Just about everything about this so-called UK economic recovery is wrong. It’s not just today’s report from the Resolution Foundation that the lop-sidedness of the labour market is becoming entrenched, with bonuses to the City financial and insurance sector rising to £14bn this year while the pay of those in the bottom fifth, mainly women […]
Posts Tagged ‘Recession’
Can Britain’s recovery be sustained?
Aug 26th, 2013 by Ann Pettifor.All around there are signs of recovery. One can almost hear the sound of champagne bottles popping and fireworks crackling in the Westminster village. Indicators are improving. Commentators are reassessing the chancellor, whose reputation for economic management had plunged, causing his stock to fall amongst his Conservative colleagues. Now they can’t resist giving him a positive ‘thumbs […]
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Who is to blame for the crisis? Not unions, immigrants or ‘scroungers’
Jul 16th, 2013 by Michael Burke.A crisis is an objective fact to which there can essentially be only two responses. The cause can be identified and addressed, or some other explanation can be advanced which effectively shifts the blame for the crisis elsewhere. The government and the supporters of austerity are increasingly bent on the second course. A succession of […]
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Is there going to be another crisis? Of course there is
Jul 15th, 2013 by Ann Pettifor.“You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets.” (From The […]
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How Osborne’s ‘recovery’ evaporated in a puff of smoke within 24 hours
Jun 24th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Twenty-four hours is a long time in politics, let alone a week. Dressed in his best City garb Osborne informed the assembled banking grandees in the Mansion House last Wednesday that: “We are moving from rescue to recovery. Britain has left intensive care”. Really? On Thursday words from Ben Bernanke, head of the US Federal […]
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The Deepening European Crisis
May 22nd, 2013 by Michael Burke.The economies of the European Union and the Euro Area both contracted in the 1st quarter of 2013. The renewed contraction in GDP began in mid-2011 and has now run for 18 months on both cases. But, as Chart 1 (above) shows, the recovery from the depths of the recession in both cases was short-lived […]
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Britain’s output per (available) worker is back to 2003 levels
Feb 23rd, 2013 by Jeremy Smith.This week, we have learnt from the Office for National Statistics that 2.5 million were still unemployed in the last quarter of 2012. The UK economy is failing to use the skills and resources of our people to best effect in the common interest. This is to a large extent because the government’s economic policies […]
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Britain needs a pay rise to kickstart growth
Feb 13th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.On the day when Ed Miliband put the prime minister under severe pressure about declining living standards, newly published figures show that, since the onset of recession in 2008, the real value of wages has fallen by 7%, or more than £50 billion a year. In the same period there’s been a real drop in consumer […]
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Does anybody know where the long-term growth is to come from?
Oct 28th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.If the 1% growth in the third quarter is a blip (caused by a once-in-a-lifetime Olympics surge plus a catch-up on deferred production from the previous quarter), where is genuinely sustainable growth going to come from? This is a much more worrying question than whether the double-dip has really ended. The usual sustainable growth drivers […]
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‘The worst of recession is over’? That will come back to haunt Cameron
Oct 27th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Where did we hear it before? ‘I detect the green shoots of growth’ (Norman Lamont as the economy plunged again) and ‘We’ve ended boom and bust’ (Gordon Brown just before the biggest financial crash for a century). Equally Cameron’s ‘worst of the recession is over’ is a foolish hostage to fortune which he will come […]
