Capital Economics (Part 3)

Money is the root of all evil, so the saying goes. Though I don’t use the word ‘evil’ myself due to its superstitious associations, the saying does have a ring to it and conveys a useful message about capital-ism in this country today.
Whether it’s the overblown share of the economy held by casino bankers and acolyte ‘services’, the foreign money poured in by speculators to London property, the corporate profits funnelled through tax havens, the spurious loans at exorbitant rates from foreign branches to make profits look less here, the all-too-real loans at exorbitant rates extorted by usurers from desperate people, the rise of the pawnbroker and the unredeemed and sickening excesses of profligate executive pay, the bonus culture, the evisceration of industry and jobs in pursuit of profit, tax cuts for the rich and penury for the poor, the cartelisation of utilities, the privatisation of profits and the nationalisation of debt, the flogging off of the last of the national silver at knock down prices, and so it goes on.
You’ll get my drift, and you can add many further examples no doubt. All of this permitted, protected, encouraged or implemented by the government in the capital.
And I’d also like to single out the lure of lucre that has pulled so many talented young people, faced with the threat of debt, away from useful careers such as in real engineering into crash and burn financial engineering.
With the export of jobs and the abandonment of real apprenticeships we have lost so many skills at a workshop level and we seem also to have lost not only the ability but also the desire to do big engineering for ourselves. So without a care for consistency the government brings in foreign publicly owned companies at breathtaking prices to build, manage and finance nuclear power stations. The French and the Chinese will be laughing all the way to their own banks having secured a huge base price and incredible index linking for 35 years!
And the mayor of the capital saw nothing ironic in the proposal by a Chinese group to reconstruct the Crystal Palace, the original of which showed to all the world the power and scale of our industry and engineering in an age when these things were valued.
Oh, but aren’t I forgetting about HS2? Certainly I’d like to forget vanity projects with incredible projections when the colossal sums involved (one of the few credible projections) could be invested in really productive transport and industrial projects. Still at least the government won’t have to invest public money in the Co-operative bank now that it will be falling into the no doubt benign and ethical control of American hedge funds.
So what’s good about capital-ism in this country today? Good question! Answers on-line please (whoops, forgot about the tax dodging).