We the Downtrodden People
If ever there was a time when democracy and people power ever existed this is not it. We’ve long complained about the power of the Press, the abuse of power by politicans, well now we have a new foe. The markets.
While Cameron and Clegg struggle over policy and try to oust Brown the markets dictate and I don’t just mean that casually. The heart of our problems is the chronic debt crisis, the fact that the only thing that will prevent a slide into financial oblivion will be the way our government tackles the national deficit.
If the ‘strong and stable’ government fails to act within the ‘national interest’ what then? Will it be back to the electorate? not if Labour and LibDem can help it, they have more to lose. So if not the people who then decides on what is in the national interest.
Anyone but the English it would appear – it’s going to be the Markets, if Cam/egg don’t cut back enough the markets will slide, if they over cut and create Greece like discontent the markets will slide, if they fail to do exactly what the markets want, the markets will slide.
Never before has a government so much depended on what the markets dictate. The people have spoken they want a change in direction, they want to see more partnership between a cleaner type of politics, they want a fairer tax system, to get rid of Gordon Brown and now they appear to want to change the voting system. But will the markets agree with them.
I have two separate points to make:
First, our politicians cannot afford to allow the markets to dictate in this way, we vote in the government not the markets, we require of our politicans a certain behaviour, if they now cave into the Markets then we’ll continue to see the slide of distrust between people and politicans. Not something any politican should take lightly.
Second, just who are the markets? This I find scary – we’re no longer dealing with investors or groups of people that want to see a company benefit or someone with a few extra pounds for an ISA saving. It’s big money and big interests that are at stake, George Sorros comes to mind, but instituional investors are really at the heart of it. Big Banks.
We’re seeing a lot of credit for market forces going to the credit agencies like Moodies, S&P and others – they arbitarily decide on the quality of a debt, be it a country, bank, stock or other investment – the power of these credit agencies is massive and they get it wrong all the time. But who are they – well they are controlled by none other than the institutional investors (the big banks).
What we seeing more than ever before is increasing power concentrated to the very few and always these few have only one thing in mind – more power, power over our government and power over our lives. The scale of these issues dwarfs that of when we had kings and queens or when religion was at it’s height. These few Banks have unprecendented power over all of us and there is nothing we can do about it.
If ever there was a time when we the downtrodden people were downtrodden then this is probably it, unless our politicans can put their differences aside and do what we voted them in to do.