Wednesday, July 04, 2012

How often does Vince Cable have to be right before they make him Chancellor?

That's what Matthew Norman asks in this morning's Independent:
He warned about unsustainable cheap credit and the consequent risk of a crash, and no one paid a blind bit of notice. He pinpointed the structural weakness at Northern Rock and called for its nationalisation, but until it was almost too late a Labour government faffed about in virtual paralysis. For inadvertently declaring war against a Murdoch media stranglehold, he was ridiculed and fined a chunk of his portfolio. By then, he had already spoken about casino banking in general, and Bob Diamond's appointment as Barclay's CEO in particular, in terms that were rather less in vogue in polite political society than than they are today. 
He spoke about the banks presenting a graver threat to this country than the trade unions, and of the dangers of the non-interventionist approach to capitalism. "Markets are often irrational or rigged," he said with wonted prescience, long before most of us were world experts on Libor. "Capitalism takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can." 
In another speech, he said: "We are worried about this combination of the casinos and the traditional banking. Mr Diamond illustrates in a particularly graphic way what happens when you have an extremely highly paid head of an investment bank taking over one of these major international banks."
Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice

2 comments:

Steve Rudd said...

How strange, also, that for all this knowledge and wisdom, Cable continues to be part of the Blight that is ruining our country and propping up the Tories in their undeclared class war on the ill, the poor, and the unemployed. If he's really right about all this stuff, he should grow a pair, discover some principles and resign from the coalition

crewegwyn said...

yeah, yeah and he's cruel to donkeys too!