The Green Party takes on the banks

This is a guest post by Daniel Key who is an ex member of Haringey and of Tower Hamlets Green Party. He is a member of the Policy Committee of the Green Party of England and Wales. He tweets at @danieloliverkey.

Last weekend, the Green Party of England and Wales made history by joining the United States Green Party in calling for an end to the private creation of money by banks. After a debate on the motion at the Autumn Conference in Brighton, the Green Party has collectively decided to instead place this power with a democratically accountable National Monetary Authority at the Bank of England. This represents a huge change in Green Party policy, as we are now calling for full reserve banking, alongside other radical policies such as a citizen's income, land value tax and of course the decarbonisation of the entire economy as we move to a post carbon and equitable world.

           
To recap: currently private banks create money as debt when they make loans. This electronic bank money now represents 97% of the UK money supply, with only 3% being created debt-free by the government in the form of notes and coins (a good place to start to understand the UK money system is the one hour documentary 97% Owned. This money is allocated by the lending decisions of the high street banks, and so we see money pumped into the housing market (putting house prices way beyond the means of young people) instead of small businesses, as banks receive collateral if mortgage holders default on their loans. This is massively undemocratic, as control of the banks' power to create money is in the hands of its board members, who are only accountable to the bank's shareholders.

 Money creation is pro-cyclical – too much is created in an economic boom, whereas we are currently living through a period where lending is restricted and money is therefore destroyed when debt is paid down. This is why the Bank of England has introduced quantitative easing to indirectly get money into the economy, and the government has introduced the Help to Buy scheme to encourage the public to take on more debt, creating a housing bubble in the process.

 From an environmental perspective, the biggest problem with the current money system is that the level of debt is constantly growing. This in turn means the economy is compelled to grow, even when this leads to environmental destruction. This is the engine behind such environmentally damaging innovations such as planned obsolescence (designing products with a limited useful life to perpetuate consumption), as Michael Rowbotham recognised in his book The Grip of Death over a decade ago. The current debt-based system of creating money is incompatible with the goal of a sustainable, steady-state economy, as pointed out in the recent green economics book Enough is Enough.

To achieve a steady state economy we must eliminate the growth imperative that is built into the existing banking system.

Full reserve banking is recognised as the missing link in the move to a sustainable economy by a number of leading green economists and thinkers. These include:

Herman Daly (grandfather of green economics and the author of Steady State Economics)

As Caroline Lucas points out in this video, the best way to use the debt-free money created as a result of these reforms (estimated at £1 trillion over 20 years) would be to spend it on the Green New Deal in an effort to build the green economy. This way we can get unemployed people into labour-intensive jobs, with more taxes paid by a larger workforce, creating a virtuous circle for government revenues and society as a whole.

The potential transition scenario to a full reserve banking system, as well as the finer details of the reforms, are laid out in the book Modernising Money. We have adapted these proposals to suit Green Party principles.

With the Icelandic parliament looking into the potential of introducing full reserve banking[3], we may have a working example of these reforms in the years to come. As the proposer of the motion, Andrew Waldie, puts it, “This motion strikes a blow at the heart of financial capitalism by removing from banks their power to create money”. We may have improved our policies, but the real battle will be taking this power back from the banks when our movement reaches a critical mass.

Read the Green Party Banking Reform Motion here - http://2joz611prdme3eogq61h5p3gr08.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Green-Party-C%CE%A903-Banking-and-Monetary-Reform-Composite.pdf

Read the Background Paper to the motion here - http://2joz611prdme3eogq61h5p3gr08.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Banking-reform-motion-GP-Conf-Autumn-2013-Background-Paper-submitted.pdf

Check out some Frequently Asked Questions about full reserve banking here -
http://www.positivemoney.org/faqs/

Democratise the money supply to save the planet

It seems like nowadays that every person and every country in the world is in debt. Ever since the financial crisis in 2007-8 which began with the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers, world leaders have been frantically trying to save other private banks and financial institutions from failing by pumping trillions of dollars onto their balance sheets and the wider economy. In the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown spent a total of over £1 trillion, which was the same as 31% of GDP in March 2010. In the United States of America, the government at the time committed an incredible £9 trillion to support Wall Street (source New York Times). By socialising the losses of the private finance sector, there are now sovereign debt crisis across Europe, which threatens the membership of the Euro currency and even the European Union itself.

Which begs the question - why did we have to spend all this money, which would have been better used on preventing the looming catastrophes of peak oil and runaway climate change? What makes private banks so special?

To cut a long story short, we are in this debt crisis because of our deeply flawed banking and monetary system. In 2012, private banks create 97% of the money in the economy as debt, whilst the government only creates 3% in the form of coins and paper money. Until this system is fixed, we will continue to spiral further and further into a debt crisis, instead of focusing on fixing the environmental crisis and other problems facing our country.

In the United Kingdom, the publicly owned Bank of England has a monopoly on creating coin and paper money, which it prints each year and circulates into the economy. This is good news, as the Bank of England, and by extension the Treasury, earns 'seigniorage', the profit difference between the cost of the paper and its value (i.e. twenty pounds for twenty pound note). In 2008, the profit to the Treasury from this was £2.33 billion, money which gets spent on public services or reducing tax. 

However, the Bank of England does not have a monopoly on creating electronic money, which private banks can legally create every time a customer opens a current account with them or applies for a mortgage. As Martin Wolf, the chief economics editor at the Financial Times puts it, 'The essence of the contemporary monetary system is the creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks’ often foolish lending.'

This is bad news! Private banks are owned by private shareholders, and are run for profit. It isn't in their interests to make sure that money is spent on productive businesses, good jobs, environmentally friendly projects, etc. It's in their interests to create as much money as they can and invest it in the most profitable sectors they can, which tend to be property (hence the housing bubble and subsequent crash) and environmentally destructive but very lucrative projects such as coal power plants, oil rigs, the tar sands projects in Canada and other nefarious schemes. As customers, we have no say over where our savings, or what should be *our* money supply, is invested.

Luckily, there is a solution. The monetary reform campaigning group Positive Money have been raising this issue for several years, and have even drafted legislation which would take the creation of money away from private banks and put it back under the democratic control of the government. You can learn more about this issue on their website, as well as on this one hour documentary called '97% Owned'.

Even better, as you are (hopefully!) a member of the most democratic political party in England & Wales, you can make it Green Party policy today to reform this system. I have submitted a motion to SOC to amend current Green Party policy EC661 to the following motion:

Synopsis:

97% of all money in the UK is created by banks. Our government prints bank notes and coins, but private banks create electronic deposit accounts. This state of affairs drives unsustainable growth and is the root of our debt crisis. This is damaging and unnecessary, and should be changed.

Amend Policies for a Sustainable Society EC661 in its entirety with the following motion:

Motion:

The Green Party will remove the ability of banks to create money and lodge the power and responsibility of creating new money solely with the state. New money will be created when necessary by the Bank of England, as determined by the politically-independent Monetary Policy Committee, and credited to the Government for use as Parliament sees fit (see EC676). Banks will not be able to lend money in customer's current accounts, effectively moving to a full reserve banking system. Customers current account money will be 100% safe, as opposed to the current fractional reserve banking system where we have to bail out banks. Banks will be permitted to lend money in savings accounts that they hold on deposit for a fixed term, but only for the duration of that fixed term or notice period. The emphasis in monetary policy will be to control and redirect the creation of money towards socially and environmentally sound areas of the economy, and away from unsustainable and consumption-driven areas.

If you want to support this motion, please email soc@greenparty.org.uk today and write something like:

"I would like to support the motion below proposed by Daniel Key. 

Text of motion (above)

Name: 

Local Party:

Postcode:

Membership Number (if you have it)"

Please do this ASAP and ask your colleagues/friends to do this, and together we can regain control of our money.

Please use the comments box below to ask any questions you may have about this issue or the policy motion.

Written by Daniel Key

Haringey Green Party

Boris Bikes are a Corporate Bonanza

Some love him, others mistrust him but few dispute London mayor Boris Johnson's gift for making his mark. No policy of the celebrity Conservative politician has demonstrated this more conspicuously than the 6,000 bulky, blue, Barclays-sponsored bicycles for hire he has brought to the centre of the capital.

Johnson, himself a highly recognisable cyclist, has made the scheme – Barclays Cycle Hire (BCH) – a flagship policy for what he calls his cycling revolution in the capital, proclaiming it a "glorious new form of public transport".

The bikes and the more than 400 docking stations from which users collect and return them have become familiar sights in central London since their introduction in July 2010. On Thursday the scheme will be extended eastwards to within a 15-minute walk of the Olympic Park, with a further 160 docking stations across the East End hosting a further 2,300 bikes.

Yet as his campaign to retain the mayoralty at the 3 May election intensifies, critics are questioning the success of "Boris Bikes".

Transport for London (TfL), the public body responsible for running the scheme, says 137,000 people have active membership accounts, though these include people who might not have used their membership key to hire a bike for many months.

Numbers of casual users, who hire by swiping a credit card at a docking station terminal point, varied last year between 48,379 in January and 240,000 in July. About 20,000 hires altogether are made each weekday and 13,000-15,000 at weekends.

Johnson's election campaign website boasts of "nearly 10m hires" since launch. However, a customer satisfaction survey conducted for TfL by Ipsos Mori last summer found the scheme's novelty had worn off for many of its members with cyclists becoming "more critical of the BCH offer". There was growing dissatisfaction over bike maintenance and finding docking stations full when attempting to return the cycles.

Early teething problems with the system, run for TfL by Serco, had meant that casual users could not access it until December 2010 and nearly 2,800 people were incorrectly charged during its first five months, though TfL says such problems are now long solved.

The survey also found that more than half of members are men aged 35-54, that only 71% live in London and that nearly half used the bikes for commuting, primarily instead of walking or taking the tube. It also found 93% of all Boris Bikes trips lasted less than half an hour, which is a free period after casuals and members have paid an access fee.

Jenny Jones, the Green party's London mayoral candidate and a regular cyclist, said: "Cycle hire is a brilliant idea but the London scheme has been hijacked by corporate interests."

She also said it was unambitious compared with Paris's much larger Vélib scheme. She cites TfL figures to claim it has generated only 3% of the extra 1m daily cycle trips the mayor is committed to seeing by 2026, compared with 2000.

At the first mayoral election hustings both the Labour candidate Ken Livingstone and Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick attacked the cost of the scheme, which Johnson pledged in his 2008 transport manifesto would be delivered at no cost to the taxpayer through "a deal with a private company."

Yet Barclays' contribution has offset only an undisclosed fraction of TfL's outlay. When the deal was announced in May 2010 it was described by TfL as being worth "up to" £25m over five years with the sum also contributing to the "Barclays cycle superhighways" Johnson has begun introducing on some main commuter routes. The cost of installing the first phase of the scheme was £79.5m. Only £3.4m had been received from Barclays by the end of 2010.

Last July Johnson applauded Barclays' agreeing to "provide another £25m sponsorship," extending its support to 2018 and planned further expansion into west and south London next year.

But in November he said the "anticipated total operational and project cost" over the following five years for the first two phases of the scheme was £140.5m, and that over the life of the contract with Barclays there was "a potential" of £50m in sponsorship.

Johnson added: "The profiling and detail of the payment of the sponsorship is commercially sensitive." A report by the London Assembly transport committee last month criticised the process by which Barclays was selected as a sponsor as "almost totally opaque".

Johnson has enjoyed a close relationship with Barclays throughout his mayoralty, appointing the bank's now global chief executive Bob Diamond the first chair of his charitable Mayor's Fund for London in 2008. Diamond has since stepped down but Barclays Capital is a "strategic partner" of the fund.

BBC London last year reported that he had made "a personal approach" to Barclays chairman Marcus Agius about sponsoring the scheme and that other high street banks were not sounded out.

Three advertising consultants put the publicity value of the deal to Barclays, whose name and Barclays blue corporate colour adorns the bikes and docking points, at £9m-£15m a year. But Johnson and TfL have always insisted the deal is good value for money in tough economic times.

The original colour of the signage and roundels for the scheme was mint green, but was changed to Barclays blue as part of the deal. TfL has always denied that the blue paint used to mark the cycle superhighway lanes was chosen because of its similarity to the Barclays hue, saying it was settled on at least three months before Barclays came on board.

London's boroughs are now being asked to help fund the scheme's growth. Citizen journalists at MayorWatch and the Shepherd's Bush blog have disclosed that Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Hammersmith & Fulham are each required to provide £2m.

TfL puts annual operating costs at £15m a year, rising to £20m with phase 2. Johnson wants these to break even by 2015, but TfL is forecasting only £7m income from users by the end of this financial year. Come 3 May Londoners' votes may be swayed by whether they consider Boris Bikes to be the triumph Johnson says they are – or a taxpayer-subsidised advertising vehicle for Barclays and the Tory mayor.

Written by Dave Hill
First published at The Guardian

Greece Can’t Repay Its Debts With Austerity Medicine

As the so called ‘troika’ (European Union [EU], International Monetary Fund [IMF], and European Central Bank [ECB]) deliberates over whether to release funds to Greece in their latest ‘bail out’ attempt to keep it in the Euro, the simple fact is that Greece cannot repay its debts by making further cuts to jobs, wages and public services.

The ‘bail out’ let us remember is not intended to be a helping hand for the Greek people, but to save the international and national banks that lent money to the Greek government so recklessly and are now threatened with going bust, should Greece default on these loans. At best, any ‘bail out’ will only delay the inevitable for a while, because all the flesh has already been cut from the bone, and Greece is, after nearly five years of recession, falling further into debt, with a 7% drop in growth in the last year alone. The latest plan can only prolong Greece’s recession and will probably make it even worse.

Ironically, in the land where democracy was born, democracy has been suspended during this crisis, with an unelected Prime Minister and commissioners from the EU now running the country’s financial policies. There has even been a suggestion from the German government that the Greek general election, due in in April this year, be postponed so that the latest EU financial offer is not rejected by the people. At best, a gun will be held to the heads of Greek voters, effectively demanding that they endorse the austerity measures in a ballot.

Understandably, the Greek people have taken to the streets with widespread rioting across the country, in opposition to the policies being inflicted on them by remote political and economic elites. Political parties of the left are close to gaining a parliamentary majority in the latest opinion polls, and these parties have said that they will reject the austerity measures as they stand. Whether this would lead to expulsion from the Euro, and even the EU, is not clear, but if more favourable terms are not offered to Greece, it looks as though they will default on their debts, which is likely to lead to an exit from the Euro at least.

There is a precedent of sorts for this situation. In 2001 Argentina defaulted on its debts, and rejected the IMF imposed austerity programme. There was a run on the Argentine Peso, factories closed, and inflation ran riot, amid much pain for the people. But at least they had hit rock bottom economically, from where the only way was up. A new government in 2003 introduced heterodox (left wing) economic policies, setting aside large amounts of money for social welfare spending. With a cheap Peso, exports began to increase and Argentina got back on its feet again.

Argentina has more in the way of natural resources than Greece, and the world economic outlook was much better than that of today, where we are in the worst recession since the 1930’s, if not worse. For Greece though, the alternative is a decade of recession and austerity, with probably a higher national debt than it has now. Some choice.

If Greece does default on its debts; it will have a serious and negative effect on the world and particularly the European economy, including Britain. But we can’t stand by and watch the Greek people being punished like they are, just to prop up the banks, and should show support and solidarity with them. There is lesson for the UK here too, where austerity policies have led to misery for the people and an increase of £158bn in our national debt.

For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. See the excellent film "Debtocracy" here.

The photo above from The Guardian

Welfare Claimants are Scapegoats for Financial Crisis

The ConDem government is attempting to cut £18 billion from welfare benefits in the latest wave of austerity measures, that they insist is necessary to cut the UK budget deficit and borrowing requirements. This policy seems to have attracted a fair amount of populist support in the country, with the government’s friends in the right wing press producing screaming headlines about ‘benefit scroungers’ and the like.

The proposal to cap benefits at a maximum of £26,000 per year, per family, has been held up by the House of Lords, but will be returned to the House of Commons, and no doubt eventually pushed through into law. This does seem like an extraordinary amount of money to be claiming in welfare benefits, when the average UK gross wage is exactly the same figure, but this tells only part of the story. The vast majority of people receiving this sum live in the south east of England, mainly in London, and most of the money claimed is in the form of Housing Benefit, from tenants of private sector landlords. So the claimants never really see this money, but if they lose it, then they will more than likely lose their homes along with it.

Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is also to be cut for those lucky enough to still be in receipt of it, whilst the rest are forced onto Jobseekers Allowance (JSA), whether they are really fit for work or not, by ATOS, the government’s private health company assessors. (The Guardian reports here that a man who has been registered blind since 2000 due to a hereditary degenerative sight condition was surprised to read his report's conclusion that "the client's level of disability would be expected to improve with time and appropriate treatment"). And of course everyone on JSA gets harassed and threatened with the loss of their benefit, regardless of the lack of job opportunities; with unemployment soaring as the economy stagnates and public sector jobs are cut to the bone. The only growth area I have heard of in the public sector is in benefit fraud investigators.

Contrast this with cuts in the government’s tax inspectorate, where far more money is lost to the public purse than in fraudulent benefit claims, and you can see a pattern emerging in ConDem strategy. The whole aim of this government is to pin the blame on people on welfare benefits for the poor state of the country’s finances, (and by implication the last Labour government), when it seems to have been conveniently forgotten that the current financial crisis was caused by the reckless behaviour of the banks, where the directors of these banks are richer now than they were before they plunged the nation, and indeed most western nations, into recession.

There’s not much sympathy for the bankers though amongst the general public, so the benefit cuts have to be sold as being not fair to the ‘working poor’. Classic divide and rule, as Diane Abbott might say. There are far too many workers on low wages, but the government’s rhetoric doesn’t match its actions. Most claimants of Housing Benefit are actually in work, but this isn’t stopping the government reducing payments and ‘localising’ the system to that end. The government is also cutting Working Tax Credits, which go to the lowest paid workers, and the likely increase to £10,000 of the income tax personal allowance (tax free earnings), will not fully compensate those on the lowest wages. Oh, and it will be made easier for employers to sack workers too.

The only problem for the government with this strategy is that it is not reducing the budget deficit, quite the reverse. The government admits that the deficit will be £158bn higher by 2015, but they have managed to drown this fact out, by shouting noisily about ‘fairness’ and ‘scroungers’. What a pity people fall for this irrelevant diversion, but I hope eventually the proverbial penny will drop, and people will see all of this for what it truly is.

And there is another way. We need to catch the tax cheats and we need to tax the very wealthy properly, and there are a variety of ways that this can done, see here and here on this blog for some examples. To address the Housing Benefit situation, we need to build more social housing and reintroduce rent controls in the privately rented sector.

We need to stop blaming the victims for this mess that we are in, and lay the responsibility at the door of the perpetrators. Now, that really is fairness.

Labour Reverts to Neo Labour

With what I think were heartfelt reasons, the Labour party (including their affiliated trade unions), elected Ed Miliband to the leadership of the party, to represent views that brought to a close the New Labour project. His brother David, the heir apparent, was defeated because he embodied all that Labour party members had come to despair about the party. Ed seemed to talk a good game about getting back to a form of social democratic politics at the leadership election, long absent through the Blair and Brown regimes, and this is what won him the contest in the end.

Tens of thousands of people have joined, or re-joined Labour since their 2010 general election defeat, many who I am sure wanted to vote for the new leader, and all with the optimistic hope that Labour would now get back to being something like the party it once was; a champion of the people, not the wealthy, big business and finance capital. They must be very disappointed.

Recent pronouncements from both Ed Miliband and Ed Balls the shadow chancellor have made it clear that Labour is not going to change at all. They will now not reverse any of the ConDem government’s cuts to public services and welfare benefits, and will effectively continue the present government’s programme of austerity, if they are elected to government at the next general election. Public sector pay freezes will remain in place under a future Labour government and the richest people in the country will continue to benefit from paying meagre amounts of tax. One really has to ask, what is the point of the Labour party these days?

The trade unions are quite rightly furious with this lurch to the right by the party they provide something like %80 of the funding for. Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union was spot on when he said: “Why should unions give money to the Labour party for policies that we can get from the Tories for nothing?”

It seems we live in a one party state, where all three of the main parties agree on the same policies, making elections redundant. The Green party does set out a new vision, an alternative to the disastrous neo liberal policies of last thirty odd years, but we are small, steadily growing, but unlikely to win the next general election. We might win enough seats to wield some power, if the result is close enough again, but that is all.

The times are crying out for a better, more just, sustainable model for the way we live, with the status quo found to be built on sand, and sinking fast. The worldwide Occupy movement, UK Uncut and other direct action groups demonstrate a desire for change, more widespread than the old media would have you believe. Support for the recent public sector union’s industrial action was slightly in favour amongst the public at large, according to several opinion polls. People do recognise that those least able, and the least to blame for the current financial crisis should not be forced to shoulder the burden of propping up the system, whilst those who are to blame, get rewarded for their greed and incompetence. To steal the Tories recent election slogan, ‘we really can’t go on like this.’

I had hoped that Labour could be a partner with the Green party in the pursuit of a fairer society electorally, chart the way towards the ‘good society’, sadly that seems not to be the case. Labour members and trade unionists should think about supporting and joining the Greens, that way they can help build us into a party of government that represents their views. Stop wasting your time supporting a party that will never deliver what you believe to be right.

We need to design a new economic order

I want a debate about how we move away from today's failed economic order and build a new one that is socially just and ecologically sustainable.

In a month dominated by the political and economic crisis in Europe, those of us following events at the COP17 climate summit in Durban took what little hope we could from the talks.

Politically, there was some success in the form of a roadmap towards a new treaty to succeed the Kyoto protocol. The fact that this new agreement to cut emissions, which will have legal force, is to include the United States, as well as the fast growing economies such as China, India and Brazil, is encouraging.

Sadly, it says a great deal about people's faith in the UN climate negotiations process that, after so many summits and empty pledges over the years, an agreement "in principle" to tackling climate change without much in the way of substance could still be hailed as an overall success.

But at least we do now have an international consensus on the need to cut emissions. The real tragedy is that our government will completely fail to rise to the challenge in the post-Durban, euro crisis landscape - and seize the opportunity to build a different kind of economy.

Drowning out calls for the coalition to deliver on its green pledges and invest in the low-carbon industries which can help lift us out of recession and create jobs, are those who frame the debate as a false choice between "going green" and keeping the economy on track.

And drowning out news about critical decisions made in Durban has been the coverage of the prime minister's euro-sceptic swaggering at the Brussels summit, where he singularly failed to defend the interests of the people of Britain who, like Europeans, are threatened by a financial crisis that could result in the loss of their homes, their life savings and livelihoods.

Preventing financial meltdown was, after all, the purpose of the summit. Instead, Britain used the occasion to defend the interests of a tiny minority - the 1% - that are the cause of the crisis, and that thrive on the back of taxpayer-backed subsidies in the City of London.

In answer to my question to the prime minister this week: "Why did he choose to conflate the interests of the nation, with the interests of the City of London?" no real explanation was offered.

Meanwhile, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy appear hellbent on accelerating the crisis by intensifying austerity across the eurozone. This is likely to be explosive: in economic, political and social terms.

But for all their misguided approach to the consequences of the crisis - rising public debts - German and French politicians are clear about the causes: lax and loosely regulated financial centres like the Square Mile.

And in that analysis they are not wrong. The City of London is set, once again, to play a major causal role in the coming financial catastrophe.

The reason is not hard to find. This week we learned about the impotence of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in dealing with bankers at RBS that destroyed a bank, caused many to lose their jobs, and stripped British taxpayers of £45bn.

That's £45bn which could have been used to keep millions of young people in employment for a considerable time, to support renewable energy and energy efficiency measures to create jobs and help those in fuel poverty, or to pay more nurses and teachers.

Payday lenders have scuttled across the Atlantic to avoid the anti-usury laws of Canada and the United States, and found refuge in what the FT calls the "singularly attractive market" that is the City of London - where there are no usury laws.

According to Thomson Reuters, the City's "lax and loose regulation" allows companies, like the recently bankrupted MFGlobal, to gamble with money that belongs to clients and then " …to finance an enormous $6.2bn eurozone repo bet … a position more than five times the firm's book value, or net worth."

It is this kind of financial speculation that once again threatens not just Europe, but the global economy.

Occupy Wall St protesters at St. Paul's are exploring alternatives to this failed system of financial liberalisation. Even the Bank of England, in papers published this week, is considering a transformation away from deregulation towards a rules-based system, that constrains capital mobility and secures stability and "internal balance" for countries like Britain.

Our politicians should be debating these profoundly important issues. They should be leading us out of this global financial morass, towards a more just, stable and sustainable future.

But they are not. Across the political spectrum - from Ed Balls, to Ed Miliband, to Nick Clegg and David Cameron - we are governed by politicians that have all promoted and defended the current neo-liberal system: "light touch regulation".

They are all part of the design team that brought you credit crunch 1.0 and that is about to deliver credit crunch 2.0.

The fact that the government has confirmed it will not support a financial transactions tax such as the Robin Hood tax, or offer anything new to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, tells us all we need to know about the commitment to social justice amongst the cabinet's millionaire ministers.

So I want to appeal for a debate about how we transform our economic system away from today's failed economic order - designed to serve the interests of the City of London's 1% - and instead build a new one.

One that is socially just and ecologically sustainable. One that provides useful and meaningful employment for all and strengthens our communities. We can and must find a better way of bringing people closer together and building a better society, while operating within the limits of the ecosystem.

Why will my fellow politicians not engage in these debates? The system we have is catastrophically impaired, yet our leaders remain prostrate before neoliberalism - an ideology that has destroyed jobs and firms, ruined the life-chances of millions, while enriching crooks, thieves and oligarchs. I call on others to join me in calling on our political leaders to match progressive politics with meaningful action, and in taking a principled stand to challenge the deeply corrupt financial system that has plunged us into environmental and economic crisis.

Caroline Lucas, Green Party Leader
The article was first published in The Guardian

How is Money Created?

This video gives much food for thought. The magical nature of 'money' is exposed as scam by the corporate banking system.

This system means that most people get screwed, and the banks' carry on making huge profits, and paying their management massive salaries and bonuses.

It is nothing short of a scandal. So, why do we, the people put up with it?

Answers on a postcard etc, etc....

The video was produced by Postive Money.

Occupy London SX TV Debate

This is a short discussion on the Occupy movement, between an oaf from the Tax Payers Alliance, which is a right wing pressure group, close to the Tory party, and Guardian journalist, Polly Toynbee. In my view, Polly spoils it a bit with her talk of 'good' capitalism, which is rather a contradiction in terms, but she shows up the bloke from Tax Payers Alliance as a shallow apologist for corporate capitalism.

Green Party Leader Gives Support to Occupy London Stock Exchange

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and leader of the England and Wales Green party, will today attend the protest by ‘Occupy London Stock Exchange’, which has continued for the last three days, with hundreds of demonstrators camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral, close to the heart of the City of London financial district.

Initially, the police had tried to disperse the crowd on Sunday, but were stopped by the Rev Dr Giles Fraser, canon chancellor of St Paul’s, who was happy to see the peaceful protest continue.

The Green party leader said, “As awareness increases of the injustice and unsustainability of the global economic system, more and more people are taking to the streets in opposition.

"The camp that has been set up a stone's throw from the London Stock Exchange is an opportunity to explore a different kind of future to the one the mainstream political parties have constructed.

"The authorities must now respect the right to peaceful protest.

"If they have any sense, they will also start to listen to the voices of those ordinary - and extraordinary people - who want to invest in a greener, fairer future rather than the stocks-and-shares house of sand that sustains corporate capitalism."

The demonstration was inspired by the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement in the United States, and spread to many cities financial districts all around the world, with the same aim, of calling for an end to the disastrous corporate capitalist system which is ruining lives everywhere, and is the effective cause of the worldwide financial crisis.

The London group have released this statement about why they are protesting:

The current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives; this is where we work towards them.

We are of all ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, generations, sexualities, dis/abilities and faiths. We stand together with occupations all over the world.

We refuse to pay for the banks' crisis.

We do not accept the cuts as either necessary or inevitable. We demand an end to global tax injustice and our democracy representing corporations instead of the people.

We want regulators to be genuinely independent of the industries they regulate.

We support the strike on 30 November and the student action on 9 November, and actions to defend our health services, welfare, education and employment, and to stop wars and arms dealing.

We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world's resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich.

We stand in solidarity with the global oppressed and we call for an end to the actions of our government and others in causing this oppression.

This is what democracy looks like. Come and join us!

Banker's Hold the Country to Ransom

So, according to last week’s economic headlines, George Osborne wants to “ring-fence” retail from so-called investment banking, does he?

Sounds to me very much like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted or – if you’ll forgive the elaboration of the metaphor – more like having the weary public slaving away to rebuild the stable which has burned down while the bankers are on the horse’s back prancing away and having a whale of a time.

These self-proclaimed “Masters of the Universe” scratch each other’s backs on remuneration committees and persist in their games of ‘Red: we win’ or ‘Black: you (the public) lose’ in the casino merry-go-round that passes for modern banking these days.

It makes you almost want to tear your hair out that no Government, whether Blue, Rose-Red or even Blue-Yellow has the guts (Vince Cable I’m looking at you) these days to take on the vast vested interests in the City of London.

It never ceases to amaze me how often right-wing commentators trot out that old chestnut about how Margaret Thatcher was needed in the 1980s to “tame the dragon” of over-mighty unionism and “unleash” the country’s spirit of free enterprise. Whatever you may believe about whether the unions were a baleful influence in the 1970s (and it is a documented fact that in the 1970s levels of inequality were much lower than at present, national well-being levels at least as high as now and the proportion of GDP that went on wages as opposed to profits the highest ever), the arguments of economic conservatives can now be turned against them with a new twist:

For are not the banks the new “dragons” that now need taming? Are they not a bunch of “financial unions” in bed with what whatever Government comes our way in Westminster? Do they not pervert the course of our democracy – if not over beer and sandwiches in smoke-filled rooms then maybe in the gleaming corporate boardrooms of glassy towers in the Square Mile? Who will be brave enough to come up with tough legislation to save the public from this latter-day breed of robber barons and oligarchic parasites?

For the truth of the matter is that we need the utility parts of modern banks – the parts from where we pay our direct debits and everyday transactions – entirely separated from the casino-habits of the investment banks not just “ring-fenced” within the same mega-institutions (clever bankers and their lawyers will just find cunning ways around that as usual).

When we have a banking sector broken up into smaller units then several things can happen:

1. No more banks “too big to fail”;
2. Many more banks on our high streets competing for our business;
3. The return of local banking: with a traditional Bank Manager who knows local businesses in her area making a comeback and being willing to provide fair loans to businesses down the local high street;
4. If you’re a rich man with money to burn you can still go to a specialist merchant bank and make a risky investment; if your pin-striped stockbroker then loses the lot by overpaying himself and gambling on US sub-prime mortgages well, it’s a tough life, but nobody except you in this scenario has to pick up the pieces.

Chances of seeing the above? Small and receding as I type. But there are things we can do. We can educate ourselves in the principles of a Green economy by reading works such as ‘Prosperity without Growth’ by Professor Tim Jackson. Above all, we can urge our friends to think seriously about changing the habits of a lifetime and voting Green for the first time. We have our first MP and our first Green Council. It doesn’t have to be the same old, same old. We don’t have to settle for Tweedledum, Tweedledee or the Tweedle-Dems. Together, armed with the facts, we can persuade, influence and grow strong. Otherwise, what are the odds that in another 10 years we’ll be glumly hosing down with our taxes the smouldering remains of another burned-down stable, a horse with a grinning banker on his back prancing nearby?

Written by Andreas Andreou, Haringey Green party