UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Friday 7 May 2010

Banking on a majority‏

Now that the dust has settled everyone will be asking the question who won the election yesterday? This whole discussion misses the crucial point because no candidate of any party potentially forming a government after today will have a popular mandate, because they are not bound to listen to the voice of the people, but rather carry out the policies of their paymasters, the banks.

So the straight answer would be no one has won but the banks.

This point is eloquently made by Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher in Hanged Parliament http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=623413 "Each of the parties contesting the current UK elections have already made it clear that there will be "cuts" in spending, "austerity" measures in order to pay back the large deficit amassed by bailing out the banks whose profiteering charges were in the past justified by the suggestion that they took a commercial risk when lending. Instead, it is the people who take the risk and the people who pay the price. None of the parties have dared looking at alternatives to the current madness, because questioning the supremacy of private banks as the originators of the nation's money supply is heresy. Hence it will not make an iota of difference who gets elected today".

He makes one error in his piece by claiming government's borrow from banks, that's not quite accurate, they issue bonds (just a piece of paper an IOU) which are traded by banks but mainly bought by our pension funds and insurance companies.

Dr Mustaqim is a supporter of the analysis we have made on this blog..."Were our governments to issue the necessary credit directly into circulation, (he means money) saving the high cost of interest on borrowing, there would be no need for cuts and austerity measures. This argument has been put to the treasury countless times, and the replies and excuses have been as ingenious as that there was "not enough demand" for this kind of government-issued money (known to economists as M0), or that the Maastricht treaty prevented European governments from doing so. Hence, the best course of action for troubled countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and sooner or later the UK would be to leave the Euro and the restraints imposed by the European Union, issue their own interest-free currency to facilitate trade and prosperity, and preventing banks from continually creaming off the lion's share of our tax payments".

So there we go once we find out who will be our new government we can start the campaign for the government to issue debt free money and end our slavery to the banks! We'll ask Dr Mustaqim to join us.