It is almost incredible that faced with the very real likelihood of a slide into world slump, as Obama is now warning, Merkel continues to parrot the reactionary monetarist mantra that “there can be no growth through borrowing”. There can certainly be no growth through prolonged austerity, though she didn’t admit that.
Posts Tagged ‘Growth’
Three speeds In Europe, all slower
May 17th, 2012 by Michael Burke.The latest publication of the GDP data for the EU shows three distinct trends but one unifying theme – slower growth. In an important but dwindling group are those economies which are still expanding, led by Germany where GDP grew by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2012. In a larger group are those countries […]
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As Hollande meets Merkel, when will Left in UK take on monetarists?
May 14th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.It is almost incredible that after failure upon failure the monetarists have still not yet been run out of town. Even after the decisive anti-austerity presidential election in France a week ago, the ejection of all austerity-accommodating parties in Greece, and now the drubbing of the German Conservatives in North-Rhine Westphalia, it seems the best […]
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Politics in wonderland: not too many enthralled
May 9th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.You couldn’t invent it. There’s really only one issue in Britain today that ultimately matters: how to get growth. All the political parties recognise that, indeed proclaim it, but none of them put forward the policies that will actually deliver it. The Queen’s Speech is an irrelevance, with a whopping big black hole in the […]
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UK stagnation is home grown & down to government
Oct 11th, 2011 by Michael Burke.George Osborne and other Tories as well as their supporters in the media are now promoting the idea that the stagnation of the British economy is a function of the turmoil in the Eurozone economy and financial markets. The main channel for economic weakness in the Eurozone to be expressed in British economic activity is […]
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Osborne in Wonderland
Oct 4th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Contrary to Osborne’s claims, the central economic problem in Britain today is not indebtedness, it is lack of demand. If Osborne’s speech yesterday was the clothing by which he presents his future policy over the next year, it would scarcely cover his nakedness. There is nothing there that deals remotely adequately with the only issue […]
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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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Anyone seen any growth?
Jun 29th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Fortunately U-turns are a favourite ploy of Cameronian government, courtesy of the NHS reforms, criminal justice discounts, forest sell-offs, housing benefit cuts, Libyan interventionism, and maybe soon public sector pensions. That’s lucky because one is soon going to be needed over Osborne’s decrepit policy on growth – or rather non-growth. The economy having flat-lined over […]
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The Budget: a vehicle for growth with the engine missing
Mar 24th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.As is usually the case, this was a very political Budget. It will change the economic future of this country hardly at all. The purpose of this Budget was camouflage to distract attention from the Great Axe that is about to fall within the next two weeks and to give the impression that Britain has […]
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Falling real wages, and still the bastards whinge about inflation
Feb 18th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Mervyn King recently pointed out that real UK wages in 2011 “are likely to be no higher than they were in 2005… One has to go back to the 1920s to find a time when real wages fell over a period of six years.” This, of course underestimates the drastic fall in living standards, since […]
