We must stand up to ‘the markets’ before they enslave us all

IN the past few months I have constantly heard politicians, the media, political commentators and others often express concern over how “the markets” would respond to the policies and actions of governments.

I even heard Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and US President Barack Obama, who were at the recent G20 meeting in Toronto, commenting on television about “the markets” and the decisions agreed at the meeting.

This thing called “the markets” is an entity that no one elected. Yet somehow it appears to have huge power over elected politicians, the policies they adopt and the actions they take.

Indeed, sometimes you would believe elected governments are little more than instruments whose role is to implement policies and whatever actions that the markets want.

Surely this is destructive of democratic government, especially as national bankruptcy is threatened if governments do not do what is demanded of them.

The worst thing about this situation is that this entity called the markets consists of a bunch of greedy gamblers who are never prepared to take their losses and who have somehow managed to get a stranglehold on the people of the world, and especially on those who hold political office, to ensure that, win or lose, the markets will be paid not matter what the cost to others.

Surely before the markets get to the stage where they can decide that human beings should be slaves who work from dawn to dusk and are executed when they can work no more, the people of the world and their political leaders should stand up and say we won’t be ruled by the markets anymore, but only by elected leaders whose policies and actions we have approved. So the markets can get lost or we will break them up into their constituent parts and send those gamblers down the sewers for the rest of their lives.

Brian Abbott

‘Glencairn’

Bishopstown Road

Cork