Some good videos looking at the current crisis.
A good overview for amateur:
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
A more in depth look (1 hour):
Will Hutton Capitalism Crisis is a good overview of what went wrong from the viewpoint of a Keynesian.
Where does it all go? Well, tax wise at the moment, it goes into paying for bankers mistakes, with the Government, who are at least partly responsible for not foreseeing the problem in the first place, now bailing out the banks bad debts with your money.
And now it turns out that the Banks were not only guilty of mismanaging their business but avoiding paying their fair share of tax whilst they were making billion £’s worth of profit. Allegedly.
The Guardian recently found evidence that Barclays had been busy creating companies in low-tax countries such as Brazil and Luxembourg. Allegedly.
These documents were published on the Guardian website, only to have a judge phone up at 2am demanding they are taken down, and in so doing generating even more publicity around the story than would have happened.
This take down order has now been ratified by a judge, in a chilling blow for free speech in the UK.
The confidential leaked documents describe how SCM, Barclays‘ structured capital markets division, allegedly planned to use more than £11bn of loans to create hundreds of millions of pounds of tax benefits, via “an elaborate circuit of Cayman Islands companies, US partnerships and Luxembourg subsidiaries”.
The tax benefits for Barclays are said to be in the region of £1billion a year, although this is unverified.
And so, Techcrunch in the US, has managed to publish the documents, in solidarity for free speech around the world. Here is the information Barclays do not want you to see:
Barclays Confidential Tax Avoidance Documents
Alleged evidence of Barclays tax avoidance documents:
Barclays Tax Avoidance – Lux
Barclays Tax Avoidance – Knight
Barclays Tax Avoidance – Valiha
Barclays Tax Avoidance – Brazil
Barclays Tax Avoidance – Berry
Barclays Tax Avoidance – Faber
Barclays Tax Avoidance – Brontos
A little diversion courtesy of Goodmagazine.com who attempt to answer – where did all the money go in the credit crunch?
All these news stories are confusing, but these videos give a good job of explaining it for us mortal folk who are not merchant bankers.
Gives a nice brief overview
Yes, its the internet, it can exist.
The BBC are always good for introductory info…beware propaganda though
Bird and Fortune are always good for a laugh….
Sky news reports Darling telling us not to borrow so much money, you naughty boys.
In case you have been living under a rock you’d be aware of the turmoil of the financial markets at the moment, with not a week going by without a UK or US bank having to be nationalised or taken over by rival firms.
The Governments in the UK and US are literally on their knees as they try to correct the mistakes made by greedy banks, with just today giving news that the Spanish bank Santander are taking Bradford and Bingley over to avoid it being nationalised for £150 billion, and the US basically nationalising almost every sub-prime mortgage in the $700 Billion rescue.
America is more communist than China is right now. You can see that this is welfare of the rich, it is socialism for the rich… it’s just bailing out financial institutions
…says Jim Rodgers, CEO of of Rodgers Holdings.
As discussed by James Bennett, capitalism was a term spoken by Marx to explain market economies, saying that eventually centralised economies would dominate. That inevitability of the process has been said to be dis-proven in recent times, incorrectly given recent events?
As each news story about the credit-crunch’s effect happens, I feel I am watching the end of an era. I can dimly remember the Berlin Wall being torn down as a kid, and I have a feeling the winter of 08 will have just as much of a significance when looking back in the future.
Letting finance markets police themselves is over – American dominance of the finance markets is over – voter dissatisfaction is going to be at all time high in America and the UK with rising unemployment, crime and living costs. Labour is doomed, but what will the market loving Tories do to a UK in the midst of a recession?
A figure totted about at the moment is that for the $700 Billion the US is planning to use to buy up toxic assets, it could provide free gasoline to America for 1 and a half years.
That is an immense amount of money, but there will be long term recovery of that figure as they sell off the assets in the future. Indeed, it could be possible in a few years time America will have money to pay off its immense national debt, most of which it owes to China.
And that is the Elephant in the room – the emergence of Russia and China as the new world order opens up is the end result of all this financial chaos.
The global centre is swinging faster than ever from West to the East; in the future if may be said the East beat Capitalism at its own game – being able to switch off gas to Europe in the height of winter gives Russia immense political weight in the region, as Georgia announced to the world. (How are those break away regions now? Colonies of Russia?)
And China, buoyed up by its Olympics, ready to provide the world’s cheap goods as long as we behave and don’t piss it off too much, since China could dump the dollar and drive America into even greater recession; Foreign investors own 47% of Americas Treasury bonds.
Interesting Times, there is not much we can do but hang on and enjoy the ride.
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