Couldn't agree more "It started in America" when it was AIG's trading out of UK that caused major problems, followed by the UK brancrupcy rules (still not changed), when the US Government made its decision not to prop it up, US didn't prop up American International Group cos it had American in the title, its registered in the US, as was Lehman's. That it was the UK that had to deal with RBS, because banking regulation wasn't devolved.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...nd-bank-regulation-illegal-says-industry.html
I see you have linked to a story about the SNP. Maybe we’d better clear something up: I’m neither a supporter of the SNP, nor a nationalist. I’m not sure if you think I am or not, but I thought it best to get that out in the open. Because I’m not really sure what point you’re making in your post.
Let me put my case.
It is my view that there has not been a “national bailout” by the Westminster government. It has been a bailout of the banks and the capitalist class. The rest of the financial system as we know it has not been bailed out.
Their debts have been forgiven,
their iniquities absolved, and
their institutions shored up.
By contrast,
the people have not been bailed out. Instead, the people must pay the price. Homeowners have been foreclosed on, wages are frozen and cut, pensions are destroyed, and the welfare state is attacked. There is nothing “national” about this bailout: it is a class project. It is about consolidating class power. They have protected the banks and unleashed an attack on the people.
The decision by Westminster parties was not made to protect the people of the UK; it was made to protect the class interests the political parties serve. It was the latest act of the neoliberal project to do what it always does: use state power to protect the financial institutions, at the expense of the people.
We are seeing what the banks are doing with the money they’ve been given. They aren’t lending it to people; they’re buying up other banks. The capitalist class is retrenching. They can see that there’s a problem here that needs to be solved – if credit for the working class is over, then a new financial structure will need to be found, but it won’t be for our benefit, and may well be to our detriment. The dialogue we see going on at the moment about the financial institutions amply illustrates that. The old way of exploiting us – chiefly “financialization” (see David Harvey’s book, Neoliberalism, pp160 – 165) - has broken down. They are casting about now to find new, more fundamental ways of doing so.
To go along with their version of events, their explanations, is to play into their hands. This crisis was not caused by irresponsible borrowers. We are not “all in this together”.
We are not responsible for the crisis.
We are the ones paying for it.
To talk about the people of the UK being responsible for the banks is wrong-headed. When the ruling parties bailed them out, they did not do so on our behalf, but on behalf of those they are there to look after: the capitalist class.
There is no such thing as an “English” share of that responsibility or a “Scottish” share of that responsibility, since it is not a national project; it is a class project. The people – wherever they live - are the scapegoats and the patsies, not the cause of the crisis.
