The world economy is not strong and the President of the United States is sufficiently concerned about new shocks to it that he recently met the Greek Finance Minister to urge ‘flexibility on all sides’ in the negotiations between the Syriza-led government and its creditors. US concern is fully justified. In any attempt to reach agreement it […]
The Tory “Right to Buy” plan will deepen the housing crisis
Apr 14th, 2015 by Michael Burke.The Tory manifesto election pledge to make housing associations sell their homes at a discount and force local authorities to sell off some of their best stock has been widely condemned by the associations themselves and by housing experts. The government has set aside £1 billion to fund the discount available to the new ‘right-to-buy’ […]
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Vote Tory and you’ll never have it so good again
Apr 4th, 2015 by Michael Burke.There is an old joke, not a very good one, that the definition of a consultant is someone who you pay to tell the time who then asks to borrow your watch. Osbornomics, the specific variant of austerity economics that operates in Britain is similar. The British economic ‘recovery’ is the centrepiece of the Tory […]
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Austerity and economic failure to continue
Mar 20th, 2015 by Michael Burke.The Tory election campaign is based on the claimed success of the government’s economic policy, as the hype around the latest budget confirms. In reality the Tories’ economic record has been unprecedentedly poor. Their economic policy is not primarily aimed at increasing growth or prosperity but rather at effecting a fundamental change in the economy […]
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Austerity didn’t even cut the deficit
Mar 10th, 2015 by Michael Burke.The Coalition parties are set to feature deficit reduction as a central achievement of their time in office as part of the election campaign. The economic crisis is driven by the excessive saving of the private sector – its refusal to invest. As the government’s deficit is a response to this private sector saving, cutting […]
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The money exists for investment in Greece
Feb 28th, 2015 by Michael Burke.The fraught negotiations between the new Greek government and representatives of the EU institutions are likely to be prolonged. They have centred to date on Syriza’s efforts to find room to alleviate some of the worst effects of austerity and address what is called the ‘humanitarian crisis’. This is entirely justifiable given the depth of […]
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How the austerity con works
Feb 24th, 2015 by Michael Burke.‘The Austerity Con’ is the title of a recent article in the London Review of Books. It is written by a leading Keynesian economist Professor Simon-Wren Lewis, who is also a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. It deserves to be widely read because it contains two important arguments against austerity. The first argument nails the […]
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Fake US & British recoveries are damaging the global economy
Feb 16th, 2015 by Michael Burke.Official economic opinion from the IMF is that the US and the British are the only industrialised economies that are growing strongly and that their growth model should be reproduced generally. The reality is very different. Both recoveries are the weakest on record and are fuelled by an unsustainable (debt-fuelled) rise in consumption. The international effects […]
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Tsipras versus Cameron: people versus bankers
Feb 3rd, 2015 by Michael Burke.David Cameron became the first elected politician in Europe to criticise the election of the Syriza government in Greece and was quickly followed by George Osborne. This might seem odd as Britain is outside the Eurozone and has limited direct influence over its policies. But the urgent and unrestrained nature of the criticism is very revealing about what is at […]
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Tory own goal on debt and the deficit pledges
Jan 23rd, 2015 by Michael Burke.The Tory Party has decided to make public finances a key battleground for the election. Key supporters of austerity such as the FT’s economics editor Chris Giles have echoed that, arguing that the “defining battle of the 2015 general election [is] over borrowing and public spending“. It is only possible to stake out political ground on […]
