What is really striking about the UK’s biggest problems today is that they are all insuperable unless there is a strategic change in policy which almost always requires a big shift in the power structure. The banking crisis will not go away so long as central banks, either in the Eurozone or the UK, believe [...]
Posts under ‘Macroeconomics’
All today’s biggest problems can’t be solved within present power structure
Apr 12th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.
The postwar Europe project has failed – we need a new and very different one
Apr 11th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.The European political project has failed: what was conceived as a means of preserving peace has become, through the outlawing of an expansionary fiscal policy by the Merkel-Sarkozy pact, an instrument to create division, inequality and conflict. Like the Left is increasingly doing across Europe (and the public did some time before), we must reject it [...]
Who are the super-rich beneficiaries from this Budget?
Mar 25th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.There can be no doubt that the nation’s revulsion against awarding a £10,000 tax break to the top 1% of earners and no less than a £40,000 tax cut to 14,000 millionaires was dramatically sharpened by the fact that it was funded by depriving 4.5 million pensioners of £83 a week. But even if that [...]
Osborne has at least shown every right-wing myth is false
Mar 24th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.After a dreadful budget we should be grateful for small mercies. But one large one is that his tenure over the last 2 years has shot just about every fox in the right-wing locker. Cutting tap at the top would benefit the whole country because the benefits would trickle down to the rest of the [...]
A budget that ignores reality: ideological and macro-economically hollow
Mar 22nd, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.Since 2009 the economy has struggled to recover from the mire of a slump caused by the banking sector. But each time economic activity quickens, it hits a series of buffers. These buffers are well known , but denied by the Chancellor: a vast overhang of private debt now slowly being de-leveraged; a banking sector [...]
Budget: initial responses
Mar 21st, 2012 by Jon Lansman.On 50p tax Richard Murphy HMRC say net 50p tax revenue is £100 million – I repeat my claim -that’s a lie – and the evidence is he has not scrapped the rate altogether. Bookmarks Hide Sites
Beware the small print in the budget
Mar 20th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.We shall be regaled by Osborne yet again tomorrow that this is a budget for growth, with all the paraphernalia of the right-wing media’s propaganda inflating the message for all they’re worth. It is typical of Whitehall and the most slippery of politicians to magnify out of all proportion a theme for which there is [...]
The big US-UK divide
Mar 15th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Cameron has enjoyed portraying in Washington that the US and UK are marching in lockstep towards early withdrawal from Afghanistan. But not on what matters even more – policy towards the deficit. There are two ways to deal with a big budget deficit: one is by cutting back expenditure (austerity) and the other is growth [...]
Standing up for Ireland
Mar 15th, 2012 by Gerry Adams.If you want to know who is taking the real decisions about the economy of the Irish state then you need look no further than EU Commissioner Olli Rehn. Since Fianna Fáil crashed the economy and Fine Gael and Labour won last years election they have repeatedly asserted that there can be no deviation from [...]
Iceland puts on trial those responsible for the crash. Why doesn’t Britain?
Mar 12th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Iceland had a spectacular economic collapse in October 2008 which bankrupted the country. This followed two decades in which right-wing governments engaged in an orgy of financial deregulation, launching a bonanza for its bankers with plentiful credit for its citizens, weak financial oversight and an unspoken rule not to ask too many questions but keep [...]
