Market forces and rising prices in oil, gas and electricity

There is a global crisis in oil = too expensive and food = too expensive and housing = too expensive and our government says there is nothing it can do about it. There is an economic downturn and no government can do anything about it. That's correct. They are powerless. Well, actually they all chose to be powerless. In fact all World Bank affiliated countries have given up their power to control the world or at least to influence it. The Global Market and the Banks are now in control and just look at the result: spiralling prices, financial collapse, dodgy money lending, environmental destruction and not least your impoverishment.

Of course these problems will not be affecting those who have created them. They are laughing all the way to the Bank - the safe Offshore one. And besides they will increase their wages while decreasing yours to pay for their increase. See how it works?!

Big lie number two is: You can trust Market Forces and the Free Market.

Rising gas bills and electricity bills and petrol for your car - your fuel bills - are the result of “market forces”. When Gas and Electricity were national assets they were not part of a market and therefore did not and could not “spiral”. The lie is that market forces are something natural and inevitable and will do the world some good when in fact the “market” is just a small bunch of big capitalists and commodity exchange investors seeking to make a killing and they really don't care who or what they kill. The free market is just a few selfish greedy people maximising their profit at any cost. Be sure that the cost will be born by you or me.

Now personally, I don't care if there is a free market in Mars Bars or Trainers or whatever because I really don't need to buy them. I really do have some freedom of choice as to whether I buy such things or not. But when it comes to essential goods and services there should not be a free market. We should own our own national assets and keep control of prices. If I had my way the Building Societies would never have become banks and would have remained Mutual Societies whose sole purpose was to help people save for a house to live in and there would not have been any housing crisis or the insane prices we see now when the market price of a house far outstrips what it actually costs to build and far outstrips our real incomes.

We were sold that particular lie in the Thatcher years and of course human greed got the better of those who had Building Society savings because they would then become shareholders and feel ever so important and ever so rich. And so it goes on. Don't believe the lies about inevitable market forces when essentials such as Gas have only recently become wholesale commodities that the super-rich can buy and sell and when the same company is selling Gas to itself and then saying it too can do nothing about its high prices. What they actually do is announce billion dollar profits and huge salaries on the back of higher bills paid by the mass of people who are poorer as a result.

You can compare electricity prices here.

Use the small arrows to click through the Google links.