It looked the final victory of International Socialism as Brown wrapped up the G20 summit. Lenin himself couldn’t have been happier. The world’s banks have now effectively been merged into a global collective. There’ll be subsidies for the poor provided by the wealthy. Bonuses will be monitored. Salaries for top bankers may well be capped. Tax havens for fatcats will be squeezed into extinction. Colleges of supervisors will be trained and sent out to patrol the international bourses, like bean-counting beach attendants, to ensure that the world economy never again surfs onto the rocks of fiscal oblivion. The costs are so vast they vanish into the clouds. Their sheer scale obviates all scrutiny or criticism. A billion may be a blunder. A trillion is an act of God. Precisely how many trillions are involved got lost in the spider’s web of Brown’s rhetoric. His taste for making enormous funding announcements collided with another of his favourite tricks – revealing that the previous, or the expected package, has just been surpassed by an even more galumphing slice of dosh.
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