The Ponzi Division

+I’m watching the Netflex docu-series The Monster of Wall Street, which looks at the rise and fall of Bernie Madoff, the ponzi fraud king who was once hailed as Wall Street’s miracle man. It is an absorbing series (four episodes) and begs so many questions about the ability of markets to police themselves (ha!) and government to do the job for them. The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) failed on multiple occasions to properly investigate Madoff’s activities. That was partly due to the fact that he was so well in with them. It’s a salutary lesson, but one which has not been learnt. We still live in a world where ponzi schemes proliferate. Indeed, Madoff was only brought down by the collapse of that other great ponzi scheme, the US mortgage market in 2008. We found echoes of that here, with e.g. Northern Rock and other wonderful financial institutions which celebrated the ‘light touch’ regulation of their business, once lauded by—who else– Gordon Brown. Now that the Tories are contemplating allowing banks to combine their retail and investment functions once again, we can expect to see a slide backwards. As somebody commented in the Madoff series, the bankers, hedge funders et al only have one interest at heart—their own. I wonder if a government were to propose an Anti-Greed Bill, what it would contain.
 
+With that as a backdrop, Starmer’s latest wheeze is to say Labour is the party of ‘taking back control,’ which aims to suggest that a Labour government will devolve more power. I’m in favour of that, but it seriously remains questionable what will come of it after new Labour ministers and their departments find all sorts of excuses why this, that and the other would be better kept under Whitehall management. Given that Starmer has also said that there’ll be no ‘open chequebook’ it is clear that local control will not extend to any extra finance. And nowhere does ‘taking back control’ seem to mean taking control off the City. It doesn’t mean properly regulating that monster, nor does it mean really getting to grips with tax havens. It’s an empty slogan which encapsulates the inoriginality of Starmer’s imagination. And I’m wondering if it’s a trademark transgression. Dominic Cummings might have something to say about that. But perhaps he’s already advising Starmer.