The bad-tempered sectarianism of UK Parliamentary debates on banking regulation this week, in the wake of the Barclays’ Libor-rigging scandal, reminds us that ‘old normal’ politics is not fit for purpose. The Chancellor George Osborne and his opposite Ed Balls were pointing the finger of blame at each other instead of seeking to learn from the crisis.
Any sober analysis would blame both the deregulatory measures of previous Conservative administrations and the hubris and misjudgement of the Brown/Balls era.
More fundamentally, neither side appears to want to understand the behavioural patterns and beliefs that caused the crisis, nor the new ones needed in response. Chapter 6 of New Normal, Radical Shift reads:
“The politics of the old normal is not working. Both left and right are geared towards maximising returns for their interest groups over the short term, ahead of the matter of long-term sustainability. This short-termism has contributed to the crisis of bubble economics and excessive sovereign and banking debt. Both left and right neglect the importance of human capital and the productive economy.”
Read more here: http://radical-shift.net/chapter-themes-extracts/
