Robert Chote, the OBR chair, is normally a serious and measured man, but to say, as he did, that the UK would suffer ‘irreparable damage’ from a Greek default or that the UK ‘may never recover’ is grossly overdoing it – more reminiscent of the saloon bar than the forum of the Government’s leading economic advisers. […]
Posts Tagged ‘Debt crisis’
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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Where Europe is going, Britain will follow
Apr 25th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.The 1st round Socialist victory in the French presidential elections on Sunday, the collapse of the Right-wing Dutch government on Monday, the probable demise soon of the Right-wing Czech government , and the likely election on 6 May of an anti-Merkel government in Greece point conclusively in one direction. Across Europe the democratic backlash against […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Another credit crunch looms
Mar 9th, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.The finance sector is signalling alarm, and our politicians are once again asleep at the wheel. Another “credit crunch” may be looming. The most significant evidence emerged from the ECB’s second Long Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) on Thursday last week. The LTRO is simply language intended to disguise the “printing of money” by the ECB […]
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Austerity Isn’t Working – time to invest in growth and jobs
Feb 28th, 2012 by Lee Brown.Austerity isn’t working. The disastrous Tory economic experiment has left the economy stagnating, household incomes falling at their fastest rate in decades and unemployment soaring towards three million. Even by the criteria the government has set itself, that of reducing the deficit, it is failing. The Tories are set to borrow £158 billion more than […]
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The Ukrainian goose & Greek gander
Feb 21st, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.The following is about the Ukraine, hardly a model of transparency, accountability and democracy. But it is interesting for what it tell us about the thinking of the great imperial powers (GIPs). On the one hand today’s GIPs make a great to-do about the need for democracy, often insisting that it is a condition for […]
