The Communist Hypothesis - This crisis is the spectalce: What is the real? - Alain Badiou

      Spectacle indeed! To choose one word to sum up the economic climate this would be it. Everybody was looking, waiting, hoping for it not to happen but it was always going to happen - I mean it had to happen. If the property market grew exponentially by the time i wanted to buy a property it probably wouldn't be able to happen.
      Badiou describes the entire performance as if it were an action film, like Independence Day. You see the spaceships coming, blocking out the sky, everybody watches, some people know what's going to happen. They have the inside knowledge and are holed up in some underground bunker. But for the rest of us? Nope, we are obliterated by the plasma ray and what little is left of the survivors have to pick up the pieces. If you were a major character in the film you survived without a scratch but us extras (if alive) are missing family members, limbs and of course our homes.
      Badiou says "I trust them,  I have every confidence in the firefighters", but do we have a choice? You or I have never and will never decide the fate of a bank. Who does? What does? The banks, to me, are the aliens. "Unreal economy" What would happen if the alien computer that controlled all the spaceships was destroyed? Would this be our Independence Day? Maybe then we'll see a "real economy".
      "Irresponsible", "irrational" and most importantly here "predatory". Preying on the human beings basic need to have his or her nest. Paid for by a mortgage that can't be afforded, for a house that 30 years ago wasn't worth half of that mortgage value.
      "A system that hands the organisation of our collective life over to the lowest instincts, to greed, rivalry and unconscious egotism". Pretty much, the government knew of the alien attack, did nothing to stop it. And then when it happened, somehow pulled billions of pounds out to help the economy. Why was this money not already in the economy? If there were enough houses at a reasonable price to buy there wouldn't have been a ridiculous growth in housing prices and there wouldn't be a mortgage problem. Why didn't they spend this money doing that years ago? There's never any prevention with the government. Just action after the crisis has happened and ignore it until it becomes a real problem.
      Badiou says "all this came about because tens of millions of people are in such low incomes that they cannot afford anywhere to live. This is the real essence of the financial crisis is a housing crisis". He then goes on to say "the only desirable outcome of all this is the hope that the real will still be what it was before the crisis". God (if there is one) no. Back to what? Over priced homes I can't afford? Just so you can live in or near the city. If this is the real then I don't want to be part of it. But in some ways it is too late for me. I'm already stuck in London, with debt I can't repay anytime soon. Or is this playing into the hands of the bank and the government, so I just get my comfortable desk job? Screw that I'm going to fly my spaceship into the mothership and send them a big fuck you. For "the real" is what you make it.