Global Forces are operating against you

[LenBurch]

(The following will forever be relevant - even though written before New Labour was ousted. LEB)

Most folk, it seems, know why "our" Economy is "going through such a bad patch".

Oft enough do we hear, how our present financial problems are the products of such self-controlling non-human entities as recessions and depressions and such-like agencies of a global nature, often called "global forces" - which are so independently unreliable, so unstable and unsustainable (while yet ubiquitously calamitous) that they can be thought of as akin to inclement weather - with not less difficulty in pinning down the source and destiny of those professed "global forces".

So is it, that our present financial problems get attributed to something approaching the inclemency of (financial) weather, operating on a global scale. Less so are they seen, as a product of the allegedly and comparatively puny activities of New Labour and Gordon Brown - who cannot control "the weather".

When Gordon Brown said, so often in his budgets, over years, that he was "prudent" (14 times in one single statement) and when the press were repeating his own description of himself (over and again, for years) then "everyone" tended to think such was the case.

Folk were led to believe that a prudent Chancellor was taking them to levels of "prosperity" - when such was a complete misnomer, in respect of what was really a self-created "boom" built on a phenomenal mass of debt - of a kind previously always followed by a "bust" and burst. Then, as now, were New Labour's control over conditions presented as a “period of prosperity” derived by Brown's prudence, when neither was the case.

Gordon Brown was anything but prudent. He was a leading profligate member within a financially unregulating caucus - which allowed and indeed encouraged a boom situation of indebtedness, such that it would, and could only result in a slump - with debts running riot, and getting finally sustained by nothing more than further debts - where debts come to have no other basis beyond themselves - where, like money itself, you simply pay for one debt with another - but up to levels where repayment becomes impossible - where those debts represent, too, what is simply and factually not there, not there in terms of real value - only as entries in a book or computer, promises backed by paper alone.

Producing debts as money (which is itself just concrete evidence of a debt) is not the same as producing value – and to act and proceed as if that were so, simply since money can be a means to value, must have financially disastrous consequences.

That recent past, still now referred to as a disappearing "time of prosperity" was no period of prosperity at all. . It was a boom period when Banks, Governments and individuals were living on tick – where all were living off money that was not theirs, (nor, as value, even there) were spending what they had not got, and living off what were historically and previously unknown levels of debt - as well as extending the normal practice of putting ever-more financial burdens onto future generations - all essentially conditions where each and all (nearly) were seeking, not simply to live off the resources of someone else, but even from resources that were not there - not as actualities rather than as paper promises - that were never financially or actuarially capable of fulfilment.

When, some years back, you were being told by economists, that, on average, every man, woman and child, was each in debt to the extent of £20,000 (excluding mortgages) and were increasingly struggling to pay even the monthly interest charges, let alone the capital itself, then it was obvious that such a form of "prosperity" based on such consumer debt alone, was an illusion that could not last- and with financial disaster on the horizon.

If I should (when I could) have borrowed £200,000, and then bought myself a flash car and engaged in living it up in so many other ways, then I would appear to all those around me as a most successful and "prosperous" person. . But I would not be prosperous at all. And to describe me, or "those times", as prosperous would be a sheer travesty and illusion. More-so too, would I, after a given period, be facing repayment and then financial disaster - as would also those to whom I owed the (now spent) money, and who had themselves anyway lent me what they too had not got, but had also put themselves in debt to provide me with – a situation, where all that backs up a debt is another debt - where there is nothing of economic substance at the base - other than psychological confidence - in a promise or promises, that (actuarially or in any other way) cannot be fulfilled - not when such created "money" (debt) has been spent, on consumer rather than other (financially) productive and profitable purposes.

An economy built essentially on (consumer or welfare) debt must eventually collapse. No specialist expertise is required to come to that conclusion - nothing more than that old-fashioned and discarded notion of living within your means - and doing so when all those private commercial interests are wanting, and are encouraging, you to do the opposite. And where you (they) build masses of expensive and luxurious shopping centres for (without our own factories) selling you foriegn and imported products.

That is our present situation, which is only aggravated by global prices of fuel and some food - initially but incredibly blamed by New Labour, for the problem they had created and were then facing . But those are minor aggravating features, not the basic cause of our present (and even more-so forth-coming) huge financial difficulties - nor is it those strange global forces that are responsible for the state of this country, and others, who have spent what they have not got, and what they will not have - those blissfully living off a future that has now caught up with them.

Significantly in that false period of Brown’s "prosperity" the Government constantly claimed the credit for the financial state of the economy. Now that the chickens are coming home to roost, we learn that it is the economy itself, which "is going through a bad patch". The "Economy" is presented to us now as if it were some impersonal and independently operating agency– as that which controls itself (and even us) in response to some autonomously acting global and non-Governmental agencies, rather than our present circumstances being no more than a consequence of our own uncontrolled and unregulated financial arrangements and activity - being no more mysterious or complicated than individually and collectively living beyond our means and spending or lending what "we" have not got.

According to New (and long-since no-longer) Labour, the state of the economy has now suddenly become its own self-created or externally-conditioned problem. It is now presented by Labour, as if it were a problem unto itself, rather than being that same "economy" which our previous brilliant Chancellor is, and was, claiming credit for directing, and being so prudently responsible for.

His and others' description of a "global force" or of multiple "forces" is simply intended to create a deceptive delusion. . Our present problems are not essentially the consequences of any "forces" but of individual and Government actions and indebtedness – with banks lending money far beyond what they had access to, or could manufacture; and with the Government and consumers borrowing and spending and living for too long off money they had not actually "got" (did not own) and would never ever be able to repay – without later going into bankruptcy or being forced individually and collectively to reduce expenditure to an economically dangerous level - and where the innocent then suffer as much as the guilty.

Whether you are a bank, a Government, or an individual consumer, then spending and/or lending, what you have not got; and what is beyond your means to repay, must put you in a mess that cannot sensibly be attributed to “global forces” or to any forces at all - but only according to the nature and requirements of accountancy itself. Spend what you have not got and are unlikely to have, and the result needs no explanation by way of forces or the intricate thoughts of highly paid economic professionals - none such.

The nonsensical notion of “global forces” is but a means for everyone else to blame everyone else and to thereby leave no-one responsible. What we face are not some unforeseeable independently operating forces, but the consequences of a badly run financial economy – here and elsewhere - but when considered globally, then mostly in the "capital-controlling" capitals of UK and USA.

Commentators themselves are fooled by descriptions of that recent boom period of living beyond our means, of borrowing and spending what we had not got, as if it were a “period of prosperity” - when it was no more prosperous than I would be if spending extensively what I had only borrowed, and would be unable to repay.

While Brown was boasting about securing the end of boom and bust, he was by his policies in the very process of contributing excessively to both. He was constantly even boasting that he had returned the Bank of England back again into the hands of "outside" private interests and relieved it of some essential functions. The very first thing a real Labour Government did on coming to office, was to take the Bank of England into public ownership. The very first thing Brown did, was to give it back again to those private interests - and then brag about having done so.

A recession is no more than the disastrous consequences of a widespread drop in spending; and that will occur after a period when banks and individuals have lent and spent what they have not got, and are then faced with repaying what they equally have not got either - and so are faced with cutting expenditure extensively and excessively - with all the vicious-circle interactions then flowing there-from, but with all that being internally and interactively connected and not coming from any externally driven and equally driving external "forces".

The issues arise from nothing more erudite, than lending, spending and living beyond your means and have nothing to do with outside “forces” global or otherwise.

Under Brown and New Labour we have had a complete mis-management of our financial affairs and the economy. And those sensible enough to foresee and forecast what was happening and what would happen – given only the news of consumers increasing indebtedness and their inability to pay even the interest (as indication enough) were not listened to.

So let us not now continue to kid ourselves by adopting descriptions for our situation that have nothing to do with its causes or its conditions - descriptions used to disguise and divert minds from the social mismanagement of what the ownership and accountancy actualities themselves require and dictate.

Lessons are never learned when spin-fully hidden beneath wads of such mis-description.

And blaming "greed" too, gets us precisely no-where. Human behaviour is but a response to the conditions that it confronts. If you want to change that behaviour, then change those conditions themselves. Do not, like religious folk, think that you can change human behaviour irrespective of what it confronts, but like Owenite socialists and behaviourists, realise that you must change the conditions that such behaviour is a response to.

Without changing the structural arrangements, you won't change much else. Where people are living under the "law of the jungle", then it's no good complaining, because they behave accordingly. Equally, in such circumstances, is it no good expecting people to put their own interests aside, under conditions, which make self-interest a priority, or where that is the most "sensible" procedure to individually adopt.

You won't change anything without regulating the conditions, which such incidences are a response to.

Advocating a free-for-all, or less regulation (persuasively called "interference") is just the opposite of that.

Changing people (including politicians) involves changing or regulating the constitutional arrangements within which they operate, and to which they respond – and within which those types always become victors. It involves more than just electorally replacing one group of inadequate people with equally similar others