Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Who's to blame for the great financial crisis?
"Is it the Gordon Gekko-style , exemplified by their penchant for lap-dancing clubs, expensive champagne and fast cars? Or is it the new generation of buccaneering bank CEOs recruited from outside the sector...They have gambled with our money, not theirs. Many ordinary people are paying for their personal indebtedness."
This is not the editorial in the Morning Star, Britain's socialist newspaper, but the leader in the Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph, choice of captains of industry and City boys and girls, biting the hand that feeds.
"The business of Wall St appears to be the cream of villainy." That's more Star-like. But no, it's the Guardian, quoting itself from a 1929 leader. "Such anger is necessary again today."
The Sun, meanwhile, lays into "greedy traders" and City regulators.
The Morning Star itself addresses the question asked by many a luminary, is this the end of capitalism? "Well, the answer is, unfortunately, No." What the paper does expect to end is "untrammelled neo-liberalism".
By which Paper Monitor thinks it means more rules, more power to the people.
"We should know that wealth without work is a chimera unless it is inherited or won...the alchemists were wrong: you cannot produce gold from base metal." The Star? Nah. The Telegraph.