Political Thread

[olivia8143]

A 10 minute history lesson for neo liberals by JC's mentor

http://bit.ly/1hj4Hf7

[westlondoncarparts]

I made my recent postings in response to another posting that said new non Labour Governments always have a difficult first few years because they have to clear up Labour messes.

I wished to make the point that the present and last Governments have also made a mess by way of the austerity policies which they chose to follow and by the way that the initial Gordon Brown short term quantitative easing programme has been extended to the present day.

Although the initial wave of debt purchases in the markets by the Bank of England ended in summer 2012, the quantitative easing programme has effectively continued because of the Bank of England’s policy to reinvest both interest income earned on purchased debt and also the proceeds of maturing debt back into the markets, thereby keeping interest rates artificially low.

The link to the Bank of England’s February 2014 Inflation Report refers. The debt instruments purchased are referred to as purchased assets in the report.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publi...febeconrec.pdf

These have all been decisions made in the UK without any control by the EU or the Americans and without any direct or indirect bearing on them by the use of the US Dollar as international reserve currency and the currency in which commodities are priced and until recently paid for.

The killer point about unwinding quantitative easing in the UK economy and the harm that it is now doing is that if it results in higher interest rates in the market, then the Government will have to pay higher rates of interest on new borrowings. The Government cannot afford to pay higher interest rates because of the way that the national debt has ballooned and is still ballooning under the Cameron / Osborne regime and so it has a high degree of self interest in keeping interest rates artificially low irrespective of who else this hurts.

Obviously there are many issues affecting the UK’s economic performance and rolling back quantitative easing alone would not solve all of the UK’s economic issues.

And just to make some comments about George Osborne as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had no relevant academic training or work experience to qualify him to take control of the nation’s finances.

In February 2006, George Osborne made a speech at the Michael Smurfit School of Business at Dublin’s University College in which he effectively heaped praise upon the Irish ‘economic miracle’. He was then the recently appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in Her Majesty’s official Opposition in Parliament.

The simple overview of his speech is summarised here.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/th...orne-tax-irish

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co...how-think.html

The full text of his speech can be found here, although it is easy to miss the wood for the trees in the way that it is structured.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/to...rne_speech.pdf

Whilst there were some good aspects to the Irish Government’s economic policies, the Irish economy was already well on the way to blowing up when Osborne made his comments. The Irish banks, which were encouraged by the Irish Government, created the mother of all property asset bubbles. They lent and lent and lent and lent to property developers and to property traders many times in excess of what would have been sensible for a country with a relatively small population. The Irish Government received a huge increase in its tax take from activity in the property sector and expanded its spending programmes accordingly. A lot of people in Ireland thought that rapidly rising property prices and high levels of Government spending would go on for ever and thought that they were a reflection of economic success. Although the Irish property market looked like it was peaking in 2006 and into 2007, the advent of the global financial crisis and the credit crunch was definitively the end. The Irish banks could not borrow fresh money in the markets to continue funding loans that supported rising property prices and the Irish property bubble burst big time. The Irish banks were effectively bust because their property customers could not repay loans from income or from proceeds from property sales at distressed prices. Rather than let the Irish banks go out of business, the Irish Government stepped in and said that it would bail out the banks, despite not being able to afford to do this. The situation was eventually resolved by bailout for Ireland from the IMF and from the EU that resulted in very severe recession.

And what happened to the British Shadow Chancellor who heaped praise upon the Irish and missed the fact that a substantive part of the so called Irish economic miracle was illusory because it was based in part upon spillover into the economy from a very aggressive property asset bubble that was always destined to crash and burn? He is now in charge of the finances of the UK. With that I rest my case that a Conservative Government is as capable as a Government from any other political party of getting it wrong and messing up the country’s economic performance.

[sidthelamp]

I made my recent postings in response to another posting that said new non Labour Governments always have a difficult first few years because they have to clear up Labour messes.

I wished to make the point that the present and last Governments have also made a mess by way of the austerity policies which they chose to follow and by the way that the initial Gordon Brown short term quantitative easing programme has been extended to the present day.

Although the initial wave of debt purchases in the markets by the Bank of England ended in summer 2012, the quantitative easing programme has effectively continued because of the Bank of England’s policy to reinvest both interest income earned on purchased debt and also the proceeds of maturing debt back into the markets, thereby keeping interest rates artificially low.

The link to the Bank of England’s February 2014 Inflation Report refers. The debt instruments purchased are referred to as purchased assets in the report.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publi...febeconrec.pdf

These have all been decisions made in the UK without any control by the EU or the Americans and without any direct or indirect bearing on them by the use of the US Dollar as international reserve currency and the currency in which commodities are priced and until recently paid for.

The killer point about unwinding quantitative easing in the UK economy and the harm that it is now doing is that if it results in higher interest rates in the market, then the Government will have to pay higher rates of interest on new borrowings. The Government cannot afford to pay higher interest rates because of the way that the national debt has ballooned and is still ballooning under the Cameron / Osborne regime and so it has a high degree of self interest in keeping interest rates artificially low irrespective of who else this hurts.

Obviously there are many issues affecting the UK’s economic performance and rolling back quantitative easing alone would not solve all of the UK’s economic issues.

And just to make some comments about George Osborne as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had no relevant academic training or work experience to qualify him to take control of the nation’s finances.

In February 2006, George Osborne made a speech at the Michael Smurfit School of Business at Dublin’s University College in which he effectively heaped praise upon the Irish ‘economic miracle’. He was then the recently appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in Her Majesty’s official Opposition in Parliament.

The simple overview of his speech is summarised here.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/th...orne-tax-irish

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co...how-think.html

The full text of his speech can be found here, although it is easy to miss the wood for the trees in the way that it is structured.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/to...rne_speech.pdf

Whilst there were some good aspects to the Irish Government’s economic policies, the Irish economy was already well on the way to blowing up when Osborne made his comments. The Irish banks, which were encouraged by the Irish Government, created the mother of all property asset bubbles. They lent and lent and lent and lent to property developers and to property traders many times in excess of what would have been sensible for a country with a relatively small population. The Irish Government received a huge increase in its tax take from activity in the property sector and expanded its spending programmes accordingly. A lot of people in Ireland thought that rapidly rising property prices and high levels of Government spending would go on for ever and thought that they were a reflection of economic success. Although the Irish property market looked like it was peaking in 2006 and into 2007, the advent of the global financial crisis and the credit crunch was definitively the end. The Irish banks could not borrow fresh money in the markets to continue funding loans that supported rising property prices and the Irish property bubble burst big time. The Irish banks were effectively bust because their property customers could not repay loans from income or from proceeds from property sales at distressed prices. Rather than let the Irish banks go out of business, the Irish Government stepped in and said that it would bail out the banks, despite not being able to afford to do this. The situation was eventually resolved by bailout for Ireland from the IMF and from the EU that resulted in very severe recession.

And what happened to the British Shadow Chancellor who heaped praise upon the Irish and missed the fact that a substantive part of the so called Irish economic miracle was illusory because it was based in part upon spillover into the economy from a very aggressive property asset bubble that was always destined to crash and burn? He is now in charge of the finances of the UK. With that I rest my case that a Conservative Government is as capable as a Government from any other political party of getting it wrong and messing up the country’s economic performance.

your surpassing yourself know, every schoolboy knows exchange rates between each country effect the buying power of what ever currency you happen to have in your pocket, its no coincidence the uk mirrors the usa interest rates, these are direct influences from the usa dollar, the price of fuel is directly linked to the dollar , the import and export of goods to the usa and beyond are directly linked to the dollar exchange rate, and you dont think the usa has direct or indirect influence on uk policy,i think you forgot to put milk on your cornflakes this morning because thats very hard to swallow.

you dont seem to think quantitative easing is such a big deal , flooding the world with paper money with no tangible exchange of goods , paying for goods essentially with nothing, holding debt in the form of government bonds, will have to be paid for , the governments that do this will sooner or latter see a spike in interest rates , indirectly governments that import who dont do quantitative easing will see a massive rise in prices , and inflation as a consequence, i happen to agree osborne is a prat but not for the same reasons you do, he has very little influence in the money markets, the world is governed from the petrol dollar not the uk £ , its buying power is directly linked to its international currency exchange rate value, these currencies are not backed by anything, ie gold or silver or any other tangible item worthy of exchange, there essentially worthless pieces of paper, that just happen to have printed on them ,i promise to pay the bearer, its called fiat money, a government form of control and enslavement , they cant control .tax tangible items of exchange so they issue paper money , make it illegal to own gold , except in token small coins , and now there in a mess by trying to print there way out of mismanaging there own economies and world economies , and you think were oblivious to making decisions without outside influence , or are you just trying to point score .

[olivia8143]

John McDonnell


That's just what the electorate are afraid of, and one (amongst many) of the reasons they will not regain power.

Wrong (again)

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...ic-credibility

[westlondoncarparts]

With regard to post #593, I was answering in respect of the previous comments about Labour Governments and trying to point out that other political parties get it wrong also when in Government.

I did study economics when I was younger.

I do not score points with people because I am more grown up and more mature than that. I try to make points based upon fact.

One of the key reasons why the US dollar has arisen in recent years is because there was a shift in the demand and supply relationship for US dollars when shale oil and gas came on stream in the USA which reduced the US need to pay for imported oil and gas.

George Osborne and David Cameron both choked off the early stages of growth out of the recession that followed the financial crash and put the UK back into recession. George Osborne has given the Bank of England direction over the quantitative easing programme ever since he came into power. Both were their choices, nothing to do with the Americans or the value of the US Dollar. The choice of austerity policies which were the tool for putting the UK back into recession was a consequence of the political ideology of the Conservative party and nothing to do with the Americans or the US Dollar.

Had David Cameron and George Osborne not put the UK back into recession and had allowed the recovery that had started at the end of Gordon Brown’s Government to continue, the Government finances would be in better shape than they are today and the level of national debt would not be so high.

The policy of austerity was a political choice, not an economic necessity.

Although the national debt would still have grown in the early days of the Coalition Government if the Labour recovery been allowed to continue, it would not be where it is now.

Whether people agree with my views or not, the starting point for any interpretation of what has been going on lies in hard facts. The graphs given in the Telegraph article show where we are with public sector debt – over both the Labour / Coalition / Conservative Governments.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/gene...ee-charts.html

One fact that cannot be disputed is that George Osborne’s austerity programme did not bring Government day to day expenditure into balance by 2015/16 as he had said that it would. And it looks very likely that it will not be in balance by 2010, four years after his original target and at the end of the current Parliament.

I do not think that quantitative easing is inconsequential. Instead I think that it is a very serious issue that is being used as a short term fix by David Cameron and by George Osborne to keep interest rates artificially low rather than address and solve the economic issues facing the UK.

To show you what I mean Sid, if you look at the cash value of UK public sector debt in the cash value graph in the Telegraph article, you will see that total debt was forecast to have risen from £1345 billion in March 2012 to £1840 billion in March 2020, an increase of approximately £500 billion. (These are out of date forecasts from the run up to the 2010 election and the projections have got worse since then.) Then do the calculations of how much an extra 0.25% pa on interest rates would cost the Government in annual interest charges, how much an extra 0.50% pa in interest charges would cost, etc.. It is in the Government’s interests to keep interest rates as low as possible, even artificially low by manipulation of the markets through quantitative easing. If you assume that a fair unmanipulated level of UK interest rates in the current global economic situation would be around 2% to 3%, you can see that interest rates at their current level would be saving the Government something like £10 billion to £15 billion a year in interest payments on just the eventual increase in Government debt of around £500 billion. In addition, because the Government cannot pay off maturing debt, it has effectively to borrow that money again, thereby increasing beyond £500 billion the amount of new money that it has to borrow and thereby increasing the amount of interest it can save by manipulating the market.

Sooner or later some crisis will happen in the global economy which will mean that the UK Government can no longer achieve this manipulation and the consequences could be painful.

[westlondoncarparts]

One fact that cannot be disputed is that George Osborne’s austerity programme did not bring Government day to day expenditure into balance by 2015/16 as he had said that it would. And it looks very likely that it will not be in balance by 2010, four years after his original target and at the end of the current Parliament.

A typo. 2010 should have been 2020.

[sidthelamp]

well ive had enough

so ive decided to become the prime minister

this is what i will do.

immediately nationalise all power generation and distribution, water and its resources, transport and its infrastructure,completely return the health service to a state were all people can receive the care they need no private cost cutting companies allowed, remove all state interference /rules/laws in forestry, agriculture, remove NRW and NRE AND REPLACE WITH ONE NATIONAL BODY funded by the state not through issuing of petty control licensing as it is now, remove petty rules and regulations and have a sensible rules not driven by secret lobbyists.
remove legislation that stops people having the ability to do for themselves , at the same time this would give people a choice were they have none now, encourage the free market to help in that choice there by reducing monopoly and reducing prices/costs ,

leave the eu , no wrangling behind closed doors in the interim period, government and industry to immediately to create the new Uk with all of the above

reinstate to its former level,legal aid so every one has the ability to defend themselves ..

a judicial review to look at the pricing of litigation, a faster and easier approach to court proceedings, standardisation across the country for certain costs with solicitors ,

no more back door politics , regulations/laws must be more open at the consultation stage,parliamentary stage , lobbying made public

a police complaints ,procedure were every one is taken seriously and all allegations investigated , wasting and abuse of a new police complaints procedure would incur heavy penalties.

a review of the CROW act

re empower landowners

trespass become a criminal offence in certain circumstances

a clearly defined right to self defence on your own property and holdings

housing policies should encourage more social house building ,

the planing system yet again over hauled , eg permitted development should mean just that, without the need for a further set of sub rules to comply with.

rebuild what is left of the armed services to a capability were it can defend the country on a level of current and future threats

a complete review of state spying laws on its own citizens,

increasing and embracing trade with the rest of the world opening up new markets ,

i think that would be a good start!

[westlondoncarparts]

Well done Sid!

Have you ever thought about standing as an MP?

(I am being serious, not just joking around.)

All these issues are worthy of serious debate and action to sort out.

[astral276]

When figures like '75% of voters aged under 24 voted for Remain in the EU referendum' are stated, how do they know that? I thought votes were anonymous, so how do they know the age of each voter and, more importantly, how they voted? Or is it simply a case of creating a figure to suit the case those giving it are trying to make?

[sidthelamp]

voting is is not anonymous every polling slip has a unique number that relates to the person the slip was issued too, i did not discover this till the mid 2000s when i went to vote and asked "can this number be related to me" they replied yes, i was under the impression till that day that voting was anonymous,