How we are bailing out the banks again

Irish economist David McWilliams from Punk Economics explains the ECB's massive cash for trash scheme - bailing out banks with your money. Well Transition Show presenter on Stroud FM James Beecher tweeted re this film and I agree it is a great way to get across difficult issues....



All this impacts on what our politicians are doing.....As the New Economics Foundation write: "Politicians call for austerity and little else. But spending cuts are economically illiterate. They wreck weak economies, locking them into a cycle explained by John Maynard Keynes over 80 years ago: Cuts mean job losses and falling demand for goods and services. Falling demand means firms sell less. Firms selling less cause wages to fall and unemployment to rise even more. Demand for goods and services falls further. This is the vicious circle we have entered into. As demand collapses and economies shrink, our debts become unpayable."

Last month nef published a new briefing - see here - on how the crisis broke and what steps we must take to save the economy. The Government and Opposition offer us no political alternatives to austerity. But there is an economic alternative.