Will Gordon Brown send UK economy over the edge?

matthewcb

The big problem as I see it, and Labour's most miserable legacy, is that they are now so universally despised that people just want to see the back of them. So the Tories don't have to offer much to sleepwalk into power.

Cameron is nothing more than Blair mk2 imo, but because Brown and his cronies are so awful, he's going to get in.

As I see it, we really aren't getting the choice we should. Two fairly central parties, aiming for the middle ground because that contains the voters who swing elections.

Cameron is as much a real Tory as Blair was, frankly.

So there you have it: the end result of 'new' Labour is a weak Tory leader who only has to avoid a massive scandal to obtain power.

leveller2911

kennyboy66 wrote: »

To be honest, I don't have much of a problem with taxes that try and change some behaviour.

Taxes that encourage a bit less flying, driving, drinking, smoking, eating fast food etc, are miles better than jacking up employers national insurance or corporation tax for example.

Taxes will be going up regardless.

True, but lets not forget Business rates, Nu labour have increased them for the next financial year...There will be a few less businesses to pay them come Christmas and the new year...

I just don't get what their thinking is there..Rochdale Pioneer have you got any ideas? or inside info?.........

vaporate

worldtraveller wrote: »

Going to? It's a done job IMHO!

I'm constantly reminded of the comment made back in February 2008 by Albert Edwards, global strategist for Soc. Gen., who, at that time, said that the U.K. was heading towards Banana Republic status with an “obscenely large” deficit and a “grotesquely huge household borrowing imbalance”. That was then!!

Interestingly, at that time the UK was assisting Liberia in poverty reduction by helping it clear the arrears on debt it owes. Our dear Chancellor, Alistair Darling, went on to boast about how great this was for Liberia, which he described as a "HIPC", a Heavily Indebted Poor Country. The 3 million inhabitants of Liberia had a government debt of $4.5 billion dollars, some £2.3 billion or £767 per head.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=26260045&postcount=1

:think:

lol Thanks, I needed some cheering up and that made me laugh a little. :money:

Rochdale_Pioneers

Wookster wrote: »

Yet more evidence of your financial incompetence/ incontinence.

That is bankrupt Labour boy!

Also known as insolvent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolvency

Your posts are just laughable for your total ignorance of matters financial/ economical.

That link you posted - did you read it? Paragraph 1: "Insolvency means the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due. Usually used in Business terms, insolvency refers to the inability for a company to pay off its debts."

What exactly does that have to do with the IMF crisis? Britain was trying to prop up the value of Sterling as it was battered following the 1973 oil crisis. The value was of significance to British interests abroad - the commonwealth held large volumes of sterling and would sell if the value fell further.

We pretty much exhausted our currency reserves propping it up giving us three options - let Sterling float free (as it had earlier in the 1970s) and devalue - risking higher inflation, impose import controls which threatened trade balances, or borrow from the IMF. Of the three, the loan was the best - but not the only - option.

At no stage were we to quote YOUR article facing "the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due"

You don't half talk out of your !!!!....

Wookster

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

That link you posted - did you read it? Paragraph 1: "Insolvency means the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due. Usually used in Business terms, insolvency refers to the inability for a company to pay off its debts."

What exactly does that have to do with the IMF crisis? Britain was trying to prop up the value of Sterling as it was battered following the 1973 oil crisis. The value was of significance to British interests abroad - the commonwealth held large volumes of sterling and would sell if the value fell further.

We pretty much exhausted our currency reserves propping it up giving us three options - let Sterling float free (as it had earlier in the 1970s) and devalue - risking higher inflation, impose import controls which threatened trade balances, or borrow from the IMF. Of the three, the loan was the best - but not the only - option.

At no stage were we to quote YOUR article facing "the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due"

You don't half talk out of your !!!!....

There you go talking our of your rectum again.

If you cannot borrow to pay your debts as they fall due then you are insolvent... also known as bankrupt.

All I can say is thank god you and your bunch of financially incontinent labour twits will be wandering the wilderness.

That's where you belong.

baileysbattlebus

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

That link you posted - did you read it? Paragraph 1: "Insolvency means the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due. Usually used in Business terms, insolvency refers to the inability for a company to pay off its debts."

What exactly does that have to do with the IMF crisis? Britain was trying to prop up the value of Sterling as it was battered following the 1973 oil crisis. The value was of significance to British interests abroad - the commonwealth held large volumes of sterling and would sell if the value fell further.

We pretty much exhausted our currency reserves propping it up giving us three options - let Sterling float free (as it had earlier in the 1970s) and devalue - risking higher inflation, impose import controls which threatened trade balances, or borrow from the IMF. Of the three, the loan was the best - but not the only - option.

At no stage were we to quote YOUR article facing "the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due"

You don't half talk out of your !!!!....

I normally agree broadly with your posts, but in this one you missed out the loan the UK took from the US of $5bn in summer of 1976. It had to be repaid by December 1976.

People thought the £ was overvalued and started to sell it like mad - by the summer of 1976 the £ had reached an all time low against the $ - the US & the Bank of International Settlements thought the £ was undervalued and the US agreed to a standby loan to support the £.

By September 1976 the UK had drawn quite heavily on the loan and needed the IMF loan to repay it.

The UK gov't approached the IMF in September 1976 for a loan of nearly $4bn - it was the largest loan the IMF had ever made and they had to get
extra funding from the US & Germany to be able to fund it.

Healey had to try and get through measures to to cut the deficit by about 20% - the cabinet had no choice really - if the IMF loan hadn't been forthcoming the run on the £ would have continued, the loan from the US would have been at serious risk of default. And who knows what would have happened.

Healey announced the public spending cuts in December 1976.

The UK didn't need to use the whole of the loan from the IMF - the following year interest rates fell and sterling recovered quickly.

I have to say though, that they inherited a huge mess from Edward Heath's outgoing gov't in 1974.

CLAPTON

baileysbattlebus wrote: »

I normally agree broadly with your posts, but in this one you missed out the loan the UK took from the US of $5bn in summer of 1976. It had to be repaid by December 1976.

People thought the £ was overvalued and started to sell it like mad - by the summer of 1976 the £ had reached an all time low against the $ - the US & the Bank of International Settlements thought the £ was undervalued and the US agreed to a standby loan to support the £.

By September 1976 the UK had drawn quite heavily on the loan and needed the IMF loan to repay it.

The UK gov't approached the IMF in September 1976 for a loan of nearly $4bn - it was the largest loan the IMF had ever made and they had to get
extra funding from the US & Germany to be able to fund it.

Healey had to try and get through measures to to cut the deficit by about 20% - the cabinet had no choice really - if the IMF loan hadn't been forthcoming the run on the £ would have continued. And who knows what would have happened.

Healey announced the public spending cuts in December 1976.

The UK didn't need to use the whole of the loan from the IMF - the following year interest rates fell and sterling recovered quickly.

I have to say though, that they inherited a huge mess from Edward Heath's outgoing gov't in 1974.

The lesson here is surely that fixed or heavily managed exchange rates always end in crisis.

they knew it was nonsense then but sadly governments of all pursuasions think they know better than the markets and clutch at little tokens like 'strong currency is good, weak currentcy is bad'.
Actually some minor parallels with Nut v Johnson.

LizEstelle

Anyway...

... on this question of D Cameron ruining the economy....

baileysbattlebus

CLAPTON wrote: »

The lesson here is surely that fixed or heavily managed exchange rates always end in crisis.

they knew it was nonsense then but sadly governments of all pursuasions think they know better than the markets and clutch at little tokens like 'strong currency is good, weak currentcy is bad'.
Actually some minor parallels with Nut v Johnson.

I suppose gov'ts thought it a good idea at the time - trying to avoid the financial chaos of the inter war years - which I think it largely did. And I suppose one good thing to come out of it all was the IMF - if you think the IMF is a good thing that is.

JayScottGreenspan

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

We are not going bust we will not go bust we cannot - as a nation who prints the currency the debts are in - physically go bust. The argument is made that we need to reign in spending - which in the context of doing so once we're out of recession I agree with. Not everyone agrees - the French with just as much % debt and a near-identical sized economy as the UK plan on borrowing oceans more cash to throw at infrastructure projects. They won't go bust either.

I don't think we'll go bust either - that really is Tory scare-mongering.

But...

There is a big zone of general crappiness between a healthy economy and a bust one - we will be in that zone IMO.

We are looking at over £30bn per year just to pay the interest on the debt we have accumulated. For context, that's roughly equal to the entire council tax take, and that figure is going to keep going up as the debt pirals and as interest rates go up in the coming years. So when you're handing over your council tax of £1300 a year or whatever it is, please bear that in mind. The debt is real and the cost to you and to each of us is real.

I believe the structural deficit is £75bn. That's a hell of a lot of spending to rein in after the recovery, and it will hurt you and me and everyone here. I agree that a stimulus is necessary (unfortunately ours is currently one of the smallest stimulus packages out there, since our hands our tied by one of the highest structural deficits).

What a pickle! And all because of Gordon's hubris. His belief that the boom wasn't a boom (in which Keynes would have built up a war chest), but a new paradigm of growth to borrow against. Okay, the Tories would have done the same (Vince Cable was the only prominent politician who called it right), but let's call a spade a spade - let's call an epic fail an epic fail.