Mick Moran, Professor of Government (uh-oh!) at the University of Manchester, in the Staggers (as quoted by Norman Geras):
“… here at CRESC [Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change], where we have been tracking the financial crisis since 2007, we have been arguing for some time that there are fundamental defects in our financial system”
Gosh, really? Since 2007? That long, eh? Some of us here at the Uncentre for Real Life, such as Christopher Fildes, Jeff Randall, and Peter Schiff (not to mention CCIZ’s own Paul Marks), have been “tracking” this crisis since 2001 or before. But then, of course, until 2007 “nobody saw it coming”, did they? I’m reminded of the Marxist idea of truth: it’s not what is factually correct, but what’s politically useful; what advances the agenda. These guys accurately warned of what was about to happen, and why, but that wasn’t helpful to the political class at the time, when boom-and-bust had been abolished. That was the Brownian “truth”; the doomsayers were lying about the impending disaster. Now that disaster can no longer be denied, the “why” is still unhelpful to the cause of Big Politics, so it will be people like Moran, who talk of “the illusion that a casino is the best way to organise the financial system for a modern economy” and claim that the City has nothing to do with “the real economy” who will be listened to, because their prescriptions of (even) greater political control are more “useful”.
But there’s a funny thing about that casino cliché: I’ve never heard of a casino telling someone who loses money he doesn’t have - after attempting to rig the game - not to mind, handing him a wad of cash, then urging him to get back to the tables tout de suite before anyone notices. If only our financial system was modelled on the robust attitude to profit and loss displayed by the gambling industry, we might be a sight better off.
Mick Moran will not refute works such as Thomas Woods’ “Meltdown”.
He will not even read them.
Statism is a closed circuit.
We hear and see their stuff all the time (whenever we listen to the radio or look at television or a newspaper - and hear about the “need” for yet more bailouts and yet more regulations), but they can (and do) shut themselves off from dissent.
I have been going on about how lending should be from REAL SAVINGS not credit-money expansion, since I was at school.
Yes - as I faught off the saber toothed tigers to get to the school cave I was thinking about money and banking.
And lots of other people did the same.
Yes we “League of Mad Fellows” have a lot of members (we are running out of tinfoil for our hats).
And the effects of all our efforts over DECADES?
None at all.
Right as I am typing this…..
Some interest rates are now zero (European Central Bank deposit rate) and may even “go negative” - and both the ECB and the Bank of England are creating money (from NOTHING) and handing it out to the politically connected.
The only sensible action I have seen recently is that trader in the United States - who killed himself at his trial.
I am told he ordered the old “bitter almonds taste” over the internet.
I think I may do the same.