Back, now with more added puns!!

After lots of electioneering and general neglect of this blog I will be posting some longer pieces soon.

But for now work continues on the gags and puns associated with the leadership battle for the red rose faction of the Authoritarian Banker Puppet War Crime Party.

McDonnell fans will appreciate:

Balls and Deadwood: Burn'eml

Spinwatch on latest Labour scandal

The Labour apologists on messageboards are distancing themselves from the latest influence peddling corruption scandal by labelling Byers et al as "Blairites". It's Gethsemane politics.

Is this line from Labour themselves? I don't know, but we are told a certain Blairite, who had to resign twice over sleaze, is still often "running the country".

Dont foget: His "mysterious" return as Business Secretary (unelected in any capacity) preceeded the banker bailouts (which he oversaw) by a very short time. Mystery indeed. But once more the cry will go up: Hold your nose! endorse corruption, warcrime, right wing economics and authoritarianism with an "X" cos the tory toffs mustn't win!11?

Banking fraud still on the increase.

http://thebankwatch.com/2010/03/11/goldman-sachs-derivative-liability-33823-of-assets/

Any of the mainstreamers who "didn't see the crisis" comming are probably overlooking that the practices which brought it about have not in any way been stopped.

Goldman Sachs now operate at levels of leverage up to 38,000% against actual "wealth"

Basic history: following the 1929 crash a law was put in place in the US that severely limited the main practices that brought it about. This is called The Glass Steagal act. The main facet was dividing the functions of savings banks and investment banks. Generally, for every unit of currency actually held by a bank 10 were leant out. This is known as "fractional reserve" banking. Now, a 1 to 10 ratio is in itself fraud, but it propelled capitalism for quite a few generations with some booms/ busts, but along with Keynsiam treatments for recession there was a limit to the severity of the bust.

Under Clinton, with Greenspan controlling the Federal Reserve (which is privately owned and not federal at all), Glass Steagal was repealed. These were conidered years of economic miracle but the 1 to 10 ratio shot up. It is this factor, linked to the boom in the "derivatives market" (bets on bets on bets to the nth degree, made increasingly and rapidly by computers) that is the true cause of the financial crisis.

Put simply, fact eventually caught up with fiction, but the way out with bailouts and quantitive easing is just a further perpetuation of the fiction.

Despite some strong words Brown et al have done next to nothing to stop this, in fact they have encouraged it. Frankly, another crash at some point is inevitable.

Solutions are complicated, but a basic one is GPEW policy - that only the state should create credit and that banks should be broken up so that "too big to fail" can't happen.

banks being "too big to fail" is the given justification for the bailouts. Even the Libdems are calling for them to be broken up now. That the state should be sole creator of credit is not Marxist dogma. It was a principle of the Founding Fathers of the US.

Obama is looking at some Glass Steagal type regulations, but don't hold your breath.
Gargantuan scams beyond those I have described here continue on his watch.

Busy busy busy.

Just a note on the lack of blogging here: Circumstances compel me to do a lot of paid work at the moment and with campaigning and general political meetings etc. I just aint getting the time together to formulate decent pieces. Hopefully this won't have to last too long, suffice to say that there will be plenty to say as the descent into madness accelerates.

Brown suddenly discovers electoral reform: Nothing suspicious there!

After 13 years it's funny how Labour have suddenly discovered the uses of another system when they are faced with the likely boot.

Of course they could have ended Conservative rule in this way if they hadnt been so lustful for power or such conservatives themselves.

Without consultation or public discussion on alternatives Brown has cynically brought this idea to the fore with his usual outdated top-down approach. He and his wonks have probably calculated (quite rightly I daresay) that the AV system suits them best and gives them the highest chance of getting back into power to represent banks and corporations 4 or 5 years from now.

Of course, he will present it as a remedy for all the disquiet around the expenses scandal, not only does it not fit that bill but it's likely people will see through it and their opinion of "Clunk" will drop even further.

Who'da thunk it?

Politics prof says UK has shifted to the right since "Labour" took power.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/24/new-labour-moves-uk-rightwing

Empty froth gets the goods.

The press are loving this UKIP burqa story. UKIP's only motivation is to compete for BNP votes. Nothing more.

It's vapid, right wing, controversial for the sake of it, and nothing will come of it so it suits the mainstream news agenda perfectly.

I think that senior Green Party members need to start making populist froth statements about the banks or something. We need to grab the headlines in the same way the hard right are doing. We don't appear very good at it - too careful and considered. We spent years looking over our shoulder about being seen as whacko. Now with fascists running around and the mainstream landing us £880,000,000,000 in debt it's pretty clear to anyone with a brain that we aint the whacko ones.