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 and part-time or zero hours contract workers, are stuck in a rut or even falling. The whole shape of the ‘recovery’ is misguided. Continue reading
Tagged with Debt crisis
Who is to blame for the crisis? Not unions, immigrants or ‘scroungers’
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 scapegoats have been offered for the crisis, including perniciously both immigrants and ‘scroungers’, and now unions. However, as these cannot begin to provide an economic explanation for the crisis, the supporters of austerity also persistently claim that the cause of the current crisis is weak exports, effectively blaming foreigners for the British crisis. Continue reading
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Is there going to be another crisis? Of course there is
“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 emperor has no clothes by David Lizoain)
Is there going to be another crisis? Of course there is. The liberalised global financial system remains intact and unregulated, if a little battered. “The crisis has proved itself as a way to solidify the existing economic order” – as Professor Joseph Vogl noted. Continue reading
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The ‘socialism’ of Vince Cable: what’s changed?
Such is the magnitude of the event that the definitive account of the financial collapse of September 2008 and its consequences has surely yet to be written.
I do not mean by stating that to deride numerous worthwhile attempts at a first draft of history. Journalistic efforts such as Paul Mason’s Meltdown, Elliott and Atkinson’s The Gods That Failed and Gillian Tett’s Fool’s Gold all do a reasonable job in explaining approximately what went wrong.
There are even works by economists, such as Crisis Economics by Roubini and Mihm and Keynes: the Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky that are accessible for those without a background in the dismal science. Continue reading
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Don’t (cry for me) pay up now, Argentina
“I had to let it happen
I had to change
Couldn’t stay all my life down at heel
Looking out of the window
Staying out of the sun
So I chose freedom” (lyrics – Tim Rice)
Few of our readers (we suspect) will have heard of NML Capital Ltd – a company which today is at the centre of an extraordinary and damaging New York court judgment relating to the sovereign debts of Argentina. NML Capital was founded by Republican-funder Paul Singer, of the US$19bn hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation. Here is how Fortune magazine describe Mr Singer: Continue reading
