The Zen Road to Affluence?

Finding that there is more to economic life than growth is not news to many readers of this blog, but finding that this lesson is being promulgated by the Financial Times is a little bit more surprising. It immediately sends my mind racing in the direction of conspiracies to keep us bovine and submissive in the face of falling wage levels and growing inequality. But so long as our lower level of material wealth comes with greater well-being, more leisure, friendship and conviviality, why should we care?

David Pilling, the author of this article, is straying into dangerous territory for a pro-capitalist paper, by suggesting that politicians might not favour the accumulation of capital in their economies as a primary goal. This does not seem much of an intellectual step from the call for politicians to take control over finance, and reintroduce credit and exchange controls, as called for by most green economists. And that would certainly be the end of globalisation as we - and the corporate billionnaires - know it.

Japan appears to have reached a different sort of accommodation with capitalism, one which enables a high standard of living without growth, and with some independence. By selling its national debt to its own citizens, it is at least closing some sort of circle. Issuing money to run the economy itself would be preferable, and any system of national financing based on debt will always transfer money from poor to rich, but at least the demands of rapacious bond markets are not a threat, nor the political power that foreign governments can exercise through their sovereign wealth funds.

The article by my near namesake Professor Kato, as recommended by David Pilling, is also well worth a read. Again there is nothing new here: it is rather the source of the story and the outlet where it was published that suggest this debate is on the move.

Meanwhile, instead of working why not squander some time on pointless games? We had great fun with our revolutionary top trumps over the festive break, and now there is a game you can play while 'working at your computer'. Send it to all your friends: debtris brings a whole new meaning to education for the life of leisure.
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GOD: Grand Old Dollar

Lloyd Blankfein is the FT's man of the year, with a citation that names him the 'Master of Risk' and quotes, apparently without irony, his own opinion that he did God's work for Goldman Sachs. This has set me to wondering which God this might be - certainly not the one I learned about in Sunday School.

The dollar is the God of the global market, but when I last looked this false idol was much closer to Mammon. This blog has already retold the tale of larceny that was the US bailout of AIG. Combined with the 'creation of money' through the purchase of corporate debt it was this 'socialised medicine' for the financial sector that guaranteed their huge profits last year. Blankfein's only skill was to have the friends in the right places, his only risk that he might make an inappropriate remark at a cocktail party or business breakfast.

When the gap between your position and the management of the nation's finances is only one promotion, it does not take a great deal of skill to embezzle public funds on a massive scale. If you must choose a US figure who has excelled economically this year it would have to be the American Everyman who has toiled to create the goods that can be sold for the money the government has allowed its private financiers to create. Or rather their as yet unborn offspring who have already been sold into slavery to fund the lifestyle of Lloyd and his ilk.

Having taken the value of our work they are now in the process of stealing the planet itself through the International Emissions Trading Association. The IETA is a coalition of private companies including AES, Barclays Capital, Chevron Texaco, Conoco Phillips, DuPont, Ecosecurities, Gaz de France, Goldman Sachs, Gujarat Flurochemicals, J-Power, KPMG, Lafarge, Lahmayer, RWE, Shell, Total, Toyota, TransAlta, and Vattenfall. This is an explicit list of the implicit conspiracy of energy, automotive and financial corporations who are controlling the debate about policy responses to climate change, and destroying our chance of a future life on this earth.

This choice by the FT establishes with certainty that newspaper's unashamed support for the worst excesses of corporate capitalism. As the only UK newspaper that can still pay its journalists enough to ensure quality research and writing, this is a disturbing note on which to begin the next decade. Tweet