Post by Teddy Bear on Nov 10, 2011 19:13:06 GMT
Wonderful article below by Charles Crawford in The Telegraph describing an invitation he had by BBC's Radio 4 to participate in a programme on the eurozone. It appears that in the exploratory phone conversation prior to the show, since he didn't give the answers the way they wanted to slant it, they didn't pick him after all.
You can deduce what the BBC were after:
You can deduce what the BBC were after:
Do markets threaten democracy?
By Charles Crawford - Politics
Yesterday I had a close encounter with BBC Radio 4.
On receiving an email yesterday afternoon asking whether I might be able to ‘help’ with a programme going out today, I called them back. A friendly woman replied. It turned out that they had spotted one of my earlier Telegraph Blog pieces and wanted to explore some questions on the eurozone.
The first of which was: Are the markets controlling governments and threatening democracy?
I said that that seemed a very odd way to put things. The whole point about the crisis engulfing the eurozone and European Union was that it was essentially a political, not economic event. Europe’s politicians had borrowed too much money and had set up policy arrangements of such complexity that they were unable to weather difficult times and now no longer looked credible. ‘Markets’ were not some mysterious, zombie-like formation attacking us from outer space, or a cruel scalpel in the hands of a cabal of cunning bankers. Markets were the savings of people in the UK, China and everywhere else around the world looking for a sensible investment.
In short, global funds were asking the EU a simple question: “Are you a safe investment?” Since the answers coming back were increasingly ambiguous if not downright weird, the world’s fund managers were deciding either not to invest in the EU space, or to charge the eurozone space higher rates of interest for borrowing money.
In other words, it was highly desirable for the markets to ‘control’ governments – and anyone else – in this way. Markets represented honest business dealing. What if things were the other way round and governments controlled markets? That was not a recipe for success, as the USSR had showed us over 70 years.
“OK,” came the reply as Ms BBC hammered her keyboard getting all this down, “but could the EU be forced to resort to autocratic measures to deal with the crisis and so threaten democracy in that sense?”
Well, I said, that was a risk.
Any radical centralisation of powers over the Eurozone on the scale seemingly needed to contain the crisis would take the EU well beyond anything its voters hitherto had accepted. It was not clear how countries outside the eurozone would be affected.
Nor was it easy to see how the new structure could be made ‘democratic’ in any sense that voters could follow. It was difficult enough in the UK allocating tax resources and public spending as between England and Scotland – how to do that across a far larger space of 17 countries with quite different economies and styles of doing things? Could Greeks reasonably make a claim on German taxpayers’ money which Germans would cheerily accept?
Right at the heart of the whole grisly mess, said I, was the European Social Model, the idea that state-subsidised ‘solidarity’ was all. The markets were concluding that that was no longer affordable.
But even the poorest people in the EU living off benefits had a far higher standard of living than most people who had ever lived on Earth, or indeed were living now. Which was why the EU’s appeals to help to the Chinese, Brazilians and others were getting a breezy reply: “Let’s get this straight – you are asking our poor people to subsidise your richer ones?!”
The Chinese had gone even further. According to Jin Liqun, supervising chairman of China Investment Corporation:
If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society. I think the labour laws are outdated. The labour laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking. The incentive system, is totally out of whack.
So, I concluded, this was where we now were. Not only were the problems accumulating at an alarming rate. The capacity of the system to deal with them was uncertain. But if there was one force not to blame in the whole fiasco, it was ‘markets’. Markets did nothing but say that stupid behaviour could, would and should get painful consequences. Nothing wrong with that.
We went round this circuit a few times and ended the best of friends. I did not get a telephone call back to invite me to say any of this on air to the UK populace.
*Sobs bitter tears*
By Charles Crawford - Politics
Yesterday I had a close encounter with BBC Radio 4.
On receiving an email yesterday afternoon asking whether I might be able to ‘help’ with a programme going out today, I called them back. A friendly woman replied. It turned out that they had spotted one of my earlier Telegraph Blog pieces and wanted to explore some questions on the eurozone.
The first of which was: Are the markets controlling governments and threatening democracy?
I said that that seemed a very odd way to put things. The whole point about the crisis engulfing the eurozone and European Union was that it was essentially a political, not economic event. Europe’s politicians had borrowed too much money and had set up policy arrangements of such complexity that they were unable to weather difficult times and now no longer looked credible. ‘Markets’ were not some mysterious, zombie-like formation attacking us from outer space, or a cruel scalpel in the hands of a cabal of cunning bankers. Markets were the savings of people in the UK, China and everywhere else around the world looking for a sensible investment.
In short, global funds were asking the EU a simple question: “Are you a safe investment?” Since the answers coming back were increasingly ambiguous if not downright weird, the world’s fund managers were deciding either not to invest in the EU space, or to charge the eurozone space higher rates of interest for borrowing money.
In other words, it was highly desirable for the markets to ‘control’ governments – and anyone else – in this way. Markets represented honest business dealing. What if things were the other way round and governments controlled markets? That was not a recipe for success, as the USSR had showed us over 70 years.
“OK,” came the reply as Ms BBC hammered her keyboard getting all this down, “but could the EU be forced to resort to autocratic measures to deal with the crisis and so threaten democracy in that sense?”
Well, I said, that was a risk.
Any radical centralisation of powers over the Eurozone on the scale seemingly needed to contain the crisis would take the EU well beyond anything its voters hitherto had accepted. It was not clear how countries outside the eurozone would be affected.
Nor was it easy to see how the new structure could be made ‘democratic’ in any sense that voters could follow. It was difficult enough in the UK allocating tax resources and public spending as between England and Scotland – how to do that across a far larger space of 17 countries with quite different economies and styles of doing things? Could Greeks reasonably make a claim on German taxpayers’ money which Germans would cheerily accept?
Right at the heart of the whole grisly mess, said I, was the European Social Model, the idea that state-subsidised ‘solidarity’ was all. The markets were concluding that that was no longer affordable.
But even the poorest people in the EU living off benefits had a far higher standard of living than most people who had ever lived on Earth, or indeed were living now. Which was why the EU’s appeals to help to the Chinese, Brazilians and others were getting a breezy reply: “Let’s get this straight – you are asking our poor people to subsidise your richer ones?!”
The Chinese had gone even further. According to Jin Liqun, supervising chairman of China Investment Corporation:
If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society. I think the labour laws are outdated. The labour laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking. The incentive system, is totally out of whack.
So, I concluded, this was where we now were. Not only were the problems accumulating at an alarming rate. The capacity of the system to deal with them was uncertain. But if there was one force not to blame in the whole fiasco, it was ‘markets’. Markets did nothing but say that stupid behaviour could, would and should get painful consequences. Nothing wrong with that.
We went round this circuit a few times and ended the best of friends. I did not get a telephone call back to invite me to say any of this on air to the UK populace.
*Sobs bitter tears*
