Jeremy Corbyn wins economists’ backing for anti-austerity policies

antrobus

ruggedtoast wrote: »

We managed to find £100 billion to bail out the banks with so I am sure we can come up with another £120 billion to spend on ourselves.....

Except that we didn't 'spend' that £100 billion.

Whereas the UK government has indeed injected some billions into financial sector intervention, the overall net cost to the taxpayer is likely to be in the order of £3 bn or so.

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-profit-bank-bailouts/21010

Some people might say that was pretty cheap considering what teh costs of non-intervention might have been.:)

CLAPTON

ruggedtoast wrote: »

We managed to find £100 billion to bail out the banks with so I am sure we can come up with another £120 billion to spend on ourselves.

More seriously, it is becoming quite difficult for politicians to justify why telephone number amounts seem to be readily available for keeping the Finance sector afloat (which we are told is indispensable to our wealth, although it never seems to do anything other than cost us money) but spending the money on schools and hospitals will lead to 1984.

I'm not saying either way as I don't pretend to understand Finance but I would like to see Corbyn standing across from Osborne and Osborne having to explain, in language that normal humans can understand, why things like handing over RBS and the Post Office for a song at a giant loss are good for Britain but, funding Sure Start is not.

Surely that is what opposition is supposed to do?

as you say you don't understand Finance, so you don't really understand the consequences of letting the people who have deposits in the banking system lose all their money

do you wish to try to understand?

ruggedtoast

Generali wrote: »

I went to Sure Start in Wapping a few times when the Generalissimos were tiny. Despite it being a largely poor area there was a rich area by the river and it was mothers from the richer parts of the borough that were hugely over-represented and that was my understanding of how the scheme ended up working: well intentioned, aimed at the poor but actually used by the middle classes.

As for RBS? The price is what it is. You can wish for a higher price if you like, rather like those BTL LLs that seem to think that if interest rates go up they can just hike the rent, but the price is what it is.

Royal Mail was probably sold off cheap.

I dont understand why RBS was bailed out at all.

Why didn't they ring fence the retail accounts and let the investment side go bust? Why didn't they do that with all the banks? It just looked like a giant bail out for investment bankers who had made poor decisions to me.

If a normal company makes poor business decisions it goes bust so why doesn't that apply to banks and their shareholders?

I have a relative who works in Sure Start. She is split over separate centres. One is in a rich part of town and used by the rich, and one is in a very deprived part of town and used by the poor.

The main point of Sure Start (one which isn't publicised at all) is to get people parents to go in so that the staff can screen which children are likely to be at risk of abuse.

Most parents don't actually want to be abusive and early interventions using very basic methods like parenting sessions at the outset can make a massive difference ten years down the line.

This is one of the reasons why you often have to go to sure start centres for the mandatory midwife baby weighing sessions, and why the staff will spend a lot of time chatting to the single teenage mother on benefits and not much time at all with the 35 year old mum who arrives with the adoring husband encased in Baby Bjorn slings.

Some of the richer mums do sometimes turn up to sessions with their nanny's, although some of the least coping mum's are actually neglected bankers' wives. Freaking out because your kid has been crying all night every night and your husband isnt very interested isn't just a working class problem.

antrobus

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I dont understand why RBS was bailed out at all.

It was, and is, a systemic bank.

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Why didn't they ring fence the retail accounts and let the investment side go bust? Why didn't they do that with all the banks? It just looked like a giant bail out for investment bankers who had made poor decisions to me. ...

Because the investment side was perfectly fine, it was the retail banking side that was bust?:)

ruggedtoast

CLAPTON wrote: »

as you say you don't understand Finance, so you don't really understand the consequences of letting the people who have deposits in the banking system lose all their money

do you wish to try to understand?

Not from you. I don't think you know anything more about it than I do.

CLAPTON

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Not from you. I don't think you know anything more about it than I do.

then ask for views from others you think know.

Thrugelmir

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I'm not saying either way as I don't pretend to understand Finance but I would like to see Corbyn standing across from Osborne and Osborne having to explain, in language that normal humans can understand, why things like handing over RBS and the Post Office for a song at a giant loss are good for Britain but, funding Sure Start is not.

Surely that is what opposition is supposed to do?

He'll steer well clear of the topic. As will only dig a very deep hole for himself. Labour are already reeling from a lack of confidence in their ability to manage the economy. To attack the Tories with any level of incompetence is pure suicide.

GO is off loading Lloyds in a hurry now to provide a buffer for what will be the lack of value in RBS.

Generali

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/janan-ganesh-a-corbyn-win-would-be-disastrous-for-labour-1.2327239

Mr Ganesh sums up my views quite nicely:

As for the popular insurrection against austerity, your columnist invites you to wake him up when it happens. Students and trade unions will march through London, but then they always do. Corbyn will rouse dog-on-a-string radicals at folk music festivals in the West Country. None of this will congeal into a national movement that draws in swing voters. Britons have had five years to revolt against Cameron and his fiscal policy. As ever, they have proven to be a terrible disappointment to the left’s moral visionaries.

Habitual protesters show a blend of narcissism and innumeracy: a belief that tens of thousands of trudging comrades reveal anything about a nation of 62 million. Contrary to their vainglorious recollection, Thatcher was not brought down by poll tax riots but by her inability to hang on to a chancellor of the exchequer and the trust of her MPs. The mayhem in Trafalgar Square in 1990 was a proximate cause, not the source, of her fall, which was already in train.

The article is quite short and well worth a read.