They promised economic stability, order and prosperity. But instead the world's bankers have delivered chaos, debt and uncertainty - and then blamed the feeble governments that surrendered control of the global economy to them.In the first of three extracts from their new book, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson explain how the reckless speculation of a super-rich elite has left us all the poorer
On March 17, Dame Carol Black, the government's national director for health and work, declared that absence and worklessness related to sickness were costing the country £100bn a year, and it was announced that ministers were to look at replacing the doctor's sick note with a "fit note", detailing what people can do rather than what they cannot when they are on leave for health reasons. This was of a piece with the "tough love" approach of Brown and his predecessor to those on welfare benefits. It was all about reminding those who wanted to get their hands on public money that rights came with responsibilities.
Four days later, the chief executives of Britain's five largest banking institutions - Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland - met the Bank of England. In the jargon of the City, they wanted governor Mervyn King to widen the types of collateral against which the Bank would lend to the clearing banks. In plain English, they wanted him to lend taxpayers' money against much flakier assets than would normally be considered acceptable.
Why did they need this handout? Because banks themselves had stopped lending each other money. The collapse of the US housing market, and the complex financial instruments that had been spun off from it, had caused chaos in the money markets. The victims of last year's "subprime crisis" included two of the world's most respected banks, America's Bear Sterns and France's BNP, while the "credit crunch" that followed claimed Britain's Northern Rock. Those banks that escaped unharmed were sure of only one thing: with so many of their peers exposed to incalculable risks, there was more bad news to come.
...
What was most extraordinary about all of this was not the bailing-out of City and Wall Street types who had spent decades, like surly teenagers, insisting that they wanted only to be free from the stuffy, paternal state institutions to which they now turned for help. Rather it was the failure of those same institutions to insist on any quid pro quo. In the real world, when a wild-child son or daughter comes home, tail between their legs, their "boring" parents usually require them to clean up their act in return for financial support and use of their old bedroom. Not so in the world of banking and finance. In remarks to the press in March, the British treasury actually ruled out tougher controls.
But then there is plenty of evidence that, in Britain as elsewhere, those in government could see little wrong with the system as it is. Democratically elected governments have, over the past three decades, willingly ceded control of the world economy to a new elite of freebooting super-rich free-market operatives and their colleagues in national and international institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. These New Olympians, who earn that title by their remoteness from everyday life and their lack of accountability, have gained this control on a prospectus every bit as false as much of the promotional material for the "exotic securities" of which they are so fond.
Guardian UK
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