Is Gordon Brown an economic illiterate?

hugheskevi

Anyone who belives that wealth gerneation is not important, is economically illiterate.

From everything Brown says, I am convinced he would think it is worth paying one man to dig a hole, then paying for one man to fill it in, as that would 'get money into the economy.'

Kohoutek

Not raising tax on businesses is 'taking money out of the economy' according to Brown. That speaks volumes about the man's statist lunacy.

nickj_2

the trouble is that gord still believes he has and is doing a great job
i would liken his time at the helm to a piramid scam , for a while is goes well until you need more and more funds to keep on top of what you are paying out . sooner or later it will all come tumbling down , he should have been stopped years ago for his incompetance ,

Wookster

I watched part of the Brown/ Paxman interview on iPlayer while I was doing the dishes earlier.

I was expecting Brown to talk rubbish but was nevertheless surprised by just how deluded he is.

I think his single biggest issue is that he thinks he is right all the time, knows everything and everyone else is just simply ignorant or wrong. He believes he is omnipotent.

He thinks we've had a period of low inflation - well inflation has been low for some items (mainly consumables), but assets on the other hand have got very expensive indeed. Why wasn't inflation targeted around the RPI rather than the CPI? This is one of his biggest mistakes imo.

I also think he simply does not understand the value of money, this is shown by his (and Labour's) incomprehension of the fact that reducing the deficit by half in the next parliament is simply not enough. Not only that, but his sums simply do not add up either (neither to the Tories or Lib-Dems, though the latter is marginally better). He is unable to comprehend the fact that running such a large deficit is risky and in the current climate (i.e. Greek events) that the UK ought to consider its position more carefully.

If he was a more adjusted person, perhaps he'd see that much of his fault lies with the fact that he cannot have a discussion with differing opinions and find a common, pragmatic ground.

CLAPTON

Wookster wrote: »

I watched part of the Brown/ Paxman interview on iPlayer while I was doing the dishes earlier.

I was expecting Brown to talk rubbish but was nevertheless surprised by just how deluded he is.

I think his single biggest issue is that he thinks he is right all the time, knows everything and everyone else is just simply ignorant or wrong. He believes he is omnipotent.

He thinks we've had a period of low inflation - well inflation has been low for some items (mainly consumables), but assets on the other hand have got very expensive indeed. Why wasn't inflation targeted around the RPI rather than the CPI? This is one of his biggest mistakes imo.

I also think he simply does not understand the value of money, this is shown by his (and Labour's) incomprehension of the fact that reducing the deficit by half in the next parliament is simply not enough. Not only that, but his sums simply do not add up either (neither to the Tories or Lib-Dems, though the latter is marginally better). He is unable to comprehend the fact that running such a large deficit is risky and in the current climate (i.e. Greek events) that the UK ought to consider its position more carefully.

If he was a more adjusted person, perhaps he'd see that much of his fault lies with the fact that he cannot have a discussion with differing opinions and find a common, pragmatic ground.

why isn't reducing the deficit by half in the next parliament good enough?

you may or may not agree with the assessment but there is an view that says trying to reduce the deficit too quickly will snuff out the recovery, destroy a significant part of the private sector companies and private sector jobs.
A bit like following the prevailing orthodoxy in the 20-30's which lead to the great depression and arguably ww2

you may not personlly agree with it but its a serious view held my many economists

chucky

DaddyBear wrote: »

Actually I have the opposite problem. My background is entirely maths and science based. I try to look at the economy and housing Market logically but it just makes no sense at all.

apart from your local cattle market any market involving any asset class does not function logically or even rationally.

if it were logical or rational we would both be millionaires with another 60 million people by this coming Thursday by predicting the future.

prowla

grubby23 wrote: »

Hi,

I am not a economist, however, I think GB is even in his field of expertise - which is apparently the economy - quite clueless. He was saying in the last TV debate that he wants to keep inflation low with low interest rates. How on earth should that work? Hasn't he noticed the inflated property and stock market prices over the last decade thanks to the low interest rate.

This guy is a liability for UK Ltd and I am still surprised that 1/3 of the population consider voting for such a clueless man.

He doesn't give a flying ££££ about inflated prices; if he can fudge the inflation figures to show low inflation then he is happy.
The fact that the huge house prices are going to cause immense distress when interest rates do go up is none of his concern at all.

Degenerate

grubby23 wrote: »

What I thought was absolute disgusting was the bailout of savers that had money in Iceland. They got high interest, so obviously there is a higher risk that the money could be lost.

They put money into Sterling-demoninated ISAs that were targeted and marketed exclusively to the British savers. They were supposed to be as safe as any other ISA because they were covered by the same level of deposit guarantee (About £18K from Iceland, topped up to UK level by the FSCS). So how exactly was the risk "obvious"? How were ordinary British savers to know that actually the Icelandic government were allowing their banks to abuse EEA treaty provisions to milk British savers for forex deposits, and would then welch on their legal guarantee obligations?

The UK government took the view that allowing these savers to lose their cash would be detrimental to the health of the entire banking system, and I agree. The moment the government allowed British savers to lose their supposedly guaranteed deposits, savers could legitimately question the safety of any guaranteed deposits and start more bank runs.

Exocet

Degenerate wrote: »

The UK government took the view that allowing these savers to lose their cash would be detrimental to the health of the entire banking system, and I agree. The moment the government allowed British savers to lose their supposedly guaranteed deposits, savers could legitimately question the safety of any guaranteed deposits and start more bank runs.

Whereas with Farepak and the ten p tax they could just !!!!!! on the poor people and it wouldn't really matter. This is one reason I won't be voting Labour while Blair, Mandelson, Brown are still around. Socialism for the better off - I don't quite get the point of it.

chucky

CLAPTON wrote: »

you may or may not agree with the assessment but there is an view that says trying to reduce the deficit too quickly will snuff out the recovery, destroy a significant part of the private sector companies and private sector jobs.

people fail to understand this or they want this because they like the doom situation and want the country in recession. it makes no sense.