Don't Bail 'em Jail 'em

I rarely comment on economic issues because I don't understand them. I'm a poor lad bought up in a council house who knows the economic difference between answering the door to the rent collector with cash in hand and hiding behind the sofa and keeping dead quiet so that the monster thinks that there is nobody at home!

When people talk about $700,000,000,000 bail outs they are talking about something way beyond my imagination. I once had £1,000 in my wallet, it was nice and made my wallet feel juicy fat. But I can't imagine what 700 billion is - is it enough to fill a suitcase, a room, a palace?

Love her or hate her, one of Mrs T's most effective campaigns was when she illustrated her policies by showing what (she claimed) would be the difference between what would be in a shopping basket if one elected a Tory Government, in comparison to what would be in the same basket under Labour. Socialists might say that she lied through her teeth when making the illustration, but that's incidental - the image worked.

So why aren't politicians from either side, or the media explaining the credit crunch with shopping bag illustrations? Is it because the biggest problem isn't one that effects the type of person who uses a shopping bag, but a problem for the mega rich?

My great great uncle Danny was a red hot Rhondda Communist, who made a shopping bag illustration many years ago, which still makes me think, despite my hatred of socialism. Uncle Danny's comment was related to 1930's Wall Street Crash films:

If you drop a shilling on the pavement you are sad because you have lost a shilling. Somebody else goes past and finds that shilling and they are glad to be a shilling better off.

Likewise for every newsreal that shows a man jumping off a building because he lost a million dollars - there is another man supping champagne because he found that million dollars.

There seems to be some truth in Uncle Danny's illustration. The billions of dollars lost by the banking crisis seem to have been found by spivs and speculators. As the usually right wing Daily Express explains:

Greedy speculators were gambling millions of pounds that the Lloyds TSB deal to save HBOS, owner of the Halifax, was in danger of falling apart.

At one point, shares in HBOS were down by more than 20 per cent, but they recovered slightly to end 16p down at 126p.

As the global economic crisis has worsened, both banks’ share prices have fallen along with the value of the Lloyds offer for HBOS. This has prompted the spivs to gamble that Lloyds may have to reprice the deal.

The spivs moved in despite growing anger at the City’s excesses, where huge fortunes are being made by speculators on the back of reckless gambles

NOTE Huge Fortunes are being made from this crisis!

If people have made mega billions by spiving and speculating and creating this misery, should any government offer bail outs that result in normal taxpayers subsidising the mega profits that the spivs and speculators have made?

Shouldn't a Labour Government, of all governments, be going after these profiteers and saying we want our money back?

Or as posters spotted in BBC reports from Washington tonight said about the spivs and speculators Don't Bail 'em Jail 'em"