In response to an FT article by Martin Wolf on 2nd April 2015, entitled 'The results of Britain's election are uncertain but unimportant'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/08f89cda-d92c-11e4-a8f1-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3WEbEZOIF
A"Should outsiders be concerned about what is happening in UK politics? Not so much, I think"
In my view outsiders and insiders should be more concerned about the issue that none of our politicians is willing to address, if indeed they understand it at all.
We live in a global environment that has the greatest abundance of natural, technological and human resources in history, and yet productivity is shrinking and wealth inequality is expanding at an exponential rate. Linked to this, though less obviously connected (at least by politicians), individual liberties are being eroded, the state is intruding further into people's lives, and internationally the battle for resources is growing, often cloaked in ideology of one form or another.
The issue that underpins this state of affairs went unmentioned last night - a global monetary system that is saturated in debt, that chokes productivity, that produces massive misallocations of capital into speculative and yield chasing activity, which requires endless amounts of time and energy spent on financial jiggery-pokery rather than wealth creation.
And why? Because most of our politicians, central bankers and academics are in denial of this state of affairs. Thus we continue with the illusion that countries have any possibility or intention of paying back this debt, except through inflation or default. We need a reset of this system, a real solution not more chair arranging. Either we do this consciously or the default option will come into play (no pun intended) I.E. the global economy, which is a complex system, not a machine that can be rigged by nonsense like 'optimal control', will do it for us...in the form of a crisis that will make 2008 look like child's play.
Last night's debate was like listening to a group of people standing on the deck of a ship that is taking water, heading for another iceberg - squabbling over who should hold the wheel and what colour they want to paint the wheelhouse. What does this mean? I think it means we are too close to the iceberg to do very much about it. We should all be concerned about that.