Austerity

Finally had some time to watch this. I agree with much of what he says, but he doesn't really explain what happens if we don't bring in austerity.

There's no question there are serious problems with the current financial system. The question for me is, how do we fix it and fix it in a way that causes the least amount of suffering? Allowing the banks to implode may not in fact be the best long term solution and will bring about a different form of austerity all on it's own. WW1 did not prevent WW2, and thus allowing a complete banking failure is no guarantee that another complete banking failure won't occur. I think what we do need is more regulation for the banks and strong barriers between government and corporations. If we can do that, how we deal with this mess is secondary.
 
Glaucus said:
Finally had some time to watch this. I agree with much of what he says, but he doesn't really explain what happens if we don't bring in austerity.
Click to expand...

There are quite a few ways out of the problem. Number one is taxation. Tax the people who have the money - tax the transaction that cause the problems (like micro second-trades, bring in a Tobin tax for e.g.) and go back to borrowing for government from the Bank of Canada as we did before Mulroney.

The problem isn't that we have no wealth - the amount of wealth we have is the same whether or not there are Canadian dollars to account for it. The issue is about who claims to own the wealth. Nothing real has actually happened to the economy - just the accounting system has gone nuts. The problem is the accounting system - it doesn't track reality and periodically chokes up, always has done.
 
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