“The degree of the moves shows the markets are pricing in something really apocalyptic.”
- David Shairp, strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, quoted in the FT.
Extraordinary scenes here in the UK, with a parasitical underclass robbing, torching and looting businesses. But enough of the bankers – why did a segment of Britain’s ‘lost’ urban generation suddenly turn feral ? The comparison between out of control financiers and disaffected violent youths is not merely a tired snipe against our unreconstructed banking class. There are wider social tensions busily simmering away. Perhaps some of the rioters who took to the streets of London, Birmingham and Manchester last week have started to twig that they face a lifetime of higher taxes (if they can get jobs at all) and diminished social services courtesy of decades of swelling “entitlement”, the accumulated benefits of the baby-boomers that preceded them, and the damage wrought by self-interested financiers playing at casino capitalism of no social merit whatsoever. Not so much Generation X as Generation Ex: ex-jobs, ex-growth, ex-prospects. We have had politicians pocketing illicit expenses, and bankers trousering unjustifiable bonuses even as the financial system totters at the cliff edge. Is trashing Miss Selfridge really so different ?
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