The cover story on this week's The Economist is Save the City, a love-note to London's legendarily corrupt, self-governing financial district, ground zero of the global financial collapse, and home to some of the world's top-compensated crooks, whose pay is totally disconnected from their performance.
Naked Capitalism rounds up a ton of online reaction to this puff-piece:
Yes, the City did once fulfil the function of efficiently allocating capital, but that stopped some ten to 20 years ago when the ‘zero sum’ game of financial speculation for the self-enrichment of the participants took over.
As I have said before the City has, with a few exceptions, become the cuckoo in the nest of the UK economy.
It has become gigantic skimming machine/casino. In addition to making taxpayer-underwritten bets, however absurd, it largely serves to diminish the savings and pensions of UK citizens, though outrageous fees, spurious and unwarranted trading and an intermediated structure that favours the interests of the people that work in its own, often-conflicted institutions (plus the people in their various suppliers including brokerages, law firms, accountancy firms, investment and actuarial consultancies, etc, etc) over and above the long-term interests of savers and the needs of the wider economy.
Ian Fraser: The Economist Loses the Plot With This Shallow, Pro-City Propaganda
