Economy

[MrFrost]

I see the economy is growing alot faster than expected. Where is this double dip recession you were all on about?

[Filo]

MrFrost wrote:

I see the economy is growing alot faster than expected. Where is this double dip recession you were all on about?

Wait until the cuts bite! they were only announced a week ago!

The growth you are seeing now is the effect of the previous governments policies!

[MrFrost]

Filo wrote:

MrFrost wrote:

I see the economy is growing alot faster than expected. Where is this double dip recession you were all on about?

Wait until the cuts bite! they were only announced a week ago!

The growth you are seeing now is the effect of the previous governments policies![/quote]

That old chesnut.

[River Don]

This is just one figure, don't read too much into it.

[Filo]

MrFrost wrote:

Filo wrote:

MrFrost wrote:

I see the economy is growing alot faster than expected. Where is this double dip recession you were all on about?

Wait until the cuts bite! they were only announced a week ago!

The growth you are seeing now is the effect of the previous governments policies![/quote]

That old chesnut.

Do your tags correctly, it`s not a good advertisement for an IT expert is it?      

[Dagenham Rover]

MrFrost wrote:

Filo wrote:

MrFrost wrote:

I see the economy is growing alot faster than expected. Where is this double dip recession you were all on about?

Wait until the cuts bite! they were only announced a week ago!

The growth you are seeing now is the effect of the previous governments policies![/quote]

That old chesnut.

No truthful

[BillyStubbsTears]

Dagenham.Rover wrote:

MrFrost wrote:

Filo wrote:

MrFrost wrote:

I see the economy is growing alot faster than expected. Where is this double dip recession you were all on about?

Wait until the cuts bite! they were only announced a week ago!

The growth you are seeing now is the effect of the previous governments policies![/quote]

That old chesnut.

No truthful

Of course it's the truth. These figures are for the period Jul-Sept this year. There is nothing that the current Govt could possibly have done to affect these numbers greatly. The last two quarters of exceptional growth are entirely down to the policies put in place by Brown and Darling with the aim of getting us out of the depth of the recession quickly.

The figures today are BACKWARD indicators, as is current unemployment. They tell you about the effects of economic policy decisions taken 1-2 years ago.

What is now very worrying is the state of the FORWARD indicators; the ones that take current policy decisions into account and predict what will happen over the next couple of years. In particular, business confidence in their own immediate prospects, which has begun to fall over the last 6 months. Historically, the business confidence figures predict the state of the economy over the next year or so. Not perfectly, but pretty well. Confidence started to collapse in mid-2007 and we went into recession in late 2008. Confidence started to rise in early 2009 and we came out of recession in late 2009. Now business confidence has started falling again. Conclusion? At the very least, the growth that we are seeing now will not continue as strongly. At worst, the private sector loses confidence more rapidly, stops investing and taking on new recruits and the public sector cuts push us off a cliff. Either way, it's hard to see us having a vibrant economy over the next 2-3 years without a determined Govt effort to bolster confidence and encourage growth. And that simply will not happen with this lot, because their ideology does not let them accept that Government action can result in economic growth.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

I tell you what though, when I was back at uni one of my lecturers had a big rant about the effect of the media on recession and we're seeing it right now.  Scaremongering from unions and the like.  Now their points may well come to fruition but their points are also going to have an effect on the lesser educated who will believe what they say even though it's set in stone.  The scaremongering at the moment is not a good thing and may see us going the way of France with their protests and that does nobody any good.

[BillyStubbsTears]

big fat yorkshire pudding wrote:

I tell you what though, when I was back at uni one of my lecturers had a big rant about the effect of the media on recession and we're seeing it right now.  Scaremongering from unions and the like.  Now their points may well come to fruition but their points are also going to have an effect on the lesser educated who will believe what they say even though it's set in stone.  The scaremongering at the moment is not a good thing and may see us going the way of France with their protests and that does nobody any good.

Scaremongering? I'll give you scaremongering.

Scaremongering was what Cameron, Osbourne and Clegg did when they said that we could go the same way as Greece if we didn't pitch in to the biggest public sector cuts in 80 years. THAT was scaremongering, as well as being plain and simple LIES. Anyone who knows anything about the situation knew that they were talking utter bullshit. 1) Our basic debt level was half that of Greece. 2) Our economy was already growing again, unlike theirs, so our ability to finance our debt was far higher thatn theirs. 3) Most importantly, our debt is mainly financed by long-term bonds, unlike Greece's, which has to be re-financed regularly because their debt is mainly in short-term bonds. Put the 3 togther, and we were not remotely in the same situation as Greece. But terrifying people into thinking that we were bankrupt did a political job.

I'll give you a second example of scaremongering. In April 2009, Alastair Darling predicted in the Budget that the reflationary measures that the Labour Govt had put in place would mean that we would emerge strongly from the recession in 2010. He predicted that we would see 1.25% growth in 2010. He was savaged by Cameron and Osbourne, the monetarist tyrants in the IMF and the gobshites in the Tory press.

Osbourne accused him using the Treasury to invent \"fantasy\" growth predictions for political purposes. Vince Cable said the predictions were \"utter fantasy - no one believes that we will get growth like that next year.\" The IMF said that the growth prediction was \"unreliable\" and said that they believed the economy would SHRINK by 0.4% in 2010. The right-wing Centre for Economic Business Research said \"This is a work of fiction. The economy will probably stagnate in 2010 and grow very slowly after that.\"

As it happens, the economy has grown by more than 2% in the first nine months of 2010 (because of the stimulus package put in place by Labour and bitterly denounced by the Tories).

So, who was right?

And who was scaremongering for political aims?

[Savvy]

BillyStubbsTears wrote:

big fat yorkshire pudding wrote:

I tell you what though, when I was back at uni one of my lecturers had a big rant about the effect of the media on recession and we're seeing it right now.  Scaremongering from unions and the like.  Now their points may well come to fruition but their points are also going to have an effect on the lesser educated who will believe what they say even though it's set in stone.  The scaremongering at the moment is not a good thing and may see us going the way of France with their protests and that does nobody any good.

Scaremongering? I'll give you scaremongering.

Scaremongering was what Cameron, Osbourne and Clegg did when they said that we could go the same way as Greece if we didn't pitch in to the biggest public sector cuts in 80 years. THAT was scaremongering, as well as being plain and simple LIES. Anyone who knows anything about the situation knew that they were talking utter bullshit. 1) Our basic debt level was half that of Greece. 2) Our economy was already growing again, unlike theirs, so our ability to finance our debt was far higher thatn theirs. 3) Most importantly, our debt is mainly financed by long-term bonds, unlike Greece's, which has to be re-financed regularly because their debt is mainly in short-term bonds. Put the 3 togther, and we were not remotely in the same situation as Greece. But terrifying people into thinking that we were bankrupt did a political job.

I'll give you a second example of scaremongering. In April 2009, Alastair Darling predicted in the Budget that the reflationary measures that the Labour Govt had put in place would mean that we would emerge strongly from the recession in 2010. He predicted that we would see 1.25% growth in 2010. He was savaged by Cameron and Osbourne, the monetarist tyrants in the IMF and the gobshites in the Tory press.

Osbourne accused him using the Treasury to invent \"fantasy\" growth predictions for political purposes. Vince Cable said the predictions were \"utter fantasy - no one believes that we will get growth like that next year.\" The IMF said that the growth prediction was \"unreliable\" and said that they believed the economy would SHRINK by 0.4% in 2010. The right-wing Centre for Economic Business Research said \"This is a work of fiction. The economy will probably stagnate in 2010 and grow very slowly after that.\"

As it happens, the economy has grown by more than 2% in the first nine months of 2010 (because of the stimulus package put in place by Labour and bitterly denounced by the Tories).

So, who was right?

And who was scaremongering for political aims?

As I stated in another thread, lets have a public inquiry into how this situation has arisen, if it can be proved to be a result of the last government, then the key members of it should be debarred from public office, if on the other hand it's found to be mere puff/spin at least it will show \"Call me Dave\" and crew for what they are!

[BillyStubbsTears]

But it's not as simple as that Savvy. There is no \"right\" and \"wrong\" answer. There's no single person or group that you can point to and say \"they caused the recession\". Recessions happen in capitalist market economies. They are inevitable. When they do happen, what you do then comes down to your political outlook. No approach is inherently right or wrong. The approaches will simply help some people more than others and cost some people more than others.

Brown and Darling allowed our fiscal deficit to reach very high levels in response to a very deep recession. In doing so, they helped smooth out the very worst of the recession, gave us a springboard for growth and ensured that unemployment, house re-possessions and bankruptcies were all much lower than in the 80-82 and 90-92 recessions, even though the severity of the recession was much worse. But that comes with a cost, which is the level of fiscal deficit that we have, that we must now address. The result of that is that we now must all tighten our belts.

The Tories would not have implemented the fiscal stimulus that Brown and Darling used. They opposed every single measure. In doing so, they would have left us with a far lower deficit, but the cost would have been an extra one and a half million on the dole, massive house re-possessions and firms and whole industries going to the wall - the sort of thing that we saw in the 80-82 recession. We'd have had lower debt as a country, but economic devastation.

This is an age-old Left-Right debate. The Tories, histroically, have stood for the Market, low debt and sound money. Typically, that helps those who are already economically strong, and when recessions come along, it is the weakest who get it up the arse.

Labour historically has been for Government intervention, protection of the weakest and, if necessary, borrowing to do it. The result is often higher taxes and some inflation which eats away at the savings of the rich.

There's no right and wrong. There's just political preferences.

I know where my preferences lie.

[Savvy]

Not sure I agree with the recession is an enivitable consequence of a capitalist economy, even Gordon Brown promised an end to boom and bust cyclical economy that had plagued the country year on year.

I do agree that no one single person or group of persons can be held responsible, thats why I can't understand why \"Call me Dave\" et al have been allowed to get away with this \"J'accuse\" regarding the state of the economy, and people are buying into it!

Now it appears we are to follow this glorious plan that is going to lead us away from the bogey man who is going to come knocking on the door of 10 downing street asking for his/their money back, and my question to the chancellor would be what is the specific plan, what economy doctrine/text is it following, and what measure/ set of measures can we use to evaluate the effectiveness of your plan?

 [img/]

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

BillyStubbsTears wrote:

big fat yorkshire pudding wrote:

I tell you what though, when I was back at uni one of my lecturers had a big rant about the effect of the media on recession and we're seeing it right now.  Scaremongering from unions and the like.  Now their points may well come to fruition but their points are also going to have an effect on the lesser educated who will believe what they say even though it's set in stone.  The scaremongering at the moment is not a good thing and may see us going the way of France with their protests and that does nobody any good.

Scaremongering? I'll give you scaremongering.

Scaremongering was what Cameron, Osbourne and Clegg did when they said that we could go the same way as Greece if we didn't pitch in to the biggest public sector cuts in 80 years. THAT was scaremongering, as well as being plain and simple LIES. Anyone who knows anything about the situation knew that they were talking utter bullshit. 1) Our basic debt level was half that of Greece. 2) Our economy was already growing again, unlike theirs, so our ability to finance our debt was far higher thatn theirs. 3) Most importantly, our debt is mainly financed by long-term bonds, unlike Greece's, which has to be re-financed regularly because their debt is mainly in short-term bonds. Put the 3 togther, and we were not remotely in the same situation as Greece. But terrifying people into thinking that we were bankrupt did a political job.

I'll give you a second example of scaremongering. In April 2009, Alastair Darling predicted in the Budget that the reflationary measures that the Labour Govt had put in place would mean that we would emerge strongly from the recession in 2010. He predicted that we would see 1.25% growth in 2010. He was savaged by Cameron and Osbourne, the monetarist tyrants in the IMF and the gobshites in the Tory press.

Osbourne accused him using the Treasury to invent \"fantasy\" growth predictions for political purposes. Vince Cable said the predictions were \"utter fantasy - no one believes that we will get growth like that next year.\" The IMF said that the growth prediction was \"unreliable\" and said that they believed the economy would SHRINK by 0.4% in 2010. The right-wing Centre for Economic Business Research said \"This is a work of fiction. The economy will probably stagnate in 2010 and grow very slowly after that.\"

As it happens, the economy has grown by more than 2% in the first nine months of 2010 (because of the stimulus package put in place by Labour and bitterly denounced by the Tories).

So, who was right?

And who was scaremongering for political aims?

I do not disagree with you that they were scaremongering aswell, do two wrongs make a right?  No, they're equally as bad and were back then.  I don't unlike others fall for the party I voted for being perfect and the other lot not, I see both points of view.

But my point still stands, all I keep hearing is the unions and so called 'working class' element talking of civil unrest etc at these cuts and quite frankly that helps nobody.  It may bring about political change but at what cost?  Surely after an election where the Tories did receive the most votes we should accept that within our political system they get on with it and we make the best of it whatever your political thoughts?  But then I'll get called young and naive for saying that despite it ultimately being what we probably should do.

If more people in this country had my attitude when it comes to job seeking of taking a job that may not be ideal in order to progress and do something worthwhile then unemployment may be a bit lower, not a lot but a little.  Too many have a negative attitude and a sense of being above a level of jobs as I've seen at the job centre and in agencies.  Perfectly good jobs that don't pay great and aren't exciting but they're a job, these people just say no.  Nothing in life comes for free and I'm sick to death of people in this country thinking things will just come their way because it's too easy.  Look at job seeking, nobody really questions my effort to find a job, I just tell them some bullshit and they go, oh ok, keep going then.  I could be making it all up and I know plenty who do - that seriously needs looking at.  Nobody helps you find a job it's all about ticking a box, a big farce that is.

[BillyStubbsTears]

At the risk of sounding patronising, I'm afraid your comments on our political system are indeed rather naive. Opponents of a Government don't just say, \"Fair enough - you get on with it.\" They question, they oppose where they see error, bad judgement or unfairness. They dig away at the Government's credibility. That is how democracy works. If the Government is strong enough in its arguments to survive this then they deserve to. Personally, I do not think that this is the case here and now.

The Tories won the most votes and seats. No argument. But they did NOT win a majority. Fewer than 36% of voters actually voted for the scale of cutbacks that we are now faced with. So the Tories rely on the support of others to push through their agenda. And remember that the Lib-Dems categorically did NOT campaign on this platform.

So, within an entirely peaceful and democratic system, there is a huge Achilles Heel waiting to be attacked.

People who desperately do not want us to be pitched out of recovery and headlong into another Thatcherite nightmare (and forgive me, but you ARE too young to appreciate this) have every right to prod away at the Lib-Dems' raw nerves in an effort to get them to bring Osbourne to heel. It's part of the democratic process.

And comments on the fragility of the recovery are categorically NOT scaremongering. The last two occasions when Governments have drastically cut back public expenditure after a recession as bad as the one we've just had resulted in the two most devastating economic scenarios of the 20th century in the early 30s and early 80s. The risks that we still face today are blindingly obvious and that is why business confidence is starting to erode. That's not scaremongering - it's understanding economic history. If Osbourne and his Lib-Dem supporters get this wrong with their manic experiment in fiscal tightening (which is what it is) then we will live with the consequences for 20 years. Pointing that out is not scaremongering - it's a democratic right. Equally, it was a democratic right for Osbourne to question the predictions of Darling and Brown. It's just that, as on so many issues, he was proved by events to be utterly wrong.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Savvy wrote:

Not sure I agree with the recession is an enivitable consequence of a capitalist economy, even Gordon Brown promised an end to boom and bust cyclical economy that had plagued the country year on year.

I do agree that no one single person or group of persons can be held responsible, thats why I can't understand why \"Call me Dave\" et al have been allowed to get away with this \"J'accuse\" regarding the state of the economy, and people are buying into it!

Now it appears we are to follow this glorious plan that is going to lead us away from the bogey man who is going to come knocking on the door of 10 downing street asking for his/their money back, and my question to the chancellor would be what is the specific plan, what economy doctrine/text is it following, and what measure/ set of measures can we use to evaluate the effectiveness of your plan?

 [img/]

Aye. Brown said that and the hubris of it will haunt him forever.

Brown did a damn good job of sailing the economy away from boom and bust cycles for a decade and we STILL fell off a cliff that no-one saw coming. That's the nature of the system.

I'll accept that it's not provable that capitalist economies must always have perioidic recessions. But there's 300 years of evidence to support the argument.

Fair point about how you evaluate the plan. There's the rub of democratic politics. You can only evaluate it by immersing yourself in the subject, analysing facts, drawing your own conclusions. Most people have neither the intellect nor the desire to do so. So they want their politics simplified. Then you get grinning simplifying politicians like Blair and Clegg.

When you simplify, every politician can always say they were right by a particular, simple measure. But there are always other measurements to judge them by.

Brown and Darling appear to have steered us away from the worst of what the recession could have done. But by doing so, they have left us with a huge deficit. Was their approach effective or not?

If Osbourne reduces the deficit, but puts unemployment up by a million in doing so, will his approach have been effective?

It comes down to what you think is more important.

[Savvy]

That’s why I rated Gordon Brown, because his proclamation appeared to fly in the face of all the economic doctrine that has been peddled since time immoral, certainly in the copy of Lipsey that I was bought whilst at University. Coupled with the global economic crisis I thought he took prudent and decisive action to prevent a run on our currency and to ensure that our economy suffered minimal impact.
Now according to “Dave and George” we are now sitting on an economic crisis of Bernie Madoff size proportions, yet it would appear if their rhetoric is true, no fecker is to be held accountable.  Mr Madoff got 150 years for orchestrating a similar set of circumstances, but in England we don’t even hold an investigation, if indeed an investigation is needed!
Smoke and mirrors, whatever happened to the “Their now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of “Neil and bob” (or is that what they do for a living?). They don’t want to set out a plan in lay mans terms as you say Billy because that would mean they couldn’t blind people with science in 4 years time, not that I think that this meeting of minds will last that long, I give it another 18 months tops!
One final thing on this subject, has anyone actually examined the proposition that there maybe an alternative to cuts? What about increase in supply or demand for the particular good or service? What about reducing the costs of production of said good or service?  I suggest non of this will have been looked at because that involves the application of knowledge, whereas cuts are simple, easy twelve people of average intelligence of this forum could get together and make cuts. CEO’s in the private sector have been doing it for years, taking over, reducing budgets in research and development, training, new equipment using it to increase dividends and earnings per share, then as soon as a major competitor captures the market with a major new product that wipes the floor with theirs, they are off to “pursue other interests” with a nice bonus and share package as severance.
To give you an indication of what I mean, I was taken to Sunderland Public works department as part of a module. The idea being that we were show an example of just how the public sector could be made to operate in the private sector. The way it worked was that you could be a private home owner, but you could ring Sunderland public works department and they would come out and give you a quotation to provide and fit your new double glazed windows, without having to phone safe style UK and the like to get the work done.
I thought that Doncaster Council had followed through with this when all of a sudden, you could get your car MOT’d at their depot on the north bridge, so the concept appeared to be spreading.  So why can’t it be followed up now to include jobs like the man who follows the dustbin man around cleaning your bins for quid each week?  Increase community tax by £52 explain what its for, get some of these 800 people  who are set to lose their job trained up by the origin team of lads and create a win-win situation?
That’s just one of the top of my napper, but I feel sure that council employees across the borough could quite easily come up with far more suggestions than this.  The problem is that no fecker will have asked them because, cuts are simple, and cuts are easy!  Of course the counter argument is that cuts will be made in departments in such a way so that current service levels won’t be affected, my counter argument to this would be if you can do with 8 people what you could do with 10 why aren’t you doing it already.


Rant over!!!!  

[Glyn_Wigley]

Savvy wrote:

Not sure I agree with the recession is an enivitable consequence of a capitalist economy, even Gordon Brown promised an end to boom and bust cyclical economy that had plagued the country year on year.

Economic cycles and 'boom and bust' are not the same thing.

Economic cycles happen, 'boom and bust' was the way of politically dealing with them.

[Savvy]

Glyn_Wigley wrote:

Savvy wrote:

Not sure I agree with the recession is an enivitable consequence of a capitalist economy, even Gordon Brown promised an end to boom and bust cyclical economy that had plagued the country year on year.

Economic cycles and 'boom and bust' are not the same thing.

Economic cycles happen, 'boom and bust' was the way of politically dealing with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoZ7JXkv6_o

[River Don]

BillyStubbsTears wrote:

Brown did a damn good job of sailing the economy away from boom and bust cycles for a decade and we STILL fell off a cliff that no-one saw coming.

Peter Schiff
Gerald Celente
Bob Chapman
Jim Rogers
Max Keiser
Marc Faber
Jim Sinclair
James Dines
and...
Vince Cable

[Savvy]

River Don wrote:

BillyStubbsTears wrote:

Brown did a damn good job of sailing the economy away from boom and bust cycles for a decade and we STILL fell off a cliff that no-one saw coming.

Peter Schiff
Gerald Celente
Bob Chapman
Jim Rogers
Max Keiser
Marc Faber
Jim Sinclair
James Dines
and...
Vince Cable

All former left wingers?  

[BillyStubbsTears]

River Don wrote:

BillyStubbsTears wrote:

Brown did a damn good job of sailing the economy away from boom and bust cycles for a decade and we STILL fell off a cliff that no-one saw coming.

Peter Schiff
Gerald Celente
Bob Chapman
Jim Rogers
Max Keiser
Marc Faber
Jim Sinclair
James Dines
and...
Vince Cable

Poor choice of phrase from me. Of course, there are ALWAYS prophets predicting every possible outcome and some of them are bound to turn out to be correct. Some of the ones you name are professional Cassandras who have been predicting doom and disaster from the day they left their mother's tit. They were generally wrong in those predictions for most of their careers. But if they stuck to them long enough, they were bound to be proved right eventually by events. That's from the monkeys and typewriters school of prediciton though.

What I should have said was that there was no obvious prediction of the recession among mainstream economic forecasters.

The fascinating thing is how often the Labour Govt's predictions actually WERE shown to be correct over the 13 years they were in power. Time and again, the \"experts\" said that it was all going to go tits up. We were going to get hammered by the Russian crisis, the Argentine default, the East Asian crisis, the dot.com bubble bursting, the post-9/11 recession, the Eurozone slowdown etc, etc, etc. Forecasters on the far Left were gleefully predicting capitalist metldown. Forecasters on the Right couldn't conceive of a left-of-centre govt actually managing the economy well. On both sides, they regularly poured scorn on Govt forecasts of economic performance, and time and again, the Govt was proved correct. What we actually got was the longest period of stable economic growth for over 100 years, while the rest of the world's performance was going up and down like a brides knickers.

If Brown didn't foresee the eventual recession, he was in good company - you'd struggle to find a mainstream economist, finance minister or central banker who did.

Vince Cable made a name for himself by being seen to be some sort of genius who saw the problem. But his failure to see how Labour's policies would bring us out of recession (see earlier post) show that he hasn't got a 100% average either.

[jucyberry]

I would never claim to know alot about politics, but I know one thing every day I am growing to despise Dave a little more.

Watching C4 news tonight, seeing his smug face and his almost mirroring of   the thoughts and sentiments of the Daily mail made me want to vomit.

To demonise poor people living in the city is disgraceful, My grandmother and her siblings were raised in a workhouse in Sleaford, personally I think Dave and his acolytes won't rest until  the poor in this country are segrigated once again.

What of the people who have lived in these areas all their lives and have seen a reversal in housing costs and popularity of those areas?

Surely this drive to oust the unworthy from prime areas will hit his voters just as hard? Call me dim but isn't one of the reasons property is so high in London and other major cities  because second home owners who have bought to rent are recouping their mortgages and expenses? So what happens when the rent dries up? Will we see a new form of mortgage relief hastily put into place to protect these votes..I mean house owners?

[Glyn_Wigley]

Savvy wrote:

Glyn_Wigley wrote:

Savvy wrote:

Not sure I agree with the recession is an enivitable consequence of a capitalist economy, even Gordon Brown promised an end to boom and bust cyclical economy that had plagued the country year on year.

Economic cycles and 'boom and bust' are not the same thing.

Economic cycles happen, 'boom and bust' was the way of politically dealing with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoZ7JXkv6_o

We got 'boom and bust' through years of politically imposed interest rates as a measure of trying to control inflation (and therefore the money supply). Boom and Bust happened over decades of crap Chancellors trying to heat up and cool down the economy either by too much, too little or at the wrong time, which is why we got 'booms' overheating the economy followed by 'busts' whent hey tried to cool them down again. Cycles happen as part of natural economics, imposing interests rates on a political basis aren't. That's why Brown immediately handing control of the Bank Rate over to the Bank Of England and out of the hands of politicians was one of the greatest economic decisions any Chancellor has made, and why the economy was going reasonably smoothly until the bankers cocked it up for everybody.

Got a glib Youtube clip for this, or are you going to contribute something worthwhile?

[Glyn_Wigley]

As a PS that others might find interesting, Private Eye has a feature called 'Number Crunching', and the following are in the currect issue:

£7bn = Further cuts to UK welfare budget announced last week.
£7bn = Predicted bonuses to be paid by UK banks this year.


£81bn = Amount government is cutting from public spending over next four years.
£185bn = Amount government lent to banks for three years in Special Liquidity Scheme.

And one away from politics/economics...

33 = Miners rescued in Chile this month who received worldwide coverage.
37 = Miners killed in gas explosion in China this month who didn't.
34 = Average number of accidental deaths in Chilean mining industry each year in last decade.
57 = Miners killed in accidents in USA so far this year.

[Savvy]

Glyn_Wigley wrote:

Savvy wrote:

Glyn_Wigley wrote:

Savvy wrote:

Not sure I agree with the recession is an enivitable consequence of a capitalist economy, even Gordon Brown promised an end to boom and bust cyclical economy that had plagued the country year on year.

Economic cycles and 'boom and bust' are not the same thing.

Economic cycles happen, 'boom and bust' was the way of politically dealing with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoZ7JXkv6_o

We got 'boom and bust' through years of politically imposed interest rates as a measure of trying to control inflation (and therefore the money supply). Boom and Bust happened over decades of crap Chancellors trying to heat up and cool down the economy either by too much, too little or at the wrong time, which is why we got 'booms' overheating the economy followed by 'busts' whent hey tried to cool them down again. Cycles happen as part of natural economics, imposing interests rates on a political basis aren't. That's why Brown immediately handing control of the Bank Rate over to the Bank Of England and out of the hands of politicians was one of the greatest economic decisions any Chancellor has made, and why the economy was going reasonably smoothly until the bankers cocked it up for everybody.

Got a glib Youtube clip for this, or are you going to contribute something worthwhile?

The context that boom and bust was referred to in this thread was put in the context of general economic activity and not the monetarist view which you appear to have read from somewhere which has widely been dispelled as myth anyway! We got boom and bust from years of politically imposed interest rates...what aload of shite!

[BobG]

Well what else causes boom and bust then Savvy?

BobG

[Savvy]

Fluctuations in production or economic activity over a period of months or years!

Whats your take on it Bob?

[Glyn_Wigley]

So whatever decisions the politicians take has no effect? Interesting.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

What baffles me is how they say the cap on housing benefit to £400 a week, £20k per year will make people homeless.  As someone who had a real nice flat and a real nice house for £90 a week inclusive of bills, I wonder how £400 is not enough for a weeks worth of rent, where are these people living, Buckingham Palace?

This is the proposal laide out, I fail to see how people cannot live on this much money for housing benefit.

    * £250 for a one-bedroom property
    * £290 for a two-bedroom property
    * £340 for a three-bedroom property
    * £400 for a four-bedroom property

[Dagenham Rover]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323022/George-Osbornes-cuts-UK-1931-says-Nobel-Prize-winning-economist.html