The credit crunch: an effect not a cause

Robert Henderson  How did we get  into this economic hole? What we are experiencing is a direct consequence of the dominant economic ideology of the age, laissez faire, an ideology which underpins the general political ideology of political elites in the West, the form of liberal internationalism we call globalism. This neo-Liberal mentality has brought [...]

It isn’t a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of globalism

It isn’t a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of globalism Robert Henderson Contents 1. Turning a blind eye 2. What is capitalism? 3. Globalisation and the developed world 4. The suppression of dissent 5. The developing world 6. The loss of  national control 7. The undeveloping world 8. Supra-national  politics 9. Just another outbreak [...]

Another day another lethal financial derivative

Collateralised Debt Obligation (CDOs) and Credit Default Swap (CDS) are old hat. Say hello to the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). The EFT  is a fund which supposedly concentrates on a discrete area of economic activity such as a the trading of a commodity, a  particular  area of business, for example, banks, or a  particular country’s [...]

Laws are for “little people” – the Mandelson mortgage fraud cover-up

The present furore should have disabused those of the public who still believed the law and rules such as codes of conduct apply to the powerful as they do to the ordinary person. At present we are seeing how widespread-hacking by the media and the bribing of police by the media to gain information could [...]

Robotics and the real (sorry, Karl, you got it wrong) final crisis of capitalism

Robert Henderson Humans and Robots Robotics is advancing rapidly. Probably within the lifetime of most people now living – and conceivably within the next ten years – there will be general purpose robots (GPRs) capable of doing the vast majority of the work now undertaken by human beings. When that happens international free trade and [...]

Foreign Aid – A Danegeld extracted by the Liberal Internationalists

“Aid – an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries”. — Peter Bauer  (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/globalDimensions/research/aidTradeDevelopment/Default.htm) The UK has been pumping Aid into the Third World since the 1950s.  At present day values several hundred billion pounds of British taxpayers’ money has been given to foreigners.   Despite [...]

How do we explain liberal internationalism as a biological phenomenon?

Robert Henderson What the liberals have done The general facts of liberal internationalist elite behaviour are these. They have socially fractured societies which previously enjoyed a high degree of racial and cultural homogeneity by permitting the mass immigration of the racially and culturally different. They have undermined national security and reduced domestic employment opportunities by [...]

Why did auditors fail to blow the whistle on the banks?

1. Audit Failure 2. Why does the failure of large concerns matter? 3. Why false accounting happens 4. The incestuous relationship between auditor and audited 5. How collusion may arise between the auditor and their client 6. Is it possible to audit companies meaningfully? 7. The scarcity of IT skills 8. The responsibilities of directors [...]

Film reviews – Inside Job

Documentary Director Charles Ferguson Narrator Matt Damon Released 2010 Run time 1 hour 48 minutes http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/site/#/cast The last time I felt so angry coming out of a cinema was after a viewing of  The Smartest Guys In the Room, the story of the Enron scandal.   In the case of the Inside Job,  it was not [...]

Market economies and the illusion of choice

One of the prime arguments for introducing business practices, private money and private business into public provision is that it improves choice. British citizens, increasingly referred to as consumers or customers rather than patients, passengers or any other appellation which emphasises the public nature of the provision, supposedly want choices of schools for their children [...]