Big busines blames the victim . . . again?

[mada85]

This article appears on the UK Times website today:

Britons ‘must save more to avoid foreign takeovers’

Labour has not managed the economy in a sustainable way and a lack of savings by Britons has left the nation’s leading companies more exposed to foreign takeover, according to research sponsored by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

[…]

Martin Weale, co-author of the report, said that Britain needed a higher level of saving and pointed to the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft as a symptom of weak savings rates. Being an economy with high consumption but not saving very much means British assets must be sold to foreigners, he said.

“If people are worried about why Cadbury is being taken over by Kraft, that is one of the consequences of not saving,” he said.

I lack the knowledge of economics that would enable me to assess the accuracy of Weale's argument, but to me it sounds as though he is blaming the victims – the people. Perhaps there is a forum member with good knowledge and understanding of the financial system who could explain the logic behind it.

In the article we find no mention of the conscienceless predatory behaviour of a huge corporation taking over a company and then moving production overseas, looting pension funds, and the usual sorry tale with the end result that jobs are lost. Instead, the blame has been shifted onto the people.

However, the think-tank says that Britain has fared poorly during the recession, compared with its peers, with sharp falls in output and bigger rises in unemployment.

The falls in output and rise in unemployment are directly attributable to the predatory actions of conscienceless corporations who take over a company and send production overseas solely for the sake of profits. It would not be at all surprising if the corporations themselves fund the writing of reports such as that quoted in the Times article.

It seems though that Kraft Foods are on a mission to devour confectionery companies. Terry's of York is another example. This Wikipedia entry sums it up:

Its history dates back to the 1920s, when the so-called "Chocolate Apple" was first produced, but the company has its roots in the 1820s. The orange was launched in the 1930s and was much more popular than the apple, leading to the apple's phasing out in 1954.[1]

On 30 September 2005 the former Terry's Factory in York closed its doors for the last time with the loss of 350 jobs, with production moving out of York and the UK for the first time to existing Kraft Foods facilities in Sweden, Belgium, Poland and Slovakia.

The annual reports of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research can be downloaded from _http://www.niesr.ac.uk/aboutniesr2.1.php Near the end of their annual report for 2008, in the section entitled 'Research Supporters' we find the following rather interesting list of funding sources.

NIESR has a corporate membership scheme which helps to fund the generic research of the Institute and in particular the economic forecasts contained in the National Institute Economic Review. The support of these organisations is vital in assuring our complete independence. All corporate member organisations are acknowledged in the forecast section of the Review.

Abbey plc
Bank of England
Barclays Bank plc
HM Treasury
Nomura Research Institute Europe Ltd
Office for National Statistics
Trades Union Congress

To extrapolate the logic of the argument: a research body, which is presumed by the public to be impartial, releases a report which encourages people to save more. These savings are deposited in the banks – the same banks which, incidentally, funded the organisation that released the report. Said banks then have more of the people's money to lend to conscienceless corporations to fund their further looting of the British economy. Which leads to a drop in output and loss of jobs, which leads to supposedly independent research organisations publishing reports that encourage the people to save more. Qui bono?