In 1948 Britain was bankrupt. It had fought a major part in two World Wars and had no assets left. America had provided massive support in the form of lend lease but this had all been directly applied to the war effort. Later the Marshall Aid plan gave Europe a massive boost in aid intended to allow the purchase of American goods and Britain had a sizable share of this. But the Country was still bankrupt.
America and Canada loaned Britain around 4.1 billion dollars at 2% interest. Britain finally paid it back in 2007 – almost exactly 60 years later.
Inflation means that in real terms that loan would now be worth around 400 billion dollars or in round figures say half a trillion dollars. For comparison the government has just guaranteed around eight trillion dollars to our errant banks. If it takes as long to pay this back the final repayment will be made in the year 2968. This is approximately 48 generations away.
Ok, so we are a much richer country now, or are we? Much of our wealth seems quite ephemeral. But let’s say we can pay it back ten times as fast. That is still five generations in hock. Your great great great grandchildren will still be cursing you. And who is to say that it will not happen again. There are precious few signs yet that lessons have been learned and the necessary changes to the financial system made.
At least the debt in 1948 was honest. Much of it had been incurred fighting and helping remove from the face the earth Hitler, the nastiest scourge since Ghengis Khan. Why are we having to hock several generations of our youngsters? To provide very fat and obscene pensions to a very few people who were so incompetent that their operations have virtually destroyed the banking system of much of the world. One has to ask how many others are there in the wings taking their very fat salaries and waiting to secure their very fat pensions - Both financiers and politicians – and most still probably utterly incompetent?
That massive debt will be paid off. It will be paid by inflation which will eat into the wealth of every save, every pensioner, the thrifty, the productive and the wage earners. This is called inflation and the value of the pound in your pocket, savings account, mattress or pay packet will reduce steadily. You will pay off that debt even though you did not incur it. You have been enlisted into the repayment plan whether you wanted to join-up or not. You have therefore been effectively enslaved to feed the back pockets of the extremely rich bosses of companies and banks who have managed to secure virtually inviolate positions of authority over the operations of our society by negotiating away the lawful restrictions placed upon them by regulation of the banks. This has been called deregulation and that is exactly what it is; setting free to pursue their own agendas the people we licensed and trusted to operate our financial system, the system that looks after our wealth.
It is our wealth, not theirs and they have no right to use it to speculate on the stock market, pocket their winnings and then dump their inevitable losses upon us, the taxpayers. This is obscene. It must be stopped.
14th October 2012
Colin Walker