Life Is Full Of Surprises

A couple of times this blog has referred to the occasion when Her Majesty The Queen visited The London School of Economics and asked the question about The Crash, “Why did nobody see it coming?”  To which there came no answer only excuses about things being very complicated.

The truth was that there were a modest number of critics, doubters and doomsters who had been deeply concerned about trends but who were either ignored or characterised as eccentrics or trouble makers.

There were some at LSE indeed or with connections.  In respect of the Euro end of it the Financial Times has pointed to one LSE professor and a Belgian, who was very close to the mark in 1998, I repeat, in 1998.

He was Professor Paul de Grauwe and there is an item about this which is not too long with a section in italics which says a great deal:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/09/15/ideas-matter-the-financial-times-martin-wolf-assigns-the-paternity-of-the-new-ecb-policy-to-lse-prof-paul-de-grauwe/#more-26856

In other sources beyond this article it is argued that after the Exchange Rate Monetary scheme crisis in 1992 it should have been clear to politicians that they had lost control of the banks and the global markets when it came to complex finance and the exchanges.

But they did not learn the lessons and assumed that it was the right political moves and structures which would solve the problems.  The Euro was devised on this basis.  Yet they are still going on and on attempting to come up with political notions and structures which would give them control.

These now go beyond any democratic safeguards or institutions.  This is not control by technocrats it is the attempt to control by the dictatorship of a political caste.  This is done by even more complicated and dictatorial with very expensive structures and turning up the money taps.

And it is not going to work.