Tag Archives: Hilary Powell

Bank Job

While I was listening to Birmingham City’s game yesterday evening, it felt as though football was the most important thing in the world.  But when I calmed down after the terrible 0-4 loss, I knew that football, for me, is just the most important of the non-important things. I hope that, if I was able to choose between Birmingham winning the Premier League or Covid‑19 being abolished, that I would choose to end the pandemic rather than put Blues on the pinnacle.

Sooner or later the Covid-19 pandemic will end but when it does there will be many people left burdened by debt. I’ve just read Bank Job by Hilary Powell and Daniel Edelstyn, which is about debt. They explain why they feel the system is unfair. When banks got into trouble in 2008, the government bailed them out.  But people who get into debt do not get bailed out

The book describes how they moved into an old bank in Walthamstow and printed their own bank notes, which they sold to collectors. They raised £40,000, gave half to local causes and used the other half to buy local debt on the secondary debt market. They then abolished that debt and, to symbolise this, they blew up a transit van containing some of their bank notes.

It is an interesting, thought-provoking book.  It includes a quote from Fanny Malinen describing the Covid‑19 pandemic as a dress rehearsal for the future.  That made me wonder what the post pandemic world will be like. It could give us an opportunity to change some things, but will we?

There is a film of Bank Job, due to be released next spring.  Click here to read more about it. There is also a Guardian article with a picture of the van being blown up.

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