Put ministers in the dock
Each week over the past three months we have been told that billions are being provided to banks "in the hope" that it will be lent on to companies, writes Simon Jenkins. What is this hope? It is like giving addicts heroin in the hope that they will pass it on to their local hospital. The money has gone into relieving balance sheets coated in red. It is throwing good money after bad, otherwise known as madness. The show trial that should be staged is not of bankers or journalists but of ministers, who have now blown £200bn of public money on a massively failed strategy for staving off recession – indeed on making it worse. Because ministers are from the same club as MPs, they are let off lightly. There will be no show trial of the chancellor. Simon Jenkins The Guardian
Full article: MPs should put themselves on trial 
The Mole: Gordon Brown rebuffs pressure to do an Obama and cap bonuses
Worst crisis for a century
Most Labour politicians possess only the cloudiest and most naive understanding of how the British economy really works, says Peter Oborne. This charge cannot, however, be levelled at the Education Secretary Ed Balls, a former Financial Times journalist who worked at the Treasury for ten years. So Balls's terrifying warning that the world has entered its worst recession for over a century needs to be taken very seriously indeed - and all the more so because he is the closest confidant of the Prime Minister and therefore privy to all the latest inside information. This means we are potentially facing conditions worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, with all that entails in terms of mass unemployment, poverty, starvation and - equally potentially - the rise to power of the Far Right. Peter Oborne Daily Mail
Full article: I pray Ed Balls is wrong but fear he's right: This could be worse than the Great Depression
Bankers' wages
When Williams-Sonoma first introduced a home bread-making machine for $275 they couldn't shift any, says Daniel Finkelstein. No one knew what it was, or whether it was really worth the money. So on the advice of a marketing company, Williams-Sonoma introduced a rival. This machine was larger and much more expensive. Sales of the orginal began to rise. Consumers now saw the product in context. When setting wages, bankers don't start from scratch. They don't consider if they really need to pay that wage to recruit someone. They use the salaries of others as an easily available anchor point. And they don't notice as the whole lot of them float away from what is necessary. Daniel Finkelstein The Times
Full article: Don't blame the market for bankers' bonuses
The pros and cons of bonuses for bankers
Posts
