Saturday, Nov 29, 2008
Suggestions for Mandy's Survival Matrix?
Times: Lord Mandelson devising test for which businesses to save
"Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, is drawing up selection criteria for choosing which businesses and industries are of enough importance to the UK economy to warrant being saved". The minister has decided that a more interventionist strategy for industry is now required as Britain faces a probable recession. Can anyone guess what the wacky criteria will be?
Posted by alan @ 03:16 PM (948 views) Add Comment
27 Comments
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1. planning4acrash said...
Its game over now. The free market (free from derivatives manipulations) should make the decisions, that means share holders, that means you and I, this is Soviet style governance. Totally evil and corrupt. Some new world order, old 20thC order more like.
2. stillthinking said...
Probably government ones unfortunately.
3. braindeed said...
So any suggestions to the contrary P4aC?
Evil and corrupt?....bit of a drama queen there - it was laissez-faire got us here, remember?
Seem to me your 'survival plan' is ego-centric - planned to maximise your personal security to the detriment of all others.
Me? I'll put up with just about any so called soviet evil, if it avoids the gangsterism and anarchy that followed the fall of the USSR.
4. quiet guy said...
braindeed,
Sometimes I also disagree with what P4AC says but there's no need for personal attacks. As for laissez-faire capitalism getting us here, I'd argue that the real problem was the abandonment of traditional mortgages for complex CDOS, SIVs and a load of fraud. Free markets work fine when they are transparent.
5. iguana said...
Possible criteria;
Does it involve 'sailors', Greek goings on, Aluminium Czsars, politicians of an alternative persuasion.
6. sneaker said...
@ quiet guy - agreed - it was a failure of transparency and regulation that created this mess. Markets are NOT free unless they are appropriately regulated and the absence or insufficiency of regulation of subprime mortgage brokers and the OTC derivatives market is the real issue here. If all those CDO's had been listed on exchanged and mortgage brokers and investment banks had a stake in the outcome of the mortgages they shaped into CDO's, this whole issue simply would not have occurred.
@ braindeed - where you say "I'll put up with just about any so called soviet evil, if it avoids the gangsterism and anarchy that followed the fall of the USSR.", (and this is not a facetious comment) I take it you don't recall the 70's and 80's, where the Soviet Union was on its knees and the people of Eastern Europe were under so much surveillance that they wanted to escape. The current economic problems do not amount to a repudiation of capitalism, nor do they require a lurch towards Marx as the current downturn in no way excuses the catastrophic mess of Soviet Communism. Both systems are flawed, but well-regulated capitalism is still the best system we have come up with and any call for authoritarian statism would simply condemn us to relive the political battles of the 20th century.
As Thomas Jefferson said “He who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both.”
7. last_days_of_disco said...
Broadly what you are saying quiet guy is "honesty works. lying doesn't". Putting the arch liar in charge of deciding who lives and who dies financially is diabolical. Labour is becoming more and more unbelievable very day. Its the nightmare they have created (through lies) and now they are becoming distinctly nasty.
The truth is the Soviets were no better than the gangsterism that was characteristic of the post-soviet Russia. It just got privatized that is all. Soviet Russia was a brutal dangerous place where people who complained about something just "disappeared". Just because the fall exposed the reality, doesn't make the Soviet "solution" any better.
Watch Citizen X for an idea of how "wonderful fair and free" Soviet Russia was. Don't fool yourself, Zimbabwe is exactly the example we should be looking at. The Labour party is increasingly becoming more and more menacing. They need to act with dignity. Even Tony Benn is disgusted with the current lot's undemocratic behaviour!
8. planning4acrash said...
Traditional Capitalism includes protection of private property, that regulation would outlaw inflation and fake derivatives that redistribute wealth and distort the market. Free from fraud & centrist manipulation, the free market would bring untold wealth
9. planning4acrash said...
In the Soviet Union, government planners provided just 75% of the country's food on 98% of the land. The free market, 3% of land provided the remaining 25%, we are suffering from over 50yrs of socialism and Corporatism. Liberty is the only way to wealth.
10. planning4acrash said...
Mandy can't run his own bedroom, let alone discern between nepotism and the common good when running OUR e(con)omy. I'd rather revolution than be run by that inbred jerk off.
11. jack c said...
I bet Mandy makes sure Brittania Building Society are OK (nudge nudge, wink wink)
12. braindeed said...
Sneaker.....
Did I say The Soviet system was superior?
And the context was P4aC's 'Soviet' Mandy - the gangsterism and anarchy that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union did happen,no?
I suspect that capitalism is, in effect, the self-serving reflection of the human physche, and I don't want to spend my life pissing in the wind trying to convince people otherwise.
I thought this was a grown up forum......it's starting to feel it's being driven by the 'comic book man' from the Simpsons.
Get a feking life
13. planning4acrash said...
Corporate welfare, Corporatism is what we have when the big boys are bailed out. Capitalism relies on bankruptcy to flush out failure. Corporate and government access to unlimited fiat money is facism, capitalism requires sound money and no inflation.
14. planning4acrash said...
We haven't had capitalism for over 100yrs. That is why our cities look awful and are full of establishment corporations. Statist politicians hijack capitalism and they blame the system they've mutated, but never blame themselves.
15. braindeed said...
.....yeh bring back the kids up chimneys and the gin palaces, you knob
16. braindeed said...
Red Tape.....holding us all back
"Got a load of asbestos on my lagging, and I can't get no pleb to take it away cheap.....and the state of my chimney, old chap".....cant even spend my money to let it 'trickle down - it's a scandal!!!!
17. dude said...
Captialism's not the problem, it's the redistribution of the wealth that it creates that's the problem. There is a fair argument to say that those that take the risks should get the rewards. But we have not taken that to such an extreme that (like the US) the gap between rich and poor is massive. Society needs to be inclusive, otherwise it will generate ill feeling and that will fuel instability. That's why redistribution is important. Business needs a stable society in which to plan and grow, and capitalism alone cannot supply that.
So yes the pendulum has swung too far, and the 30-year Thatcherite experiment must come to a close. It seems the populous are now ready to accept a more interventionist approach. What is interesting is the struggle between current home owners who are seeing the 'value' of their property fall, and those who aspire to be home owners who are waiting for property to fall even further.
I do hope at the end of this current downturn that the home-owning frenzy is tempered with an increase in public-sector-owned property that can meet the needs of those that will not or cannot buy a place of their own. Social housing is one vital facet of the broader housing policy; one which the Tories, and New Labour, have chosen to ignore.
18. malct said...
braindeed - can you please decode your last three posts so that I have a chance of understanding what you are going on about?
I'm really interested in what you have to say, but it must have some foundation in UK house prices and the economy - otherwise I am not allowed to expand on your comments
19. malct said...
well said dude - but what's the answer?
20. braindeed said...
Ok maict: in essence, I too, am railing against the way this forum has been high jacked by sorts with agendas that are only loosely connected to the HPC. We have some people arguing about the minutest variants of any salient point.....and usually only tentatively connected to this forum's supposed topic.
And of course we can argue about any aspect of the monetary system and its anti-ceding variants. Certain individuals seem almost gleeful about the imminent collapse of what passes for civilisation, imagining they'll 'make a killing.' - Without (it seems to me) ever coming close to imagining what our lives could be like if the thin veneer of evolution actually did rupture.
There has been a realisation that the HPC will only be a symptom of a much greater malaise, but certain individuals here really do need to take themselves less seriously, and be perhaps, rather more reflective than proscriptive
21. jimmy_joe said...
Where capitalism fails...they call it something else.
22. unplugged said...
Interesting clip of Chomsky putting forward his vews of capitalism, communism etc
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HFxYyXGMfZM&feature=related
23. planning4acrash said...
dude, redistribution of wealth is socialism. Our education system is so rubbish that we can't tell the difference. You need to do some reading and listening on mises.org and lewrockwell.com
24. last_days_of_disco said...
@braindead
I wasn't really trying to upset you or defend capitalism. I just don't think communism is an answer. We need a more moral system than capitalism (capitalism is fine within certain moral rules). However herein lies the rub, who determines what morality to use as the gold standard. In the past we had broad agreement on Christianity being that standard with the ten commandments being emblematic of the legal system that results in.
Now that moral system has been intentionally undermined, what is the basis for making "fair" decisions and reigning in markets, etc. These things look simple on the surface but when you start digging deeper they are very difficult issues. You have no basic legal code beyond a memory of Christian values and its not enough. The great experiments of the 20th century with alternative systems has been a ghastly disaster. Now what?
How do we decide who to help? What is the right thing to do? What is the politically expedient thing to do? Do they align? If you have no standard for right beyond utilitarianism, your are in poor shape.
25. dude said...
@ p4ac:
Of course redistribution is Socialism. If you don't like the term don't use it, but the fact is without redistribution you get some individuals who own billions, and many, many more who own nothing. That's the way to revolution. From a business perspective the more people that have money to spend the more they can contribute to the economy. So Socialism is as vital a component of an economy as is Capitalism.
It must be a balance. If either dominates the other we end up with the problems of the 60s and 70s (too much Socialism) or 80s, 90s and 2000s (too much Capitalism). Politics means this equilibrium is always moving, but if there is no equilibrium there will be problems. With so many now excluded from mainstream society (they used to be called unemployed, but now they are often on disability benefit), we are at risk of massive instability in society. That helps no one.
26. planning4acrash said...
Dude, you just don't get it, millionaires and billionaires are not the establishment that are destroying our futures, they are the middle class that would save us and overthrow the government if we let them. If a person gets a billion via entrepreneurship, they bloody well deserve it. This is why most revolutions are sponsored by the establishment with a proletarian uprising against the middle class. They plan to tax those earning over 100k 60%, but, the trillionaires will still be offshore paying no tax, totally insulated.
What you don't understand about socialism is, that inflation and income taxes are the main redistributions. Inflation is the tool by which the establishment extract the rate at which the economy grows, or a bit more, this is why inflation is always at or around the GDP growth rate. Inflation, via the printing of money ensures that economic growth does not filter down but gets sequestered to the top. Income tax is largely just a payment on interest for money borrowed to inflate, so, not only do we suffer the theft of inflation, but we pay for the interest on the inflation via income tax.
The small repayments we get are welfare to ensure that the system does not break down. Without inflation and income tax, we could look after ourselves and would be much more wealthy, in most situations, charitable donations exceed tax income, like, way more money was given to Katrina and Tsunami victims from the people than ever got to them via government. So, government inflate to the point where public transport is unviable, so they buy it and subsidize it, via our money to ensure the system doesn't break down. A fiat money union involves interest rates set to control the biggest economy, London, but chokes the north, so, we subsidize the north to ensure that the Union doesn't break down, but, in a sound money commodity based gold backed currency, that would not be necessary because we wouldn't have interest rates to worry about. The list goes on and on.
27. musn't grumble said...
Why this corrupt shirt-lifter has any say in British society after being disgraced twice is beyond me. The man is a proven liar - ahhh, errrmmmm .... maybe he fits right in with New Liebour then.