Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Curbing The Banks

Sooner or later this has to happen everywhere. It is to the greatest credit of the United States that it is the first to act. Once America sees a problem and accepts it, it acts. This is why it retains the edge on Europe and most likely always will. Contrast with the scampering around in Europe, trying to prop up the Euro, bail out Greece, stop Spain, Portugal and Italy going the same way and, on top of all of that, agree proper regulation of financial institutions run amok, but on whom they depend for endless loans to fill budget black holes.

Of course banks with ordinary High Street (Main St) depositors cannot use resources to become traders in whatever wild financial instruments fly through the market, some so obscure that nobody knows what they actually are. This is the nub. If parcels of worthless securities are bundled up and traded, if weird so called positions are bet against opposite events, if money is taken to insure against loss in these unfathomable transactions, there is at work a process of creating worthless money, little different to setting up a forger’s press and printing counterfeit notes. There is no difference when after passing from hither to thither, they are presented for payment of real hard cash. Both are of no value whatever.

The busted banks rush pleading to the taxpayers, crying that they are too big to fail and that all will come crashing down unless they are given real money now. So the taxpayers of the U.S and U.K and to a lesser extent Europe, came up with real money, which they exchanged for the worthless paper clutched in the tainted hands of the gluttonous financiers.  Now with real money in those ever sticky palms, back they went to their dodgy ways, their fraudulent activities legitimized and made profitable. Well not any more. The game is over. It will not be played again.

The market reaction? Record falls. You’re so right. Even the market knows when the music stops.

Price of Alcohol

This is again in the news, with Tesco backing a halt to loss leading alcohol sales. They may even support a legal minimum price. Various informed and thinking contributors have been giving their views on the media. A major problem appears to be the fact that booze is now so widely available in supermarkets and corner shops at all times of the day and night. The days of the off licence, allowed by the authorities here and there but not everywhere, and pubs as the only place (apart from restaurants) where alcohol could be bought are gone. So are the restrictions of licencing hours. Both may need to be brought back.

Once chroninic binge drinking becomes part of the culture of a community, a country or a generation of the young, it is a diaster. This is not to say that drinking alcohol is bad, if at sensible levels. But it becomes bad if the purpose of drinking is to get drunk, the sooner and the more completely the better and even the more heroic. This is a cultural wrong turning and will need radical measures to get us back on track. Tinkering with the price will not work alone.

America tried total prohibition. That did not work. This blog believes that something between it and what we have now, would. A complete ban on the sale of alcohol in stores and supermarkets across the board whatever time of day or night. Re-opening pubs shut because of supermarket competition, so that people drink in the right place and the prohibition of drinking in public non-licenced open spaces and buildings. Return of off licences but not too many. Reintroduction of liberal licencing hours but an end to 24 hour availability. Slap on tax to make drinking an affordable luxury not a cheap thrill. Triple tax beers or wines with excessive alcohol content. Culturally outlaw boozing as a severe weakness of character and help those addicted.

In other words not unlike what we had before all the trouble began. Oh, something else. Get some life values and work practices that do not make people want to drown their sorrows at the end of every single day. Understand that boozing, bankers,  borrowing and bust, all come from the same dark cave.