We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
These things are not unrelated These two things were separate items in the Spectator newsletter.
A wave of directors have left the UK since Labour abolished favourable tax treatment for non-domiciled residents. Some 3,790 company directors left, compared with 2,712 in the same period a year earlier, the Financial Times reports.
… and…
The number of civil servants earning between £150,000 and £200,000, putting them in the same pay bracket as the Prime Minister, has increased 114% since March 2023, according to Cabinet Office data.
But of course these are not separate at all. This only ends if the UK gets a factory reset, a literal non-figurative revolution. I really hope we can vote our way out of this, but with the rise of sectarian politics inexorably turning the UK into something akin to Ulster writ large, I am by no means confident that is going to be the case. If so, I wonder what will kick off the 1642 moment? What will the sides even be?
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Y’all don’t get to vote until 2029, right?
Can somebody please enlighten me as to the meaning of “domiciled” in English law?
Well, whatever the sides are, I hope everyone keeps an eye on the Muslims…they most certainly will not waste the opportunity.
They won’t be hard to find as you are now, what, 10% Muslim?
Or, if we’re only counting military age males, 30%?
Same as US law, I believe.
You can have multiple residencies. You can have multiple citizenships.
You can only have one domicile. It’s your home base.
There are several factual tests to determine your domicile, and the answer isn’t always clear, but it is always a unitary answer.
bobby b
Correct re the 2029 voting due to the unassailable Labour majority and no realistic mechanism for forcibly bringing about change beforehand no matter how much people try to convince themselves otherwise. Economic and societal breakdown isn’t going to make it happen any sooner, quite the reverse more likely.
GregWA
That rather depends on whether you believe the official census and immigration figures.
Indeed. This government will last until 2029 at which point it will be voted out, assuming the increasingly repressive state allows that to happen, which I am no longer 100% certain will be the case.
I suppose there is a small chance that TTK, fearing the lunatic/ethnic wing of his own party, will seek permission from HRH to declare some sort of government of national unity to address the crisis.
As the last 14 years have shown us that Labour and the conservatives are two cheeks of the same arse I doubt if we would notice much difference.
“Y’all don’t get to vote until 2029, right?”
No, but the markets gets to vote every day. And it’ll be their votes that put Labour in its place well before 2029. And no, having a massive majority in the HoC does not mean you can control the foreign exchanges or the gilt markets any better than if your majority is one. The HoC cannot vote its way against financial reality any more than it can vote against gravity. If the yield on gilts is passing 5,6,7,8% and still rising and the pound is in free fall on the exchanges, then a government that is in debt to its eyeballs and totally dependent on borrowing more money to continue paying its bills on a day to day basis must act to cut its expenditure to meet its income, or it faces literally running out of money. There is no limit to the amount the market can charge the UK to borrow money, and the lower limit to the pound’s value on the exchanges is zero. No amount of votes in the HoC can change either of those facts.
Correct. But no amount of economic woe changes the fact this horrendous government doesn’t have to call an election until 2029. If the choice they have is hanging on to power or bending to economic reality, they will chose the former.
What on earth does TTK mean?
It’s not obvious, but he means Two-Tier Keir 😀
The only PM who I’m aware who was overthrown by the ‘markets’ (ie the Bank of England and the ‘City of London’) is Liz Truss. They’ve shown a curious amount of patience for PMs with much more reckless policies than Liz ever had the opportunity to even claim to support, let alone implement.
‘The markets’ are so politically controlled, hoping for salvation from them seems asking a lot.
Wouldn’t be the worst thing, not that I’d support such a government.
My worry is that the next PM will be the British Gorbachev. Someone who tries to save the system but only brings the whole lot tumbling down and ends up being despised on all sides. Given the state of Britain is a LibLabCon outcome, it may be best that they ‘own’ the system’s demise.
“If the choice they have is hanging on to power or bending to economic reality, they will chose the former.”
If they bend to economic reality, then they stop being a Labour government. They might be nominally in power, but if they are forced to do things they viscerally hate then they aren’t in actual power. Then its just a case of hanging on to the perks of office as long as possible. I can live with that.
And in such a circumstance (where a Labour government manages to pass a package of real cuts to public spending in order to calm the markets) they’d soon all be fighting like rats in a sack. The realists would be saying ‘We’ve got to keep doing this, there is no alternative!’ and the TrueBelievers would be demanding that economic gravity be ignored, and Labour would no longer be a party of government, just a random group of people who hate each other and can’t agree on anything. Whoever was in No 10 wouldn’t have a majority at all, because a lot of his own party wouldn’t vote for him (or her). There would be no Labour government because Labour would cease to exists as a unified political force.
@Martin: Markets are herds. They will hold a line so far, because everyone else is holding, suddenly one breaks for safety, then a couple more follow, then everyone else follows, precipitating the crash. At the moment markets are assuming the people in charge of the UK government are rational human beings, who will accept the reality of financial gravity, and will react sensibly when the markets send them pricing signals. The markets do not yet realise the nature of who we have in power in the UK, that they are the sort of people who will crash the plane into the ground at full speed while confidently declaring the altimeter is wrong. At some point the markets will cotton on, and then all hell breaks loose. Not least because the UK will be on its own. In the last few big economic crises (GFC and Covid) everyone has been in the same boat, so hiding among the crowd has been easier. This time the UK is going to be out there all on its lonesome when the SHTF, which will make things far worse for us.
You’re not selling the ‘wisdom’ of ‘the markets’ well here. Doesn’t take much intelligence to realise Starmer is a psycho.
From the article Perry linked to:-
……and he is now “two-tier Keir”. Presiding over two-tier Britain. Trust me, unless there’s a radical shift very soon, it’s going to stick.
Unusually perceptive for a guardian writer. It’s coming up to a year since she wrote that, how time flies.
Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
It’s not often that I quote Saul Alinsky but we are living in strange times.
“What will the sides even be?”
The pro-British v. the anti-British.
I am still optimistic that we will have a Reform victory in the next general election, and the dire situation and the aggressive opposition will force the party to be radical.
Aetius.
I did vote Reform last year and have no intentions of going back to voting Tory (Kemi Badenoch is horrendous). However, I have string doubts about Reform’s capabilities, and just reading this this afternoon doesn’t inspire confidence.
I see no alternative to Reform, warts and all, in 2029…& I truly believe any other result means UK will be beyond salvage.
When North and West Northants councils had Conservative Party majorities – Council Tax went up 4.9% a year.
And now with Reform Party majorities in both councils – Council Tax will go up by 4.9% a year.
No difference. Elected people find themselves “in office – but NOT in power”.
Under “libertarian” (and he did see himself this way) Prime Minister Johnson – there were the Covid lockdowns meaning we had LESS freedom than during World War II, or during the rule of Major Generals under Cromwell.
And under “fiscal conservative” (and he did see himself this way) Chancellor Sunak – government spending was the wildest in British history.
It was NOT that the Prime Minister or the Chancellor loved crushing liberty, or stole lots of money – the brutal fact is that they had no power, they were both puppets of the system.
I could go on – for a long time – but I think you get the point.
This is not about individuals or political parties – this is a “System Failure” which may well turn into a “System Collapse”.
It is rather hard to vote yourself out of a System Collapse.
Meanwhile the Bank of England is reacting to the increasingly worthless “Pound” currency – by REDUCING interest rates.
People who can will leave the United Kingdom – those of us who are too old and too poor to leave, are in for very hard times.
The first quote is true if you’re talking about the abstract market consisting of agents offering goods & services among eachother with no restrictions on what offers one can make. The second quote picks out specific organizations that claim to run subsets of the market where people & companies can make these offers more conveniently than in the wild, but with restrictions on what offers they can make.
I don’t know everything about British government, but I strongly suspect enough votes in the HoC can put limits on the amount ‘the Bank of England and the “City of London”‘ can charge the UK to borrow money. It would be foolish and evil of them to do so, of course, but I bet they could make it happen. Ditto for mandating ‘the Bank of England and the “City of London”‘ have a minimum positive floor for the pound’s value on any exchange they make.
Unfortunately, managed sub-markets are our best proxy for estimating the activity of the total market, so resourceful people have gotten good at using these proxies to hide problems (often so well that they end up hiding the problems from themselves).
At first glance, Jim missed a trick in the third quote, and continued Martin’s conflation of The Markets with the various identifiable artificial sub-markets that bank on their prestige. I think Martin knew about the distinction, and just used the conflation rhetorically to predict the behavior of politicians & the organizations running the sub-markets.
I’m pretty sure Jim also picked up on the conflation, and just ran with the new term, since the third quote doesn’t seem to rely on any behavior of pure markets as opposed to artificial sub-markets. It would confuse any newcomers looking here for behaviors of ideal markets vs behaviors of real markets, but you can’t have everything.
Governments, including the British government, no longer borrow gold or silver – they borrow “money” that they themselves create, via their Central Banks (or just do it without a Central Bank).
It is utterly absurd for a government (with or without a Central Bank) to create “money” from nothing, lend it out, and borrow it back again at a higher rate of interest.
It would be no more inflationary to just create the “money” from nothing and spend it – rather than create the money from nothing, lend it out, and then borrow it back again.
“Borrowing” a “national debt” and so on – may have made some sort of sense when governments were borrowing an actual commodity (such as gold or silver), but now they are borrowing “money” that has no independent existence, “money” that is entirely fiat (whim – command – edict), “money” that they themselves created, such things make no sense at all.
Back in the days of Mr J.P. Morgan financiers may indeed have lent governments commodity money (such as gold), but today the “financial institutions” are parasites.
It is all a horrible game now – indeed a vicious farce.
The end will be terrible.
My expectation is that Labour isn’t collectively stupid enough to be optimistic about their electoral chances in 2029, but they do enjoy being in charge, and so they will be looking for some way to foster the second while working around the first.
IOW, your government structure is going to be altered soon.
Snorri, following on from bobby b, the best definition I have heard of ‘domicile’ is ‘attachment to a legal system’, that is to say, it is something that you ‘acquire’ at birth (in the UK you take your father’s domicile at birth), and it is more than ‘permanent residence’ or even the right to reside. It is a legal concept which shows which country or legal system you are attached to. In the USA, I would imagine it is the State or Federal district that you are deemed to be attached to. In the UK, you could be ‘domiciled’ in England & Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, but only one. I was told of a Scottish chap who wished to disinherit his son entirely, he was advised not just to move to England but to make a sworn declaration that he had adopted English domicile, thus severing his connection with Scots law and its rather fixed inheritance provisions (totally unlike the rest of the UK). Generally domicile is of ‘origin’ unless you adopt another, e.g. by emigrating or settling. For UK tax purposes there are taxes on people ‘resident’ for tax purposes such as income tax, but if they are not UK nationals, they might have a domicile overseas. This had allowed some to only pay tax on income received in the UK, rather than worldwide income (called informally ‘non-doms’ for non-domiciled in the UK) who might be for capital tax purposes based outside the UK and so escaping significant tax burdens. IIRC our last Prime Minister’s wife had been in just that situation, coming from a wealthy Indian family, so she got some flak for that and I believe that she dropped the status thereafter.
You can be deemed to acquire domicile by demonstrating an intention to permanently live in a country, e.g. by moving there, taking up work, marrying someone from there, but it is not always clear-cut absent a specific documented decision.
À collapse in France begining in September is a lot more probable They are really in a no winning situation
Nevertheless Marine Le Pen could be worse Difficult to imagine, but a reality
Many thanks to bobby and Mr Ed for the clarifications.
Mostly, i only had to pay taxes in the countries where i was residing and earning a salary. I did not pay tax on British investments when not residing in the UK.
That is why I assumed that there is no difference between domicile and residence.
But i did not have to pay taxes in the UK when i was working there for 2 years — on condition that i left the country within 2 years. (An encouragement to brain drain.)
(Also, i paid taxes at a reduced rate in Denmark for the first 3 years there. Apparently, i would not have had to pay back taxes even if i stayed there.)
Are the civil servants earning that? Or being paid that? Where’s the evidence they are *EARNING* that money?
There are local elections before 2029, ours are in 2027. Reform are building up the ground work everywhere.
When I was living in Hong Kong I paid UK income tax in the UK on the rental income from my UK properties, Hong Kong income tax on my income in Hong Kong.
bobby b – “your government structure is going to be altered soon”
Quite so. Probably there will be a “crisis” – perhaps a war, or (from other comments above) quite likely hyperinflation, that will provide an excuse for the suspension of elections for the duration of the emergency. No need for the alteration to be official, or even admitted to.
They have already done it at the local level; a lot of council elections were suspended where Reform were likely to win, on the fairly spurious grounds that boundaries were to be changed in a few years’ time.
Do your local elections have any impact on national government? Do you replace national officeholders with new local people? (I really don’t know enough about your systems.)
What was that about:
“You can vote your way into socialism. But you will probably have to shoot your way OUT of it.”
In the case of the Untidy Kingdom and most of the “Commonwealth”, this presents a challenge.
Snorri: here is a guide to what “domicile” is in UK law – it is different to residence.
https://www.burges-salmon.com/our-thinking/what-is-my-domicile-and-why-does-it-matter/
Martin: They’ve shown a curious amount of patience for PMs with much more reckless policies than Liz ever had the opportunity to even claim to support, let alone implement.
Quite. While some mistakes were made, it has all the markers of a coup, wrought by people who feared their Keynesian, Big State fantasies were being challenged. She was a “disturbance in the force”.
Do your local elections have any impact on national government?
It builds up the ground work and the activists for higher levels of government. When I was active in the 1990s we realised we had to make a concerted effort to get as many of the council wards in a constituency we were targetting before we had any chance of an effective chance of winning the Parliamentary seat.
No local elections have no great impact – although they do have some impact. For example, the Reform Party controlled councils are able to take down the Ukrainian flag, but if these councils have responsibility for Adult Social Care and Children’s Services – Council Tax will go up by 4.9% per year.
The real question is how much, if any, impact do national elections have in the United Kingdom?
The establishment (the real rulers) got a kick out of making Prime Minister Johnson impose the insane Covid lockdowns.
And they got a kick out of making Chancellor Sunak spend wildly.
“libertarian Johnson forced to crush liberty more than during World War II or under Cromwell’s Major Generals – giggle-giggle”
“fiscal conservative Sunak forced to spend like a drunken sailor – giggle-giggle”.
But the real victims of this undemocratic farce are not Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak, they are just fine. The real victims are the British people.
Could a Reform Party government truly smash this system? I do not know. But the system does need to be smashed.
Not “made to work better” – rule by officials and “experts” has to be ended.
jdh – was there any point in being active after Margaret Thatcher was betrayed in 1990?
Increasingly I suspect that there was no point after that – and that it was time for a self inflicted “bullet in the brain pan – squish” as a character says in the film “Serenity”.
The only benefit of a Reform vote would be to temporarily halt the insanity and corruption.
FPTP means they wont get in, anyway.
Also, the HNWI have already left, I expect listed companies to follow before the next general election. Especially pharma companies.
The UK elite is almost as incompetent as the Weimar Republic, double digit inflation is waiting for the next general election if not before.
No, FPTP means Reform probably *will* get a majority.
Perry makes a good point – a point that Nigel Farage does not seem to grasp.
With Proportional Representation the Reform Party would never govern – it would either be excluded from office, as the AfD in Germany and the Freedom Party in Austria have been, or would be “in office but not in power” – toothless in a coalition.
Only a large majority in the House of Commons can (if anything can) smash the present system of rule by officials and “experts” – get rid of the “independent bodies”, get rid of the “ministerial code”, bring back the “bullying” of officials – i.e. actually giving them ORDERS, rather than polite suggestions that they ignore with contempt, and-so-on.
Proportional Representation, which Mr Farage says he supports, would make all this impossible.
Farage’s support for PR, at least until the past several months, made sense given the conditions being worked in at the time. Farage’s parties performed best in PR elections while in FPTP elections underperformed. In the 2014 and 2019 European elections, Farage parties won the most UK seats under PR conditions.
Under FPTP conditions, in 2015 UKIP got 1 MP with 13pc of the vote, while the SNP got 56 seats with less than 5pc of the total vote, and the Lib Dems got 8 even with 8pc of the vote.
Last year Reform’s result was 5 MPs from over 14pc of the vote while the Lib Dems got 72 seats from 12pc of the vote, and Labour won 2/3 of the seats from 1/3 of votes.
Reform, at present polling, look like they may now benefit from FPTP. This is a very new phenomena though, and is largely because the Conservatives have reached depths of incompetence and irrelevancy that even long time critics didn’t think was possible.
For years, Tory loyalists would implore people to forget UKIP, Reform etc as a wasted vote under FPTP that would split the right wing vote and benefit Labour and the Liberals. Well Tory loyalists, if it looks like your party is a wasted vote that splits the right wing vote, what will you do now?
Martin – what will I do now?
It is unlikely I will be about at the next General Election – but if I am……
I would gauge what political party in the constituency I live in was most likely to defeat the left.
In 2024 the Reform Party vote in Kettering was not a “wasted vote” it actively did harm – depriving Kettering of a good Member of Parliament who voted the way you, Martin, would want in Parliament (often rebelling) – and replacing him with a Labour Party “lobby fodder” type.
But in 2029 it is possible that the election here will be between the Green Party and Reform Party – if (if) that is the case, and I am still alive, I would vote for the Reform Party candidate -in order to help defeat the Green Party Candidate.
By the way – Proportional Representation never made sense for the Reform Party for the reasons I have already explained.
Either the other parties would ally against them – as has happened in Germany with AfD, and in Austria with the Freedom Party.
Or, just as bad, the Reform Party would be part of a coalition – which is what happened in the Netherlands. Unable to do anything.
Of course both Ben Habib, former deputy leader of the Reform Party, and Ruper Lowe, formally one of their five Members of Parliament, argue that Mr Farage and the Reform Party do not really mean to do anything – that it is all “Controlled Opposition”. But that may be too harsh a view.
Let us be charitable and assume that Mr Farage really does intend to be an English version of Charles Martel of France – driving out the forces of Islam and taking other dramatic action.
To do anything dramatic he would have to have a very large majority in the House of Commons – large enough to get rid of he House of “Lords” (which is no longer made up of Lords) and defeat (or destroy) other institutions as well.
My own view of Mr Farage is a far more charitable view than the opinion that Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe have of him – my view is that Mr Farage is an old fashioned 1980s style Conservative.
I have no problem in theory with that – after all I am a 1980s “Thatcherite” myself.
But our time has gone – the future is not really about tax rates and levels of government spending (although these things remain important), the future is really about conflict (perhaps even Civil War) as the institutions of this country (all the institutions) are deeply hostile to the British people. The next few years will be about whether England (specifically England) survives – or whether it is destroyed, destroyed with the active cooperation of its own establishment institutions.
Does Mr Farage have it in him to be a second Oliver Cromwell? It is very hard to make a judgement on this matter.
In case people still do not understand…..
Britain is not Hungary – politics here is NOT about “stopping immigration” (as it is in countries like Hungary – which have not made the terrible blunder that Britain made over DECADES) things have gone way beyond that, due to natural increase. Even if all immigration into Britain stopped right now (today) it would not prevent what is going to happen.
I doubt that Mr Farage is suitable for the savage conflict which may be the future of this land – and I am not insulting him, because I am NOT suitable for such times myself.
I want politics that is about restoring sound (commodity) money, ending Credit Bubble banking, and reducing government spending – NOT politics that is about ethnic war.
But that future, the future I do not want and am not suitable for, is the future this island is likely to get.
Hopefully I will not live to see it.
Paul:
I agree with your points about the absurdity of governments “borrowing”, at interest, fiat money which only exists because they say so. Prior to 1971, governments borrowed money from investors precisely because they could not create money ab initio, it was still linked to gold via the dollar. In those days governments had to ask their citizens to lend them money, and many people owned such bonds.
Now we are living in a strange shadow land. Governments which issue fiat currency have no need to “borrow” it. But I think they continue to go through the motions to perpetuate the myth that money has some sort of independent existence from the state. The US government could pay off the $30 trillion nation debt tomorrow if it wished, by simply creating $30 trillion dollars. It’s not illegal when they do it. But doing so would reveal the essential hollowness of our financial system. No-one would ever trust a fiat pound, dollar or euro ever again. And nor should they. But for the time being, it suits governments to play pretend and keep the made up game going a little longer.
@JohnK, I think there is a bit more to it than that. The dollar is backed by the “full faith” of the American government, which to all intents and purposes means — you can expect payment because we are going to tax future generations and pay you with that.
So when they talk about a “government deficit” what they actually mean is “we are borrowing this money from your children, grand children and those not even born yet.” How many people think it is ok to fund their lifestyle by borrowing from their children? Not many I’d venture to say. The opposite is generally true — we sacrifice, save and spend to make our children’s lives easier.
And there is another really bizarre side to this. If the government increases the money supply what it means is that the existing money supply is devalued. So, if it increases the money supply by 5% it means all dollars are now worth about 95 cents. This is called “inflation”. Which is to say it is a tax on wealth. But the irony is that it isn’t a tax on rich people’s wealth, because all that newly created money ultimately goes through various means to the rich. It is instead a tax on the middle of America, not the rich, not the poor but the people in between. So not only are they stealing from our children, but they are stealing from us to so that we can’t provide as well for our children.
And even for the poor — here is the scheme. You are getting your social security check for $2000 a month. The government prints more money and uses it to get you $50 more on your check, so you now have $2050, but it is only worth 95% of what it was, or $1948. So, the government says “vote for us! We made you $50 richer”, and people believe it though in actuality they are $50 poorer.
Fraser:
I think he “full faith” BS is to give cover to the fraud inherent in the system. It implies that the government will honour its debt. Of course it will, by borrowing more to pay off that maturing bond.
It is no coincidence that all government debt has soared since 1971. It never has to be repaid! You just cover it with money you “borrow” by willing it into existence. If we had that power as private citizens would we use it wisely or go on a massive spending spree? That is exactly what politicians have done since 1971. Spending gets them reelected. That’s all they care about. The debt never gets repaid, the notion is absurd.
One day the wheels will fall off, until then we all enjoy the ride to oblivion and the £1 million loaf.
JohnK – correct.
Fraser Orr – “full faith” was exposed as a LIE in 1933 when the Federal Government defaulted on its gold debt, indeed it did more than default, the regime of Franklin Roosevelt (“FDR”) demanded that ordinary people hand over their monetary gold (they could keep such things as wedding rings – how kind of Mr Roosevelt) under threat of fines and imprisonment.
In 1935 the Supreme Court, five to four, de facto decided that it was fine for the government to default on its gold debt (so much for “full faith”), break all contracts (public and private) and even steal, take by the threat of violence, all monetary gold from ordinary people – something that even King George the Third and Prime Minister Lord North had never done.
In 1971 this default was made complete by Washington defaulting on its gold obligations to foreign governments – it had already defaulted on its gold debt to American citizens in 1933, now (1971) as a “temporary emergency measure” foreign governments were cheated as well – I think, after 54 years, it is clear that it is NOT a “temporary emergency measure”.
“Tax future generations to pay the debt” – first of all that is utterly impossible as the debt is over 100% of the economy (it is bigger than the entire economy). And that does not even take account of the unfunded entitlements – Social Security (pensions), Medicare, Medicaid, and-so-on – the situation is utterly insane. The real debt is vastly MORE than 100% of the economy.
As you yourself point out – the government, via the (despicable) Federal Reserve system creates “money” from nothing – so, again, why “tax” and why “borrow”.
The money has no independent existence, it is not gold, it is not silver, it is not anything other than the whims of the regime.
As for the “national debt” “paying interest” and all the rest of it – this is just a way of paying out subsidies to New York and other “financial centers” – giving welfare to people in thousand Dollar suits, at the expense of everyone else (the Cantillon Effect).
And every other nation is the same.
Again – every other nation is the same.
There is no “capitalist free market economy” (BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, plus the Credit Bubble banks, are not a “capitalist free market economy”), there is no independent economy, no Real Savings, no independent finance.
It is all a farce – a vicious farce.