Picture nicked from bristol247
I have a great sense of frustration at my inability to express my anger at what is going on in a rational and informed way. Perhaps I should have studied economics rather than physics.
I am sick of hearing that we have to do things because that’s what ‘the markets’ want. At no time do our great media institutions tell us who the markets are, who stands behind them, in whose interests they act, how they are held accountable.
We do know that if the markets lose ‘confidence’ share prices fall, economies stumble and people lose their livelihoods. The markets demand that government slash their spending and if they don’t they will drive up borrowing costs and drive out governments. In the last week the markets have deposed two elected leaders (not that I have much time for them) in Greece and Italy.
Apparently we are seeking to promote democracy around the world, people fight and die for it. We support the fall of dictators while allowing unknown, unseen people to rule our lives. No votes can remove them and revolutions are unable to remove them. There is no equivalent of the Arab Spring rising up to throw off their yoke.
The markets have presided over a massive shift of the distribution of wealth towards being increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small elite. I guess it wouldn’t take much digging to find out that many of those are also the people who control the working of ‘the markets’.
Some of ‘the markets’ were responsible for the way that debt was packaged and repackaged and traded until the economy became unsustainable. Having started to destroy themselves they are now seeking to consume our democracy and to thrust large numbers of people in poverty.
‘The markets’ are described in the media as if they are some benign, rational higher intelligence able to decide objectively what needs to happen to individual states and the world economy. They appear to be more like a group of 8 year olds playing football all chasing the ball with no real idea of a strategy.
reading back through this I am worried by my incoherence, perhaps I should get a tent.
I used to teach a bit of economics. Sometimes I used the analogy of the market as a gravitational field. Both market force and gravity can be understood as invisible consequences of deeper phenomena, independent of human will. Both are useful in some situations and lethal in others. We need both, but without proper understanding, safety rules, common sense, vigilance and constant technical innovation either can flatten us. People who want markets to let rip are dupes or liars, the sort of people who would sell tissue paper parachutes to sky divers. Markets need powerful counterweights and fearsome controls to keep them honest.
I’ve said it before, but the only law of market economics you need to remember is “whatever you can get away with”. I recommend Nicholas Shaxson’s book “Treasure Islands” as a route in to seeing how the whole corporate world has gone rotten through vigilance being neglected. Calling on the UK Parliament to do anything about it now is about as useful as asking Bristol City Council to get Bristol Rovers into the European Champions League next season.
Tough times.
Economics? Have you seen the Wizard of Oz?
I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more …
No time to watch Wizard of Oz, rushing out to see our emperors reportedly amazing new clothes
What you said made perfect sense.
I’ve been reading through That’s Not What I Meant by Deborah Tannen. Specifically, chapter 8. She describes the differences in male and female communication. Check out “complementary schismogenesis”. “Conventional wisdom” is framed formally which strips out things like impact and intuitive reasoning.
Analyse the language and subject matter of the Labour and Tory Ashley ward candidates on Twitter. They are personally and politically on different planets. Both seem incapable of listening or crossing divides. The habits learned in the school playground aren’t communicating? Very frustrating.
What to do…
I’ve thought of joining the camp but feel too crushed. The past few years have been *hard* and I’m working through all this trans BS as well… And I’m skint. Too many men at the camp. Feminazis… Outing myself. The weirdo big mouth with the glass bead bangles… Aagh.
Kill… me… now…
Or Bristol Rovers a new ground…or City even ??
Greed v Fear and the madness of crowds.
Good stuff Paul – hanx – slf
The truth is only known by guttersnipes
I see the markets as the aggregate of all of us with pensions, shares, cash ISAs, savings accounts and so on. Anyone who has money saved or invested with the expectation of growth. Fund managers look for opportunities which they believe have been undervalued by the rest of the market.
Hedge funds and other entities which short stocks, or drive government bond prices higher are essentially calling the bluff of companies and governments which they believe are BSing. If companies and governments didn’t BS (e.g. promising consumptive benefits – such as welfare, health care, etc – to their people today, with no extra taxation for today’s taxpayers), they wouldn’t have anything to trade against.
“Hedge funds and other entities which short stocks, or drive government bond prices higher are essentially calling the bluff of companies and governments ”
There is, of course, no human actor “calling the bluff” or anything else. Each isolated human within the structure is doing their best to make their way in the world, as they see it. The structure itself is dehumanised and amoral – and what us humans need are much stronger democratic (or, if necessary?) tyrannical powers to reconstruct the command and control mechanisms that waves of libertarian and greedy voices have dismantled over the decades since 1945. Global capitalism must be counterbalanced by a global power that minimises its destructive potential. Marx hoped this would be an inevitable outcome … but he was an optimist. Fingers crossed that Mathus isn’t the last economist standing.
What to do? I’ve got rid of my car, brought up my children to think, changed my bank to the co-op and I write bits on the internet. I reckon that’s my one seven billionth worth of humanity.
“There is, of course, no human actor “calling the bluff” or anything else. Each isolated human within the structure is doing their best to make their way in the world, as they see it. The structure itself is dehumanised and amoral”
I don’t believe it matters whether it’s humans or aggregate human systems which call the bluff; if poorly-run companies and governments didn’t BS and promise the impossible (i.e.. the best and most-expansive welfare state money can buy, but with no higher taxes), there would be no-one to call their bluff! PFI is a prime example of such behaviour; instead of making the case that the UK needed new schools and hospitals, and that it’d cost an extra x% in tax over the next n years, the previous government hid it all away off the balance sheet (and it’ll cost us more for the privilege of doing so!)
“Fingers crossed that Mathus isn’t the last economist standing.”
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/03/peak-stuff/ suggests that economic growth, as one who believes in the capacity of humans to continue to work smarter rather than harder expects, continues to provide an escape from Mathusian endpoints.
Malthusian, obviously!
I don’t why why people keep moaning about the banks and power companies and keep giving them money. My power is with Ecotricity and I bank with co-op and local credit union
“My power is with Ecotricity and I bank with co-op and local credit union”
The problem with Ecotricity and credit unions is that they’re uncompetitive.
The major energy companies had cheaper green tariffs the last time I looked. A personal issue is that there don’t appear to be any “renewable + nuclear” green energy tariffs.
Looking at Bristol’s two credit unions, the interest rates they charge on loans are higher than many equivalent rates from commercial banks, and the rates they pay to savers are lower (and not even keeping up with inflation). I would also be concerned about how robust they would be in the event of a relatively small number of defaults. In theory, no borrower from a credit union would ever be so dishonourable as to default, but…
Seems to me you are taking a rather short term view
I have a pension but have no control over how the money is invested
Do you really think we can make meaningful change through consumer choices?
These so-called ethical choices are mainly products for wealthy liberals with guilt complexes. If we all chose Ecotricity, it wouldn’t work. They don’t have enough ethical electricity do they?
Similarly, we could all go over to credit unions but all the big government and corporate money that keeps the international banking industry oiled would still keep them calling all the shots.
Consumer power is a myth. We have no power.
Its not consumer power its choosing not to give my money to certain organisations
“Its not consumer power its choosing not to give my money to certain organisations”
That surely is the definition of consumer power.
And anyway, how do you know that the “certain organisations” you do hand your money to are any better, ultimately, than the “certain organisations” you don’t choose to hand it to? They all start off cute and fluffy.
Some pension funds pass on shareholder voting rights to their clients, rather than merely holding investments passively.
An example of this is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalSTRS#Investments_and_corporate_governance (yes, in the bastion of capitalism that is the USA, even!) who use http://proxydemocracy.org/
Economics wont help us, it is not a dismal science but a set of tools to enable the powerful to justifiy an unjust distrtibution of rewards disproportionate to effort, creative endeavour and merit.
No, it is Sociology we should be studying, asking ourselves if Marx was right. We all have too many illusions about democracy and they are being smashed before our eyes.
We are witnessing the utter failure of European Social Democracy, it was naive to think the forces of Capitalism were going to tolerate it indefinitely.
Time for a radical rethink of our approach to finance and markets. There is no invisible hand, but powerful actors acting in their own interests. It is time for governments to save the people not the banks.
“Economics wont help us, it is not a dismal science but a set of tools to enable the powerful to justifiy an unjust distrtibution of rewards disproportionate to effort, creative endeavour and merit.”
If something is generally viewed as having merit (either by a large number of people willing to pay a small amount, or small number of people willing to pay a large amount), then it is rewarded commensurate with such merit. Regardless, in fact, of how much effort or creative endeavour it took to produce.
You may feel that’s unfair, but why should something that takes great amount of effort and/or creative endeavour, but isn’t at all useful to anyone be rewarded at all?
I don’t feel that professional football is interesting or valuable enough for me to justify paying for a Sky sub, or for tickets. Apparently, though, many millions of people continue to feel otherwise, and express that by paying the going rate to watch games, such that players and managers are very highly paid. Who am I to tell the fans that they must not pay as much as they do to watch games, or that clubs shouldn’t pay as much as they do to secure the best players in order to produce the most compelling matches?
Alex B
My point was about the power of Capital (those who have it) against the rest of us who are now having to underwrite through the state, the erroneous ways of the Capitalist, who have now become locked in a dependancy culture because the risks have been socialised, unlike the profits.
I am not against markets per se, but against the way capital markets are all powerful and lack accountability.
The Neo-Liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed miserably. We need to move to an economic system which creates the conditions for society to thrive, not the grossly distorted system which currently operates.
“My point was about the power of Capital (those who have it) against the rest of us who are now having to underwrite through the state, the erroneous ways of the Capitalist, who have now become locked in a dependancy culture because the risks have been socialised, unlike the profits.”
Personally, I’d have been happier if the institutions which made bad investments were small enough that they could have been allowed to go bust. Doing otherwise creates moral hazard and encourages future bad behaviour. However, as they were not “small enough to be allowed to fail”, it would have been a case of cutting off our nose to spite our face to allow them to fail as they deserved. I expect that I would support regulation that controlled the size of banks.
The thing is that we’re all responsible; very few of us argued against the activities of “the markets” (or, to give them another name, “shouty men in funny jackets”) when times were good and our house value kept on rising, and our wages kept on going up, not realising that it was all an illusion, funny money, debt-as-money, not *real* growth.
Now that the faeces has collided with the rotary aeration device, it’s too late. Governments must feed the growth monster, which has no concept of “enough”. The trouble is, we’re in “never being repaid, ever’ territory now. The graph looks like a nuclear reactor in meltdown.
Extract yourself from as much of the service economy as you can; grow your own food; re-skill in real, physical activities; connect with people around you: you will need those connections in the coming months and years.
surely those with great power bear the greatest responsibility
Yes, they ought to take responsibility but they won’t. No one will. Like Tim says, most of us weren’t complaining when the system looked like it was working for us, were we?
“[W]hen you ask why Greece is going bankrupt, ask yourself who gives Gross his money. Why does he have the power? It is only because greedy western investors have told their fund managers to rape and pillage on their behalf to fund an otherwise unaffordable retirement.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/12/pension-funds-global-recession
I’ve a feeling we’re going to all our poultry coming home to roost in a bewildering multitude of permutations over the coming decades, but that’s just the old Kasandra complex talking again.
If everyone foraged for nuts and berries, made fire by rubbing two cyclists together and knitted their own houses, the world would be a better, kinder place.
Do you think this is where we are headed?
So nobody took an interest in gender studies versus economics? Interesting… A few doses of complementary schismogenesis in here but people would know that if they’d bothered to look it up.
Speaking as the creator of “Think Different” (nobody has to believe that if they don’t want to) I’d already concluded it yesterdays news before the skinny rich guy died. This and the banking and political system is genderised, and Occupy and similar trends are a genderised response. Read Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. It’s all in there.
*sigh*
The boys would always give me blank looks and titter at school until they discovered something for themselves then they acted as if they’d thought of it and wouldn’t shut up about the thing.
*grits teeth*
“A few doses of complementary schismogenesis in here”
For sure I looked it up 2sp, having a bit of a fetish for such things, but me still not seeing the link to the markets of Paul’s OP. Perhaps being more explicit might elicit more response. Perhaps.
Some piquing discussion over at:
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/11/12/democracy-in-every-colour-as-long-as-its-black/
And, if you look at the first page of the latest PEye, some intriguing background on the grey men being brought in to run the show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Regling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Draghi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Papademos
I was throwing a tantrum. LOL.
Your links are symbolic of intellectualising emotion and impotent power which uncovers part of what I said earlier. You’ve got far closer to it than the boys did earlier. Sometimes people can think too much about these things and be too distant? This is part of the problem…
Andrew Lansely is getting tough on NHS bosses and the Tories are ditching a million public sector workers. Big butch men turning over heaven and earth to get me a pair of new b00bies? Goody. Andy Burnham is just overthinking and scaremongering…
*squeals and twirls hair*
This echo-nomonics is easy!
Interesting book out on this Mother of All Crises:
“The book’s political analysis is updated in the team’s most recent working paper Groundhog Day which addresses the issue of how all three main stream political parties in the UK welcomed the half hearted and inadequate Independent Banking Commission reform proposals for ring fencing around retail banking. The UK is stuck in a ‘Groundhog Day’ time loop where radical banking reform is unthinkable because our political elites have not broken with their financial backers and changed their pre 2008 principles about the priority of shareholder value and minimal public control of financial markets and banking structures, The working paper highlights a series of democratic disconnects because the radical technocratic critics of finance have not had much impact on the many critics of finance in civil society and the Labour opposition (so far) is an obstacle to mobilisation partly because its own roots in civil society are almost non-existent.”
http://www.cresc.ac.uk/news/news-from-cresc/researching-the-financial-crisis
What do any Labour Party members here think to that last assertion?
I agree with the comments on the banking commission. The Labour Party actually has a lot of people engaged in civil society but they tend to keep their heads down politically and not mention that they are Labour people (Iraq and other issues damaged the brand but even before that people in this country tend not to where their political allegiences in public).
So my comment about Labour (and other) politicians delivering a low return on investment is right?
Since all political careers end in failure that had to be true
Maybe if you started listening and stopped treating everything as a joke that would change?
Well I’ve got your book suggestion to read next when I’ve finished the one on Nudge theory
Observing the secrecy of Labour members in civil society from the outside, it appears that they are like Freemasons. While never admitting their affiliation to outsiders they always seem to pop up to support each other in sticky situations.
Party affiliation, it seems, is often stronger than the law, good practice, morals and good principles.
Perhaps if you were more wedded to ordinary people and their expectations than to each other you might be more popular and more trusted?
I share your view on this I am also concerned that the labour party has largely withdrawn from working class communities and has an almost exclusively middle class membership, leaves door open to far right, think I’ve blogged on this before. Joseph rowntree foundation published a report a few weeks ago highlighting this.
Hope you find it worthwhile but I have wondered if youth and stupidity gave it a glow it didn’t deserve.
Loosely wondering how I can monetize my experience. I know I have the right focus (partly because I’ve seen so much stuff directly ripped off or been ahead of the market) but have a problem getting in gear and doing all that teeth grating people pleasing.
The way things are going I’ll be lucky getting job waiting tables.
Listening to the audio book version now…
Bristol blogger sez what I’ve been saying for ages. Problem is Labour is arrogant and treats people like shit. Just look at the way Darren Lewis threw a fit and blocked me on versus my latest analysis. If there’s fuck all in it for me I can (and will) walk away with my (valuable) skillset and rot happily on the dole. This should worry Labour a lot more than it worries me and the fact it doesn’t says something.
“I am also concerned that the labour party has largely withdrawn from working class communities and has an almost exclusively middle class membership, leaves door open to far right …”
We should all be worried about this. It’s not just the Labour Party that’s out of touch though, it’s most of the Left, but raise the issue and you get either abused, ignored or dismissed.
So people in the Labour Party now feel so unpopular in the community that they have to operate ‘undercover’ … well well, what an admission.
As for the tribalism of party affiliation, my feeling is that that only applies to the ‘little people’; the PBI and cannon fodder. When it comes to the top brass, however, they privately recognise their common interest nowadays whatever colour the rosette of convenience they sail under.
Some of the reason that people don’t declare their political affiliation is that it is that involvement in politics is counter cultural – we are not supposed to talk about politics or religion hence the english have to fall back on the weather. Being embarrassed about talking about politics or mentioning an interest does make political discourse in this country immature.
“… we are not supposed to talk about politics or religion hence the english have to fall back on the weather. Being embarrassed about talking about politics or mentioning an interest does make political discourse in this country immature.”
Of course the discourse is immature, positively foetal. That doesn’t apply only to ideological topics but everything in this stuck country.
Let’s face it, we’re all happy enough to grunt and moan about politics and religion as long as it’s a matter of simply agreeing to hate whatever section of society we already happen to hate [insert term], but heaven forbid that there should be any sort of intelligent debate on the pros and cons of actual issues or principles – that would be too much like hard work and might involve listening to a different point of view, thinking, compromise … ugh!
Joyeux nouvelle année.
Buon Anno
Well we do have X factor, TV the opium of the masses
Can you imagine if we didn’t though? While the young men are all indoors playing on their computer thingies they’re not out raping and pillaging. No wonder crime’s going down.
Has http://www.bristolwestlabourparty.org.uk got lost?
Your example reasoning is similar to my own but I’m not a member of Labour so don’t count.
Paul’s recollection of strategy discussion is different to my own…
I tested the chair of Bristol Labour and a former work colleague (to keep things discrete) and they catastrophically failed. They failed to understand policy, they failed to reach beyond their political tribe, and they failed to deliver concrete value.
Some of the things I always do (even if it’s not obvious) is I always go back and review a position against how things are now to see how it stood up and can be improved, and test delivery from a customers perspective.
Labour don’t get business, don’t understand the people they label as “far right”, and as the recent labour leadership speech in Scotland proved have all the talk but have not transformed in ways they can deliver.
Speaking as someone who is jobless, who’s been hung out to dry and sneered at by Labour members, and treated like a thing to be exploited like I’m some kind of joke you’re on your own.
Maybe when Labour finally figure out their survival depends on them being nice to me *more* than me being nice to them we might talk again (and discuss rates because my time has value as well).
Now to get on with the rest of my life…