International

Over the last week it became painfully clear how the financial sector and casino capitalism works. On the stock market, large investors, so called ‘hedge funds’ had betted large sums on the demise of an American computer game chain store, Gamestop. When masses gathered on the internet to keep the company up and running by buying stocks on a large scale, these investors started losing money. Because powerful capitalists came under pressure, the rules of the market were suddenly changed.

A ‘political thriller’, is what D66-senator Boris Dittrich called the debate in the First Chamber on Wednesday. The former political leader and current thriller-writer did not stoop to these words on accident. In the Second Chamber, the debate of the day was on the fall of the government, and the child-support affair, which also exposed the gap between the policy machines in The Hague and life of the people in the country. Whilst the Second Chamber debated on the crisis in politics, the First chamber spoke about my proposal for a binding corrective referendum, which could contribute to restoring the confidence in politics.