Millions of employees in Great Britain mounted the first General Strike in many years today, after the country's coalition government threatened to impose more cuts in retirement benefits and pay for public workers.

It was a smash success. As many as two million strikers proved that the public's patience with the unjust fiscal regime known as "austerity economics" has its limits. It highlighted the important role unions can and must play in the fight for a more just and stable economy.

And it raised an important question for the United States: Could it happen here?

We Have Ignition

The Cameron government struggled to find the right messaging. It claimed that the strike was an inconsequential event involving a mere 960,000 strikers (as if that were a small number), instead of the two million reported in the press.

The Prime Minister even described the strike as a "damp squib." If you're like me you don't know what that means. But a quick Google search revealed that the phrase refers to a firecracker that has failed to ignite, perhaps because it was left out in the rain.

So the strike fizzled, says Mr. Cameron. But his government also accused unions of sabotaging something it described without any apparent irony as an "economic recovery." So which was it: A dud, or sabotage? Apparently consistency is not this government's strong suit.

What was the strike's real impact? As the Globe and Mail reported today:

"58 per cent of public primary and secondary schools are closed completely and only 13 per cent are fully staffed. Hospitals are only taking emergency cases, as most nurses are on strike. In fact, the school where Mr. Cameron and one of his top cabinet ministers send their children ... was largely shut down, with only two classes open ... At Manchester Airport, only 26 of 176 scheduled international flights arrived today ... Garbage collectors, social workers, street cleaners, and some workers at museums and children’s centres also closed ."

Fizzled? As some New York workers of my youthful acquaintance might have said: I got yer "damp squib" right here, pal.

Nailed

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines "austerity" as "enforced or extreme economy," or as an "ascetic practice" - you know, like those wandering monks who starved themselves or slept on a bed of nails. "Austerity economics" is the practice of forcing others to sleep on a proverbial bed of nails, to pay for the financial disasters caused by those who sleep on silk and satin.

Soundlike class-warfare hyperbole? Consider this: Even as the Cameron government was cutting benefits for teachers, nurses, airport workers, and other public employees, new efforts were underway to rescue British and European banks yet again for their unwise lending practices, this time to European governments.

Hypocrisy? Well, yeah.

As Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, observed: “This is a government that scrapped the tax on bankers’ bonuses.” While bankers revel in their government-subsidized riches, the poorest 10 percent of Great Britain's population saw their real income fall over the last decade, according to a recent report, while the "richest tenth of the population have seen much bigger proportional rises in their incomes than any other group."

Gold-Plated

You can't ask people to sacrifice their financial security without giving them an enemy to hate, so conservatives in the United States fingered public-sector union employees as the source of our economic misery. Millions of people actually believe that the country's financial problems were caused by bus drivers making $45,000 a year.

They're using the same playbook in the UK. While bailed-out bankers enjoying their usual round of bonuses and raises,public employees face a two-year pay freeze and a 3 percent increase in pension contributions. The end result could be net pay cuts of as much as 15 percent by 2014.

How does a government justify that? By using the well-oiled phrases of the parsimonious elite, honed by consultants and then echoed endlessly by politicians and journalists. In this case the phrase they've chosen is "gold-plated pensions." A Google search on that phrase comes up with nearly half a million results.

The Daily Mail, house organ of Britain's morally degraded wealthy, routinely runs stories like the one it ran today, which begins "Taxpayers cannot afford to fund the latest gold-plated pensions, business leaders say." Three days ago a Daily Mail headline screamed,"Union barons behind the strike that will cripple Britain enjoy gold-plated pensions."

The phrase "gold-plated pension" appears 9,500 times on the Daily Mail website.

The Daily Mail is owned by a gentleman named "Harold Jonathan Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere," whose net worth exceeds one billion US dollars. By contrast, the average public employee's retirement income in the United Kingdom is $4,650 per year.

The only thing 'gold-plated' about British pensions is the gold-plated BS that's being spread about them by self-serving (but hardly self-made) billionaire heirs like ... well, like "Harold Jonathan Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere."

This Economy Will Self-Destruct in 10 Seconds

These austerity measures are brutal and unfair, and they punish innocent people for the mistakes of others. But at least they're working, right?

Wrong. Austerity is devastating the British economy. There are 3.8 million "workless households" in Great Britain, and 1.8 million children live in them. As of last August, retail sales had fallen 2.5 percent and household income was projected to fall another 2 percent under Cameron's austerity plan. As Paul Krugman explains, the British government is even defying the advice of the typically austerity-minded International Monetary Fund, which really, really thinks they ought to fix the economy before doing more of the budget-cutting that's making things so much worse.

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Is it just me, or does it seem as if the Brits are much more serious about preventing market fraud than we are?

LONDON — Investment bankers and traders in Britain will have their mobile phone conversations recorded in the latest step by the country’s financial regulator to crack down on insider trading and market abuse.

The Financial Services Authority, Britain’s financial watchdog, said Thursday that under new rules, effective next November, all financial services firms will be required to record any relevant communication by employees on their work cellphones.

Companies would also be responsible for discouraging employees from taking client orders or discussing and arranging transactions on their private cellphones, where conversations cannot be recorded.

The new rule makes Britain the only country in Europe to explicitly require the taping of conversations on business cellphones, according to the F.S.A. Rules in other European countries merely require companies to ensure that all relevant conversations are recorded.

“We expect the rules to increase the volume and quality of information available to us to use as additional evidence in insider trading cases,” Sarah Bailey, a spokeswoman for the agency said.

The F.S.A. already required the recording of conversations on office land lines and the storage of business e-mails, but exempted cellphones until now because the technology was not available, Ms. Bailey said. The rule will affect about 16,000 cellphones issued by financial services firms, which will be required to keep the recorded conversations for six months.

The new rule will also require “firms to take reasonable steps to ensure that such communications do not take place on private communication equipment that firms cannot record mainly for privacy reasons,” the F.S.A. wrote in the policy statement published Thursday.

[...] Recording cellphone conversations may be a technique more commonly used to fight terrorism than financial crime, but Britain would not be the first country to use taped cellphone conversations to support insider-trading cases. In what was thought to be a first of its kind on such a scale on Wall Street, United States prosecutors used court-ordered wiretaps in their recent case against Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group hedge fund.

For day-to-day activities, United States regulatory agencies have resisted a blanket mandate on recording work phone conversations for the financial services industry. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has only one obscure rule on taping, according to a spokeswoman, Nancy Condon. Companies with a high concentration of employees who have been associated with firms that were expelled for sales practice violations must tape phone conversations with current and future customers.

I do get a little tired of the fact that war seems to be our major export these days. Now we're all upset because Great Britain is making defense spending cuts? I don't get it:

The US has made an eleventh hour intervention in the highly charged defence review as Britain's top military brass launched a last ditch attempt to persuade David Cameron to water down the cuts.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Robert Gates, the defence secretary, both voiced concerns about the planned cuts as the heads of Britain's three armed services marched into No 10 in uniform to express unease about plans to cut the Ministry of Defence budget by 10%.

As the prime minister welcomed General David Petraeus to Downing Street, Washington highlighted concerns that Britain will scale back military spending to the level of weaker NATO members.

In an interview with BBC Parliament's The Record Europe in Brussels, Clinton was asked whether she was worried about the planned cuts in Britain. "It does, and the reason it does is because I think we do have to have an alliance where there is a commitment to the common defence. NATO has been the most successful alliance for defensive purposes in the history of the world I guess, but it has to be maintained. Now, each country has to be able to make its appropriate contributions."

Would that be Moody's, the same rating agency that certified big steaming piles of mortgage manure as Triple AAA-rated securities and collapsed the international economy? I guess this means that Wall Street wants us to cut the deficit, huh. Well, I'd say what's good for Wall Street is bad for America:

The United States and other top world economies need to make potentially painful government spending cuts or risk losing the high-grade credit ratings that have kept borrowing affordable, the Moody's rating agency said Monday.

Moody's warns nations to cut spending or risk AAA ratings

European officials hold off on bailout package for Greece

Outlining the dilemma faced by policymakers in the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France, Moody's said that debt levels in the four large credit-worthy economies had reached the point at which they are at risk of being downgraded -- a step that would drive up interest rates, increase borrowing costs and mark a turn in perceptions about the world economy.

Economic recovery might ease the problem by increasing tax revenue, Moody's reported, but "growth alone will not resolve an increasingly complicated debt equation. Preserving debt affordability at levels consistent with AAA ratings will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion."

The dollar rose against major currencies despite the report, a reminder of its continued role as the world's reserve currency.

The agency said a downgrade did not appear imminent and expressed confidence that the four countries would come to grips with their fiscal problems. Germany, the report said, has included a new debt provision in its laws, and the United States has established a commission on spending reform.

A question from the UK press really caught Bush flat footed (cackles ensued) and made Tony Blair smile and say: "You had kind of forgotten what the British media were like, hadn't you?" (Laughter.)

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This isn't the first time Bush has been asked questions by the UK press, but he sure acted like it. Yes, the British press is a little more "direct," you might say...Makes a person wonder how our political system would operate if our press had that same level of frankness...

Q During the course of this visit it has been confirmed that Gordon Brown is going to be the next British Prime Minister, taking over in 40 days' time. I wonder if I could have both your reactions to that. And, in particular, Mr. Blair, what you say to those people who are saying now there is a new Prime Minister in place, you should go sooner? And to Mr. Bush, whether --

PRESIDENT BUSH: That's a lovely question. (Laughter.)

Q -- however inadvertently, you once said that you would like Tony Blair to stay for the duration of your presidency. He's not doing that. Do you think you're partly to blame for that?

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Meanwhile,

Via Rising-Hegemony

In Great Britain, actual journalists are doing their actual jobs. Journalism is something that is not often recognized among our major media corporations nowadays, but it looks like this, and should Americans be allowed to know such things...they might be angry:

The secret Downing Street memo

Let me summarize...

And their little war puffery was by their own admission a tool to use in the November 2002 elections.

With US or Against US, clearly means with BUSH, and not the United States.