Newsnet Main Articles

Sunday, 03 April 2011 02:00

9 Comments

by David Malone

The problem with saying the headline of this piece out loud is that as soon as you do, a great clucking flock of Chicken Littles come speeding out of their corners, kicking up dust and confusion and drowning out any attempt to discuss the issue beneath a frenzy of shrill cries of "Don't listen to the madman. If you do the sky will fall on our heads.  All the banks will burn down, the ATMs will all stop working, our houses will be repossessed, all our pensions - Oh woe! - all our pensions will be seized and eaten by a rampaging army of angry vengeful bond holders and we will never, ever in the whole future of the universe be allowed to borrow money from the bond market ever again, till the end of time."

Newsnet Main Articles

Sunday, 03 April 2011 02:00

3 Comments

by David Malone


The Irish banks need €24 billion. So now we know. WHAT?!  Until we know WHY the losses keep on appearing like poisonous toadstools in the dark, then we know nothing.

Does anyone imagine that the reason why we now find that the banks need more money is because the previous four times the government inspectors simply miscounted how much was missing?  This is getting frustrating. It's like watching a simpleton who doesn't realise you need to put a plug in the bottom of the bath, wondering why it won't stay full.  Every time he finds, to his amazement, that the level has gone down, he measures how much has mysteriously gone missing this time and tells his mate, "6 inches will do it. For sure."

Newsnet Main Articles

Sunday, 03 April 2011 01:30

0 Comments

by David Malone

The free market ideology of Friedman and his like became enshrined in international agreement in 1995 when governments signed the Uruguay round of GATT (the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs). In most countries the agreement was signed without any public debate or even awareness of what was being signed and decided. In the UK there was virtually no parliamentary debate. And yet this agreement created the World Trade Organisation as a power above nations and set the principles of free trade on a par with the idea of justice - in that, like justice, nations were held to be subservient to the ideals and regulations of free trade.