Who's next? Spain? Italy?

worldtraveller

Greece is already facing a first wave of strikes, with customs and tax officials walking out for 48 hours. More are planned for later this month, with the two largest union's calling separate 24 hour strikes, one for next Wednesday and one for the 24th.

Expect the same here, after the election, when the Government will have to shed huge numbers of public sector jobs to cut costs in an attempt to reduce the public deficit.

Kohoutek

worldtraveller wrote: »

Greece is already facing a first wave of strikes, with customs and tax officials walking out for 48 hours. More are planned for later this month, with the two largest union's calling separate 24 hour strikes, one for next Wednesday and one for the 24th.

Expect the same here, after the election, when the Government will have to shed huge numbers of public sector jobs to cut costs in an attempt to reduce the public deficit.

Back to the 1970s! Fool me once Labour shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I hope we've learnt our lesson, and they're out of power at least another 18 years.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Kohoutek wrote: »

Back to the 1970s! Fool me once Labour shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I hope we've learnt our lesson, and they're out of power at least another 18 years.

And if its like last time we had 18 years of the Tories can we once again expect 2 crushing recessions, prolonged unemployment north of 3m, prolonged 10% interest rates, mass repossessions and bankruptcies?

Kohoutek

Do you really think the early 80s recession would have been avoided by Labour staying in power? It's too simplistic to blame political parties for global downturns. High interest rates helped restore credibility to a country with inflation as high as 25% at peak. I know the social cost was horrendous but what other option was there? The US and many other countries did exactly the same thing. Prolonged low interest rates are one of the root causes of this crisis.

Labour has made a massive, largely unfunded increase in the public sector, radically expanded the welfare state to create incentives for millions not to work, continued some of the Tory's worst policies such as privatisation and deregulation, put the country's finances on a fiscally unsustainable path and made the country much more susceptible to terrorism by being involved in two wars in the Middle East. At least the Falkland and Gulf War had some reasonable justification, Labour's wars are based on lies. I don't rate Cameron, but that'll take some beating.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Kohoutek wrote: »

Do you really think the early 80s recession would have been avoided by Labour staying in power? It's too simplistic to blame political parties for global downturns.

So why are you doing exactly that? Lets make the assumption that the recession in Britain was Labour's fault. Whose fault are the simultaneous recessions in most of the world? If its about Labour's regulation of the city, how do you explain tightly regulated economies falling over? It was Iceland and Ireland crushed last year, according to the economists its Greece and Portugal and then Spain and Italy about to go over as well. Are they all caused by Labour ideology? What then made the most right-wing American president in a generation nationalise the bulk of Wall Street?

Lets assume Howard had won in 2005. Would Britain have fared better? Would Prime Minister Howard gone to the city and decried their profits and ordered them to stop making money? Even assuming he had spent a few score billions less than Labour our national debt would still be close to where it is now (ie less than France Germany et al). Had he supported the same fiscal stimulus package as the rest of the world we've have had a similar deficit to the one we have now - Britain was hit harder than most of Europe because Britain had a bigger banking sector. That wouldn't have changed.

You're blaming Labour fome something that has swept aside policies and governments held by governments of left and right across the world. Then you claim that its "too simplistic to blame political parties for global downturns". Well quite.

Mr.Brown_4

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Then you claim that its "too simplistic to blame political parties for global downturns". Well quite.

I agree. Which is why I only blame one political party.

Kohoutek

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

You're blaming Labour fome something that has swept aside policies and governments held by governments of left and right across the world. Then you claim that its "too simplistic to blame political parties for global downturns". Well quite.

That's my point, you've misinterpreted it. I don't solely blame Labour for this recession or the conservatives for the early 1980s recession. However, I do blame Labour for the egregious domestic and foreign policies I mentioned in my original post. They've made Britain's position far worse than it could have been.

aelitaman

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

So why are you doing exactly that? Lets make the assumption that the recession in Britain was Labour's fault. Whose fault are the simultaneous recessions in most of the world? If its about Labour's regulation of the city, how do you explain tightly regulated economies falling over? It was Iceland and Ireland crushed last year, according to the economists its Greece and Portugal and then Spain and Italy about to go over as well. Are they all caused by Labour ideology? What then made the most right-wing American president in a generation nationalise the bulk of Wall Street?

Lets assume Howard had won in 2005. Would Britain have fared better? Would Prime Minister Howard gone to the city and decried their profits and ordered them to stop making money? Even assuming he had spent a few score billions less than Labour our national debt would still be close to where it is now (ie less than France Germany et al). Had he supported the same fiscal stimulus package as the rest of the world we've have had a similar deficit to the one we have now - Britain was hit harder than most of Europe because Britain had a bigger banking sector. That wouldn't have changed.

You're blaming Labour fome something that has swept aside policies and governments held by governments of left and right across the world. Then you claim that its "too simplistic to blame political parties for global downturns". Well quite.

No more boom and bust - Economic cycles are a fact and can be caused by an external event i.e America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. The LAbour party thought that they had abolished boom and bust whilst borrowing loads of money during boom economic times. The Chinese avioded boom and bust because they had a trillion bucks in the piggy bank and they unleashed thier savings to help in the hard times. We had to print money to survive and had a very small fiscal stimulus a VAT cut.

The depth of the recession in he UK is Labours fault, just like the depth of the recession in America is Bush's fault. Australia never ever had a recession. France, Germany America were all out of recession earlier and faster than the UKbecause they did not borrow as much as Gordon during the good times so could aford a larger fiscal stimulus when the bad times came. German polititians are taking about tax cuts now we are facing large tax rises!

Germanys recssion was deeper than ours because we had a large financial sector and they have a large high value manufacturing sector. People still pay loans off in recessions but they do not buy Mercs.

All of the countries you mention as going bust have one thing in common large debts and big borrowings to maintain large public sector employment, wges and pensions. We are next. Browns fault.

Would it be different under Howard, yes because he would not have borrowed so much and cut back public sector spending.

Brown is and economic disaster - The worst chancellor this country has ever had.

Rochdale_Pioneers

aelitaman wrote: »

The depth of the recession in he UK is Labours fault, just like the depth of the recession in America is Bush's fault. Australia never ever had a recession. France, Germany America were all out of recession earlier and faster than the UKbecause they did not borrow as much as Gordon during the good times so could aford a larger fiscal stimulus when the bad times came. German polititians are taking about tax cuts now we are facing large tax rises!

You're believing the spin rather than the facts I see. Lets demolish a few shall we? America exited its recession earlier than we did. It also entered 6 months earlier than we did. And have you compared Britain's borrowing to that of Germany France and America? According to the OECD their debt to GDP is HIGHER than ours. But I'm sure you are right and the OECD are wrong....

aelitaman wrote: »

All of the countries you mention as going bust have one thing in common large debts and big borrowings to maintain large public sector employment, wges and pensions. We are next. Browns fault.

Would it be different under Howard, yes because he would not have borrowed so much and cut back public sector spending.

OK so how much would this have changed our debt position? Lets say he didn't inflate GDP by the extra couple of percent post 05 as Labour did. So we'd be on 69% debt not 71% - happy? No? Remember that most of the deficit and the 25% of borrowing added to the total has been caused by the crash and our reaction to it. You do know that American, French and German debt increased by a similar amount due to their own response don't you? That the ECB and the Fed printed more money in their own QE programmes than we did?

But I think its your last line that is most telling. Lets assume that Howard had cut public spending. We'd have hit recession earlier (in line with Europe most likely) and with higher unemployment than we did. We wouldn't be exiting recession with substantially lower unemployment than Europe as we are now. You appear to be spinning the line that spending less in the crash was the right thing to do. Well we'll add you to that side of the argument alongside CamerOsborne, still massively outnumbered by the rest of the world. When the head of the IMF told Cameron in Davos that cutting spending would trigger a double dip recession were you listening? He was, hence the abrupt reversal in policy.

Generali

Greece represents 1.5% of GDP so a default is unlikely to cause problems beyond the Greek borders in itself. It would however bring into sharp focus potential problems that countries like Spain, Portugal and to some extent the uk and us will have in balancing their books.

As many people on the dfw board will tell you, if you borrow indefinitely with no plan to repay then you'll end up in trouble.