The other worrying problem for the success of the UK financial rescue policy, is the mountain of credit default swaps, many of which, Will Hutton warned last week, were due to be repaid last weekend. In fact the further falls in the global exchanges are mainly accepted as being the result of a realisation that the global recession is now manifest.
But Channel 4 TV with the help of Will Hutton haunted us with this spectre again tonight. Globally the market in credit default swaps is something of the order of over 50 trillion dollars, many of them not unsurprisingly held by British Banks like HBOS, which has just needed partial nationalisation. The UK government is repeating again the mantra about it will do "whatever it takes" to support the banks. More hopefully the EU appears to be setting in place arrangements for controlling them on a global scale. It seems likely that the sociogram that was illustrated on the programme (program) about the intimate and incestuous cross holdings in all Icelandic financial organisations, is just a microcosm of the incestuous network of holdings in the entire anglo-saxon led global credit economy, capable of building magnificent castles, betting that there will *never* be a recession that the state will not spend its way out of. So when there is what use is the network of insurance policies? Isn't it cheaper to concentrate on setting up soup kitchens than to pay off each one of the owners in this chain mail system? If these are really just castles in the air, would it not be easier for the leading financial states in the world to call them all an elaborate house of cards, and utterly worthless. Thereby letting the states of the world concentrate on the real and current economy? I would be interested to know whether other list members think that the collapse of these 50 trillion dollar structures will cause an unimaginable further lurch into profound depression or whether they are just worthless air, and could be blown away. I do not believe much in conspiracy theories, but the political intelligentsia of the establishment, including its loyal reformers, has a vested interest in not telling us the full truth. Chris Burford _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
