Starry eyed MP opens his mouth....

[kalniel]

Actually your questions suggests you didn't understand the scale of the banking crisis. All banking crisis takes a long time to resolve themselves. Look at Japan with their banking crisis in 1997. I'm afraid sorting out a banking crisis doesn't happen overnight. Austerity will continue well into the next government.

That was my point

[Top_gun]

Conservative are mopping up by tightening the strings, and that's needed as well. By hook or by crook, we've come out (albeit perilously), quicker than just about any other country that was also affected.

Actually, it was the tightening the strings which were counterproductive to sorting out the nation's finance. Paul Krugman, one of the world's leading economist, was saying this during the term of this Tory government. The Tory policies hasn't worked at all apart from making the poorest of our society to suffer more.

[TheAnimus]

That was my point

The phrase playing chess with a pigeon springs to mind.

Not saying Wikipedia is a perfect source of truth, but when someone tells you that it's wrong, that apparently your (somewhat better than average) career is apparently an aberration of merit, you start to realise they are a somewhat wilfully ignorant. I also don't believe he has much of Krugman's work, I wouldn't expect him to agree with someone who wants the abolition of minimum/living wages, having sweat shops etc. Much of which I agree with from an academic perspective!

[cookie365]

I have just read a VERY interesting book called "Fingerprints of the Gods." It explores the ancient civilizations of Egypt & South America, the buildings they left behind and the various myths concerning global events and things like that. What it concludes is that there was a very advanced and knowledgeable population in seriously remote history (looking at around 10-11,000 BC here), that understood spherical geometry as relates to the Earth, understood how the planet moved through space (precession and all that) and set all this down through the medium of what we would consider religious myths. Essentially, the church is an ancient science cult. Not just Christianity either - there are something like 200 odd versions of the Noah myth for example, from all corners of the world, which could have only been conjured up independently of each other, which seem to indicate a period of extremely high sea levels and serious seismic activity which ties in with the end of the last ice age.... Astrology was just one of the tools the ancients left to allow future civilizations to work out precession & things of that ilk.

Quite aware that I'm waffling now, but it's a very good book, I'd recommend it gets read

Yes, if you're interested in the pseudo-scientific claims of a convicted fraudster, based on fabricated evidence, aimed squarely at gullible racists who can't imagine how people who weren't white could possibly develop a culture that didn't involve living in caves and banging rocks together

[wasabi]

Yes, if you're interested in the pseudo-scientific claims of a convicted fraudster, based on fabricated evidence, aimed squarely at gullible racists who can't imagine how people who weren't white could possibly develop a culture that didn't involve living in caves and banging rocks together

A bit like Scientology then. but more credible?

(to be fair - I actually prefer the pseudoscience religions. Mostly because they're funny. But there is a tiny bit of skewed rationality in there. Unlike magic-omnipotent-man-in-sky-talks-to-guru, do-as-we-say-or-die, go-to-hell etc nonsense types)

[opel80uk]

The phrase playing chess with a pigeon springs to mind.

Not saying Wikipedia is a perfect source of truth, but when someone tells you that it's wrong, that apparently your (somewhat better than average) career is apparently an aberration of merit, you start to realise they are a somewhat wilfully ignorant. I also don't believe he has much of Krugman's work, I wouldn't expect him to agree with someone who wants the abolition of minimum/living wages, having sweat shops etc. Much of which I agree with from an academic perspective!

Are you suggesting that no one’s career is an ‘aberration of merit?’ And also, didn't Krugman also say that the financial crash had very little to do with Brown and Labour, and that Brown’s response to the crash was the best of all international leaders? (in fairness, I could be wrong about that, but I think it was Krugman)

[TheAnimus]

Are you suggesting that no one’s career is an ‘aberration of merit?’ And also, didn't Krugman also say that the financial crash had very little to do with Brown and Labour, and that Brown’s response to the crash was the best of all international leaders? (in fairness, I could be wrong about that, but I think it was Krugman)

More that for a day job I've made systems that crunch very boring economic (micro and macro) indicators, stock movements, derivs market and gives potential risk exposures, and attempts to identify arbitrage / global macro across financial products. I've got a CFA too. So when someone says something that is so simply wrong, something that lacks any ambiguity around the textbook definition (I must have about £5k of text books on this fun, fun subject), then simply state I have to disagree with your lack of economics knowledge. it's rather pointless engaging in debate.

As for Krugman, yup absolutely, he was a real fan of Gordon Brown, which is what makes him notable, as few economists are, or would want to show partisan allegiance. He also is sometimes tarred as an advocate of exploitation, his views on sweat shops and the like, he considers regulation around minimum wages to be a bad idea too. Some as a result (I feel unfairly, and emotively) label him and his ilk as some kind of exploitation thirsty soul-less monsters. His economic views whilst favouring kensyain stimulus, I do not think are not directly applicable to the full situation for us, he doesn't appear to consider debt default to be likely, he fails to explain how by having a simple change of government, the owners of our government debt, were demanding less interest. (after the ConLib came to power, our borrow rates dropped moderately significantly, there was a feeling that we would be 'safer' the reason I mention is he seldom appears to consider market sentiment when it comes to state debt, I appreciate this might sound a little bit like salt/fresh water arugments, but myself I think this is a very valid criticisim of him).

But mostly, you can never justify something by saying "oh this great economist think's its a good idea", the old Churchil quote sprints to mind, if you have two economists in a room, you will have two completely differing opinions, three, if one of them is Keyns. Often they are debating about models that may work in the very small, but not at all in the global word, a good easy to read example of this with Krugman is this beeb writeup here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25035267 it is based around US politics.

The other thing, with these rockstar economists, they are also, rather politician like.

One of my recent hobbies is putting interesting news articles and the like into outlook, setting a reminder for 1, 2 or 5 years. Really interesting to read how people predict things, and how reality turns out. For instance, this article here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/e...d-nations.html makes no mention of how immigration might be effecting things, nor does it relate growth to per capita, or consider something like GINI to see how distributed that growth is (how fair).

[Top_gun]

The so-called "bedroom tax" is absolurely right in principle. The problem is with the implementation.

This unfair "bedroom tax" demonstrates the lack of thought by the Tories on this piece of policy when there were no social housing to downsize to. The absolutely right in principle does suggest a knee jerk reaction without considering the consequences.

As for the recession, who was in power when it happened? Who had been running the economy for 10 years, when it happened?

This argument is completely bonkers that somehow Gordon Brown and the Labour party were responsible for the recession when the reality was that the banks were to blame.

The banking crisis affected other countries such as USA, Germany, France, Spain, etc. All these countries suffered recessions. Not exactly Gordon Brown's fault is it now?

Who had been spending money like it grew on trees?

The Tories mismanaged the economy during the nineties and spent a lot of money on unemployment benefits. As a result the national debt increased by a certain amount. This amount was similar to when the national debt increased under Labour when they rebuilt the schools and hospitals that decayed under the Tories. I think Labour had something to show for their money. Can't say the same for the Tories.

As I said before, the idea that the nation's finance is safer under a Tory government is utter tosh.

And, by the way, it yas not been the longest recession. Not by a very large margin. What is has been is one of the deepest, and the recovery has been very slow. The question is why?

I'm afraid it was the longest recession. I've previously shown a chart that proved it.

One major reason is that, traditionally, a major part of the way out of a recession is to export. After all, in a recession, the home country is hit hard, money is tight, consumer confidence clobbered, business investment down or stopped, and therefore growing your way out using domestic markets is hard. So you export. Trouble is, our major markets wrre hit hard, too. The US suffered badly, and the EU, especially the eurozone, still is. Significant parts of it are still in real trouble, and the eurozone as a whole is managing what, 0.2% growth?

It's very hard to export your way out of trouble when nobody's buying.

Nor is spend, spend, spend an answer. If we, as a country, do that, all that happens is that our debt gets worse and worse. The first result is that interest rates rise, and I mean the rates government pays to borrow. Look at Italy, Spain, etc, then look at UK rates. But private rates follow. Who, in current times, wants to see a huge increase in their mortgage payments?

Eventually the UK will have to replace all those ageing infrastructure such as the power stations, transport, airports, etc. If we don't then the economy will suffer. I'm afraid spending was the answer as you can recoup the money through tax receipts.

Instead, the silly billy Tories decided to cut too fast which means extending the recession, lowering tax receipts and paying more money to people on unemployment benefits.

We MUST keep every cost we can down as much as we can, and concentrate what dpending we do do in areas designed explicitly to boost national productivity. That might be infrastructure (though not politically motivated ego-trips like HS2), it might be apprenticeshops or re-training for older people, it might be start-up help for new businesses, and do on.

One of the best ways in keeping government costs down is coming up with sensible & thoughtful policies. I'm afraid this isn't one of Tories' strengths.

What it can't be is simply protecting the living standards of those than can afford to take a hit. And yes, a lot can't afford to take a hit, and need to be helped, but a lot can take a reduction .... but simply don't like to. Well, nobody does, but the simple fact remains this country has been living on debt, both government and consumer, for far too long, because successive governments have spent what we can't afford, AND encouraged consumers to do likewise (such as not letting the air out of the housing bubble), and done it for short-term political gain, not sound long-term economic benefit.

I'm fully aware of the country's debts particularly consumer debts as the government debt is manageable. The problem originated from Margaret Thatcher and her free market ideas. The banks were given lots of power and their profits were generated through lending especially on mortgages. At the same time rent controls were abolished and social housing was undermined.

One of the reasons why Germany has a competitive manufacturing sector is that their workers enjoy lower housing and living costs.

Maggie Thatcher has successfully created a very unbalanced economy which is top heavy in banking and makes us vulnerable to banking crisis. She undermined our manufacturing sector which means we're not able to earn our money through the export market. The success of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies depended on debt particularly consumer debts. So it's completely ironic when Saracen discusses consumer debts without understanding its causes.

Is the so-called 'austerity' popular? If course not. Only stupid turkeys enjoy the approach of Christmas. But the nations finsnces are what they are, and the very worst thing you can do with big debt is ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. The pain of sorting out your debt is a lot better than having bailiff's at the nation's door.

I'm afraid all you telling me is the Tory one dimensional approach to debts by cutting only demonstrates a lack of thought in debt control. The best way to cut debt is to earn more money. The debt doesn't actually go down if the money isn't coming in. This is precisely what happened under this government.