Michael Meacher MP

It now seems likely that the 20-strong no-compromise Tea Party core, with its ideological fixation on massive spending cuts and no increase in taxation, not now and not ever, will tilt the US over the brink into default and likely credit downgrade.   This is tragically ironic for two reasons.   The biggest part of the £14.3tn US deficit derives from Republican President Bush’s monstrous tax cuts for the rich and starting two decade-long wars costing $4tn.   Even more tragically ironic is the fact that the fundamental problem for the US economy at the present time isn’t high spending, but a wholesale lack of demand, and the $2-3tn spending cuts demanded by the Tea Party Taliban as a condition for raising the debt ceiling will only make the feeble state of demand even more sickly.   Worse still an incipient Tea Party Tendency is already taking shape in Britain. (more…)

Any idea that the humiliation of Murdoch has signalled the resurgence of regulatory and parliamentary power must be given short shrift.   Two events today show how little has actually changed.   It is almost incredible that James Murdoch received the unanimous support of the BSkyB board for continuing as chairman when he has acknowledged a major error of judgement in paying out over £1m in hush-money to prevent the phone-hacking scandal going viral and has in effect been accused of lying by top News International executives when he said that he had not been told about the crucial ‘for Neville’ email which would indicate he did in fact have knowledge about phone-hacking at the News of the World.   The same day we are also told for the umpteenth time that bank lending to business has yet again fallen, contrary to their Project Merlin agreement with the Treasury.   So who rules Britain?   Certainly not the Government. (more…)

The sovereign debt crisis is moving up a gear this weekend.   As the fundamentals of the eurozone crisis remain unaddressed, as opposed  to superficial remedies for the symptoms, the failure to raise the US debt ceiling within the next 4 days, which looks increasingly likely, could seriously destabilise the global financial system since American treasury bonds form its backbone.   Bank capital ratios could be hurt as AAA-debtholders were forced to accept their holdings were worth less than previously recognised, and Eurpoean banks hold as much as $300 bn of US bonds, while Japanese banks hold an even greater total of $360bn.   Some European funds might be forced to change their financial structures because they are restricted to investing only in AAA-rated debt.   And where US treasury bonds have been used as collateral by some complex derivative products, it may cause other AAA-rated collateral to rise in value.   But how far will this damage the UK economy? (more…)

This was supposed to be D-day.    After half a year of stagnation today’s announcement of the second quarter economic figures was expected to herald Britain finally emerging from the worst recession for a century which started nearly 4 years ago.   The 0.2% growth figure isn’t just a disappointment, it’s a wake-up call loud and clear for a change of course.   The annual growth prediction for 2011 has now been downgraded for the fourth time to 1.3%. and the economy may struggle even to achieve that.   That has to be compared with the German economy now roaring ahead and the French economy which is now growing confidently, though less fast than Germany’s.   So what should now be done? (more…)

A central question in the phone hacking scandal now is why the criminality wasn’t exposed much earlier, in particular in 2006-7.    It was first brought to light when Clive Goodman, reporter on royalty for NoW, wrote a story on 11 June 2005 about Prince Williams’ medical treatment that almost certainly must have been sourced from voicemail interference of royals or staff.   Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed in January 2006.   The police naturally questioned if there was more such illegal hacking.   In May 2006 solicitors Harbottle and Lewis acting for News International wrote that they had reviewed emails from senior reporters and executives at NI and had found no evidence that the “news editor and others were carrying out similar illegal procedures”.   It is now known that NI had handed over only some 300 of the relevant 2,500 emails available.   Yet top NI executives have repeatedly claimed they co-operated fully with the police.   This pattern has continued since. (more…)

While world attention has been drawn to the deepening Murdoch scandal and the horrors of the Norwegian massacre, an unseen and even more dangerous scenario is taking shape.   In the US, EU and UK - for very different reasons in each case – the economy is threatened by a slow-burn economic collapse.   In the US Republican intransigence over a deal to raise the debt limit above its present level of $14.3 trillion (£8.7 trillion) by 2 August, just a week away, could trigger a breakdown in stock and bond marketsd worldwide leading to another global crash.   In the EU the second Greek bailout of €109bn is now looking a lot more shaky than at the original grand flourish by Merkel-Sarkozy, dragging both Spain and Italy back into the frame and one again threatening the future of the Eurozone.   And in the UK the likely news on Tuesday that second quarter growth was either zero or at best stagnant at 0.1-0.2% pushes the country to the brink of a double-dip recession. (more…)

The humbling of the Murdochs by Select Committee, perhaps fatally if Murdoch Jr is found to have lied over the critical evidence on which the whole hacking scandal hinges, was a sight to behold.   But what if they had declined to attend, as indeed was their first reaction?   The conventional wisdom was that they could be hauled to the bar of the chamber to be questioned by the whole House.   But that was always fanciful.    The only other sanction to persuade them to attend would be the bad press focusing on the assumption of guilt.   But for a hard-nosed ruthless baron like Murdoch Sr, that is no more than a gnat to be swatted away.   So what should now be done to ensure Parliament’s will prevails? (more…)

Such momentous news is happening so thick and fast that it’s difficult to hold on to the significance of it.   James Murdoch is cornered, and with him the Murdoch dynasty.   It seems inconceivable that the two top New International executives, Crone and Myler, could have prevailed on him to pay out nearly £1m to Gordon Taylor without explaining to him why it was necessary, i.e. to hush up the ‘for Neville’ email which blew the ‘single rogue reporter’defence out of the water.   It is equally inconceivable that Murdoch Jr. would have taken such a step unless he knew exactly why it had to be done.   His sole meagre defence that he was not given the full facts has now been holed below the water line.   He is toast. (more…)

The Murdoch phone-hacking frenzy morphing into a far bigger picture of elite corruption in Britain is now in full spate.   The country is ruled by a closed network between banks and international finance, mega-corporations, the small clique round No.10, an aggressive media, and an indifferent police/MI5 security system.   Every one of them has now been corrupted by the collapse of regulation and accountability which has accompanied, indeed gave birth to, the neoliberal capitalism founded on the premise that government was bad and unfettered markets and deregulation of almost all controls was the best way to run societies.   It was the best way for elites to run society because they increasingly got their way on everything and moulded a society in their own image, while employing oodles of PR and media consultants to persuade everyone elese that it was really in their interests too.   The results being slowly uncovered show how far Britain has steadily transmuted from democracy into oligarchy. (more…)

What do you do with a global firm now worth $50bn, run by its original family founders through their ‘A’ shares which control most of the votes though only some 13% of the shareholder equity, when the CEO turns 80 and the empire created is clearly too large for its management?   That was the central issue highlighted yesterday in the Wilson room in the Commons.   It was convenient for the old man, when asked for evidence he stumbled over and couldn’t provide, to dismiss his ignorance on grounds that he’d “lost sight of” the details because News of the World had been less than 1% of the total enterprise.   Amnesia can always be a useful ally in a cover-up, as it was for Reagan in the Iran-Contra fiasco.   But here it was probably genuine.   The truth revealed starkly yesterday is that the Murdoch empire is now too large for the Murdochs to be able to govern effectively. (more…)

Establishing an inquiry into setting up a new code of police-media ethics, as Mrs. May proposed yesterday, whilst welcome, is not going to resolve the profound derelictions of duty recently exposed in police behaviour at the highest level – failing in the face of abundant evidence which they themselves held to re-open the hacking inquiry in 2009 and taking bribes estimated at £130,000 for illegally passing on private information.   Dealing with such abject irresponsibility and deep-seated and pervasive corruption requires much more stringent and proactive strategic supervision.   Mrs. May has already set a bad precedent when she dismissed charges yesterday, brought by me among others, that she could and should have taken action much earlier in light of abundant evidence that phone-hacking was rife and being ignored by the police, by tamely saying she had accepted police advice that no new evidence had emerged.   We now know that that view was influenced by Neil Wallis, ex-NoW deputy editor, who had been secretly hired by the Met Commissioner.   So much for May’s vision of tighter supervision. (more…)

The police have a great deal to answer for over this media crisis and one resignation, however honourable, does not exculpate their collective liability.   Three months ago the Guardian highlighted that “We now know that in dealing with the phone-hacking affair at the NoW, they (the Met) cut short their original inquiry, suppressed evidence, misled the public and the press, concealed information, and broke the law”.   Police HQ failed to change course or to intensify investigations or to act decisively on the damning information they had been sitting on for years.   The stunning Guardian revelation nearly a year earlier, in July 2009, that there were “thousands” of victims of NoW hacking came from a very senior police officer close to Sir Paul Stephenson.   Why did the police do nothing to follow it up vigorously and immediately? (more…)

Amid all the reportage of the crumbling of the Murdoch empire, one rather important matter has been glossed over.   Why did it happen at all?   It would not have happened but for three events.   The first is the tenacity of the Guardian which has never let up in its relentless camapign against phone-hacking and those responsible, despite all the fob-offs from the police, the politicians and News International over a period of 5 years.   Second was the stunning revelation on 4 July that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked into during the murder inquiry in 2002 and some of the messages deleted to make way for more, which could only have been leaked from the notes of Glen Mulcaire, the NoW private investigator, held by the police and which then started wave of national revulsion against the Murdoch tactics.   Third was Ed Miliband’s decision to cut loose from the Murdoch stranglehold and stage a Parliamentary debate to demand that the BSkyB bid be delayed till the public inquiry and police investigation were completed, which Cameron was then forced to back.   Without each of these triggers the fall of Murdoch might well not now be happening.   There are serious lessons here to be learnt. (more…)

Though many in the financial markets now think a Greek default is inevitable, a new proposal which might avoid the mayhem of such a scenario is gaining considerable traction.   It involves the conversion of a share of national debt to EU bonds.   The decision on such a conversion need not be unanimous, since it could be by a voluntary process of enhanced co-operation as was the case when the euro itself was created.   Germany might well want to retain its own bonds, and would be able to do so.   Significantly, the European bond issues could be globally traded, and could then attract surpluses from the central banks of the emerging economies and from sovereign wealth funds.   That could fund growth and cohesion within the Eurozone without fiscal transfers from Member States. (more…)

Today was the most successful day for Parliament in general, and for Ed Miliband in particular, in living memory.   The man regularly referred to as the real Deputy Prime Minister in successive Cabinets was finally brought low as his empire crumbled around him and the prize which had been determined to get at almost any cost was torn from his grasp.   In the very limited 2-hour debate, cut short by earlier business taking longer than scheduled, only a third of the 28 requesting to speak were actually called, so here is what I would have said: (more…)