Sunday, Apr 20, 2008
You have to laugh or cry about this one
Daily Mash - Its news to us.: OFFICE OF FAIR TRADING TAKES FOUR YEARS TO DISCOVER BUILDERS ARE AT IT
So here we have it, private money printed to fund public private partnership (to pay for schools, railways, you name it) has been used to inflate build costs, in turn justifying a higher tax grab to pay interest on loans from private banks who print money from thin air. Now that the bubble is popped, low & behold the office of ?fair? trading announces that the building trade has operated as a cartel. Is this a smoke screen for the banking cartels who printed the money that made inflated prices possible in the first place? Or have I missed something?! Why "expose" builders now? Is it because the government has benefited from the housing bubble? Only if the government is representing banking interests. No? Then how did Tony Blair bag a ?500k? "job" (pension?) from JP Morgan.
4 Comments
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1. planning4acrash said...
OK, so now for some real articles about the subject:
The economist: http://www.economist.co.uk/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11058496
Daily mail: http://beta.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1015875/OFT-accuses-100-builders-operating-price-rigging-cartel.html
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2006/09/builders_cartel_fines_reduced.php
The competition authority NMa has almost halved the fines (from just under €100 mln to €53 mln) it handed out to 10 building companies in 2003 because the companies cooperated with its investigation.
- This is a scam that is coming to our waters. British firms are already lining up to (line up their pockets) - co-operate - in exchange for leniency. So some preferred firms don't get blasted. Corruption? You betcha!
2. Fun4now said...
love the last paragraph ..Mr Hayes added: "I know I can't build an extension on my own, but does that give some fucking Sun reader the right to charge me 800 quid a day to ruin my garden and show me photos of his six bedroom villa in Santa Ponsa?"
3. paul said...
This happened in Japan during the land price boom - the process was kept running smoothly with the help of the criminal underworld.
Over here though this kind of corruption is widespread and unregulated - so no-one's "done anything wrong"!
Corruption is as corruption is legally defined.
4. planning4acrash said...
Paul, the powers that be would like to have us think that there is a criminal underworld behind this. That would assume that the establishment were the good guys.