Thursday 21 October 2010

A mass debate with twitterati (for @hangbitch AKblackandred and @Danny777James )

It all starts with something like this:

A bunch of speculating cocks throw the world into recession and govt takes it out on ppl who've been doing the right thing.


To which I replied:

@hangbitch Yeah, living the high life on money borrowed from those speculating cocks


Somehow, the daft Australian cunt and some fellow travellers took this to mean that I was having a go a dole scroungers. I wasn't, because as far as I know (not being a dole scrounger myself) banks won't lend money to people on the dole because they don't have enough income to pay back any such loans.

My point is that everyone was happy to ride the wave of easy money created by these speculating cocks, everyone got suckered in by the false confidence generated by the monocular mentalist and his promise of ending boom and bust. In a sweeping generalisation, I'd say that nobody actually did the right thing, which is why it's so fucking painful for us all and why we're all so fucking keen for the buck to stop somewhere else.

Nobody wants the party to end, especially those who were doing OK out of the mentalist's boom.

Nobody wants to look in the mirror and say to that fuckwit in there: "You made bad decisions, too. You need to man up and take the consequences of your part in this."

My point is not that any particular group of people don't want the fake boom to end, my point is that nobody wants it to end. They're dressing it up as concern for the needy, concern for the disabled, concern for the cheeeeeeeldren.

But the truth is, what they really don't want to do is take the medicine they know they actually deserve themselves. If people hadn't ridden the wave of easy money created by those speculating cocks, riding out the consequent recession would actually be pretty easy.

Now, for the sake of completeness and for the avoidance of doubt, I will also say that I am quite happy with my track record of saying that we should not have bailed out the banks. We should have let Northern Rock go to the wall, even if we'd had to pick up every penny of deposits as a protection of customers (and we wouldn't have, because the Rock had a shitload of assets) letting some other bank pick up the Rock's assets would have cost the tiniest fraction of the mass bailout and making a better business out of it is exactly what capitalism does best.

The decision to secure the banks' liabilities was nothing other than a massive nationalisation in all but name for the Labour Party agreeing with a massive grab of public funds by corporate interests who decided that rent-seeking was a better way forward that actually facing the market the hard way.

The thing that fucks me off more than anything is that the same people calling for more "regulation" of the banks (which will only protect the same thieving incumbents from the competition that would really keep them honest) are the very same people who fail to see that the regulatory state is at least 50% responsible for the fact that vast quantities of our money were handed over to reckless business, completely absolving said reckless businesses from the responsibility for their recklessness, not just now, but in the future as well.

Look at it this way, if a child asks its parent for sweets before dinner and the parent actually gives the child the sweets, who is actually at fault?

16 comments:

Timdog said...

Nail, meet head. Lack of personal responsibility is ony of my biggest gripes. People need to man the fuck up

Dick Puddlecote said...

Top post, Obo. :)

Phil Dickens said...

Fair enough on the original point: you weren't talking about benefit claimants. I'm happy to stand corrected on that.

I'll also agree with this:

"the regulatory state is at least 50% responsible for the fact that vast quantities of our money were handed over to reckless business, completely absolving said reckless businesses from the responsibility for their recklessness, not just now, but in the future as well."

But make the point that this is what people rail against when they rail against capitalism. The free market is a nice little pipe dream, but capitalism in the real world is and always has been entangled with state power.

In fact without that, or equivalent, monopoly of violence behind it it simply couldn't exist.

Obnoxio The Clown said...

"In fact without that, or equivalent, monopoly of violence behind it it simply couldn't exist."

WHAT?

Jesus, that's a pretty remarkable assertion considering that trade is entirely possible without a monopoly on violence.

JuliaM said...

"Look at it this way, if a child asks its parent for sweets before dinner and the parent actually gives the child the sweets, who is actually at fault?"

The greedy capitalist sweet manufacturers, of course!!!

Phil Dickens said...

"trade is entirely possible without a monopoly on violence"

Yes, it is.

But markets and capitalism are not the same thing. Capitalism is the violent state-corporate system that's dominated for the last 150 years, and any reference to "free markets" therein is entirely illusory.

If you want free markets, you want mutualism, not capitalism.

Caedmon's Cat said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Caedmon's Cat said...

Fully agree, Obo. Although I have no sympathy with any of the political parties, I have even less (if that's possible) with those champagne-guzzling Gramscian Marxists who are always on the take - and the lookout for the next opportunity. Their lives are simply two-legged denials..

microdave said...

My only disagreement is the use of "Nobody wants". Some of us have managed to survive without spending money we haven't got. I've only taken out one loan in my life - to buy my first motorbike, and I paid that back in less than the agreed time. I have a credit card and use it regularly, but I have the funds to cover its use, and pay back in full every month.

I drive around in a knackered old car, I'm typing this on a dodgy old PC, and my mobile phone is 7 years old, etc etc. So why should I be at risk of loosing my savings and pension because of the fuckwitted behaviour of others???

I recently asked my financial advisor how easy (and quick) it would be to convert my money to gold (as frequently recommended by many bloggers). He seemed rather surprised at my concern of the way global finances are heading.

Can someone please start a parallel universe that I, and other like minded people) can move to, and leave the rest of the brain dead cunts to get on with it....

W/V "eureo" For fucks sake!!!

John Demetriou said...

Back, and with a vengeance.

Nice to see - of all of them, you'd be the one to miss.

Just don't get so fucking jaded!

Good recent articles, fella.

Anonymous said...

Who was really responsible for the plight the country finds itself in? And who should therefore be made to pay? Well the Prime Mentalist first and foremost, he who repeatedly told us that he had abolished Boom and Bust. Also Balls,Darling, Cooper, and the rest of those crooks. They should be made to answer for what they did.
Lastly, all those who voted Labour in 1997 should be fined £500. Those who voted for them again in their second election should be fined £1000, and those who voted for them three times should be fined £3000. That should put the deficit in reasonable perspective.

Mitch said...

Obo, glad your back! you need a Tv show or even radio to get these views out there.

Shock jock clown.

Tomrat said...

Actually there are other reasons why Labour bailed out Northern Rock & Bradford/Bingley etc. - look at where their head offices are based and it becomes very apparent this was an exercise in shoring up private sector jobs in Labour strongholds (note: Bingley is actually a Bory council, in part due to the efforts of Titus Salt in the 1900s, but it is surrounded by Labour councils).

Incidentally here is an allegory of the credit crunch that I wrote recently.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Glad you are back with us.

John Demetriou said...

hurry up and do a new article will you. Dont want your rep to slip back into 'lazy cunt' mode, do you?

Lola said...

I am a 'financial adviser', so I know wherfore I say and the FSA is not 50% responsible for the credit cock up, it's more like 75%.

I have just been 'interrogated' by the utter cunts as to whether I amj 'treating my customers fairly'. When a made a reasonable request as to whether the FSA could define fairness the shitbag interrogator said (and I kd you not) 'W(v)e ask (zer)the Qvestions.

Really, what the fuck can be done with these people?