Tame the Vampire Squid!
From nef (New Economics Foundation):
Portraying investment banks as a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, a new animation from The Great Transition campaign of nef (the new economics foundation) is launched today, Monday 6 December, aimed at increasing public pressure on government to take on the banks and not sweep the issue under the carpet.
The animation ask politicians if they have a plan to tame the banks, and if not, why not?
The one minute animation is backed by a wide range of influential pressure groups including: Compass, ResPublica, 38 Degrees, World Development Movement, Tax Research and the Post Bank campaign. The animation is part of the fast-growing counterweight to the power of the banks and is launched the day before the Eric Cantona-inspired run on the banks (bankrun2010), that has seen grassroots public campaigns spring-up in 15 nations.
Andrew Simms, Policy Director at nef said: “Who is afraid of the big, bonus-driven banks? The Coalition government it would seem. Why else, just two years after the biggest bail-out in history, are the unreformed banks still in trouble? Big investment banks were compared to giant vampire squids, wrapped around the face of humanity, feeding on anything that smells like money. Now massive spending cuts follow in their wake. The government lack a plan to tame them, and seem to wish the problem would just go away. That’s why we’ve brought the vampire squid compellingly to life to jog their memory, and ensure that no one can forget the need for urgent reform. We have a plan to take back our banks for the benefit of the public and the wider economy, where is theirs?”
Tony Greenham, head of nef’s Finance and Business programme added: “The bankers claim they earn their bonuses through creating wealth, but the reality is that modern banking is more about extracting wealth from the real economy than doing anything socially useful. We can’t go on like this; it’s time to take back the banks for the public good and not allow our politicians to be bought off with a few grudging concessions from the banking elite.”
As public services pay the price for massive private-sector failure, there is little sign that government is prepared to stand up to the banks that played such a central role in the crisis:
- Nearly £7 billion will be paid out in City bonuses this year.[i]
- £7 billion is more than the first wave of public spending cuts, and the amount the UK has committed to propping up failing Irish banks as part of the Irish bail-out package.
- Attempts to change bad bonus behaviour with a levy failed according to former Chancellor Alastair Darling, and there are already signs that the banks are preparing to return to business-as-usual on bonuses eschewing measures designed to diffuse public anger.
- We’re told that there’s no alternative to huge public spending cuts in the wake of the crisis-driven recession. Yet, add together all the taxes in the UK that go unpaid, evaded or avoided and you come to a figure of £120 billion.[ii] A vigorous effort to collect even a share of that would completely change the debate. Yet the banks, and the accountants and lawyers that win lucrative business from them, are busy finding ever more ingenious ways to help their clients pay their fair share of tax.
Why Cuts are the Wrong Cure
Adam Ramsay offers a fantastic argument against education cuts (cross-posted from falseeconomy.org.uk):
Two days ago, I stood outside Oxford’s Cheney School as almost the entire sixth-form walked out of their classes. Their younger school-mates too had turned up that morning with placards and with marching shoes and with pre-prepared chants. But their teachers had threatened severe punishments if they joined the march.
The students complained that, as a result, there were “only” 200 of them. They marched into the city centre, and joined with 300 more school students from across Oxford before going on to occupy the county hall, shut down every bank in the city centre, and secure all of Oxfordshire’s front pages. And, of course, similar things happened across the country.
Today’s teenagers were written off as “the X box generation”. Day X has smashed that stereotype. What can have caused this? Well, it’s pretty simple. Chloe, one of the organisers from Cheney School, put it best: “Most people here come from ordinary backgrounds. We won’t be able to afford to go to university if they introduce these fees. I want to be able to go to university.”
The same, simple sentiment was expressed by those I saw kettled into Whitehall on Wednesday: “They’re taking our EMA away. How am I going to be able to finish my A-levels?”
And it was shared by the students I spoke to at the occupations of UCL, SOAS, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Oxford Universities. They use longer words, like “marketisation” and “neo-liberalism” but they mean the same thing – these cuts and fees and students debts will shut people out of their hopes and their dreams.
But there is also a basic economic problem with the massive cuts we are seeing to education. Because money spent on teaching doesn’t go into a black hole. Margaret Thatcher was famous for asset stripping – for “selling the family silver”. At the time, this meant selling physical assets – buildings, factories, whole industries.
But if the new economy is – as we are so often told – a knowledge economy, then these cuts are just a new kind of asset stripping: stripping a generation of the skills they will need to build new wealth, and a new society, from the ashes of the recession. The failure to invest in tomorrow is a classic way to destroy a company or a country. It is a failure that the government seems to be blundering into.
But it seems this generation has woken up to its plight. And, with Lib Dem MPs wobbling on fees, they might just have a victory in their sights.
Adam Ramsay blogs at Bright Green.
