The amount of American money that has migrated to China is staggering. It should be remembered that with that capital outflow, US jobs outflow has been of a similar nature. It is convenient for Trump to blame China for the totally false charge of currency manipulation. After all - They aren't the white Anglo-Saxons who REALLY did the damage to the US.
The vast majority lol? I find it hard to believe there are still deluded liberals crying about the results. Liberal denial and refusal to pull together and unify is damaging America far more than Trump ever could. Bravo, Spud.Originally Posted by Spud1
I've never understood why the word liberal is used as an insult in North America. It doesn't have that connotation in Europe.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (25-09-2018)
Lmao - the silly word liberal. So liberal by what standards??
Societal or political??
What by the standards of many countries in the world the US is a "liberal" country whether the Republicans and Democrats are in power,since last time I check most people who vote for them probably do have sex before marriage,drink alcohol,allows women and men to frantanise freely,allows porn(of which the US is the biggest producer),does not have a massive social taboo on single parent families,does not have a taboo on divorce,etc. Yes,VERY liberal.
However,this is Europe. Both your main political parties are considered right wing by European standards and not considered "liberal" parties by European standards.
PS:
This is the UK so. For the most part the conservatives and labour are considered right of centre and left of centre parties,but the last Labour government were not really "left wing" by our standards anyway.
If you really want to go "liberal" by our standards many countries in Western Europe have been considered far more liberal in their attitudes for many years.
In fact when you look at postwar governments,right of centre governments are more common than left ones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...sh_governments
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 25-09-2018 at 11:33 PM.
Liberal in the US is used to align with Socialist, rather than the classical liberal definition most Europeans understand.
You are quite correct that both parties in the US are very Liberal, by classical definitions. 'Liberal' is used largely as a supposed insult by the right toward the left, usually by the ignorant, and usually because of issues thats are really very anti-liberal. For example, economic liberalism is more usually called 'fiscally conservative'. A position most people toward the right of the political spectrum embrace wholeheartedly.
As always, the fringes scream the loudest, but fortunately they also achieve the least.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (25-09-2018)
I find the use of the insult weird - on one hand the US is a very liberal country by many standards,ie,you have a ton of freedoms. OTH,both their main political parties are considered more right wing at least by the standards of this country and the UK is hardly a bastion of mass leftiness,as it rarely translates into votes(even if did it is more down to the conservatives usually effing up more than anything).
I mean I find it utterly weird the democrats are considered socialists,when they really are as much socialists as the republicans,especially when in the past the parties have had stances which people forget,such as the republicans starting as a coalition of anti-slavery parties.
Its really interesting following the etimology of these parties over time,how they have shifted in views relative to each other.The Republican Party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs and Free Soil Democrats opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, submitted to Congress by Stephen Douglas in January 1854.
I mean lets not forget the first state to have social welfare in the modern era was Germany under Otto Von Bismarch who was a "conservative" and the term "social welfare" was actually coined by his "liberal" opponents,and was done to stop more socialist parties like the SPD from gaining votes from the working classes.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 25-09-2018 at 11:34 PM.
And don't forget everyone's favourite Fascists, the National Socialists....
Views shift, and the voting base for the parties shift also. The Southern US used to be the Democratic base, while the North East was Republican. Many see the shift being the Democrat-opposed Civil Rights Act in the 1960's, but it goes back a lot further than that.
Currently we're seeing centrist politicians that are largely ignoring the fringes, who are shouting louder, but that's about it. Trump is a perfect example. While the Left fringe screams about how terrible he is, and the right fringe screams right back, few want to acknowledge that he was the most centrist candidate from either of the two parties.
But the issue is Trump is hardly centrist by our standards since the US really does not have a left. The closest they have to a left is Bernie Sanders if anyone amongst more mainstream politicians and he is more of a centrist by global standards,but looks like a radical by extension.
So all this name calling seems rather weird - on the one hand the US is liberal compared to many countries irrespective of government but on the other hand none of the major parties are hardly left leaning unless you look relatively.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 26-09-2018 at 01:27 AM.
I don't think Trump really fits into traditional political groupings, be it left, right or liberal. He's sonething else.
You could call him populist, or even anti-establishment, in a way.
It's not that he appeals to the left, or to the right. It's largely that he appesls to the disenchanted, disenfranchised and to those that wouldn't give a broken two-bit coin for the entire political class because they regard them as a useless bunch of cover-yer-rear political hacks up to their necks in lobbyists and too busy climbjng the greasy pole, then staying there, that they've forgotten they're actually supposed to be working for the people. And the people have had enough of them.
So Trump managed to bypass much of the normal political machine, going round it and over it's head, and over the bulk of the mainstream media too, to appeal directly to those feeling ignored by decades of the political elite.
I think those normal labels are irrelevant. Times have changed. And what's more, it's a growing trend in many, many countries.
aidanjt (28-09-2018)
Everything is relative. Remembering, of course, that the UK has a state church with it's own appointed representatives in government. That's an extremely right wing concept. Picking single issues is easy, but I generally agree with you. A real left idea, like Nationalisation of industries, is something that is acceptable to talk about in the UK, but abhorrent to the American Dream. Of course, I'm a Libertarian and member of a Union, so I don't really know anything.
The "state" church doesn't mean quite what you might think. And it doesn't have repreeentatives in government, merely in parliament. And in the upper house at that, which is a revising and reviewing body, not setting or changing policy. The roots of "state" church are historic, and in large part rooted in a king wantibg a divorce in the dags before Europeans discovered north america.
As for nationalisation, it's only in very recent times that that has come back on the discussion agenda, with by far the most left-wing official opposition we've had in, oh, a very long time.
It remains to be seen whether that discussion resonates enough to get Labour elected, or puts off enough people to ensure they don't.
Thing is, nationalising is NOT some kind of magic bullet to fix things with massive problems, like railways, ascanyone that remembers nationalised railways knows. Another great example would be British Leyland.
On the other hand, there are some industries that are critical national infrastructure, like water companies, where each consumer effectively can ONLY buy from one state-mandated monopoly.
As ever, the biggest problem with nationalisation (after you've worked out how to pay for it) is tgat major national infrastructure needs major capital investment, and wuth nationalised industries, that puts investment decisions in the hands of (<spit>) politicians, most of whom are in the job for a couple of years and don't have to account for the effect of their bad decisions, or lack of investment. All we get is a never-ending series of short-termist political climbers, and no long-term accountability.
After all, that's why nationalised rail was such a disaster - several decades of politically motivated under-investment. And some other countries have shown us that either privately or state-run rail can work well .... just not the way we've done either for about 100 years. And that is bith ironic and hugely annoying for the country that pretty much invented railways.
aidanjt (28-09-2018)
I think you're a bit mixed up here. You are probably referring to Henry v111 who had a falling out with the Vatican over his 'divorces', thus creating the Anglican Church, who is represented by it's head, (Currently Queen Elizabeth). (Long after America was being colonised) And if you think the head of State (for that is who she is) has no influence over parliament - I have a bridge to sell you.
As for nationalisation - Well apparently it's OK for foreign governments to own our national infrastructure such as railways, water, power, and some of our defence capabilities, where the British taxpayer actually have to pay them exorbitant amounts, much, much, more than when they were under national control, to keep our strategic assets running. Just as long as they're not British owned. Oh, and by the way...the nationalised British Rail was one of the most efficiently run railways per capita in the world. Just as the NHS was the envy of the world for the efficiency of its operation before the current Govt started selling it off piecemeal.
I think if you you think the Queen has much influence over government, J've got a bridge to sell you. But it all depends on what is meant my "influence".
As for nationalisation, no, I certainly don't think foreign ownership of critical infrastructure, like rail but especially water or even more, power generation, is okay. Not only is it not okay (as far as I'm concerned) it's an utter bleeping disgrace. I'm pretty sure I've already said that.
But that doesn't mean the only alternative is nationalisation, and we have plenty of exsmples of how nationalised industries were a huge disaster, not least because of political interference.
It is possible to develop an effective model for nationalised industries which are kept at arm's length from politicians and their tinkering, whether the tinkers are red or blue, but I see no hint of that in the Corbyn/McDonnel plans, whose rationale and motivation seem to me to be not only ideological, but atavistic as well, which is even worse
I want such industries run well, competently, effectively and efficiently, and in the ownership and best interests of UK citizens, not foreigners of foreign states. But simply nstionalising them is neither sufficient, nor indeed necessary, for that.
As for British Rail being do good, oh, that gave me a laugh. As someone that suffered a bone-clanking old diesel, with no heat and no food, on a Edinburgh to London run, and a month later travelled halfway round Europe, including Germany, France, Spain and Italy, I find the asertion hilarious. British Rail, despite valiant efforts of a generally superb staff, was about one step above Russian and Eastetn European, and Romanian, rail and maybe two steps above the Indian railways (of the time).
As for selling off the NHS, oh dear. And NHS fundingvgas gone up over the last 8 years, just not by as much as it did previously. This is because and you might have noticed it, there was a workd-wide (or at least, western-world-wide) financial crisis eith the resulting economic turmoil, panic and uncertainty. The resulting measures, interest rate reductions and "printing money" added to that uncertainty and further economic pressures and were done not by tjis government, but by Darling and Labour.
Despite being very bad news they have the spectacular saving grace of bring much better thsn having not done them and seeing the whole system collapse.
And that set us up for, whoever was in power, a long period (which we're still in) of economic retrenchment. At that point, with a large debt and much worse, huge deficit, there are only three options :-
- substantial austerity to get that deficit down, or
- huge increases in taxes and borrowing, all of which has to be paid back AND increases an already dire deficit, or
- carry on, build both deficit and debt, all of which leaves us funding current services via debt, which effectively transfers the "paying for it" part onto our kids. Such national debts are, after all, merely deferred taxation with our kids not only getting stuck with the bill for our services, but interest on the loans too.
Personally, I'm all for an NHS, publicly-owned, free at the point of delivery. But .... it either has to live within it's means, or EVERYBODY has to face up to paying more taxes to fund it because using debt to do it, or deficit which is merely future debt, is disgraceful.
Sadly, the usual socialist dream of getting the rich to pay for it is a dream. It won't work, andcfor two reasons. First, there aren't enough of them compared to overall population, and secondly, bleed them too hard and they leave. We know that it's been tried before.
aidanjt (28-09-2018)
That's not how government debt works when you're a sovereign fiat currency issuer.
It's also, depending on the effect you want to have on the economy and society, probably I'll advised not to be running a deficit as if you don't you're effectively removing 'money' from the system (the value goes up as there's less around but you also stifle growth). It's worth noting however that you can go to far in the opposite direction and issue more new 'money' than the economy can effectively use and end up with hype inflation, it's a fine balancing act.In a monetarily sovereign country (such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia and most other countries, in contrast with eurozone countries), government debt held in the home currency are merely savings accounts held at her central bank. In this way this "debt" has a very different meaning than that of the debt acquired by households who are restricted by their income. Monetarily sovereign governments issue their own currencies and do not need this income to finance spending. In these self-financing nations, government debt is effectively an account of all the money that has been spent but not yet taxed back. Their ability to issue currency means they can always service the interest repayments on these savings accounts. This is why bonds and gilt-edged securities are considered the safest form of investment.
Debt is debt, when it's raised, as most government debt is, by issuing gilts. Sooner or later, and that depends on the term, that gilt is presented for redemption and government has to come up with real money to buy it. In the meantime, of course, they're paying x% per annum on the gilt, and there is, of course, a healthy trade in buying and selling gilts, discounted on the basis of interest rate and remaining term. But ultimately, that gilt gets presented and real money gets paid to redeem it.
Of course, governments have options about where to get that money. They can issue another gilt ..... assuming there are buyers. Ask Greece about that method. And if you do, you perpetuate the debt for another two, five, ten whatever years and extend, yet again, the cost of that borrowing, tgat being the whatever earnings the ond holder is getting. At the time of the first post-crash general election, the cost of financing that government borrowing was something like £40bn billion) a year, which IIRC,, was about the third largest category of government spending, after welfare and the NHS. I haven't looked recently, but ISTR it was up at more like £60bn, because 8 years of large deficits have massively increased the debt.
The cold, hard truth is that whether £40bn or £60bn, it is tens of billions coming out of our national annyal earnings (tax revenue, etc) that are going to service that debt, much of it to foreign investers, instead of paying for or increasing spending on current services.
Or, of course, governments (that run and print their own currency) can simply print more, and use it to buy back those bonds. But there's a sting in the tail. Do that and one result is to undermine your own bond market. Why? Because you undermine your currency, and generate inflation, and neither the bond market nor bond buyers are stupid.
Thing is, we already have that massive bond debt, and even those £40-60bn payments are as low as even that massive cost because the markets more or less trust both the political stability and economic fundamentals of the UK. That is a pretty fragile trust, and beggaring about with money-printing risks that trust. Do that, and you could find the gilt rate up from 2.5-3.0% to 5%, 7%, even 10% by whuch time you're heading for junk status and finding it hard to refinance at all because buyers don't trust the economy.
As that gilt buyback process is ongoing, several times a year as old issues come round for redemption, any increase in the bond rate puts up your financing cost, and given the exact same current level of debt, we could easily find that £60bn at £100bn, £120bn, or worse.
And the effect of that is to hit massively on our ability to finance even existing levels of services. If you cannot borrow on open markets, you either end up with IMF (or with Greece, IMF and EU) loans with massive strings attached, or you have to have to drastically cut services .... like health care, pensions, wrlfare payments, etc. and I mention those because, being by far the largest categories of spending, they cannot be avoided.
So while, sure, gocernments aren't households and the mechanics are different, and no analogy is direct, there are very distinct parallels and my earlier comnents hold - bortowing is deferred taxation and like any loan, there is both a requirement to psy if back, and a current account cost go holding it.
Unlike most domestic loans, government costs of financing are effectively just the interest cost, and the capital gets passed on every singke time government uses a current bond issue to raise funds to redeem an old one that has come due.
Hence, passing the cost to our kids, or grandkids, via deferred taxation IF we use borrowing to fund current services.
That, of course, is an entirely different kettle of fish to using borrowing to fund investment ... though successive governments, and one Mr G Brown in particular, seemed to regard every penny spent, from the 11 Downing Street coffee fund upwards, as "investment", not spending.
aidanjt (28-09-2018)
That's a lot of points raised there, I'll try to cover some of them but i tend to get a bit frazzled towards the end of the day.
Unfortunately it's not, debt to someone like you or I is indeed money that we owe, government debt to a sovereign fiat currency issuer is nothing like that though, a sovereign fiat currency issuer can't owe itself money.
Gilts and Bonds are just a way to either increase or decrease the supply of money in the system until a fixed date in the future, hopefully when it's either again removed from the system or taxed out of the system via economic activity, Gilts and Bonds are nothing more than a means to control the supply and demand for money, as was seen when the BoE created £60+ billion from thin air in 08 when they tapped a few keys on a keyboard and 'bought' up a load of bonds, effectively they brought forward an increase in the future supply.
Sovereign fiat currency issuer don't get money (at least not in the way you seem to be implying), they either create it or remove it, creation mainly happens via a few keystrokes and removal is mainly via taxes, it's nothing more than a typical supply and demand equation, to much supply and the value falls, to much demand and people can't do what they need or want to.
Greece was not a sovereign fiat currency issuer so is irrelevant, stupidly they cooked their books and then even more stupidly they joined the single currency and with it gave up their power to control their economy.
Yes the government services debt, in the form of various interest payments, but that's all part of the same creation of new money, whether it goes into economic activity like the NHS or private hands it's still the same creation of new money, in the hands of the NHS that economic activity is jobs, manufacturing, research, taxes and everything associated with it, in private hands it still does exactly the same thing, the person earning interest pays taxes, run businesses, make things, hire people, etc, etc.
How the money a sovereign fiat currency issuer issues is largely irrelevant as there's only two sides in the ledger, for every credit created in the private sector there's an exactly matching debit in the currency issuers ledger.
There's no such thing as tax revenue if your a currency issuers, put simply taxes don't pay for things, that's a hangover from fifty plus years ago when we followed the gold standard, if you want more proof of that you only have to look back to WWII, or any war for that matter, as we didn't ask Hitler (that's not Godwin as it's relevant) to wait while we raised the money via taxes we spent it, we spent it first and later either taxed it back or it was swallowed up from increased economic activity.
As i said bonds are just a way to increase or decrease the amount of money in the system (the system being the economy as a whole). What you hit on and is far more worrying than devaluing bonds is the inflation that comes from creating (printing) to much money, if the economy is running at near maximum and you keep printing money you end up with a Venezuela situation.
Incidentally, and apologies for bringing politics into it, but that's what i find most worrying about Labour's plans, with a lack of money in the system you risk recession, increasing inequality, and deflation, with to much money you risk hyper inflation.
As I've already said bonds are just a means to increase or decrease the money in the system, interest payments are just a different way of increasing supply, it would either be interest payment or something like infrastructure, NHS, or the military.
Trust in bonds is besides the point IMO as like i said they're just a way to take, say £10k, out of the system for 10 years in the hope that your economy has grown enough in those intervening years for that money to be put to use in the economy and eventually taxed out of existence.
Sorry if I've missed anything as it's home-time and from what i can gather most of what you've said seems to be roughly following the same premise, that government debt is bad because they owe it to someone, however that's not how things work when you're a fiat currency issuer, as a currency issuer you control both the supply and demand and as such you control the value that your currency has, it's in no way comparable to 'normal' peoples finances, in fact the two couldn't any more different if we tried.
Last edited by Corky34; 28-09-2018 at 05:24 PM.
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