Malone: Ungarbled Pt 2.

Everybody Is Wrong About Everything. (Except Me)

In the next segment David and Roger discuss Neo-Liberalism (NL) which I attempted to do here and here. David, of course gets straight down to everything I missed, the fact that both sides, left and right, got the analysis right and the solution wrong. Both sides want to place the blame on the other side for the GFC but the blame lies squarely on the side of the banks who ramped up unrepayable debts. In doing so they created Too Big To Fail institutions who could hold a gun to the nation’s head with impunity and they did. The left have a point it was the banks. The right also have a point that the vaguely Keynesian response was to throw money unproductive at moribund banks. Both sides are correct and need to stop shouting across each other and accept what actually happened. It’s cost us as a nation £1.4 trillion to get it wrong so far.

Next David talks about money and the great work done by Positive Money raising awareness of what money is and how it’s created, indeed David reviewed to book when it first came out. It was adopted as official Green Party policy and won my vote even though I was aware it was a Blue vs Red election, it’s a theme of my blog after all. Roger asks about all the competing heterodox solutions and economist such as MMT, Bill Mitchell, Steve Keen and how it can seem like Monty Python at times, MMT? Spit! I’m with Steve Keen we are the anointed ones follow his gourd! David is reluctant to act as referee in these fights, as passions run high, and I can’t say I blame him. Fear not David, that’s what my blog is for, I shall be once more unto the breach shortly, risking the wrath of Neil Wilson who in turn incurred the wrath od Ralph Musgrove. David has a point.

Roger then asks about the Green party manifesto and the differences between the far more radical 2015 manifesto to the 2017 version. The Green party , for David needs to be about so much more than the environment afer all we have Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth as pressure groups, why just mimic what they do? David thinks that the Greens need a radical economic policy to prove that saving the environment needn’t cost the earth (see what I did there?) and Jeremy Corbyn has proved that there an appetite for radical solutions out there. People like Richard Murphy are very approachable and glad to share their expertise. The 2017 manifesto did not contain EC661 which would have enabled money creation to be returned to the state and some £20 billion annually to be returned to the public purse via seigniorage.

David is clearly disappointed that the Labour party was left as the radical party rather than the Greens. He is also frustrated at the debacle of costing policies, as if manifesto promises and their costs should somehow balance at zero, just for the high priests of punditry who help push a false agenda. David felt that the current Green leadership had different priorities for the 2017 election and was not part of the clique. he doesn’t sit on the policy committee and doesn’t live in London, not the best of combinations politically speaking. He wants to take the argument to the mainstream economists who rail against public debt whilst turning a blind eye to private debt creation.  He sees no attempt by some to so much as debate this position with the worst being those who do know better. Why don’t the very well paid scribes do some research and question more?

They then moved on to the EU and I was quite delighted to see they were just as much conflicted over the issue as I am. Roger’s reasons seemed more set against joining than leaving and whilst David recalled the EU’s “Golden Age” of greater employment and environmental protections, there was also TTIP. The Transatlantic Trade and Partnership Treaty was negotiated mostly in secret and David was opposing it before most people had even heard of it. Slowly, but very surely, public outrage built especially at the secret courts corporations could turn to, to over-rule sovereign states. It’s dead in water for now but none the worse for watching, these corporate types never give up. The UK will be bound to trade pacts such as CETA under a sunset clause and the EU tends to cut out democracy when it looks like they’ll vote the wrong way, ask Ireland! The EU will not protect us against these profoundly undemocratic deals.

David is also a published author of the best selling book The Debt Generation so I’ll quote the web page. There are also excerpts from the book here.

In the Debt Generation, David Malone comes to a similar conclusion as I came to making Inside Job: that the financial system, as presently constituted, isn’t just a danger to our economy, but to our very democracy.” Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job Passionate, angry, funny and full of insight, The Debt Generation is both a compelling account of the economic crisis as it happened and a devastating critique of the financial system and of our political leaders who bowed down to it. Read more.

“Before reading The Debt Generation I would have said that the funniest and most entertaining book on the financial crisis was “Whoops!” by John Lanchester. Now I think that prize must go to David Malone’s work. It is intelligent, funny, informative and committed. It is committed on the side of us, the poor and weak, against them, the rich and strong, and I unhesitatingly recommend it to all readers who wish to be enlightened about the world of high finance and who want to be entertained at the same time.

There is much more on the full interview which I’d urge you to watch in full on, the Green Party and it’s direction, climate change, trade deals and much more. I’d like to thanks David and Roger once again for putting on the interview and hope there’s more to come, watch this space.

Get /The Debt Generation/ on Kindle for just £1.95.

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