Transnational Institute | Prevailing policy for our times: reward the guilty, punish th... - 0 views
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What, then, have the people of the UK, the US and Europe received in return for these colossal bailouts which did not fall from the sky but were taken from citizens’ pockets? Calls for more sacrifices. Government deficits ballooned largely because of spending and borrowing to save the financial system. It had to be saved, yes, but not at the expense of ordinary, mostly poor and middle-class people.
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Citizens are now paying a second time and governments have proved that they govern on behalf of that tiny fraction I call the Davos Class—the financial, economic and political elites who meet each January in the Swiss ski resort to take stock and discuss their next moves.
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A small tax on all financial transactions at a rate of one per thousand could provide up to $600 billion a year—quite enough to repair our social benefits systems in the North, pull the South out of endemic poverty and convert to an entirely green economy. Banks that wouldn’t be here but for citizens’ contributions should be at least partially socialised and obliged to lend to small and medium enterprises, especially those with a viable social or ecological project, now starved for credit.
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"What, then, have the people of the UK, the US and Europe received in return for these colossal bailouts which did not fall from the sky but were taken from citizens' pockets? Calls for more sacrifices. Government deficits ballooned largely because of spending and borrowing to save the financial system. It had to be saved, yes, but not at the expense of ordinary, mostly poor and middle-class people."