Morgan Stanley is the latest bank to discover a huge loss [$3.7bn; £ 1.8bn] as a result of the subprime mortgage debacle. Meanwhile petrol in the UK breaks through £1 per litre and the country is beginning to discover the perils of debt. The world's stock markets are yo yoing about all over the place. Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats was the only mainstream politician to warn about this some three years ago. Naturally nobody paid attention.
The banks are sitting on piles of 'financial instruments' [so much scrap paper!] that they thought was actually worth something and now they don't know if they are or not. These 'instruments' were dreamed up by people who were paid obscene amounts of money for their so called 'ability' and who paid minimal taxes whilst considering it OK to try and avoid paying their office cleaners the minimum wage. If we imposed proper levels of taxation on these people and they carried out their threat to go abroad then I for one would be pleased.
However they wouldn't go. No less a person than Michael Heseltine pointed out that there are massive benefits to the very rich from living in Britain and paying fair taxes that they could well afford would not make them leave.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment