How to Build a Crisis – by liberating banks and corporations from the rule of law

Last Updated: November 4, 2015By
Protest against TTIP outside EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium - 04 Feb 2015 [Image: ZUMA/REX Shutterstock].

Protest against TTIP outside EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium – 04 Feb 2015 [Image: ZUMA/REX Shutterstock].

George Monbiot hits the problem squarely on the head:

David Cameron has boasted of running “the first government in modern history that at the end of its parliamentary term has less regulation in place than there was at the beginning.”

This, in a world of accelerating complexity and booming corporate crime, is pure recklessness. But fear not, they say, economic power no longer needs be subject to the rule of law. It can regulate itself.

Some of us have long suspected that this is bunkum with bells on. But until now, suspicion is all we’ve had.

Today, the first global review of self-regulation is published. It was commissioned by Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, but it covers every sector from payday lenders to dog breeders. And it shows that in almost all cases – 82% of the 161 schemes it assessed – voluntary measures have failed.

When the Welsh government introduced a 5p charge for plastic bags, it cut their use by 80% overnight. The Westminster government claimed that self-regulation by the retailers would do the job just as well. The result? A grand reduction of 6%. After seven wasted years, it succumbed last month to the obvious logic, and introduced a charge.

On the other hand, the [government has devised] draconian new laws to reinforce elite power. Corporations are given the rights of legal persons. Their property rights are enhanced. Those who protest against them are subject to policing and surveillance of the kind that’s more appropriate to dictatorships than democracies. Oh, state power still exists all right – when it’s wanted.

Many of you have heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). These are supposed to be trade treaties, but they have little to do with trade, and much to do with power. They enhance the power of corporations while reducing the power of parliaments and the rule of law. They could scarcely be better designed to exacerbate and universalise our multiple crises: financial, social and environmental.

But something even worse is coming, the result of negotiations conducted, once more, in secret: a Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), covering North America, the EU, Japan, Australia and many other nations.

Only through WikiLeaks do we have any idea of what is being planned. It could be used to force nations to accept new financial products and services, to approve the privatisation of public services and to reduce the standards of care and provision. It looks like the greatest international assault on democracy devised in the past two decades. Which is saying quite a lot.

So the self-hating state proclaims that it has no power, while destroying its own capacity to legislate – internationally and at home.

As if the last financial crisis had not occurred, and as if unaware of what caused it, George Osborne, in his most recent speech to the City of London, told his audience of bankers that “a central demand in our renegotiation is that Europe stops costly and damaging regulation”.

Restraining the electorate, releasing the powerful: this is a perfectly designed formula for a multi-dimensional crisis.

Source: How to Build a Crisis | George Monbiot

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

latest video

news via inbox

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

3 Comments

  1. Dez November 4, 2015 at 12:27 pm - Reply

    Perhaps the current elite have been promised high places in this attempt to create the new World Order. I guess the global financial collapse was still not enough evidence for these lamebrain leaders to ignore all attempts to promote and trusting self regulation. In some respects it just seems to have spurred them on to more stupidity and global collapse……maybe that’s the plan?

    • shaunt November 4, 2015 at 3:20 pm - Reply

      Daz, or promised the politicians a place at the high table. I suspect, for the Cameron, Osborne and the other 15 or so Eton educated cabinet members, there is no divide between the Eton elite that run the Conservative party and Etonians that run corporations and London’s financial services sector. Yes, from what I gather no significant measures have been put in place to prevent another global financial

      • Mike Sivier November 5, 2015 at 12:09 pm - Reply

        I’m not sure this comment makes sense.

Leave A Comment