07 October 2008

Towards mass nationalisation of the financial sector... welcome, Comrade Treasury.

Great news kids... we're all about to become bank financiers, courtesy of £50bn(? sum as yet unconfirmed) from the UK Government. Partial nationalisation, in other words. At least we're getting 'em pretty cheap... although it'd probably be a better deal for the taxpayer if we waited for them to get to the brink of insolvency and then picked them off one by one. That seems to be the Icelandic strategy at any rate.

The way they've performed under private ownership, it may well make sense to hang on to 'em in the public sector for a while. Or indeed permanently. Just don't let McKinseys and the other management consultants loose on them the way they've been allowed to run riot in the NHS.... aaarrrgh.

Well, we shall have to see whether this latest bail-out fares any better than the US bail-out, which . The rule book is being rewritten at the moment.... and by people who only vaguely speak the language. That is, HM Treasury, who spent the last ten years (and indeed decades before that) arguing for free-market economic policies. Yes folks, HMT is now leading the drive towards a socialist UK - parallelling our friends in the US, where Paulson and Bernanke are leading the revolution.

As I said a few weeks back, Jon Voight was almost right when he said that Obama would introduce socialism in the US - except that George W Bush got there before him.

Today's 1970s LP choice: "Crisis? What Crisis?" by Supertramp. Seemed appropriate somehow.

1 comment:

T.N.T. said...

Ha ha - Geoffrey Robinson on Newsnight has just said "we've implemented the 1983 Labour manifesto - Tony Benn must be very pleased."