If you want a laugh, have a read of this BBC article entitled “Where now for capitalism”? Great to read the thoughts of such renowned free marketeers as….Noam Chomsky, Tony Benn, Brendan Barber. Along with other elements within the left-wing media, the BBC takes delight at the current chaos in the money markets/housing market and it is fantasising at the moment that capitalism is dying and it’s time for socialism uber alles.
THE WAR ON CAPITALISM.
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They show contempt for those of us not under the socialist illusion by not even attempting to include a token free marketeer.
Well if it`s the death of capitalism it must be Marxism again, unless the Beeb want it to be a theocracy (but what sort?).
Funny that the BBC doesn’t have a problem having a commercial arm of its own does it?
Perhaps when it comes to making money for drugs and rent boys the BBC approves of capitalism?
Yes I thought this was completely extraordinary! I mean, I pay them! I’m really not interested in Noam Chomski’s or Anthony Wedgewood-Benn’s views on ‘capitalism’. It’s a complete non-story.
And when did we ever hear a BBC story “where now for socialism”? With comments by Iain Dale, Michael Howard, etc
The BBC must be gutted that their hero Brown has granted exclusive interviews to Sky News today.
The Beeb have missed the classic ironic headline quote from our Dear Leader and as used by Sky:
“PM Slams ‘Off-Balance Activities'”
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Bank-CrisisGordon-Brown-Hits-Out-At-Inexcusable-Behaviour-Of-Some-Financial-Institutions-Involved/Article/200809315102670?f=rss
Brown has long targeted a 40% of GDP government borrowing rate as his ideal – though breached thanks to his disgraceful nationalisation of Northern Rock – yet as the Tax Payers Alliance report, the actual state liabilities as a % of GDP is 129% thanks to our Dear Leader’s own off-balance sheet debts!!!
http://tpa.typepad.com/research/2008/09/brown-blames-of.html
Q1> How does this man keep a straight face when speaking this bullshit?
Q2> But then why was he not challenged on this hypocrisy by Sky?
Journalists really are pipsqueaks to be despised as much as politicians & ambulance chasing lawyers.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Bank-CrisisGordon-Brown-Hits-Out-At-Inexcusable-Behaviour-Of-Some-Financial-Institutions-Involved/Article/200809315102670?f=rss
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7621771.stm
and the ONLY american they quote is an american that hates america, hates capitalism and is a die hard marxist.
unf**kingbelievable.
Mr Vance – you really should take a screenshot of that page.
ask any american free marketeer or libertarian and they’ll say that its proof of a failure of socialism.
government intervention , under the guise of political correctness, opened up this box of worms.
do a google around and you’ll find out that “ethnic minorities” were not being lent to in the past. because of the credit risk. the U.S. government leant on the banks , and the rest followed.
seriously – thats where the roots of this crisis lies.
Mostly unreadable gibberish.
However this country has a real and increasing problem.
Wealth can only be really created by making things, growing things, mining and other activities like fishing . It has always been so.
We in GB increasingly are doing less of these vital activities and are very vulnerable to a financial crash. The City should exist to facilitate these activities not to be an end in itself.
It used to be it’s purpose.
Whenever pure speculation took over it ended in diasaster.
South Sea Bubble, the railway mania being two examples.
The natural human tendency to gamble and speculate needs to be controlled.
This is not some sort of socialist mantra but a recognition that in a democracy money must serve the nation and not become an end in itself.
To equate a completely free and unregulated market with a libertarian outlook is absurd.
When your freedom to act as you see fit destroys lives then it is no longer freedom but oppression.
This wretched government has greedily followed the principles of unfettered markets largely through the fraud of PFI.
As a financial company has a balance sheet which is a pale reflection of reality so does the nation. Nothing can be believed any more and I pity the next government when it tries to restore reality to the nation’s finances.
Not only that, but the BBC has a new Economics front-man called Robert Peston.
This over-excitably wonk with an annoyingly widow twanky voice, has developed a kindergarten way of delivering the wow wow news that talks down to the viewers and listeners… and the Corporation just can’t wait to post him up at every opportunity.
It’s interesting to note the differential application of ‘logic’ to two different political situations by chunks of the political ‘left’, including chunks of the BBC:
The logic of example 1.) is accepted:
1.)the present financial crisis in capitalism (and capitalism is prone to financial crises) means that desirable socialism is imminent;
The logic of example 2.) is not accepted:
2.)the aims and intentions of Islam, through jihad, high birth-rates and mass immigration into non-Muslim countries, where non-integrationist demands are made will not lead to the re-imposition of a global Caliphate.
Fleur | 19.09.08 – 9:08 pm |
Well, of course they would. Peston is Mr. Brown’s biographer. The FOG faction at BBC editorial meetings has won the day, so he’s the obvious choice to explain the economy to the public. Of course an FOG should be the authority the Official State Broadcaster presents to the public to explain that Mr. Brown is making all the right moves.
The BBC has no integrity in this area, or they wouldn’t think Chomsky and Benn have opinions on the topic worthy of anyone’s respect.
voice coaching has had a really weird effect on Pestons voice.
good point George!
but then , this is a classic example of how the left likes to emote. it exists on emotions and feelings rather than any sort of rationality.
hence you get the contradictions that you mention.
it always staggers me that the likes of Tony Benn and Noam Chomsky always forget about the hundreds of millions of people put to death by the Marxist politics that they both subscribe to.
and not a hint of a rethink.
a person like that , at the age of both of them, is clearly a person who hasnt learned and who hasnt developed.
in other words – neither of them have wisdom.
they are both trapped in the mindset of an 18 year old college student.
dave s
Have to disagree with you a little, I’m afraid.
Most of the value that rich countries add is in intellectual services, even if they are connected to manufacturing activities. For example Mercedes are really good not because they have brilliant welders but because they have really good designers, process engineers, brand managers, leasing services, marketeers, etc.
The best welder in the world won’t be able to add 10 times more value than a merely competent welder. An activity like building and maintaining a brand can potentially add much more value.
David P.
I didn’t know that, and it explains a lot. ie, why Brown’s face & voice makes me feel sick, and why Peston has the same effect.
Well, I didn’t have to read the article to know what it says.
Gnome Chompsky was an idiot in 1969, and hasn’t improved with age.
I already KNOW what he thinks, no need to see it again.
BTW, I wonder what these nuts thought about the stock market ending up back where it was before this hoo-raw started?
a country consisting mainly of social workers, hairdressers and security guards who think they can get rich forever by continually buying each others’ houses isn’t really a recipe for long-term success.
“followed the principles of unfettered markets through … PFI”
What do long-term government contracts have to do with free markets?
NovelPhenomena
You are quite right.I assumed that good design etc was part of making things.
The very best wood working machinery is German. Brilliant design and very well made. We have simply given up trying to do this in so many fields and this is what worries me. Germany has not done this and will inevitably end up the dominant power in Europe while we play around doing what?
Mercedes is just one huge industrial company that country has. We have nothing much now.
archduke | 19.09.08 – 11:29 pm |
it always staggers me that the likes of Tony Benn and Noam Chomsky always forget about the hundreds of millions of people put to death by the Marxist politics that they both subscribe to.
You’re forgetting the Apostle’s Creed: It’s a beautiful ideology, always ruined by a few bad apples.
Bush definitely has embraced socialism, though.
The only real conservatives in America are people like Ron Paul, who opposes welfare handouts to the rich.
Hank Paulson is clearly mentally retarded and should be sacked. $1 Trillion of TAXPAYERS money being given to PRIVATE COMPANIES is Communism pure and simple.
Jim Rogers says America is now more Communist than China, and he’s right.
mamapajamas:
“BTW, I wonder what these nuts thought about the stock market ending up back where it was before this hoo-raw started?”
Well, when it gets there you can ask them!
With regards to the BBC using a quote from Noam Chomsky as the first comment in an article entitled “Where now for capitalism?”: why on earth would they ask a LINGUIST for his views on ECONOMICS? Chomsky has absolutely no economics training whatsoever.
Answer: They asked Chomsky the linguist because he’s an opinionated left wing anticapitalist turd, and the BBC loves opinionated left wing anticapitalist turds.
I regularly see young college age kids with their noses in a Chomsky book on the subway. I believe he’s the most quoted author on Earth, or something like that. To the left, he’s literally a God of sorts and they would not think of questioning anything he says.
And yet his books are complete and utter bullshit. I once stood in a book store and read a little of a book called “The Anti-Chomsky Reader” by David Horowitz and Peter Collier. In it, they expose many of Chomsky’s lies and his tendency to be disingenuous with whatever facts he does use. But the funniest part of it was when they explained how in many cases, Chomsky’s famed “footnotes” actually point the reader toward another book he’s written himself!
As in: “it’s true, and to prove it, here’s another of my books where I claim the same thing”.
Jeez, all you have to do is Google “Chomsky Lies” and the first result is titled “denial of the Khmer Rouge holocaust in Cambodia.”
That says it all. And he’s the first person the Beeb thinks of when they want expert views about the capitalist economy. The BBC is so unashamedly biased, they’re like a perpetual comedy sketch.
Archduke 8:39 pm – absolutely correct. The US banks were pressured by the US Govt to lend to sub-prime borrowers in order to level the mortgage playing field. I mean FFS – even illegal immigrants were able to get housing loans!
Brown has done exactly the same in the UK with the explosion of credit and the chav/self-cert 125% mortgages. How else could this end but in disaster? This should all have blown up in 2003/2004, but the BoE dropped interest rates then instead of raising them. Unf*ckingbelievable. Still, what else would you expect from a Chancellor with Brown’s legendary commercial “acumen”.
This has been an unprecedented and spectacular failure of socialism, political correctness and “quota” mortgages.
Zevilyn | 20.09.08 – 1:50 am |
Hank Paulson is clearly mentally retarded and should be sacked. $1 Trillion of TAXPAYERS money being given to PRIVATE COMPANIES is Communism pure and simple.
Technically, there aren’t any PRIVATE COMPANIES in actual Communism. This is nominally Corporate Welfare, albeit supposedly the kind where the government will earn interest if the money is ever paid back.
In theory this could fuel growth where there would otherwise not be any, or even actual wealth creation in the long term. Not the way things are supposed to work, ideally, and I share your disgust that it has come to this. It’s hard to see how this could be avoided after such a comedy of errors, as archduke and others have described.
But this is hardly Communism, or even Socialism. If the Obamessiah gets elected, however, different story.
(Full disclosure: I stand to lose some business in December if AIG fails. As it is, I may lose that anyway, although my situation involves an overseas branch, and not even actual financial or insurance stuff, so who knows what will happen. But I suppose that makes me slightly biased.)
A lot of what is classed as capitalism these days is actually no more than “political entrepreneurship”, or “crony capitalism”.
What makes me mad is that this is constantly misrepresented as “the free market”.
Even the columnist Rich Lowry from the National Review, who I agree with most of the time, agreed today with Henry Paulson when he said “raw capitalism is dead”.
But we never HAD raw capitalism. Not a bit of it. We’ve had neomercantilism and state intervention all over the place. The very existence of the Federal Reserve mean that there is no such thing as raw capitalism.
Lowry even mentions the ways in which the government has interfered with the economy, as if he just can’t (or refuses to) make the connection.
It scares me to see so many people dropping all pretense of reason and letting their clouded emotions take over. Who the hell in the public eye is coming to capitalism’s defense? It seems everyone is saying “more regulation is needed”, despite the quite obvious fact that it was regulation that got us here in the first place. The point needs to be hammered home that the only regulation which is needed is a state which enforces contracts and prohibits fraud. From there, capital must be able to flow freely according to the decisions of the individuals who own it. If people wish to gamble, that is their decision. If people wish to entrust their money to those who gamble, that is their decision too. Nobody else should have to pay for it when things go wrong. And when a company fails, then let it fail, release it’s capital back into the system to flow into a more efficient enterprise.
It’s like this whole thing is teaching us the most profound lesson in personal responsibility that we’ve ever had, yet everybody’s blind to it.
More defense of the free market amongst all of the insane hooting and braying against a “free capitalism” which doesn’t exist:
Trillion Dollar Bailout Will Lead to Future Bubbles
AIG feels at home in the government
The ‘Naked’ Truth — Short sellers are unsung financial heroes
“The point needs to be hammered home that the only regulation which is needed is a state which enforces contracts and prohibits fraud”
Except that this is an ignorant point which will lead to a barbaric jungle, not to a human society.
Chomsky and Benn are fools. But their comments are balanced by the CBI, and Patrick Minford (as right wing an economist as you could possibly hope for). Perfectly balanced piece.
@wwl
Except for the running order:
Chomsky (anti)
Wedgewood-Benn (anti)
Jay (anti)
it’s an old trick – bury the pro voices way down at the bottom of the page.
Yes, I was going to say. Patrick Minford’s a free market man.
But the order of commentators says a lot. Chomsky and Benn, darlings of the student left, at the top. Peter Jay, repentant capitalist, next. Three businessmen/economists. And last of all, poor Brendan Barber.
Socialism isn’t about improving working people’s lives any more – unless you count throwing social workers at them. It’s about hating America first, and the West in general second.
During the last 11 years, the onward (and unsustainable) march of socialism has been paid for by milking to death what remains of the capitlist system. The BBC would not have millions to waste without tax money from the real economy. The only hope for the return of common sense is the current end of the latest debt fueled boom. As has been said earlier – we are far more vulnerable to the present recession because a far larger preportoin of our national income is generated in the city of London.
“Chomsky and Benn are fools. But their comments are balanced by the CBI, and Patrick Minford (as right wing an economist as you could possibly hope for). Perfectly balanced piece”
Who IS this beeboid? Wheeling out demented economic illiterates in this context is not remotely ‘balanced’.
whitewineliberal | 20.09.08 – 10:36 am |
Chomsky and Benn aren’t economists or bankers or businessmen. There is no logical or journalistic reason for them to be there. The BBC only has them in because they are worshiped for their far-Left views (read: smack in the middle of the mainstream of the BBC). Further, if one asked them the same question ten years ago, they would have the same answers they do today. They are there purely because of their well-established views, not to provide any useful insight into the present situation.
one yank they should have quoted is one Warren Buffett – he’s been warning about the credit bubble for absolutely ages. and he KNOWS his stuff.
but chomsky? what the f**k does he know about capitalism?
Citing the order makes for a very thin case of bias. Or perhaps they should have asked seven bankers as you say. Have you lot ever got together for a drink with your kindred spirits on Indymedia? You should. You could share your conspiracy stories.
whitewineliberal:
‘…Have you lot…’
‘You lot…?’ Seems an odd way to phrase things.
Best I can see there is no ‘lot’ here other than a few independent, diverse and often (not always!) like-minded folk sharing areas of concern for debate.
However, it seems fairly clear that there is some perceived need in other cosy quarters to try and combine, isolate, categorise and then attempt to tar all with a rather broad brush, and in a pretty crass manner. Very tribal. Don’t know about others, and can’t/wouldn’t speak for them, but I am just on team ‘me’, here.
Pity; I actually though a few of the debating points were shaping up as almost worthwhile.
However, ‘Yer, well you’re all mental, you!’ after but a few rounds smacks of one who feels they are already stuck on the ropes; rather a record with what seems like a first outing.
And this pronouncement from upon high smacks of something a little too corporate for this independent-minded individual to feel like engaging with further.
Why do I have a feeling it will soon be: ‘New usernames again, please, IT boys!’
Don’t think ‘Bollyintheaisles’ is taken yet, is it?
As the (always) stupid BBC predict the end of Capitalism, Capitalists just get on with it
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/09/20/do2003.xml
“Citing the order makes for a very thin case of bias. Or perhaps they should have asked seven bankers as you say. Have you lot ever got together for a drink with your kindred spirits on Indymedia? You should. You could share your conspiracy stories.”
What a silly beeboid you are, mate. You completely duck the point about Benn and Chomsky being ignorant lunatics, and simply launch into the usual ignorant beeboid nonsense about ‘you lot’.
“you lot”… ha! ha! laughing my head off here.
i have as much in common with David Vance as a Spartan has with an Athenian.
we can beat the crap out of each other when having feuds, but we sure as hell know who the bigger enemy is.
“you lot”:
archduke: irish republican socialist background. libertarian now.
david vance: ulster unionist. conservative.
pounce: pakistani extraction. ex british army guy.
disillusioned german: american guy. in germany. republican.
anyone else care to add to the “you lot” gang? my my – we are all so alike… NOT…
(sorry, splitting my sides here…LOL)
“The point needs to be hammered home that the only regulation which is needed is a state which enforces contracts and prohibits fraud”
Except that this is an ignorant point which will lead to a barbaric jungle, not to a human society.
George | 20.09.08 – 9:33 am | #
What is your basis for saying this?
A state that enforces contracts and prohibits fraud will lead to a “barbaric jungle”? This is the only economic regulation we need. Our society has grown and evolved despite economic interference, not because of it.
The state’s only job should be to protect the individual from physical coercion and fraud. How anyone in their right mind could ever believe that these protections are the ingredients for barbarity is beyond me.
Jason | 20.09.08 – 10:26 pm
and yet the most tightly regulated societies in the entire history of humanity were the most barbaric.
mao’s china. the soviet union. khmer rouge cambodia. nazi germany.
you would think that lefties would get a hint after those hellhole lessons, but since they live in JK Rowling fantasy land, obviously not.
come to think of it “JK Rowling fantasy land” could be a good line of attack for you conservative party members who are reading this blog.
i think it’s got legs as a meme.
the dust-bin of history will just have to wait for the consignment that will someday follow communism – and it certainly won’t be American capitalism.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article4794902.ece
I’m sure you all have very diverse political views. But you all appear united in the absolute conviction that the media is against you (the BBC in particular). The Indymedia kids are driven by a similar conviction and seek to hound those whom they accuse of bias. So i was merely suggesting you might have common cause. The point about juxtaposing views from yahoos like chomsky with other more intelligent commentators is not evidence of bias, but rather a lame and lazy attempt at the point/counterpoint school of journalism. The BBC did similar with MMR, where i thought their coverage was very poor.
archduke | 20.09.08 – 10:11 pm “anyone else care to add to the “you lot” gang? my my – we are all so alike… NOT…
Oh go on then. will – never voted Conservative, was Labour until mid-80s brought back to Labour fold by Blair, who whilst a disappointment in many areas, is still a man I like. Relationship to Blair was/is focus of my strong dislike of BBC & Brown. Could I be a one off, here or anywhere?
“The state’s only job should be to protect the individual from physical coercion and fraud. How anyone in their right mind could ever believe that these protections are the ingredients for barbarity is beyond me”
No, YOU think (using the term loosely) that its only job ‘should’ be etc. Plenty of rational people disagree. And you can’t read, mate. Nobody said that these protections are the ingredients for barbarity: it’s the absence of the other protections that is the recipe for barbarity: absence of protection against the tyranny of the majority, to name one example. Absence of protection against hunger and against emotional torture of minors is another. There are plenty more. It’s these that make for civilised society.