Is Gordon Brown an economic illiterate?

Pennywise

CLAPTON wrote: »

does that mean that you wouldn't provide a government guarentee for savers in HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Santander as well Santander is outright foreign and the others lend / invest all over the world.

Completely different scenario. Those banks in your list are trading in the UK, have branches in the UK, are regulated by the UK regulators, pay UK taxes, employ UK workers, etc. I havn't seen many Icesave branches on the High Street and as far as I know, they weren't regulated in any way by the UK authorities.

CLAPTON

Pennywise wrote: »

Completely different scenario. Those banks in your list are trading in the UK, have branches in the UK, are regulated by the UK regulators, pay UK taxes, employ UK workers, etc. I havn't seen many Icesave branches on the High Street and as far as I know, they weren't regulated in any way by the UK authorities.

maybe and a different point

I was responding to '''''Money should remain and should be invested within the
country in order to be protected by the government!''''

StevieJ

Pennywise wrote: »

Completely different scenario. Those banks in your list are trading in the UK, have branches in the UK, are regulated by the UK regulators, pay UK taxes, employ UK workers, etc. I havn't seen many Icesave branches on the High Street and as far as I know, they weren't regulated in any way by the UK authorities.

I give you Heritable bank

Nosht

A._Badger wrote: »

The myth of Brown's 'genius' should be laid firmly at the feet of the Left-dominated sections of the media. Early in Blair's regime, they worked hard to convinced us that this man, who has no experience of business and whose PhD is apparently in some footling aspect of Scottish Labour party history, was brighter than the average potato.

In truth he just did what others before him had done: he printed money, turned the taps full on, stuck his fingers in his ears and chanted 'la la la' when realists warned about inevitable outcome.

I you remember the first thing G.B. did was to do nothing :eek: , he just continued with Ken Clark's economic policies for about 3 years, claimed the credit then started changing/messing things.

N.

Degenerate

Nosht wrote: »

I you remember the first thing G.B. did was to do nothing :eek: , he just continued with Ken Clark's economic policies for about 3 years, claimed the credit then started changing/messing things.

N.

I wouldn't call handing interest rate policy to the BOE for the first time "nothing". It was a very significant change.

StevieJ

Degenerate wrote: »

I wouldn't call handing interest rate policy to the BOE for the first time "nothing". It was a very significant change.

And raiding the pension funds he hit the ground running.

Kohoutek

Degenerate wrote: »

I wouldn't call handing interest rate policy to the BOE for the first time "nothing". It was a very significant change.

But the Treasury still dictates the inflation target, and the measure used to calculate inflation. "Independence" is a misleading term.

Gordon Brown changed the measure of inflation used for inflation targeting from RPI to CPI so it ignored housing costs, which was probably highly significant towards contributing the bubble in housing.

chucky

Kohoutek wrote: »

Gordon Brown changed the measure of inflation used for inflation targeting from CPI to RPI so it ignored housing costs, which was probably highly significant towards contributing the bubble in housing.

that would mean that either it's the tories fault for the house price 'bubble' or the below isn't true... which is it... :j

Nosht wrote: »

I you remember the first thing G.B. did was to do nothing :eek: , he just continued with Ken Clark's economic policies for about 3 years, claimed the credit then started changing/messing things.

StevieJ

Kohoutek wrote: »

But the Treasury still dictates the inflation target, and the measure used to calculate inflation. "Independence" is a misleading term.

Gordon Brown changed the measure of inflation used for inflation targeting from CPI to RPI so it ignored housing costs, which was probably highly significant towards contributing the bubble in housing.

I think you got that 4rse about tit as they say in lower circles

Degenerate

Kohoutek wrote: »

But the Treasury still dictates the inflation target, and the measure used to calculate inflation. "Independence" is a misleading term.

And they changed once in 13 years, and that was to implement a generally accepted international standard, not on Brown's whim.

Gordon Brown changed the measure of inflation used for inflation targeting from CPI to RPI so it ignored housing costs, which was probably highly significant towards contributing the bubble in housing.

Actually it changed from RPIX to CPI. RPI was never used, because the base rate feeds directly into it via mortgage costs. RPI goes up -> bank raises rates to try to get it down -> mortgage costs rise -> RPI goes up even more. RPIX is RPI excluding housing costs, so Brown didn't change that aspect at all.

CPI is a generally accepted standard for measuring inflation, comparable in methodology to the measures used in other advanced economies around the world (otherwise known as the harmonised index of consumer prices or HICP). CPI does tend to produce a lower figure than RPIX, but the target was dropped from 2.5% to 2% at the same time to compensate for this.