It’s politics, stupid, it’s politics. As plans to save the global economy become more and more desperate by the day and governments try to present bank buyouts, mergers and 
collapses as good news, not bad, it is becoming increasingly obvious that this is no longer about the economy, but is all about political survival. For Gordon Brown, at least, the current crises must look like a gift from God but as political leaders from here to…well, America look for short-term fixes to long-term issues, who is looking at the bigger picture for real solutions that will shore up broken confidence in a banking system that has left ordinary, hard-working people running to their mattresses to bulk out their bedding? Of course, Alex Salmond and all the other party leaders have to stand up for Scotland and do everything in their power to secure threatened jobs following the HBOS rescue but where, overlaying that, is any blue-sky thinking and where is Salmond’s argument for how an independent Scotland would weather this storm? The answers to an economic recession for a half-power government are clearly much more difficult in the practical sense because Salmond has no control over the excesses of the central bank and less than full control over taxation but that does not mean he should abdicate responsibility for suggestion. Now is the time for bold and radical pronouncements that could convince the Scottish public that their fortunes would be safer in an independent Scotland led by a brave and pragmatic leader. Instead the FM is sticking his large economic head in the tried and tested sand of increasingly outdated models and all we are being offered is more of the same but slightly tinkered with and not one bank criticised or one executive brought to book. Offering increased levels of guarantee on bank deposits is one thing but offering a whole new banking system could be another. What is wrong with rotten banks being allowed to fail anyway? Banks didn’t just go on wholesale funding, credit derivative and leverage sprees on a whim. They were given the greenlight by central bankers such as Alan Greenspan, aided and abetted by a Chancellor called, let me think, oh, Brown. Central banking has nothing to do with capitalism (the Fed was invented in 1913) or free markets. It is a government regulator and printer of money. It’s a pity Gordon Brown gave up his history books when he thought he had become the world’s best economist or he might have known how to really run an economy. What the system needs is true free market principles in banking i.e., the ability to fail without any recourse to government and sadly, the risk that depositors do lose their money. That way banks become more prudent in their practices and depositors become much more aware of which banks are behaving conservatively. The SNP could be in a  win-win situation if it was brave enough to recognise that difficult times require difficult answers and although it may not have the power to implement all of them, it could offer paper solutions that would expose the UK Government’s response for what it is; a liferaft for a failing Prime Minister. For a start, the SNP could propose an alternative emergency agenda that removes the protection afforded to the public sector from the economic headwinds; suspend or revise non-essential expenditures, demand action instead of words on shared services, get rid of the unnecessary quangos, slash the management structures in the NHS and take on board the Tory idea of schools becoming self-governing and thereby slash education costs. Bold, brave, radical and desperate but only matched by the desperate times. There would be no bailouts of the financial system either and instead of going cap in hand to places like Qatar to try and find cash to fund the public infrastructure that he needs to admit we can’t afford, the FM should think about creating a new state bank, perhaps even a specialist bank designed to fund public build that would be in a position to both lend to companies that needed the money (as banks of old used to do) and to take deposits from those that were fearful of theirs in existing institutions. He could then propose that any existing accounts, deposits or loans of the Scottish Parliament should be shifted to the new bank. And he could call the new bank The Bank of 
Scotland or, if he couldn’t get away with that, The National Bank of Scotland or the New Bank of Scotland. They’re only suggestions but perhaps a start of a new more transparent dawn.

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