What do we want? Bankers. When do we want them? Now

4 April 2009

Martin Vander Weyer says that the anti-capitalist demonstrations provoked by the G20 meeting in London may help us learn to love capitalism again

At last, a government response to the financial crisis that is actually working. Am I referring to last November’s VAT cut? Of course not; it has been as ineffectual as we all said it would be. Those loan guarantee schemes for struggling small businesses? Nope, still very little sign of them, I’m afraid, months after they were announced and re-announced. Quantitative easing? Oops, sorry, much of the first wheelbarrow load of new-minted cash has disappeared abroad, to foreigners who jumped at the opportunity to offer their gilt holdings back to the Bank of England — while the Bank has been struggling to sell new gilts to investors perturbed by signs of a rift between the Governor and Downing Street.

No, on most fronts, things are more pear-shaped than ever. But the successful policy I’m talking about is Gordon Brown’s campaign to persuade us that it’s better to vent our anger on bankers than on him. The first big breakthrough came last week, when the Edinburgh home and car of ex-Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir Fred Goodwin (now said to be holed up in Majorca with his family, for fear of more attacks) suffered criminal damage. This week, the strategy has borne fruit beyond the Prime Minister’s wildest hopes, with a cavalcade of anti-capitalist, anti-war and save-the-planet activists marching on the Bank of England, besieging dressed-down City workers in their locked offices, and no doubt trashing a few fast-food outlets as they pass.

Unintended outcomes are the overarching theme of the financial crisis, and this week’s disruption of London is just one more: social disorder is perhaps the most frightening of all possible consequences of a severe recession, yet by signalling that banker-bashing is morally justified, Brown has actually managed to encourage it. Indeed, the extent to which he has got more than he wished for is matched only by the tragic extent to which he has promised more than he can deliver.

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