Andrew Fisher, PCS policy officer, interviewed David Malone, author of the Debt Generation and former BBC documentary maker. The following is the transcript:
What inspired you to write The Debt Generation?
Sheer frustration is what started me off. There was something about the assurances back in 2007/8 which sounded like lies.
I started to read what financial traders were saying to each other and quickly realised that what they, as insiders, knew to be going on was a million miles away from what you and I were being told. We were being told there was no other way than bailing out the banks. I was reading that there was another way. The more I read the more angry I got and that started me writing.
What are its conclusions?
That we have been led into vast debts for the benefit of the people who own, run and hold the debts of the big banks. We could and should have made them and their bondholders suffer the consequences of their greed and stupidity.
What are the prospects for 2011?
Last year was about transforming private debts into public ones. This year will be about enforcing the cuts and austerity the bankers want.
It is also the year that anti-cuts protests will have to pull together. The need for cuts is because of the hundreds of billions we have given and continue to give to the banks.
Was public sector spending a cause of the crisis?
The financial crisis was wholly caused by the greed, stupidity and fraud of multimillionaire bankers.
Gordon Brown and Labour were as mesmerised by the City as the government before and after them. They are all in awe of and in the pay of the financial class. They are cutting with a will to achieve via this crisis what they could never achieve through the ballot box – the savaging of everything that makes this country civilised.
So will cutting the public sector solve the crisis?
Cutting public spending will not help growth. It will impoverish the most vulnerable to protect the wealth of the most powerful.
It is true that if we simply went on borrowing or printing we would find ourselves in the situation Ireland and Greece are in. But it is the great lie of our time to be told that it is either borrow until we bust or cut till we bleed.
The truth is our debts are too high because we have given hundreds of billions to bail out banks we did not have to save. We need banks but not these banks.
There do need to be cuts but they should be in our support for moribund, reckless and sociopathic banks.
In 2011 we must defend what we believe this country is about.
For further information see debtgeneration
For further information see debtgeneration
