Tuesday 7 September 2010

What a difference two years makes

Two years ago the investment banking community were slated by the political right and left alike...

...today, as government austerity measures consign more people to the dole queue and send more businesses to the edge of the precipice, they are back, and set to be more influential than ever.

What is most bizarre about this whole crisis is that, despite the irony of ordinary people having to pay with their jobs and their services for bailing out an industry that may as well occupy a different planet from them (whilst senior staff in that very same industry go on to continue like the whole affair never happened), anger is not focused.

People are upset, yes; angry - certainly. Fearful too. But their wrath is directed at many targets beyond the gambling investment banking community - politicians, civil servants, recipients of benefits, immigrants. The right-wing press, meanwhile, has seized on this marvellous opportunity to slash and burn the public sector with aplomb...

... and out of this mess, not many are left smiling. Except for Bob, above, and the collection of multi-millionaires and recipients of inherited wealth that make up the representatives of our supposedly modern democratic system. 

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