Robert Peston - arsehole of the week

Many uber-capitalists would tend to agree with Vince Cable's critique of capitalism - that it tends towards short-termism, that markets often don't work in a fair and efficient way, that vast rewards often accrue to the undeserving.

Thus Robert Peston, the Bitchy Boys' business editor. That's über, pronounced you-ber, by the way. Peston's verson sounds like udder-capitalists, which, come to think of it, may be an unwittingly accurate description of the sort of people he is talking about, who love a heavily regulated market because it raises the cost of entry and permits them to buy from politicians the advantage their products cannot win in the marketplace.

The marxhorroid term "capitalism" no longer serves any purpose. It implies there is an alternative. The correct term is "the free market". It is not self-evident what or who is "fair", "efficient" and "deserving". If it were, the dream of socialism would have worked. Instead it produced a corrupt, tyrannical nightmare.

Every government since the fall of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan some two decades ago has - by stealthy increments - tried to make it their business to try and harness capitalism to minimise the bads and maximise the goods that it generates. The problem is, some would say, that they did this in a piecemeal way that didn't get to the heart of the matter.

Nearly all governments subsequent to Thatcher and Reagan, all over the world, continued the process of deregulation because it created greater prosperity.

"Some would say" - how pathetic. What is the "heart of the matter"? Answer comes there none.

Acknowledged experts - including the governor of the Bank of England and the chairman of the Financial Services Authority - assert that the banking crisis of 2008 is a demonstration that the taming of capitalism has failed in a pretty fundamental way.

That would be the "acknowledged experts" who, possessing all the necessary power to restrain asset price inflation and the uncontrolled speculation based on it, did not do so.