LETTER: We are now living in a bankocracy

The impact of quantitative easing in detail terms is unknowable but in essence the Bank of England is buying debt no one would buy at prices no one would pay using money created out of nothing.

I fear very much we are now living in a bankocracy. Public policy is constructed primarily in the interests of the banking class, and the political class seems content to offer the citizenry at large as sacrifice to them.

Economic growth during the post-war era was driven by a number of factors including cheap fuel, abundant credit and a favourable demographic structure. These drivers are no longer in place; a fact that has yet to permeate the minds of national political leaders, let alone the mainstream media.

The country’s recent economic model has been based around financial services generating wealth to pay for imported essentials such as fuel, food and other manufactured goods. It is abundantly clear that during the past decade much of the wealth generated by the financial sector was an illusion and the nation is now facing the day of reckoning.

This crisis is not only quite extraordinary but exceedingly dangerous because the political class has completely misjudged the public mood and are now seen to be impotent with no answer to our travails other than misery for the majority.

While one must prepare for the worst, one must hope for the best.

KEVIN HEY

Castle Road, Colne