The price of everything

Frankness goes to Hollywood

(Originally published 27 September 2010)

 

Something rather interesting happens during the end credits of the latest Will Ferrell comedy, ‘The Other Guys’; to the somewhat arch soundtrack ‘Pimps Don’t Cry’, animated sequences show: How a Ponzi scheme works; How the $700 billion T.A.R.P. bailout equated to a $2,258 payment from every man, woman and child in the United States (the children won’t of course have the money, but they’ll be paying for it as part of the government deficit for the foreseeable future); That 73 employees of failed insurer AIG received $1.2 billion in taxpayer-funded post-bailout bonuses; That the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average US employee rose from 7:1 in 1917 to 107:1 in 1990, and to 319:1 in 2010; How the recent stock price history of Goldman Sachs compares to that of the average US listed business; That the average CEO retirement benefit package amounts to $83,600,000 while the average American 401K account has recorded a 47% loss over the last five years.

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Red Scare

“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.”

- Jim Callaghan, speech to Labour conference, 1976..

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Panic on the streets of London

A couple of thoughts strike the bemused, slightly appalled, observer of ITV’s leaders’ debate (19 November 2019) between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. One is that the producers at ITV don’t appear capable of running an orgy in a brothel. One is that at the highest level of political engagement in Britain today, you can expect to see weird experiments that may transgress the laws of thermodynamics, in that it is possible for supposed political leaders to generate almost infinite amounts of heat without any apparent light. Viewers to this lightweight bout without contact were “treated” to a continuation of the largely pointless political polarisation and tribalisation that has transfixed the country for the past three years and counting. Another is that neither Messrs Johnson nor Corbyn appear remotely concerned – or their spin doctors have advised them not to broach the topic with a bargepole – that we may all (i.e. the developed world) be collectively hurtling towards a bigger economic crisis than anything to do with either Brexit or accidental Marxism combined. The out-of-control spending pledge bidding war that has recently intensified between the major parties is both the absurd cause and grotesque symptom of the malaise.

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The Final Battle

“Few general elections,” writes Robert Tombs in The Telegraph, “can properly be described as historic. Fewer still mark a watershed in the way we are governed - perhaps one a century. In 1831, the victory of the Whigs under Earl Grey ensured that the old constitution would be reformed and a slow movement towards popular government began. The election of 1910, won by the Liberals, marked a victory of "the People" over "the Peers" and heralded full democracy. And now the election of 2019 will decide whether that very democracy, created so slowly and so painfully, can still function in 21st-century Europe.”

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On liberty

Despite the psychic political torture of the last three-and-a-half years, the coming UK General Election promises to be a doozy of epic proportions. For the hard of recall, here is a summary of what the three major British parties promised in their 2017 manifestos regarding the most pressing issue of the day (at least to  this correspondent), namely Brexit. The Conservative Party pledged to “deliver a smooth and orderly departure from the European Union”; the Labour Party said that it “accepts the referendum result and.. will put the national interest first”; the Liberal Democrat Party announced, somewhat uncompromisingly, “Stop Brexit”. (Its unofficial campaign slogan is unsuitable for a family-friendly newsletter.) So the Conservative Party promised to deliver on the result of the 2016 referendum, Labour prevaricated, and the Liberal Democrats pledged to overturn a legitimate plebiscite altogether. (In days of yore the latter behaviour would not have been termed either liberal or democratic, but it might have been called treason.) For Leave voters and Brexiteers, the choice seems unusually clear.

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