Friday, February 13, 2009
Use the Force, Luke
Once again, Kettle excels and even manages, at the end, to quote Conrad. In the words of Henry James, 'I'm a total sucker for that kind of posh stuff.' Kettle sees that Brown is like Luke, Han and the Princess, desperately trying to stop the walls closing in and crushing him. Unlike them, he will fail because of his abject lack of self-knowledge and his dismal 'it's not our fault, gov' litany, the default claim of Labour politicians down the ages. All you really need to know about Brown's record is the Business Monitor paragraph quoted by Jeff Randall - 'Despite enjoying 11 years of growth between 1997 and 2007, the UK ran a budget deficit of 1.7 per cent of GDP over this period, fuelling a fiscal time bomb. Faced with the financial burden of bailing out the banking sector and kick-starting the economy, the budget deficit will to an unsustainable 9.3 per cent of GDP in 2009.' Face it, Gordo, we're a basket case. Now, I'm no economist, but I want to know something. Large parts of the growth in GDP claimed since 1997 we now know to be delusory. In financial services the growth has been entirely wiped out - indeed, the banks have been largely destroyed - and I would guess the cataclysmic fall in asset values has negated most, perhaps all, of the wealth Brown claims to have created. Should we not, therefore, recalculate the growth figures on a realistic basis, stripping out the property bubble and the zero sum nonsense of the City? I'm only asking.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Great point, well put. On another current controversy one bit of the media finally came off the fence and made the government look as stupid as it deserves. Respect, Kirsty - yes, really - and the whole Newsnight team.
ReplyDeletemaybe we could have a whip round and get him Gandhi's glasses.
ReplyDeleteRichard, I was impressed by Kirsty Wark last night too - the first time I can remember this being the case!
ReplyDeleteOur economic growth was illusory, but no different in many ways than the growth that afflicted Iceland, Ireland, Spain and many other countries (including many parts of the USA).
Brown and Blair's (don't forget charming Tony in all of this this) greatest crime was piling huge sums into a greedy, insufficiently unreformed public sector - hence those budget deficits through the good times. I never understood the media's hostility to John Major and their doe-eyed acceptance of Blair back in the mid-90s. Major spoke of his golden economic legacy at the time - he was right, but nobody was listening.
These numbers say it all, years 1997 - 2007 the cities contribution to the economy - £85 billion. The officially predicted figures for increased govt debt, ours actually - £250 billion, due to the cities fraudulent behaviour.
ReplyDeleteNo mathematician am I but there seems to be a £165 billion deficit in there somewhere.
Figures courtesy of Private Eye
Yep the charge against Brown is much worse than the sole but important charges against his stewardship of the banks and the financials.
ReplyDeleteHe is a negligent captain that hit the biggest econonmic iceberg this side of the Three Gorges dam.
And you or anyone else did not have to understand the major underlying problem in order to deal with it or mitigate it, all you have to do is ask where is the money coming from?
You main point, is what Dave should be asking on wedneday afternoons, but is not.
Just how how far do prices have to fall to be in line with real values. from that point we can go forward and start to price all those toxic debts.
My guess is 20-30% or in other words a double dip recession. And I would guess that House prices are/were 40% over real values at their highs in 2007.
There's a bit more to life than worrying about a few City greasers and their awful taste in cars. The banks are bust. Short and simple. I don't see anything moving forward till this central point is owned up to and addressed directly. And until it is, we'll remained obsessive and off-kilter about everything else.
ReplyDeleteI was startled to hear yesterday that the FSA has lined up staff bonuses this year, and the Home Office pays bonuses too. For MPs, almost every day is bonus day because of their myriad expenses scams. They're all it. If Don Politico and pals want to reconnect with the public they should start with that simple and very British idea that may well be the ground of the next election: fairness.
Fairness is not a word mark :0)
ReplyDeleteIt is being addressed, I think this (below) explains how.
In short the grand plan is to monetise the debt, and make sure China, Japan and the rest of SE Asia are on board and dont sell the dollars they are holding.
The results of this will be us (the west) being about 25% poorer than we were, with a economy to rebuild and public spending to be drasticaly cut, by a 20% (which as most of it is waste anyway, should not be too painful)
The main question, are Dave and George up to being the most hated men in Britian?
This is a link
In what way has Wark gained your respect gentlemen, because she exposed Vaz? akin the shouting "hey, this septic tank stinks".
ReplyDeleteIf and when she has been brought to book, preferably in an open court for her and her companies dealings with the McConnell Scottish parliament and the choosing and building of Holyrood and the subsequent contract she was given to make a documentary about what when wrong, the process in which she was actively involved.
There is also the not unimportant matter of her total lack of impartiality whilst a BBC reporter during the 1997 election, for which the BBC should have sacked her on the spot.
She is, at the very least a hypocrite, fronting television programmes purporting to expose wrong doing.
Even if there was a satisfactory outcome to the above I doubt that even then she would gain this taxpayers respect.
I admit I haven't followed those allegations against Wark - you know a lot more than I do about them malty.
ReplyDeleteStill, I like to be thankful for small mercies. Previously you had to go to YouTube to see thoughtful debate of Fitna. As well as mocking Vaz's high-handed stance on a film he hadn't even bothered to watch I thought Kirsty - and the excellent Maajid Nawaz - broke the mold by engaging publicly in meaningful discourse with brave scholar (and missionary to London) Jay Smith. More of this and there will be real change in many areas of freedom of speech in this country.
Well I'm no fan of Kirsty Squawk, but at least last night she was fairly aggressive and laid into her lefty buddies. Quite a relief after last week's gollywog nonsense to see a BBC friend of New Labour not giving a toss about somebody giving offence. and if even Kirsty is savaging Brown's apparatchiks now - the writing is well annd truly on the wall.
ReplyDeleteGood points - I do not know where these growth figures come from or what they really mean for our wealth.
ReplyDeleteI have seen it said it really relates to the velocity of money circulating, not wealth creation.