It's all kicking off again

LisbonLaura

kabayiri wrote: »

Our recovery depends on the Eurozone, and not the value of the 2 bed terrace in RightMove.

:eek: Come on you rentiers & 'financial advisers', this kind of radical realism needs stamping on, fast!
Before you know it there will be suggestions that manufacturing & exporting is the only way an economy survives!

michaels

Yes because 'manufactured goods' are worth something unlike things you can't touch like legal services, computer software, patents for mobile phone processors etc which are just figments of people's imagination. Meanwhile can we repeal the corn laws and uninvent the spinning jenny...

ffacoffipawb

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I would ask you to show extreme respect for Margaret Thatcher. OK, she my be well into dementia, but she's the best PM we ever had!

Even with dementia I suspect she can still talk more sense than Ed Milliband.

Loughton_Monkey

michaels wrote: »

Yes because 'manufactured goods' are worth something unlike things you can't touch like legal services, computer software, patents for mobile phone processors etc which are just figments of people's imagination. .......

I agree with you, but this has long since been forgotten by our governments.

You set up a company making, say, wheelbarrows, then you are either exporting it, or stopping the builder (who buys it) having to import one. You have increased the wealth in the country [which sadly deteriorates slowly over the life of the wheelbarrow] but it gives employment, makes a profit for the steel supplier, for yourself, and then gives Georgie Osborne a few shillings.....

If, instead, you set up a sandwich shop, you shovel a bit of money around the system, but any 'value' you have created lasts for less than 24 hours before going down the toilet. However, Georgie Osborne still takes a nice slice of the action, so he's happy. You have hardly affected the Trade Balance.

Pobby

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I would ask you to show extreme respect for Margaret Thatcher. OK, she my be well into dementia, but she's the best PM we ever had!

Maybe a miner may disagree. A worker in heavy industry would not be so happy.

Communities smashed. Far to much financial deregulation and the start of speculative house price inflation cheered on by Nu Labour.

John_Pierpoint

I actually agree with both sides, having shovelled concrete in and out of a wheel barrow and worked in the software industry.

The latter is a lot more productive and a lot less like hard work.

The economy of both M.Thatcher and Nu Labour was based on a North Sea oil petro pound model. An 80 million year creation that was obviously going to last for ever; so we could forget about the balance of payments. Let's party and "invest" in Spanish villas, as money is cheap freely available and foreign prices are seemingly low.

Now we have the worst of all worlds:
Declining oil and gas.
Service industries that are easy to relocate to cheaper providers.
Manufacturing where the screwdriver jobs have been sent "off shore" and the high tech ones have been starved of investment or taken over (by and large). Hi tech. engineering is still available in Germany and the Nordic countries.
Even our military budget is now being spent in a futile physical attempt to "safeguard" oil supplies instead of being shovelled into GEC (RIP).

All this is presided over by a chancellor who is amazed that printing money and giving it to banks has produced a commodity price bubble and firms stuffed with cash, but too scared to invest it.

The only budget that has not been cut is the Agricultural one - the money go round where every household in the land pays £10's per week to Brussels and get some paid back to rich land owners.
That is supposed to be capped and cut to reduce it by 10% in the next 7 years. [OMG surely the European Commission is not going to get a clean signed off audit?]

All this presided over by a chancellor who know how to spend half the country's wealth, but is desperate enough to impose a pasty tax.

Conrad

nollag2006 wrote: »

Wouldn't be at all surprised if we were just in the foothills of another great property boom.

:beer:

I agree, it's virtually certain a new boom is underway, but as ever the bears don't see comming.

Yet again the lucky ones will just blunder into riches, much to the annoyance of bearish types with a 'good grasp' of economics.

Will you (meaning the bears) be one of them...........?

Conrad

kabayiri wrote: »

Our recovery depends on the Eurozone, and not the value of the 2 bed terrace in RightMove.

+ Best balance of trade numbers for 1/4 century

+ Highest exports to rest of world for 30 years

+ Best car manufacturing numbers since 1975

+ 2 m net new private sector jobs

And all this in spite of Europe.


Don't let the doomers tell you we're not recovering.

BillTrac

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Has the Queen died?

If only.

at least we would get a day off.. :rotfl:

mind you, when I look at the idiots following behind her it does make me shudder.

Republic every time.

Totally of topic of course

John_Pierpoint

Here is a reasonable overview of the UK's place in the global manufacturing production and trade. As the nation state and its borders is now just an inconvenience to the multinational company, it is vital that we don't increase the barriers to trade. If we do the UK will become an ignored agency type operation rather than a major node where high tech high value added jobs are located.
Drugs, medical technology and bioengineering have been our successful production high value added activity in the last 15 years.

http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/business-sectors/docs/m/10-1333-manufacturing-in-the-UK-an-economic-analysis-of-the-sector

The "improved terms of trade" following Gordon Brown's devaluation of the currency by 25% seems to have us stuck on the down slope of the "J" curve?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443991704577578592970469360.html