The Conservatives were supposed to cut the deficit, not incomes. But hats off to Dave and his toffee-nosed rabble, he has slashed on average £1,350 from household income. In the West Midlands it’s £1,550/year, or just shy of 30 quid every week. An achievement only equalled by Dave’s presiding over 35 consecutive months of falling […]
Posts Tagged ‘Debt’
Demand, debt mountains and the next crash
Jun 17th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The problem – a very big problem indeed – for capitalism at its present stage is that demand is flat, or falling. That underlying pattern has existed for the past 40 years, since the demand for continent-wide reconstruction after the Second World War gradually petered out in the 1970s. Thereafter the flatness of demand was […]
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The Troika’s ‘Men in Black’ and the crime of organised money
May 28th, 2013 by Tom Gill.Continuing to force states to finance themselves at high-interest rates is just a strategy to justify wage control, the privatisation of public services and, ultimately, to enslave peoples, says Juan Torres Lopez, Professor of Economics at the University of Seville. Spain has once again received a visit from the so-called Men in Black, the Troika inspectors, coming […]
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Why is Labour so reticent about spelling out the true position on debt?
May 20th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.debtIf there’s one thing that haunts Labour, however much the Tories are determined to commit hara kiri, it is the accusation that ‘Labour was responsible for all this mess in the first place’ by gross over-spending. Since this is not true, why doesn’t Labour refute it at every opportunity? Just before the crash in 2007-8, […]
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The theory on which austerity is built is now shown to be false
Apr 24th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Two years ago the Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published their best-selling book This Time is Different which purported to show that one natioanl debt exceeds 90% of GDP, economic debt declines rapidly. It was seized on by Right-wing governments, media and academic pundits generally to justify a policy of extreme cutbacks in […]
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Thatcher’s legacy on debt: cut spending, destroy earning capacity
Apr 20th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Mrs. Thatcher was once asked: What is Thatcherism? She replied “living within our means”. So what is her legacy in this regard? In the two decades from the mid 1980s private household debt rose to the level of total national income (£1.5 trillion), financial debt following her deregulation of the banks rose to 5 times […]
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The best graphs are the ones Osborne doesn’t publish
Apr 30th, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.Last year on the 13 December 2011 Newsnight asked a group of economists to identify the most important chart of the year. I chose this one, which had appeared in the first paragraph of the British government’s Budget Report of 23 March 2011. It shows, as you can see, the extraordinary high levels of UK private debt – but […]
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Consumer credit market winners: payday lenders
Mar 1st, 2012 by Carl Packman.The Bank of England recently published the trends for lending for January 2012. They show that: The major UK lenders are Banco Santander, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide and Royal Bank of Scotland and together they accounted for around … 45% of the stock of consumer credit.
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Ed Balls’ plan won’t work without a real jobs & growth strategy
Oct 3rd, 2011 by Michael Meacher.After unveiling his 5 point recovery plan in Liverpool, Ed Balls concluded with a flourish: “I don’t care what they call it, Britain just needs a plan that works”. I agree. Assuming the aim is to turnaround the slide into stagnation by generating sustainable growth which will steadily reduce unemployment, it is worth asking how […]
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The spectre of bad debt
Oct 3rd, 2011 by Carl Packman.Unsurprisingly, much discussion has been had during Labour conference on the budget deficit and how the country can promote growth and create jobs while simultaneously trying to level national debt in a realistic period of time. Of comparable importance to the level of national debt are levels of personal debt, which have seen a sharp […]
