Britannia Radio

newnations.com
Monthly reports on finance, business, trade,
economics, & political analysis


NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 17 JUNE 2009

Special Report on NATIONALISATION

Given the drama of the 2008/9 Financial crisis, one extraordinary item separated the chosen solutions to rescuing banks, insurers etc favoured in the US, as opposed to the R-O-W, particularly Europe. It was obvious that in case after case no solutions could be found except for state financial intervention, more exactly using taxpayers money to bail out private shareholders, the taxpayer being banker of last resort.

The ideological barrier to calling that by its proper name - nationalisation, was almost entirely indigestible and grown men prevaricated because they had been ideologically brainwashed to reject the concept as "not the American way." But still and often, they took the money. One of the reasons for this disparity of attitudes between the US and 'the rest' was that even leaving aside those nations that were a part of the Soviet empire, the democracies of western Europe had a broader political range of experience than the USA, because socialism had been one of a number of political choices, and not a dirty word. Many countries had socialist or broad left elected governments and coming out of WWII many of those were familiar with nationalisation as a fact of political and economic life.

It transpired that apart from political ideologues, state control of enterprises in recent history fell out of favour basically on the grounds of efficiency, indeed governments went to extraord inary lengths to privatise even monopoly businesses, like electricity generation, supply of water, etc; with freemarket ideology running rampant.

This months Special Report examines the matter of nationalisation in more depth - a fairly short history, a tale of triumphs and disasters - and of the ideologies of the nationalisers and the privatisers. Whatever else, unless one believes that there will never again be another financial crisis, a short review of how it came about and where it may be going, might help to understand the phenomenon.

GO TO

"NATIONALISATION"

 

Also published on our blog: GEOPOLEMICS where readers comments are invited

Send this newsletter to a friend
If you wish to stop receiving the New Nations Bulletin, Click here
Newnations.com Bulletin, 17 June 2009| New Nations - a not for profit company
Contact Us: enquiries@newnations.com
© New Nations