British capitalists admit capitalism not working

This video from the USA says about itself:

Richard Wolff: ‘Capitalism Is Not Working’

24 February 2012

Economics professor Richard Wolff attributes the global economic crisis to the failure of the capitalist system. He argues that the root cause of the problem is over-borrowing, and that capitalism runs on an unsustainable cycle.

Each month, Richard D. Wolff presents an an analysis of some particular economic topics and then opens the floor to questions, comments and a general discussion. This course takes place at the Brecht Forum in New York. Each month, we aim to develop participants’ understanding of and ability to explain to others the key economic developments of our time.

The updates focus on the evolving global capitalist economic crisis and its consequences. Professor Wolff examines topics such as: the social costs effects of the historic long-term US unemployment; national debt crises and “austerity programs” in Greece, Ireland, Spain, and beyond; changes in today’s Chinese economy and their global effects; tax reform and the entire tax issue in the US today; continuing crisis in the US housing and credit markets; the economics of immigration.

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum in New York City. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD. He will release three new books in 2012: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books), Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press), and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books).

From daily News Line in Britain:

Tuesday, 24 October 2017

ANY LINGERING doubts about the morbid terror that is gripping the capitalist class were dispelled this weekend when 50 of the leading bosses from finance and business lined up to despairingly admit that the capitalist system is ‘broken’.

The occasion for this collective outpouring of grief and tangible fear for their future was a panel convened by the Financial Times to discuss the future of British capitalism. The answer was only too clear, it has no future, it is broken beyond repair and rotten ripe for overthrow.

The discussion was opened by former government minister, investment banker and currently Chair of Santander UK bank, Baroness Shritta Vadera who set the tone of despair saying: ‘The underlying promise of western capitalism – that a rising tide lifts all boats – has been broken’ and that a ‘better model is needed’.

She was quickly followed by Robert Sanwell, former chair of Marks and Spencer who lamented that capitalism had ‘lost its way’ with companies and investors fixated on ‘short termism’. Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the bosses’ organisation the Confederation of British Industry, could only say that capitalism had taken wrong turnings.

She said: ‘The financial crash, a fixation on shareholder value at the expense of purpose, and the toxic issues of payment of tax and executive pay stand in the way of redemption.’ There will be no ‘redemption’ for capitalism.

It is a system that has produced child poverty on a scale not seen in modern times, which has waged war on the most vulnerable through its Universal Credit system that has left thousands of families without a penny for food or rent for weeks and months as it drives to make the working class pay for the bankers’ crisis.

The working class is not in any mood to ‘forgive’ this capitalist system or the bosses and bankers who have grown obscenely wealthy on the backs of impoverishing workers. It is this overwhelming fear that the working class has reached the conclusion that capitalism is indeed broken beyond repair and needs to be overthrown that is driving this confessional.

This was most clearly expressed by Anne Richards, chief executive of the asset management company M&G. She said: ‘In the current era, best described as “the age of anxiety”, we will see capitalism rejected unless it finds a way of fundamentally addressing this anxiety.’

All these speeches from leading capitalists are a kick in the teeth to Theresa May, who stated last month that free market capitalism is ‘the greatest agent for collective human progress ever created’.