We are told that the current serious problems in the economy are the result of a global crisis and that there is really not much to do about it other than hold tight until global affairs start to pick up.
We are told that the current serious problems in the economy are the result of a global crisis and that there is really not much to do about it other than hold tight until global affairs start to pick up.
Can the people who are telling us this explain how it is that, when there isn't a British bank that has the means to bid to buy the Bank of Toyland, a Spanish one breezes in and snaps up one of our top mortgage banks for £1.2bn, describing the deal as a bargain for a company which will be earning good profits again in a couple of years? The last time I looked, Spain was on the same globe as Britain; how did they avoid the crisis?
To find the answer to that, it is worth considering this: if only a small part of the mountain of cash currently being raised from public and private investment sources to repair the shattered balance sheets of the financial sector had been spent on reconstructing and modernising our coal, steel, transport and automotive industries in the 1980s, would the country's economy be in its current state? An economy based on the financial-services industry, with the rest of us ending up selling cappuccinos to each other, doesn't handle global crises at all well.
Ken Nicholson,
Newlands, Glasgow.
In 1904 a Quaker woman invented the Landlord's Game - the forerunner of Monopoly. Like Monopoly, there was a bank and the players competed in the knowledge that the bank was independent and even-handed - otherwise no-one would participate.
Thirty years ago, the state deregulated the banks and, with technology replacing cash, the banking bonanza took off. Obscene profits and salaries aside, the real harm lay in allowing private companies to create the national currency at whatever rate they deemed most profitable.
Initially the price was inflation, now it is monetary chaos. The state is tilting at windmills trying to prop up an illogical system. Let's face it, no money will ever work if it ceases to be neutral. It would be Monopoly with the bank competing as a player, or like admonishing counterfeiters with a modest fine.
All money, whether cash or credit, must emanate from the state for distribution by the banks. The Bank of England is the only neutral issuer of money in the UK and the banks must revert to being intermediaries again. Why are we using the national credit to rescue this egregious system rather than issue it to them under properly controlled conditions?
This was done when we dealt in cash and can be done just as readily with credit. The procedures are well documented, but where is the political will to grasp this nettle? At Westminster it should spring from the Treasury Select Committee, and in Holyrood we should be looking far beyond the so-called Scottish Futures Trust - where's the initiative in a pathetic alternative to PFI?
Laying all this grief at the door of globalisation and oil prices is a cop-out, an excuse to duck the real issue. Get the money debate out into the open and everything else will follow.
R F Morrison,
Helensburgh.
