out unveiled last week. It will spark suspicions that the Prime Minister may have to take more drastic action, even going so far as to nationalise the entire banking system.
...
When Mr Brown unveiled his £50 billion plan to use taxpayers' cash to buy stakes in major banks, the original intention was for these to be relatively small. However, the plunge in banking shares means the Government is prepared to take majority stakes.

Experts suspect that it may have to take a majority stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, while it will also have major holdings in HBOS, Lloyds TSB and Barclays under the plan.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3180207/Financial-crisis-Nationalisation-fears-as-ministers-prepare-to-control-banks.html

Just 'sources', so I can only quote the Telegraph on this; and I suppose we take it with a pinch of salt ('fears' and 'suspicions' make it clear the Telegraph doesn't like it).

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. Oh, no, I think the prospect is real enough; though I hope they will be taken over, lock-stock and

barrel. I also find it quite plausible that the utilities and trains will be taken over again, as has been mooted. Why not the buses, too?

The new policy needs to be not that profit is god, the only god, and an insatiable one at that, but rather caring for the basic needs of the economically poorest in our societies must always, always be our governments' over-riding, "number one" priority; without exception. After that, on a sliding scale, upwards, not downwards.

Up to now, we have been held hostage to the CEO's, directors and shareholders - what Will Hutton, in his fascinatingly informative book, The State We're In, described as the "rentier" economy. Of course, the shareholders, in their turn have been held hostages to the ordinances of the CEO's, who, one way or another, assign to each other however much they fancy.

In an article on the TIMESONLINE dated June 1, 2008, in an interview of Nassim Taleb by Brian Appleyard, the latter writes:

"He points out, chillingly, that banks make money from two sources. They take interest on our current accounts and charge us for services. This is easy, safe money. But they also take risks, big risks, with the whole panoply of loans, mortgages, derivatives and any other weird scam they can dream up. 'Banks have never made a penny out of this, not a penny. They do well for a while and then lose it all in a big crash.'"

In view of this, unambiguously, the way forward seems to be a return to boring old, traditional banking (though in a spirit of thoughtful, public service, like the German banks, as described by Will Hutton), and above all, a wholesale reversion to basing the economy on manufacturing industry.

For all the other benefits accruing from the synergies created by an approving Creator (not a Hidden Hand in the form of a brutal psychopathic Market, yet whose only-begotten son, Profit, was held by the neo-liberals to be a curiously introspecive, sensitive and above all, FRAGILE, hot-house flower) the kind of measures such as those taken by European governments pursuant to the Breton Woods II will presumably need to be taken.

One, thanks to MacArthur, which was extraordinarily successful in Japan, was the linkage of the CEO's aggregate compensation to a low multiple of the lowest paid worker; extraordinarily low, in comparison with the vile plunder of our "Anglo-Saxon economy" CEO's.

Oddly enough, there are a whole host of lesser-seeming outrages perpetrated on us by corporatism which will, I hope also be remedied. Such as the abolition of premium telephone numbers by companies - even for enquiring or complaining! A return of company switch-board telephonists, instead of disembodied voices offering us multiple choices from call-centres from here to outer Mongolia. The TV companies should be prohibited from straining out certain ranges of notes in advertisement sound tracks so that thye blast our ear-drums; and junk mail knocked on the head.

Your country is large enough to be an economic bloc in is own right, and you still have Canada and South America you could be trading with as fellow human-beings, instead of predator and prey.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. My country is your country, just for reference

(well, close enough - I'm in England, not Scotland)

Yes, the prospect does look real now - the BBC is reporting it too. They don't seem to have specified how much would in be normal shares, with voting rights, and a risk and potential benefit for the taxpayers, and how much in preferential shares. It seems to me that we're taking on the risk whatever happens, by saying we won't let them go bankrupt, so we may as well have control and the possible benefit.

As far as utilities and transport goes, yes, I'd like them renationalised - more so than banks, because they're natural monopolies. In theory, I'd be OK with banks being privately owned, if they were properly regulated, and, as you say, in the 'boring' business of providing banking services, and making simple loans for plain mortgages and business development. I note that the Co-operative Bank isn't said to be in any difficulty - talking about merging with the Britannia Building Society, but it doesn't seem to be because either has big problems.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. How very interesting about the Co-operative Bank, Muriel. Perhaps, on her demise,

we shall see a state-funeral for her in a full-blown, Old Labour State. And more statues of her adorning Parliament.

It's odd, isn't it, that she and her crooked, loony acolytes and puppet-masters liked to cast her as a Churchillian figure; when her mania for deregulation and capitalism at its blindest and bloodiest look to have brought about a planet-wide economic collapse; while Churchill did a lot to save it.

On the other hand, at a hellish price, it could be argued that Hitler, the half-wit, and his crooked, monied supporters throughout the Western world, Vietnam village"-style, perversely destroyed Germany, along with much of Europe and tens of millions of its citizens ..... "in order to save it". After being reduced to rubble, new industrial plant provided a great platform for Germany's future economic growth, given the other gifts of the German people; gifts alas not shared by us in the UK.

Because of the historically predatory, imperial, parasitic nature of the "ethos" of our rulers in Britain, since the Normal conquest, we have actually been in industrial decline, since the middle of the 19th century. Despite the fact that we initiated and trail-blazed, the industrial revolution. Our leaders have historically scorned engineering and trade, in favour of imperialism abroad and the liberal professions at home (after the military): the reason why we admire the Germans' engineering skills, instead of matching or leading them. Whittle, after all, well... I'm not sure he was even knighted; though I'm sure he wasn't enobled. Yet he changed the modern world so significantly. And how disgusting is it that the Nazis had a fast, jet-fighter before we did? He wasn't "one of us," seemingly.

You might think that I have it in for our toffs in the UK, but it isn't the case at all, actually. The kind of "officers and other ranks" caste-system in the army didn't chafe me at all; and with what little contact we had with them, I found them very nice people. I wouldn't change the system at all, myself, though I'm not sure that up, to now, it's been benficial for the country in civil society. On the other hand, that may change now, because they seem to be one of the last bastions of Christianity and its values, and I'm hoping that, with an attitude to money and status a lot more in tune with the Gospels, they may return to lead the country. Acceptable representatives of theirs sure don't exist in any of the parties today, though. The sanest seems to be Alex Salmon of the Scottiss Nationalists. But I think you're a Brit, so, whether you agree or not, you'll know some of it as plain fact.

[Blue_Tires]

5. good read

ttt