Across the pond

This is the good news, which should be listened to, against the clamour of the media focus on the collapse of capitalism as we know it.

The banks of the world are bust. Because they have encouraged people to buy what they cannot afford.

Thereby betraying what I was told was the duty of the banker. To tell his client what was prudent, rather than what he might achieve if the dice rolled his way.

The unregulated financial economy, pushed by Thatcher and supported by Reagan, is now seen to be a Hollywood dream.

Now, the banks, and the whole world, is faciing a tomorrow, which may be worse.

At least temporarily.

So throughout the world the banks, in order to survive, had had to rely on governments.

It will take a long time for the economists to come up with a theory to explain this. John Maynard Keynes explained the 1929 crash. But the bankers since then, have discredided him.

They thought that the economy of ever increasing goodies was possible.

But they are now bust.

Surviving with Government money.

Not Thatcherite free enterprise capitalism. But a Democrat New New Deal. And Gordon Brown’s version of New Labour.

At the time of re-writing this the stock markets are still sliding. But come next week maybe they will realise that the present crisis may lead to a better regulated world, in which governments and businessmen work better together to steer us away from boom and bust economics.