The Fat cat Oil companies are bleating and threatening to withdraw up to £50 billion of investment in the North Sea oil industry because the government has levied a windfall tax of £2 billion on their profits for financial year 2010/2011. This is a scandalous greedy response in a financial year when the oil companies [...]
After thirty years of credit bubble capitalism it is time we made the rich pay for the mess they have created and ensure they make their proper financial contribution to the big society. In the last thirty years we have seen a massive shift in wealth to the richest in society – in 1982 the [...]
The meeting of the finance ministers from the 20 major economies has just finished this weekend in Paris. They were focused on two things: growth and re-balancing the world economy. In reality they wanted growth in developed western economies at the expense of the developing economies of China, India and Brasil. Is that the way [...]
Anger has rightly resurfaced on bankers’ bonuses in a week when two of the US banks with a significant presence in the UK announced they would be paying bonuses to their staff of over $30 billion for 2010. UK banks are estimated to be making £7 billion in bonus payments for 2010 when they are [...]
The rise in VAT to 20% is part of the coalition’s plans to make us pay for cost of their crisis. It is part of a package of cuts and tax increases worth £111 billion pounds a year that will be borne by the less well-off section of society to meet the cost of the [...]
1. European Union (EU) Debt Crisis The bailout of Greece and Portugal in 2001 put strains on the whole Euro system. A single currency with competing national capitals and a diverse range of economies is unsustainable. Portugal is unlikely to survive beyond the first half of 2010 without a bailout. Spain is the big one [...]
A full financial bailout of Portugal involving the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) looks set to happen in the first half of 2011. This will involve severe austerity conditions being imposed on the Portuguese people by the ECB and IMF. The indications are clearly there as at the end of [...]
What’s the difference between Ireland and the UK? Probably about two years! When Ireland’s property and credit bubble burst the Irish government poured tens of billions of Euros into the banking and building industries to stop them going completely bankrupt. They endured a deep recession which saw tax revenues decline dramatically. To pay for this [...]
The SNP’s upcoming proposed Scottish budget for 2011/2012 should be an opportunity to put a radical alternative to the austerity which the Coalition is trying to impose on us. Instead the SNP will themselves exert further austerity on the Scottish people. They will bundle all the budget cuts announced at department level by the Coalition’s [...]
As it currently exists the Euro as the single European currency is highly unstable. Ultimately it can only succeed if backed by a single European state power and the unification of existing national currency reserves. The latter is not the case but the former is only partially true. A single European state can only be [...]
