Economics and all that

A rousing Gable End cheer for Evan Davis and his excellent programme on Wednesday evening "The City Uncovered". Now, the meedja in general, and the BBC in particular have not, in this correspondents view, been entirely balanced in their perspective and reporting of the economic state we're in. Not much calling the Government to account and plenty of stick aimed at the banks etc.

It should be borne in mind that many hundreds of thousands of normal people work for the UK's banks, and 99.9% of those people carry no blame or responsibility for the behaviour of the minute fraction of employees who did call the shots wrong. Trouble is, we're all a "banker" in the Sun's (etc) eyes and should be strung up from the nearest lamppost on mention of a bonus or a £10ph company contribution to the staff Xmas meal.

It is, of course, preposterous to suggest that such people are awarded multi-million £ bonuses - most of them are lucky to get a bonus at all, and those that do, it probably runs into a few hundred quid (before tax). I think the great British public should not lose sight of that fact and frankly, if people are going to get on their high horses about financial institutions "wasting" taxpayers money, they ought to get a sense of perspective and look pretty hard at where their tax-pounds have ended up over the last 12 years !

Anyway, TVFGE is not intended to be a political soapbox, so I digress...

This programme was a pretty detailed look at why the banks, UK and otherwise, Retail and Investment, got themselves into such a pickle (driven incidentally, by the demands of shareholders and Boards to be profitable to turn shareholder value, and from consumers to provide cheap, available, no-questions-asked credit). What was so impressive though was the methodical and straight-forward way that Mr Davies explained the workings of the system and how things turned bad and why. It was an entirely sober, non-patronising, non-hysterical and factual examination.

Totally unlike the economic-terror-doom outpourings of this clown...

Robert Peston is the economics equivalent of nails running down a blackboard and someone needs to turn his volume down. He harbours a breathtaking streak of arrogance and a complete refusal to accept his place in the roll-call of blame.

The Gable End view of the economy is that it doesn't seem quite so bad as some people would have us believe. It is very easy to think that everything is turning to shit. For example, yes the average house price in this country has declined in the last 18 mnths, but is still higher than it was 3 years ago. A loss is only a loss if you capitalise it.

Undeniably things are worse than they were, but far from this being due to the collapse of free market capitalism, it is actually the safety valve inherent in the system letting off steam. The human cost is of course, dreadful for the people involved, but really, our are high streets worse off due to the demise of USC, Adams and Zavvi ? And as for Woollies and MFI, they've been basket cases for years; it's been quite laughable how much hand wringing sorrow has been generated as a result of them going, but c'mon, where were we all a few years ago ? I, and I suspect many people, long ago gave up shopping at Woolworths. The seeds of its demise were sown then, not in the last three months..

So, if the BBC isn't dumbing-down quite as much as we feared then equally, this thing may not be quite as bad as they would have us believe.

Mind you, I could be completely wrong. Here's what Karl Marx once said on the matter:-

"Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism."

Crikey ! Let's hope that it isn't as bad as that !!!