70 months and counting ...
Reckless practices in the banking and oil industries are tying us together in what Ban Ki-moon calls a 'global suicide pact'
As we stumble through the early days of 2011, two economic and environmentally shattering issues are being neatly swept under the carpet. Could the reason for inaction be as simple that politicians in general, and the government in particular, are hugely dependent on financing from both the oil industry and financial services?
Oddly, you can't help but think that when Goldman Sachs announced that its average pay for staff was going to be £269k, they thought we would all be impressed by their restraint. Until, at least, someone pointed out that when you excluded all the admin staff, the average package for their top 1,000-plus bankers was more likely £5 million.
When senior figures in banking refer to their pay as "compensation", you do wonder exactly what they are being compensated for. Perhaps it's the stress of having to suppress knowledge of the other issue kept under the carpet: how the economy, dancing to the tune of finance capital, is gambling, badly, with the stuff of life.
The wheel of high and volatile food and oil prices has spun around again very quickly since the last peaks of 2008. And BP, after its disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, is once again attracting investors and paying dividends in spite of its continuing, huge liabilities.
Presented in numbing pages of graphs and tables, this is the "global suicide pact" written invisibly into the world's economic model referred to by Ban Ki-moon. And it will remain so, until we can break the spell of magical thinking which allows us to believe that, economically and environmentally, there are no limits.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2011/feb/01/70-months-counting-climate-change
Related: The True Story of Bielderberg Group
