re: #171 000G

… European voters are waking up to an oligarchic coup in which taxation and government budgetary planning and control is passing into the hands of executives nominated by the international bankers’ cartel. This result is the opposite of what the past few centuries of free market economics has been all about.

Populist movements in the past have brought about national socialism or other hyper-nationalistic movements, and often to disastrous consequences. That the Greek government now includes what are effectively neo-nazis ought to be sobering.

This urge to blame bankers, or in the US version “wall street”, is not new. Indeed, American populism was blaming Wall Street a century ago for various ills.

My own fear is that our current set of leaders (in the major nations, like the G20) are way too timid in addressing the hard issues, thus paving a way for even more reactionary movements to arise when problems blow up into major crises.