A good article here from Jonathan Portes at The New Statesman about the effect of the UK government’s austerity programme on economic growth, which supports my contention that George Osborne is either an idiot or a liar.
They just don’t get it, these “experts”. Here’s Adair Turner (former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, former Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority, member of the Financial Policy Committee, part-time lecturer at the London School of Economics) explaining very clearly why debt is the main problem with the UK economy and then completely…
Blame Ignorance, Arrogance And Indolence, Not Immigrants
This article by Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph is disturbing on two counts. His erroneous argument is a distraction from what’s really wrong with our economy, and it has stirred up a foul nest of malcontents (see the comments below the article) who appear to blame immigrants for everything that’s wrong with our society. Jeremy…
Good article from Tom Streithorst in which he argues that the problem we now have is a lack of consumption due to a lack of money. He suggests this is because our industry has become very good at producing stuff with very little labour, which means money isn’t being distributed widely enough to allow people…
Savers Should Stop Bleating And Start Investing
I feel sorry for people who have money tied up in poorly-performing financial products from which they can’t escape, but I have no patience with the likes of this lot – saveoursavers.co.uk – who seem to think that they have a God-given right to an income from money that’s lying idle in a bank account.…
US Debt Ceiling: Hatred Of Government And Love Of Money
This article on the BBC News website tells us that the US Treasury expects to reach the “debt ceiling” sometime in October. The debt ceiling is an arbitrary amount of federal government borrowing that Congress has decided cannot be exceeded. It’s a bit like an overdraft limit for the nation. The limit has been imposed…
Where Did All The Money Go? Pundits Missing The Point (Again).
Rory Bremner’s One Question Quiz on Radio 4 this evening asked Where Did All The Money Go? Most of it was predictable comedy that skimmed the surface of our financial dysfunction, but they did tell us loud and clear that banks create most of our money when issuing loans, which was unexpectedly accurate. More disappointing…
I Love Zero Hours Contracts
I have been self-employed for the best part of 30 years. If I’m not doing something that a client has agreed to be invoiced for, then I don’t get paid. That’s a whole working life on zero hours contracts, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can pick and choose who I work…
Benefits Rage: Getting Things Into Proportion
The UK government has been very successful at promoting the idea that our system of welfare benefits is at the mercy of legions of scroungers who are cheating the taxpayer out of vast sums of money and thereby contributing significantly to the annual deficit. The resulting “benefits rage” provides a very effective smokescreen, helping to…
The Gold Fetish: Why Shiny Metal Is No Better Than Any Other Money
There’s a great deal of confusion about the nature of money: what it actually is and how it works. I often hear people wax lyrical about the days of the gold standard, when the value of currency was tied to an agreed value of gold, in the belief that gold somehow keeps money honest. They…
Views From The Boatshed 