Max Keiser in this video, produced last summer, explains how Gordon Brown MP sold off the UK's sovereignty by putting 60 per cent of its gold bullion on the market below the market price. It's an illuminating talk, and the discussion of UK gold reserves starts about 19 minutes in.
This lecture is a resounding condemnation of current economic policy going back to the Thatcher era, but not letting anyone off since that financial meltdown of an era. It describes generally how interest rates are being kept low because that makes it cheaper for bankers to borrow in order to speculate. This is what enables the financial class to get rich while everyone else lives in fear of a rise in interest rates, because they are experiencing a squeeze on all fronts including housing costs and some people have been also borrowing too. Kaiser predicts that an expected international currency collapse will be particularly hard felt in the UK because of this disastrous sale of gold, leaving the UK without a tangible asset that the rest of the world is buying up.
This affects 'freedom to choose' significantly, showing how little it figures in the calculations of modern-day managers of the UK economy. From a Scottish perspective it heightens my interest in the independence proposition, because the Scottish Government's financial performance has been creditable by comparision. And it makes me wonder how George Galloway can sit through such a lecture and still declare that it is still in Scotland's best interests to stay in the union. He has argued that it is not 'real' independence if Scotland proposes to keep sterling, and this is a criticism that many on the independence side are making, but the sheer savagery of the UK's economic management makes one wonder why anyone would seriously want the Scottish people to stay on board.
6 comments:
Was it not a scottish mafia in control of the country and the gold, that sold it off?? Messrs Blair Brown and co?
Yes it was a Scottish mafia, but they were acting in a sound British tradition! The Scottish government has never led itself get led astray by the interests of corporations – certainly not the way they have in neoliberal Westminster.
When it comes to Windfarm Developments, the Scottish Government (SNP) is a law unto themselves, totally ignoring local community and council decisions on numberous Planning Applications by overturning democratically reached decisions ... in the interest of an EU Climate Reduction programme that has now been abandoned. They have also supported the payments of subsidies to the developers as well as paying the service providers when the turbines are not generating .... all funder by the long suffering tax payer.
I don't know the particulars of these cases Bill but the Scottish Government certainly leaves plenty to be desired in terms of its local democracy. That said I don't believe that the Scottish Government is the same bottomless pit as the UK government, which has the huge debt on which the UK public is taxed year after year, and it continues to grow.
This link says a lot and should be alarming to all readers
http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/scotland-s-green-agency-fails-to-hit-own-targets-1-3288277
not sure of the point here Bill. The Scottish Government has constraints affecting its ability to meet targets. Not only will these constraints be different under independence, but also Scots would be able to elect a different government (without strings being pulled by the Westminster political parties). It also says nothing about steeply increasing levels of UK debt.
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