corruption and fraud by banks, not a single person has been jailed either in the US or the UK for perpetuating this fraud. It's even more difficult to believe that this crisis has been exploited by right-wingers and free market zealots to make the case for a shrinking of the state and greater deregulation in the interests of those who clearly cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. The neoliberal zealots, for whom truth and facts are simply options, shout down those who call for regulation and controls on irresponsible market as socialists who will usher us all into the Gulag. They will have missed the Newsweek report this week which found that there are 6 million people in the US either incarcerated or under some form of criminal supervision. Newsweek helpfully pointed out that the figure of 6 million, in the Land of the Free, exceeded the total number of people imprisoned or under state supervision in the Soviet Union in the worst years of Stalinist repression. Meanwhile, there are $18trillion sitting in offshore tax havens, a figure which exceeds the combined debt of the OECD economies. The truth and the facts show that there is no justification for austerity. Austerity is simply a policy choice for neoliberals who care more for their own selfish interests than they do for truth and facts. ".....The bad news is that the truly decisive element has been something even more insidious: money. Lots of it.......Money in American politics was already an elephant in