Thursday 13 May 2010

So what is St Vince going to do with is power?

Readers will know that we at Capitalists@Work do not hold a high opinion of St Vince Cable. In fact, one of the highlights of the election was seeing him get torn to shreds by Andrew Neil.

Of all the Lib Dems in Government, St Vince is the worst. A die hard old socialist who has the added spice of massive over-confidence in himself. As business secretary David Cameron has wisely kept him away from the treasury and put him in a department which, lets face it, is going to some big hits when the spending review is done.

More worryingly, Mr. Cable has been put on a new committee to review the UK banks. Now here are a few links, take a look at what Mr. Cable thinks of banking. Of course, he worked at Shell in his career as an economist. Shell being one of the most profitable company in the world has little time for banks, it even has its own prop desk for trading FX and commodities.

Also of course Mr Cable was the socialist most demanding the banks be nationalised, including the total financial disaster that has been Northern Rock. Cable thinks of course this is a good thing, state ownership being better because precious profits go to him and his politician colleagues to hand out to grateful plebeians.
If you doubt this, see here where last year he calls for the guillotine for bankers who get paid bonuses.

So Mr Cable will recommend some nasty medicine for the banks, a profits tax (silly), a separation of investment and retail banking (great idea in theory, hard to do in practice), a control on bonuses (illiberal) and the closure of tax haven units.

The danger is that Mr. Cable decides he can have a private war on the banks, half of whom we need to nurse back to health to try and get our money back, the other half who have a major say in whether the UK remains credit worthy and contribute huge tax revenues already. Of course, the Tories, who two want reform, will get antagonised by this. Clever then to put ex-Banker David Laws, into the Treasury with George Osborne.

No idea what St Vince will do with his business portfolio, as an economist he is singularly unqualified to make real business decisions; great money to be found on him being the first minister sacked in the Government overall (Nick Clegg has no love of his rival either).

5 comments:

Sackerson said...

"... the banks, half of whom [...]have a major say in whether the UK remains credit worthy and contribute huge tax revenues already."

And they are able to pay huge taxes because, ultimately, they get the money from...

Pogo said...

... their customers? Just like any other business. Don't confuse capital inadequacies with cash-flow!

Budgie said...

CU, like you I have little time for St Vince. I did not know until a few days ago that he was "ex" socialist: but the statism always showed.

In a state like ours, half socialist half capitalist, big business and big government sleep together, and grow bigger by feeding off each other (at the expense of smaller, less well connected businesses). This was especially evident under the NuLab regime - a sort of 'fascist lite'.

The banks let down this establishment and won't be forgiven, despite being to a large extent the victims of Brown's boasting and incompetence. The irony is that if we had a smaller state that properly policed the Banks the likes of Fred the Shred would not have been boosted by his government connections and would have been found out sooner.

hatfield girl said...

We haven't begun to have the reorganisation (and renaming) of departments yet; but the Mandelson empire is crying out to be sensibly dismembered and the parts re-assigned to their proper homes. What the universities were doing separated from education was a New Labour policy now unhorsed.

Mr Cable will go down with his department as the Treasury reinstitutes its poper role.

(why is the word verification 'perhaps'? And in Italian, to make the point even more cruelly.)

Anonymous said...

I'll go a step further with a prediction about Vince.

When he does get the sack, he will spend a few weeks on the back benches, stirring trouble and will then cross the floor to join the Labour party, taking a few disaffected LibDem MPs with him.

It will be the beginning of the end for the LibDems.

Just a thought!