The view from here

There is a tendency for failure to view the world objectively. Especially in politics. For example, Mr Obama berates European countries for running up debt - carefully avoiding to mention that the US has the highest debt in the world. Practice austerity say the Americans, the Canadians, the english -never mind that they don't, or have clearly demonstrated that it doesn't work. The UK government rules as it sees the world from an office in Whitehall, just down the road from Canary Warf from whence everything looks like a financier's boardroom. Games are played as if the financial services industry was the be-all and end-all of UK 'industry'. It has been thus ever since the Thatcher years when solutions were enacted to problems viewed from a business perspective. In the US, the perspective is the place of the US as a world leader and the military complex reigns supreme under the thrall of the DFA and their coterie of special interest groups and lobbyists. In Canada, it is the oil-enslaved province of Alberta which provides the backdrop - when all you can see are the oilsands, all solutions lead you to encourage more, faster, less restricted oil flow. Centralisation is the problem - if all you see is a hammer, all problems look like nails. And, if you hogtie the backbenchers (who could tell you what the real people think), then you will only ever see nails.

Balance is everything. There will come a time when the oil runs out; when the financial services sector leaves for Beijing, Rio, or Mumbai; and when the army simply cannot be paid. Diversify, encourage industrial development, localise manufacturing of as much as you can, deglobalise, draw the teeth of big business by underecutting them. Encourage smaller, faster, more flexible, and better quality - tailor to the local market requirement. Bigger is not better in the current climate, there is no such thing as too big to fail. Increase taxation rates for high end salaries - if a few wrinkly old fat cats leave in a snit wave them goodbye and hurry them out of the door, there are certainly a few young, lean and hungry people to take their places. In the end, industry needs customers, not the other way around.

The current market model is broken and is not sustainable. Make a new one, start from the ground up, not the top down.