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Now that taxpayers are each about to receive a £2,000 stake in Britain's banks (thanks, Darling), can I suggest that their former owners and major shareholders be expropriated and the monies received put toward a national holiday (indefinite) during which the new stakeholders and their non-citizen partners, together with those of the other bank-owning nations, decide which financial institutions to axe (all of 'em?) and which activities to continue under our direct control?

(No futurology. Cannot guarantee does not contain futurology)

B

I’ve had a few hours to mull over David Cameron’s speech at the Tory Party Conference, and also some time to cool down. When I saw the ‘high’lights on the news, I wanted to throw things at the television. Luckily nobody else was in, as for the duration I shouted some very rude things in my annoyance. I dislike Cameron intensley, and the thought that this thinly-disguised Thatcherite will in all likelihood be the next Prime Minister makes me rather sad, not to mention angry.

Jon Amsden published these penetrating comments on the meltdown mailing list earlier today. McCain is gambling with the global system, a shrewd move because if he loses he wins. i.e. Whether this bailout finally goes through or not, sometime soon capital is going to need the US worker onside. Even if there is sooner rather than later a run on the US dollar, McCain will still be the populist who stuck by the workers when all  around him were bent on feeding big capital's crack habit.

after this i suspect other bankers will have to be written off as bad deaths, or their morts gaged on a mark to market basis. but if the price of citizenship continues rising for everyone without triggering a collective (& pro-refugee response), the asbotic reflux of 40 years of capitalist decadence will probably be articulated in ever more politically aphasic forms.

In his Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville argues that democracy - and American democracy as the new democratic state par excellence especially - is inherently paradoxical. For example, while democratic peoples are ignorant and elect fools, who in turn produce mangled and shoddy legislation, the net outcome is a system in which unworkable legislation is quickly thrown out (for new legislators are rapidly elected), and the laws of the land are respected by a demos which views the democratically produced laws as its own.

I filed this under politics because I couldn't find anything more appropriate. I guess it kind of fits.

Some recent experiences of mine have served to open my eyes to a few things which, being of a somewhat left-leaning persuasion, I had assumed myself to be fully conscious of already. Allow me to elaborate.

In the second of a two-part analysis of neoliberalism Indian style, Neil Gray looks at the economic impact of policies legitimat

More thuggish banking crisis-oriented Nettime forwarding from me...account of an activist's valiant campaign to become a one-man booster rocket for the global financial meltdown

http://www.17-s.info

I am writing down this pages to announce that I have expropriated 492,000 euros to 39 banks through 68 loan deals. If we include interest on arrears, the present amount of debt is over 500,000 euros which I will not pay.

Sorry for the egregious viral forwarding (and the fact that the title I've appended pretty much sums up the joke), but this drifted by in the Nettime gunkstream...itself re-posted from The Nation's website. Seems like liberal bien pensant opinion in the US (encompassing the continuum between the NYT and The Nation) is stridently anti-bailout, maybe like a tepidly progressive re-working of the "moral hazard" banner as a clash between 'Wall Street' and 'Main Street'.

Please come to Clerkenwell County Court tomorrow morning to show solidarity with Lowell Spirit Grant.

Spirit is being taken to court by the overseas developers who bought his place from Hackney Council for a song and who now want to evict him, allegedly because of outstanding rent arrears.

Please come along to the court at 9.30 a.m. tomorrow morning - the hearing starts at 10 but we need to be outside to show that Spirit has lots of support.

The Gee Street Courthouse 29 - 41 Gee Street EC1V 3RE