A great little piece in today's (UK) Mail on Sunday paper by Dan Atkinson,

[Joe Chi Minh]

the paper's City Editor. It wasn't online today, but I expect it will be, later. Here is the Mail web-page for his articles:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?searchPhrase=dan+atkinson

Here, also, is an excerpt:

"City competes to be a loser

(snip)

Indeed, we have been in deficit every year since 1983 (on edit: Say it ain't so.. 3 years after the leaderene, Queen of the Vandals, came to power), NOT A GREAT BATTING AVERAGE WHEN YOU THINK OF THE GREAT SACRIFICES (my caps). By contrasts, in the 'years of failure' - the Fifties and Sixties - we were in surplus for 13 out of 20 years. It is tempting to dismiss the endless struggle for competitiveness as a business version of one of those bizarre Marxist cults of permanent revolution.

(snip)

But perhaps the riddle of our uncompetitive competitiveness has a simpler solution. The City has always pressed for a strong pound, but that throttles exports and supports imports. Given the City has brought us to the brink of the abyss, perhaps we should choose the latter."

It's almost scarey how simple the basic problems are.

Economics seems to present a continuum, extending from an extreme polarisation of wealth via undemocratic government pandering to the criminal, pathological avarice of the richest few, to a much more just sharing of the country's wealth, with the rich and powerful recidivists, appropriately taxed, and monitored in a way which would ordinarily offend against a person's most basic, human rights.

The very rich are not content to be big fish in a medium-sized pond. No. They have to be big fish in a small pond, and it doesn't matter how small the pond becomes to meet their goal.