Gordon, markets have never and will never be moral
Dear Gordon Brown,
Aside from failing to impress anyone with your little American jolly (not even the American media), you’re now back in the UK banging on again and again about your stupid ‘global new deal’. Of course, you daren’t explain what this actually might mean because you know that voters and businesses will be appalled by the measures that you are trying to put in place. Your speech at the Scottish Labour conference yesterday was full of statements deliberately inserted to allow a new wave of socialist policies to be pushed through.
So what did you tell your buddies north of the border? You claimed to be pushing for common international standards to curb the pay of bankers and “end the short-term bonus culture”, insisting that “only government can make the markets work in the public interest and not their own interest.” You added: “We believe that markets need not just money men but morals, that being fair matters far more than being laissez-faire and that banks must always serve the public, not just serve themselves.” No doubt this would have been received well by your fellow comrades in Scotland seeing as any mention of the words ‘profit’ or ‘freedom’ sends them into violent convulsions. You are pinning your survival hopes on the G20 summit in London next month, where you will propose (and might even spell out) your ‘global new deal’. This includes shared international rules on how banks should operate, including regulators being able to insist that banks take a more “prudent” approach to capital reserves, setting aside more money during years of growth to protect them against possible slumps in the future. You claim to see “an emerging consensus on how we strengthen global regulation of our financial markets”.
Everyone knows that, as a socialist, you have just been itching to destroy any sense of a free market in this country and don’t think for a second that we are going to fall for this ‘covert comradeship’. Since when should a government decided how much a banker gets paid? If a banker raises billions of pounds for a bank, why shouldn’t they lavish him with rewards? If bankers don’t have a decent incentive to work, they won’t do their job properly, and if bankers don’t raise money for banks we’re all in serious trouble – as you might have noticed. Do you even understand what the concept of a market is – supply, demand, transactions, prices, efficiency etc? Markets cannot have morals, you idiot. Morality requires some element of higher brain function found in some mammals. You can’t apply morality or ethics to a market where goods and services are traded. And why should banks serve the public? Banks are profit-making companies who provide a service which, because it is a popular service, gets used by lots of people. Using banks is a choice, not a right. You can put your money under your bed or you can give it to a bank and earn interest, but you still have a choice. Your new regulatory burden will just force banks to work under whatever conditions a government wants them to, and seeing as a government has no idea how to run a bank – let alone the entire banking sector – this will spell disaster for all of us.
What a pile of vacuous and dangerous rubbish. I’m not surprised Obama has thus far refused to endorse your ‘global new deal’ because he can see it for what it is – a socialist assault on market principles designed to bring all markets under governmental control. All that you are doing is appealing to your comrades while desperately putting on this facade of ‘fairness’ to give yourself more room to attack as many capitalist and market principles as you can. Free markets are not perfect, we all know that, but having the government watch and control everything that markets do will be far worse for everyone in the long run.
Yours disrespectfully,
A.Tory
He’s just touring the comrades. What will he say if Obama refuses to say that Gordon really is the saviour of the world, and won’t endorse his ever madder schemes. Where will he be without the hope of another bounce?
The trouble is the more desperate Brown gets,then the more desperate Brown gets.
Very true. After the G20 summit, he’s got nothing. He appears to be pinning all his hopes on getting some agreement produced at the end of it, but if memory serves me correctly these summits tend to be little more than glorified talking shops.
Besides, I don’t think the public care about what bankers get paid from now on – they want the PM to drag us out of this recession, and he doesn’t seem that bothered about it.
I agree with you wholeheartedly about Brown. The man really is an embarrassing arse.
But, I would like to take issue with this:
“Banks are profit-making companies who provide a service which, because it is a popular service, gets used by lots of people. Using banks is a choice, not a right.”
Yes, technically it’s true that people could choose not to have bank accounts. But they don’t, because the reality for the majority of people is that they have no choice, really.
If you wanted to buy a property, or get a job that wasn’t cash-in-hand, you really wouldn’t get very far without a bank account. People have a bank account not because they like banks or because it’s a popular thing to do, but because, “Actually, I don’t have a bank account,” doesn’t go down well with mortgage companies, most landlords and most places of business.
In many ways, the banks do have people over a barrel.
If you’re brassed-off with your bank all you can do is either close the account, get a cash-in-hand job (because your company that paid via the increasingly widespread BACS system sacked you for insisting, like a big loony, on being paid in cash), stuff your meagre wages in a shoe under the bed, or, you can go through the rigmarole of changing to another bank who will shaft you as well, because they can, because they know that you really do need a bank account.
It’s more fundamental than that.
Whether people dealing with each other in the open market are acting morally or not is a philosphical point; but whether politicians are a bunch of witless, lying, thieving charlatans is pretty much beyond debate.
Bob, of course we are reliant on banks for some actions such as getting mortgages, but it is still a choice. The fact that we have very few serious alternatives is regrettable.
My point was in reaction to Brown’s assertion that ‘banks should serve the public’, which means either nationalising them or leaving them with so little room to run their own affairs that they are effectively nationalised anyway.
Mark, eloquently put.
I wish he would just stop and go away!!! He is making things worse. He has this air of desperation about everything he says and does, it’s quite worrying!
It’s all bullshit. Like when he talks about the evils of tax-havens then clams up when asked about Jersey and Guernsey let alone out further flung imperial possessions under the auspices of the House of Lords.
He’s like your bald uncle with dementia, raving at you about his hair falling out overnight. Pitiful and annoying, ultimately, in equal measure.
As for Bob’s point – it would actually be interesting from this point of view if the state told the Post Office Counters franchise to run banking services (as Mandy suggested for current accounts and debit cards) since this would provide, basically, a legally enforceable, market-enforceable ‘bottom’ to retail banking service while ensuring that comunities not on an A road still have a post office. But then, what do I know? I’ve been drinking since three!
Shaun Pilkington.
What you describe is the current plan. Unfortunately Postbank has barely moved from discussion stage yet. Saet for end of March. It will take to long to be of any use at this rate.
Still its only been at the ‘discussion’ phase for two years already.
Its a complex scheme to put in place, against the wishes of the banks, progressing very slowly.
I think BobC takes too slim a view of our options with our money. True one will not get far without a bank account, but the more banks, the more competition between them, the more options available to savers/borrowers. It is, ultimately, all about choice. And in a capitalist system that is precisely what one has: choice of whether to enter in to a deal/transaction or not.
Following this same reasoning, I see the banks as already serving the public. They need their customers to survive, and – and this is down to opinion – money tends to be better served in a bank than under a mattress in any case.