In April 2009 I was invited to appear on the BBC News Channel. The G20 group of rich countries was staging a Summit in London. World leaders were in a state of ill-concealed panic about the financial crisis. None seemed to have the faintest idea what was going on. I was asked by the BBC presenter: ‘Is this the end of capitalism as we know it, then?’ It did for once seem like a reasonable question to be asked, even by the makers of BBC News.
At the time, limitless quantities of public treasure were being poured into the collapsed financial ‘architecture’. Yet more public treasure was being lavished on a ‘fiscal stimulus’ to salvage the ‘real’ economy. Old cars were bought up and scrapped so that more new ones might be sold, and fewer jobs lost. General Motors – once the biggest corporation in the world – was to be saved from bankruptcy.
