J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception by Michael Hudson

Author:Michael Hudson [Hudson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Economics, Capitalism, Neoliberalism, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9783981484250
Google: NuVpnQAACAAJ
Amazon: B071W31MTM
Goodreads: 34150000
Publisher: ISLET
Published: 2017-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Teleology: An a priori approach (from Greek telos, “end”) depicting any existing status quo as being a natural result of past trends and how past conflicts were resolved on a presumably constant upward trajectory. Such history is written as if there are no realistic alternative modes of economic or social organization (e.g., Mrs. Thatcher’s TINA), only selected antecedents that lead to the present. (See End of History and Stages of Development.)

Thatcher, Margaret (1925-2013): As British Conservative Prime Minister (1979-1990), she claimed that “there is no such thing as society.” This anti-social view sees no need to protect consumers or the environment from exploitation, or to protect economies from predatory financial behavior. Her trademark phrase was TINA: There Is No Alternative. (See Neoliberal, Reaganomics and Social Market.) Her Labor Capitalism was borrowed largely from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who fled to her country for protection and indeed plaudits after his bloody military junta ended.

To persuade voters that they could make easy speculative gains and become capitalists-in-miniature, Mrs. Thatcher privatized public enterprises at low prices to provide quick price jumps. Starting with British Telephone, dumped at an initial public offering (IPO) discount for the company’s retail customers, her selloff of public infrastructure provided windfalls, above all for speculators and large financial organizations. This created an illusion that producing financial gains helped “the economy” instead of polarizing it while making it high-cost. Meanwhile, high underwriting fees (an enormous 2% giveaway to investment bankers) shifted economic power to London’s banking sector.

Privatizing public housing was a bonanza for mortgage bankers. Mrs. Thatcher’s policy may be summarized as: “Sorry you’ve lost your job. I hope you made a killing on buying your Council House and are watching its price soar.” But real estate’s soaring prices left British workers unable to live in central London, forcing them to spend many hours each day on expensive travel to and from work (on privatized transportation). Thatcher lost power when she imposed a poll tax on the middle class instead of recapturing the soaring land prices by a windfall land tax, taxing people not property.

Thatcherism continued and even intensified after Thatcher. Tony Blair’s New Labour Party celebrated financialization, and followed up Thatcher’s rent and tax increases by privatizing the railroads and subways with Public/Private Partnerships. New Labour deregulated Britain’s economy under Gordon Brown’s “light touch,” leading to the collapse in 2008 of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Icesave bank and other fraud-infested insider lootings.

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