Here We Go Again.

After seven years of austerity which has seen the poor across the world paying for the mistakes of the rich and greedy the whole rotten financial system, it would seem, is once more on the brink of collapse. How, you make ask, could this happen? It's quite simple really. Neoliberal economics is mumbo-jumbo - nothing more than propaganda by the rich to fool the rest of us into handing over our money to protect them against their own greed and stupidity. In 2008 the world economic system, deregulated by corrupt politicians for their own advantage, was shown to be a complete disaster. Banks were shown to be little better than organised crime syndicates while the myth of "trickle down" was exposed as a "pouring upwards." Yet, though this was obvious to all, the rich and greedy were able to turn the argument on its head and persuade far too many of us that it was all the fault of the unemployed, the sick, the disabled and the poor. Punishing them for crashing the world economy, they told us, would cure all our woes. The wheels may have come of the financial system, but, they assured us, re-attaching the same broken wheels was the only thing we could do. So what has crashed the economy all over again? Is it the poor, the unemployed, the sick and disabled again? No, it's the bankers and financiers - the same bankers and financiers who crashed it the last time and then walked away leaving us to pick up the pieces. Undoubtedly the Tories will tell us that here in Britain what is needed is yet more austerity - for us, of course, not them. The NHS, they will tell us, is now totally unaffordable. More public assets will have to sold to their rich mates at knock-down prices to pay off the national debt that they have trebled in the last six years and to protect the tax cuts they are planning to reward themselves with. To all those of you who voted Tory at the last general election - are you enjoying having your noses rubbed in the soft, sticky brown stuff?

Rampaging Right Fiddles As We Burn.

The banking crisis in 2008 showed us all the utter lunacy of the free market, no holds barred neoliberal economic policies that have plagued the world for the last 30 years. There was no mistaking why the crisis happened despite the claims to the contrary coming from the right. Deregulation of the finance industry had encouraged greed, stupidity and outright criminality right at the heart of the world's economic system and, after the crisis hit, failed to do anything about it. Effectively the argument as to whether neoliberal economics made any sense at all was over and the verdict was damning. Right-wingers, however, did not throw in the towel as you would expect. In Britain the Tories managed, with support from an opportunistic LibDem party, to make a last ditch rearguard action against reality and to force through policies designed to make the victims of the neoliberal failure pay for it. In the United States the Republicans failed to field an even remotely credible candidate in the Presidential election and lost badly. Their answer is to block President Obama at every turn and to force massive cuts in the budget that will harm the ordinary citizen but leave their vast fortunes unscathed. On both sides of the Atlantic unscrupulous right-wing politicians are willing to countenance economic disaster for the majority in order to protect their own narrow interests. Wedded to an economic system designed to promote these narrow interests during the good times, it is hardly surprising that the greedy and selfish would seek to protect those same interests during the bad times. For them neoliberal economics is a no-brainer since its central tennant - heads I win, tails you lose - serves their insatiable lust for money. In Britain nothing, not a triple-dip recession, a loss of the AAA credit rating or rioting in the streets will divert the Tories from their utterly sefish course. They will starve the needy, persecute the disabled and steal whatever they can get their hands on in order to maintain an economic system that this country can no longer afford. The Tories have proven, once and for all, that they are not a political party in any real sense - they are simply an expensive and wholly irrelevant interest group unfit to govern now or at any time in the future.

Global Elite No Better Than Criminals.

Thirty years ago a group of greedy people managed to sell the idea that allowing them to steal the world's wealth was a really, really good idea. The idea was diseminated by people like Margaret Thatcher with a few simple nostrums such as national economies being like household budgets and a whole raft of incredible assumptions such as "trickle down." The result of this confidence trick is now evident after thirty years of sheer criminality by the global elite. Something bewteen 21 and 32 trillion dollars has been hidden away by a bunch of madmen who collect wealth like some people collect beer mats. They are clearly insane since this money has no real function and only exists for the greedy to gloat over. They have all but destroyed the world economy in their quest for more and more and have created a society that is so unequal that it threatens to collapse into revilution. Caught out and exposed for all to see their first reaction was to pretend it wasn't true, then they urged us to punish ourselves for their crimes and now they're urging us all to move on and forget what happened in the past as if it isn't still going on. These people are destroying our future and the future of our childfren. They are criminals pure and simple driven insane by greed and, despite their claims to world leadership, they suffer from a devastating lack of character. People like Cameron and George Osborne in Britain and Mitt Romney in the USA are the standard bearers for more of the same while opposition to it is all too often shackled by a need to appease the very criminals who caused the problem in the first place. The system is broken and cannot be repaired and we need to sweep it away and start again.