QE Or Not QE?, That is the Question
Today on Threadneedle Street in the City, the Monetary Policy Committee meets to decide the Bank of England’s base rate and whether or not to keep the printing presses running The base rate is currently of symbolic importance (unless you have a base rate tracker mortgage), because prevailing real world market rates are far higher than the official 0.5%.
Has QE worked? We will never be able to answer that question definitively. Economists will argue forever about what would have happened if things had been done otherwise. We can however point to unintended consequences of the Anglo-American monetary splurge. Commodity price inflation, a non-trivial £200 billion unwinding problem in the UK, a yet more burdensome government debt disaster. The evidence is that QE has largely allowed the Bank of England to buy the government’s new debt giving foreign investors an exit route. Pimco, the world’s biggest bond investor has taken that exit route from gilts and says they are now resting on nitro-glycerine.
For £200 billion we got growth of 0.1%, the longest recession in history and a 6% drop in output that saw Britain as the last major country out of recession. Most worryingly of all, inflation is now ready to rip.
The recession came to a technical end last week. With that QE should come to an end. Policy makers need to perform a trick never accomplished before anywhere in the world at any time in history, turn off the monetary liquidity flood without lagging inflation jumping, sterling collapsing or the economy seizing up. Mervyn’s memoirs will make interesting reading.
Good Morning
Wayne Bridge gave his girlfriend one of those chocolate mould’s of his cock….when she looked unimpressed he said “I’ve spared no expense – it’s Thornton’s chocolate babe….”
She takes a bite, spits it out and says “I prefer Terry’s”…
All very well trying to scry the runes of economic data (it’s proved so fruitful in catastrophe avoiding in the past after all) but when do we get the Piggy Data ?
Widdycombaya is already trying to pre-emptively put the boot into Legg so what does that portend ? MP’s whining and squealing about Legg for days to come.
Name and shame these disgraces please Mr Fawkes.
I expect that weasel Stuart Bell to be another of the scumbags.
Pay back time…. £1.3 million.
Not claiming the maximum in expenses means it’s all okay for Dennis Skinner. You of course are not allowed to claim for the things MPs got to claim on.
Sloblock: that joke was old when it appeared on the Kirsty thread yesterday.
Pillock!
Let’s look at what the Germans think of the UK economy under New Labour. Won’t get this kind of reporting from the BBC.
Sorry, mate. Feel for you, as I do for anybody whose business fails.
But I don’t think the world revolves around picture frames. (Had you played your cards better, you wouldn’t be in the difficulties you are now.)
Being in the picture frames business is neither here nor there. It’s his over reliance on the “public sector.”
I still think that the journalism was less biased than the BBC, the overall length was far longer than BBC stories, the reporting was more objective than the BBC (and didn’t include footage of the reporter, unlike the celebrity reporting that passes for UK journalism).
Sort of reminds me of the journalism the BBC (and even ITV) had 20 years ago. Wish that it’d come back…
Brown built his reputation on inflation, and is dependent on a kindly soul in the finance industry giving him a job in a few months time.
Therefore he’ll sell sterling down the river.
Buy wheelbarrows
Gordon Brown stock answer number 1 … “Stop talking down the economy” = don’t ask me hard questions about how I have fooked up.
Mit Apologien an Hughes Mearns :
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
Nil ReiPublicae desperandum est
With reference to my previous comment, Gordon saved the World, but you Tory Tossers were too thick to understand.
Every bleedin country in the World is in the same boat.
We all owe gazillions to this bloke who is about to kick the bucket.
Just stuff him for 99.9999% inheritance tax and problem solved.
Hmmm, you’re a bit simple really, aren’t you?
Oh, Tony Tiger, you’re Gggggrreeat!
Everything costs – everything has to be paid for – so get somebody else to pay for it! And then just keep helping yourself and contributing nothing. Brilliant!
Point is, you can’t SuperTax the very rich – it’s like trying to shoot the stars with BB gun – so you just end up putting holes in the middle- and lower-income bands. This is a bad thing. This is all you ‘achieve.’
Ratchet up that Nation-Insurance Tax on the lower paid; piss the money away on Inquiries and MPs expenses, £10m of rented empty office space, etc. etc. etc. (You’ve done too many dumb things to list here.)
Then slap yourself on the back, and be rude to anybody who resents your waste, profligacy, and ineffectiveness.
He sure is GRrrrrreeeat!
He’s taught me everything I know.
Or indeed don’t.
Look, its quite simple. The very rich are sat doing Sweet FA, with an enormous number of digits in their bank account which they’ve lost count of. Its dead money that might as well not exist, and all they want to do is make that number bigger so they can die with a bigger number than their next door neighbour. They ain’t even having fun, and the government could take 99% of it and they wouldn’t even notice.
Now I admit that governments are useless at spending money and getting any sensible work done, because the people who occupy and control governments are stupid and the only thing they can think of producing is more weapons to kill people.
So what we have got is a log jam, that is stopping the flow of money from doing anything useful, because the people in control of it haven’t a fucking clue what money is really for.
Its only real use is to motivate someone else to do some useful work, and currently that is not happenning.
The US is even more stuffed than we are because they are even more fascist.
No one seems to be coming up with any sensible ideas to actually utilise all this money to do something useful
Politicians are so bleedin stupid that they actually believe all this Global Warming bollocks and build totally useless windmills
The entire lot of them need replacing with some sensible people of integrity, to take back our country from all these cretins who haven’t got a clue, and release this logjam of wasted money and wasted talent.
We are not thick in this country except we have allowed the most stupid people to take control, and we have not yet worked out how to get rid of them all, except by suggesting for example that they fuck off back to Eton.
The filthy rich got there by knowing how to keep hold of their money.
Tax avoidance is serious business.
The more you try to take, the more people will hide / move their assets from the state. This leads to a lower amount of taxation raised, despite the higher rate of taxation.
I know I would.
99% and they wouldn’t notice…yeah right tit
Tony, I detect a whiff of: “Old money = bad; New money = *not mentioned*”
So let’s draw up an analogy so that even the average Prol couldn’t fail to understand:
Footballers are overpaid. Wayne Beckham, Dave Rooney, John Bridge, Wayne Terry, et al, all earn far too much money for what they do, so let’s tax them at 100% for what they earn above the minimum wage. Sorted.
I’m not an overpaid footballer, so I’m not going to feel any pain. You aren’t, so you won’t. Great! “Tax the B@st@rds ‘til they bleed!”
But they’ll feel it, and they have the resources to relocate somewhere where they’re equally in demand, where the people value their abilities, where the repressive tax regime doesn’t take their every penny, and they get much better value for the tax they pay.
1st Leg Result: 2-0 Home Defeat. (Standard of Football in this country nose-dives as anybody with any talent leaves, the tax take goes DOWN.)
“Och noo!” exclaims the thicko manager and assistant coach in Number 10 & 11. “Better change the formation for the Return Leg: Bring in a Football ‘Tobin Tax’ and Football-Tax Harmonisation across the entire world!”
But the formation doesn’t work. They’re playing people out of position. They can’t get the players in their tax team to knit together. They can’t get agreement.
Final Result: Scoreboard doesn’t have enough digits to count the lost £billions£ and Professional Football dies.
And as for cheap-shot remarks about the Eton Educated, why is it not okay to have a pop at people of a different cast, religion, ethnicity, or sexuality, etc. but it’s fine to have a go at those you’ve never met, to whom you never spoken, and you imagine to be some kind of alien breed? It isn’t.
As a kid growing up, I spent time at Fee-paying and State Schools. Truth is that the average IQ of the privately educated was MUCH higher than those in the Comprehensive System. There are still bright people (140+IQ) in the state schools, they’re just more heavily outnumbered (100s:1)! This is why the results are better.
GIGO : Garbage in, garbage out..
Labour ruins the country with excess taxation. They’ve even tried the huge IHT tax hit before, in the ’70s.
By quietly charging estates Capital Gains Tax _and_ Inheritance Tax (the earliest Labour stealth tax?) 85% and more of death estates was stolen by the government.
The dual charging was reversed after the tax profession exposed it, but not before a lot of little people were disinherited by the state.
So Tony, Brown saved the World? No, what he is doing is squandering the British Taxpayers money to keep his own career on the life support system. When everything goes pear shaped i.e. Britain has it’s Credit Rating further downgraded and we’re paying £Billions in interest without reducing the Debt, where will Brown be? He will have retired to some Baronial pile (albeit to a padded cell) where he will have a deluded version of his memoirs ghost written. Meanwhile, if Labour are in power,various Draconian measures will be in place to pay the bill. These are likely to include increased VAT (with VAT on all Groceries), Privatisation of the Motorway Network and subsequent Toll Charges, vastly increased Council Taxes, and huge Job losses in the Public Sector. Any fool can borrow money if someone else has to pay it back!
All I know about economics is that you can’t spend more than you earn.
I think gordon must have been raised in a dysfunctional family who never taught him that adage and who always lived in immense debt.
His minister father just exhorted the congregation on a Sunday morning to cough up more or roast in hell.
Gordon just does exactly the same – through higher taxes.
Gordon Brown is truly EVIL.
Sarah likes a roast.
Did you see the photo of the Brown family back in the ’50’s – it was in the press recently.
The lack of any smiles,any hint of humour says a lot.
How this monster crept into his unelected position,god only knows,but I reckon Blair was happy to see him get there,just as Thatcher was glad that Major followed her as PM – Blair knew how bad this moron would be and so it could only make himself look better.
Of course,Blair is now an international pariah who one day will come across his own Reaper in the Middle East.
Sleep well,Blair and Brown.
I am unaware of any country in history that started printing money and then successfully stopped. Do you think the jackasses that blundered into such an economic catastrophe have the IQ to figure out the ‘Goldilocks’ amount of money to print? Of course not. Because the Goldilocks amount of money to print is zero, fuck all, not a penny. In this way you maintain the integrity of your currency. Any other option completely destroys your integrity.
As you said the QE was simply used by the BoE to buy up the 200bn quid of debt issued by Brown to pay the civil service this year. It didn’t buy a yard of road, a yard of railway or a single watt of nuclear power capacity. It was all just paid to box-tickers, arseholes and bastards to shield them from the economic clusterfuck that the private sector has had to contend with this past two years.
As soon as he stops printing money he will be just like Mugabe – unable to pay the police or the troops to keep order. So they’ll continue to print money and gold will continue to accelerate in price.
We’re fucked.
Nah, as it said in Snatch the Movie.
“Proper Fucked!”
Ah now, what fuckin use have i got for a caravan with no fuckin wheels on it!
I too am unware of any country (etc.etc.) … but I didn’t study economics, and I’m not sure it would have been a particularly trendy part of the curriculum if i had (Paper B: crap things people did in the 70s).
On the contrary – that’s the paper that many of us growing up in the early 80’s on bread & water rations because our parents were so broke and dipirited would loe to have taken.
If the people had learned the lesson of the 70’s they would have been less likely yo be bribed with their own oney in the 90’s & 00’s by Labour.
This goverment has been the sad epitaph for the middle years of my generation – because it was mostly us that voted for them, born in the early 70’s -ruined in the early 00’s.
I never voted for the scum. I am not proud of much, but that is a gem that I treasure.
No one is printing any vast amounts of money. There aren’t enough trees to go round to do that. All whats happenning is a load of digits are being added to registers in computer systems in banks all over the World.
And so far as spending more than you earn, the UK has always done that, and every other country in the world is trying to join the game.
And anyway, how come after WWII when we were bombed to fuck and hopelessly skint, we could afford free education, free health service and jobs for everyone and we were so well off that most mothers could afford to stay at home and bring up the kids and there was still enough food to go round and we could watch Andy Pandy on the Telly in black and white?
All this money stuff is a load of bollocks, and the game is totally different for governments than it is for private individuals or small companies.
The solution is to break up all these massive big things like Governments and mega Companies into much smaller manageable units and return to real democracy such that people can take charge of their own destinies.
The bleedin Tories should be coming out with stuff like this, instead of lookin up to the Communists and Fascists that have taken over.
The entire lot of you politicians are so thick that you should be fired and replaced by the bin men.
We weren’t rich in the 1960s.
The cars were crap. people had holidays in shacks in yorkshire. you had one TV and it broke a lot. The food was dull and cheap – and the fanciest convenience food was fish fingers or vesta curries.
We are used to all sorts of fancy stuff these days, what I want to know is how the hell did we get to the state where one accepts paying £3 for a coffee at a motorway service station.
The difference between now and the sixties is that many of the “essentials” we now have had not been invented and people did very well without them.
No mobile phones with £400.00p.a. contracts.
No computers.
No DVDs
No Video recorders.
No Internet.
No (or few) foreign holidays.
No McDonalds, Pizza Express, Starbucks, etc, etc.
Very little convenience foods.
Bread, milk, meat, groceries, soft drinks, green groceries delivered to your door.
Our needs were less because the advertising industry had not persuaded us of the wants we now regard as needs.
Yep. Three quid fucking coffees. What’s all that about? You could buy a tumbler full of fucking whiskey cheaper than that and it’s 80% tax.
It’s all down to insane property prices. The Coffee costs three quid because the premises cost three million quid and the council tax is 50K a year.
The premises cost three million quid because planning laws won’t let you build another fucking service station next door on farmland costing five thousand quid an acre.
The whole fucking UK economy is fucked by insane property prices propped up by insanely restrictive planning laws. Those beautiful beamed villages in Sussex and Kent – you couldn’t build one like that today because the c*nts want to keep you in some massive housing estate stitched up by buying off the local council and jacking the price of land they bought on the q.t from 5,000 an acre to one million pounds an acre. It is no fucking coincidence that the defining fraud that has been perpetrated by our MPs has been in the flipping and renovation of multiple London properties.
Our entire economic ‘prosperity’ for decades but certainly under this Labour idiocy has been the increasing ‘value’ of our insanelky priced homes. Take that notional money out of the economy and economically we’ve gone backwards this past thriteen years. And most likely for the past fifty years.
When did UK finish paying for the US loans that supported Britain in WW2? 1995 was it?
You build on fields today. You starve tomorrow in your concrete palaces.
There’s no shortgage of land in the UK. Less than 7% of it is under houses, roads, railways, runways whatever. And a lot of those houses have a garden that people could, at a push, grow some vegetables in.
We’ll not go hungry for vegetables any time soon although meat might go up in price.
But if you’re worried about fields then build the new houses in ‘areas of outsatnding natural beauty’ ie god-foresaken expanses of rocks such as dartmoor, the pennines, the lake district.
Fucking Scotland even.
Mine d’
The World War 2 lend lease was finally paid off in December 2006.
We took a “payment holiday” on at least one occasion. I believe when Healey went on the beg to the IMF.
We also have outstanding loans to the US for the cost of World War One.
We have not made a repayment on WW1 loands since 1934. The debt has never been written off by the USA, and is still owing
We had a Baird TV – it never broke !
……… and we never had these new-fangled motorways of today – just good B-roads on which to ‘push’ the MG !
Nurse !
We didn’t have a TV – that certainly never broke!
We had an ITT. You had to turn it on about 10 minutes before you wanted to watch one of the 3 channels as it had to ‘warm up’. Then there was the hour long ritual of adjusting the antenna , which usually resulting in one of us (usually me) having to stand in the corner with a coat hanger in one hand and the ariel in the other. If you didn’t watch it for a few days (believe it or not, most people did not sit in front of the box for hours on end, day after day) the smell of dust burning on the red-hot valves in the back was literally breathtaking. It also took two grown men to lift it.
I still have one, thanks to these Leibour fuckwits can afford on of these new fangles Plasma LED thingeys
Its all relative though isn’t it? We were rich in the 60’s compared to 10 years earlier, and absolutely everyone got a job. Even if they left school at 15, they could walk into an apprenticeship and get paid whilst they were learning a skilled trade, that would pay them enough to go to Ibiza by the time they were 19.
Compare the 60’s to now if you’re a teenager.
It doesn’t matter even if you’ve got all the talent in the world, the best you can hope for is to scrounge some money off your grand dad and go down the off licence and drown your no hope future on a bottle of cheap cider.
The real youth unemployment is more like 90% if you take into account all the useless training they are given to do useless hamsterwheel jobs that never materialise. This is all down to the idiots in control, of which the vast majority have never done a proper job.
There’s loads of work to be done, just look at the state of most of our towns and cities. Why not make them beautiful instead of them looking like shitholes?
The Tories will say that Labour spent it all on useless quangos. Well fire the bloody lot of them, and encourage the kids to start up their own companies to clean up the bloody mess the old farts have left them with.
Agreed. Britain is a mess – why don’t you lot mend anything? Look at bloody Stonehenge. Can’t be bothered. All these ruined cathedrals and castles. Can’t be arsed. No wonder Britain is a disaster area. Take a look at Germany – not much left after Bomber Harris did his thing. Take a look today.
Tony – we could afford to do all that after the war because we knew we could pay our debts when the time came. Mums could afford to stay at home because nice houses in suburbia that at present require a bond-traders salary and bonus were affordable by 20-something engineers.
All that has happened is that in the past sixty years we’ve bid up houses to insane prices. Everything else is cheaper (as a percentage of income). Even fucking petrol is cheaper. Cars are cheaper. Food is cheaper. TVs, washing machines, foreign travel.
All cheaper.
Except our house. Now instead of it being 3 times your average salary it is eight times your average salary.
We need to raise interest rates now and bring house prices down. High house prices are insane. They are the biggest economic stumbling block we have in the UK. The only reason house prices are going up is because not enough people are being forced to sell their over-mortgaged pile of shit because interest rates have been slashed to allow them to stay in their over-priced piles of shit. The only houses changing hands are to cash buyers. No other c*nt can form a chain.
It’s insane. The UK voter needs to be collectively shaken by the throat (like the Irish) and weened off this mentality that spending all your future earnings for a shit pile of 10K worth of materials is fucking insanity.
I’d go mainly for a boom in over-confidence in the market.
TonyE might say stuff about people forgetting the 70s, but its as if no-one remembered the early 90s.
I also doubt that increasing interest rates would make (/have made 2000-2005) house prices go down. Its a bugger. investment in useful things would have gone down far more, and the value of sterling would have gone far higher, and manufacturing would have been even more stuffed (if thats possible). PS: i offer no sensible solutions to that madness. Perhaps “housing ladder” should have been called “stupid twats”, and Sarah Beeny should have been allowd to use the expression “fucking dickheads” instead of all the “don’t you think” stuff.
You’re quite right. The only people to gain from ridiculous house prices are those who inherit a house. Everyone else is shafted by them.
BUT STILL, you will get news items beginning “Good news on the housing front. House prices rose by x% last month…..”
The only answer, and it’s probably too late now, is a higher rate of interest.
I cannot remeber one effort by Brown as Chancellor to check the runaway inflation of house prices; indeed, he seemed to smile benignly at it. What a plonker.
Tony my man, you’re a complete loon with absolutely no understanding of economics. This is the 4th time in my life time I have watched labour screw the economy up; only this time is worse than ever – believe me.
In the immortal words of that old cinema siren Ms Bette Davis: “Fasten your seat belts, we’re in for a bumpy ride”.
Doris,
I may be a complete loon, but it is completely obvious that even the vast majority of professional economists have got everything completely and utterly totally wrong and are living in denial about their own stupidity.
With regards to Nu-Labour I detest almost everything about them, even more than the Tory Tossers.
However Gordon Brown, despite being known for picking his nose and chewing it as an example of his PR skills, does in fact have some redeeming qualities. For example his scam to screw £22.5BN out of the Telco’s for the use of hot air for 3G that still doesn’t work at the height of the tech bubble was sheer class. Whilst he may well have pissed it all away, we would all be like Russia was 10 years ago when all the banks went bust, if he hadn’t saved the World 18 months ago, and stitched up the Yanks – sucking out all their first bail out money to pay us back for the nicely wrapped human turds they had flogged us
Do you honestly think any of the Tory Tossers even now would have had a clue how to play the game?
Guido,
Thanks for the entertainment. I won’t bother changing my IP Address to get over being banned. I thought you were very tolerant.
Bye
thank f for that
yeah fuck off shitforbrains
Brown has ‘bought’ the votes of the current employed voters at the expense of our grandchildren.
The Conservatives were right: we should have bitten the bullet now and saved future generations from Brown’s disgusting politics
We should have bitten the bullet two fucking years ago instead of lying that there was no recession… ooops there is but we’re best placed in the world to weather it …. ooooh actually we’re worst placed in the world to waether it but we’ll emerge first …. ooooh okay we’ll emerge last – if at all as long as I just print and borrow another 200bn ….oooooh – is the election here yet…. ohhhh fuck, fuck, fucketty fuck….
We are an extra 500bn quid and two years away from dealing with this Labour economic catastrophe just so Brown can blame the whole clusterfuck on somebody else.
His entire government deserves hanging. All of them. Not one of 400 or so Labour MPs has broken ranks to decry the economic idiocy and savegery wrought by this arsehole.
The evil, self-serving fucking bastards.
Unfortunately milllions of people will remember Labour as the party that spent and invested – and the incoming Tories as the ones who brought in cuts.
They won’t realise the underlying economics was of a incompetent Labour Government and a prudent sensible Tory one
And the way Cameron & Co mis-communicate with the electorate, then the electorate never will realise that the cuts are labour’s fault!
I think ‘traditional’ Tory voters already ‘get’ it. Traditional Labour voters are too stupid or wilfully ignorant to care and enough of the ’swing’ voters are just want to be told that their house will go up in value and they’ll be ‘rich’ again next year and can borrow more money too.
I begin to understand why Switzerland is so popular with smart, rich people.
We are all at the whim of the lowest common denominator.
As some have been saying since ‘97, ‘Lowest Common Denominator’ are the 3 words that best describe Labia. It is this philosophy that is ever more ingrained in the public sector, disguising the work of some very diligent individuals. Teach at primary school that there are no losers and wait for these kids to grow up and we reap what we have sown.
BBC showed recently Kenyan school age children without money for an education sneaking INTO school, here it is free and people choose not to accept it
It will take at least a generation to achieve a turn-around. If people really want any change before it is too late
Don’t forget the basis for Brown’s economic decisions.
This is the man who as Chancellor, put the lives of thousands of troops at risk so that he could gain a small advantage in his personal feud with Blair.
Hmmmm – it is beginning to look that way alright. I had thought he’d just kept his mouth shut and went along with it all – the better to be in position to pounce – but it is beginning to look more and more as if he deliberately acted to string the whole thing out and deprive Blair of his short, sharp, victorous ‘Falklands’.
Just when you thought you understood the depth of his malevolence he suprises you on the down-side.
Interesting thought. September 2003 saw the withdrawal of the majority of the UN workers after the UN mission was bombed the previous month and head of mission was killed. Sounds like a good time to cut funding, Gordon.
Reading about the illustrious career of Brown the Chancellor, one gets the impression that many of his actions were prompted by a desire to undercut Blair and promote himself. Presumably he begrudged the promotion of the fluent and persuasive Blair over himself, formerly the up and coming man.
It’s appalling that such childish people should have got away with this, and that the sheeple voted this lot in 3 times in a row.
If the middle class feel hard done by, they’ve only themselves to blame. Their leftward swing voted this lot in.
I believe that the British economy is being deliberately undermined to make us beg to join the Euro. Once the real scale of the clusterfuck hits home, and the pound becomes worthless, the only option for us would be to join the euro. And I shall make this bold prediction now.
Inside 10 years, we will be in the Euro and it will be Cameron, or one of his acolytes, who takes us in to it!
It is the way with this duopoly dictatorship. The left of the country are more likely to allow labour to introduce the far right policies, and the right will be far less resistant to the tories introducing the far left policies. I mean, how little fuss has there been from the left over all the iconic British brands sold to overseas companies by labour? Even the privatisation of our nuclear power generation capacity to foreign owners? What would the left made of the tories doing that???
(if it is our side doing it, then there must be a good reason for it. I don’t like it, but I’ll go along with it)
Mark my words, the tories will take us into the Euro inside 10 years. Tory and labour both want to implement the SAME agenda.
its the bildbergers will wakey wakey people
Remind me, who’s brother is head of cummunications of the French giant EDF who generate more & more of our electricity?
Brown is evil.
This is what awaits us.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/edmundconway/7153169/Greece-crisis-There-but-for-the-grace-of-God-goes-Britain.html
It is well worth reading, because where Greece goes, we may well follow.
Panic stricken Governments do stupid things because they consist of panic stricken people. All tax and spend Departments are under enormous pressure to tax more and spend less.
I am due to be taken to Court in a few days time, forcing me to pay a Child Support assessment which was under appeal and has now been withdrawn pending recalculation. I have yet to hear if the case has been dropped.
We can expect the same from every area of Government.
That article does seem to skirt round the things that make greece worse. Anything that makes your blood boil in the uk about unions and high public spending, (+ a public not willing to cut it), and “bloody socialists”, would cause you to pop in a small nuclear explosion in greece.
The reason that the Greeks are against the cuts so vehemently, is because they are not cuts coming from the will of the Greek people.
The Greeks bought into an illusion. They joined the Euro and used the global fiscal might of the Euro-zone to take advantage of the lower rates of borrowing for Euro-zone countries. They went on a borrowing binge and now the bills are hitting the mat, they are in deep shit. The Greeks thought that being in the Euro would be enough to guarantee economic stability and that the EU would guarantee them. now they are learning, to their pain and disgust, that they are shafted.
This has led to the EU effectively taking control of Greece’s economy. So the cuts are not democratic cuts implemented by a will of the people, realising that they are in the shit and deciding for themselves how to get out of it. This are now seen as cuts being imposed by foreigners who the Greeks have not voted for.
So there is double the resistance. Firstly resistance to a change that the Greeks never ever thought that would need to happen. The Euro was supposed to take care of them forever. Second, that the change is being ordered by unelected diktats from foreigners in the EU.
I am so glad and thankful and grateful that John Major secured the opt-out from joining the Euro.
This the price that National Governments will all have to pay for signing Lisbon without a referendum.
Spain, Portugal, and probably Germany, (but for different reasons).
When people have lost their jobs and their income, they no longer have anything to fear; the worst has already happened. Riots are inevitable.
Riots are inevitable, but I can assure you, the worst has not yet happened, not by a long shot.
As we have also signed up to the Lisbon treaty, does that mean that the EU has the same power to dictate our economic policy to us as it does to Greece?
Not yet. But it does mean joining the Euro is more likely and then they will have that power.
On the Toady programme this morning, Evan Davis quipped that if QE is ditched now then re-introduced later, it could be called QE2.
Jim Naughtie nearly came in his pants.
Rome burns while Nero fidddles…ang giggles…
That piss-poor pun has been in regular use for several months on Zero Hedge and other blogs.
Never heard of Zero Hedge you prick…!!
Ditto.
There is a myth that the Bank of England is “independent”. Well it isn’t really – if QE is extended in today’s meeting, it would prove the point. The UK economy needs more QE, like it needs a hole in the head, but Labour need QE to keep reality at bay for a few more months. The outcome of today’s meeting will therefore be keenly anticipated.
Spot on me beauty !!!
Or watch messrs brown & king fall out again !
Brown will win. Even if he has to fire Merv. Which he will already have threatened. Merv will be torn between resigning thus precipitating a financial crisis or agreeing to print just a leeeetle bit more Mr Creosote and being in position to try and help the UK through this clusterfuck once we are rid of Brown.
Because you can be sure whoever Brown replaces Merv with would be an economic beserker. Probably Blanchflower – man for whom interest rates could never be low enough. Even if they were negative and he was charging you 10% for the privilege of borrowing your money and pissing it up a rope.
Withhold any Tory votes, let Brown win and let this bunch of incompetent shits sort out and take responsibility for their problem. There will be a social whirlwind unleashed when the IMF come in, unemployment soars to above 3 million and the benefit chavs take to the streets because their income has been cut. New Labour we be consigned to history.
Not before Zanulab have completed their constitutional and social destruction of the UK as well. Far Right and Left and Jihadists will all be slugging it out on the streets whilst Plod fills out forms back at the station.
Unemployment is close to 7 million now, if you mean people of working age that are not working but are perfectly capable of doing so.
For unemployment to “soar above 3 million” it would have to SINK from today’s real figure.
Breaking News. John Terry is not shagging Sarah Brown
it’s shagging Gordo
This could start a trend.
Well, I paid him enough. I want my money back.
No-one is.
Gudio
You hit the nail on the head..
How to “turn off the monetary liquidity flood” ?
It’s never been done before on the scale necessary here as you also say…
I have seen many people talking and writing about the necessity for and timing of an “exit strategy” but never HOW….without the inflation, currency collapse etc
Has anyone actually spelled out HOW this can be done??…It is easy to stop QE but not to “reverse” the trillions that have already been injected…
They’ll never be able to unwind the QE without a Gilt strike, the Pound crashing and inflation kicking in.
I think the BoE might try holding it at £200bn this month and see what happens, are we the last country in the world still printing money?
The next couple of years will be carnage, time to emigrate everyone!
Clearly it had no chance of working because Gordon Brown was involved in it. His problem seems to be that, faced with multiple options, he dithers and dithers and dithers until, probably too late, he either takes the deciusion to act, or, more often than not, runs away to hide, leavinhg others to pick up the pieces. Brown wanted to be PM but hadn’t got a clue what he would do when he was PM. And he refuses to allow people to see that he is paralysed by this and will not seek advice. Instead he seeks reafirmation from the weakminded and weakwilled group of Brown pleasers he has surrounded himself with.
And if anyone says: “Are you SURE about this course of action, Gordon?” He considers them an enemy to be attacked. Consider the latest example of this:-
Labour MPs attack Brown, Brown attacks Labour MPs, Clare Short attacks army – and can I say “no wonder Monbiot is called Moonbat?”
The markets are only holding off beacuse of the possibility of Brown being booted out. A Hung Parliament or a Labour Administration re-elected on 6 May will result in a run on the pound nothing is more certain although Mandelson will of course say that is talking down Britain which bearing in mind he and Brown have not just talked down Britain but bankrupted it for a generation seems like taking the “piss” to me
When is the announcement due?
midday
Watch Daily Politics ?
As the great man wrote:
“In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.”
Vegetative state patients can respond to questions ……….More than Brown can.
Does this QE/PIMPCO ED BALLS mean my new job is screwed.
Give me a job.
Damian McBride is evil – ignore him.
As someone who used to be an “old fashioned” kind of school secretary, I sincerely hope that your so-called job (and all similar public sector jobs with a wonderful title, vague job description and good salary) does come to an end.
The EU fears Cameron. http://tinyurl.com/yfoff9q
Good – he must be doing something right.
Is that a Cast Iron promise ?
I think we are right to be concerned that once started a QE process that substitutes a competitive return determined by the free market for a obligated buyer (the taxpayer or more widely the owners of non-proxies for real assets) blind to alternative measures of value and prospective return, is going to both difficult and almost certainly expensive to halt and then reverse. The question I pose is “do we have the right people in place making these decisions?”. My view is we do not for a wholly academic approach seems to drive their work and this is evidenced by a lack of targeting in where the money went. To simply allow the printing press to substitute for buyers with economic reasons to own UK debt the Monetary Committee has been incompetent at best or nobbled by the Executive at worst.
If you increase the amount of currency in circulation you naturally water down its value. The fact that much of this money now resides in Chinese and other surplus nations’ virtual vaults and not our real economy is a bit like building a superdam somewhere upstream on the Yangtze.
The real problem with sterling is that it is “overvalued” as a world reserve currency, which the market makers like to peg between two “slots” on which they can make sure profits and quick returns, which ironically insulates the UK pound from catastrophic devaluation and the resulting rampant inflation it would effect.
There is, however, as observed quite correctly a sort of “flood threat” should all those Brown Bonds get sold on, even at a loss. Britain ranks with just the US and Japan for sovereign debt, as we as a nation float collectively in hitherto uncharted seas.
Does Sterling still hold the lustre of these other two world currencies? It only takes a few creditors to start to feel queasy about whether the hamsters of the British Economy can keep their little treadmills whirring at the correct speed to finance the opulent and otiose investors from richer and doubtless warmer parts of the world.
The Problem with Brown buying votes is that when he does not deliver, as he will not the voters will want there money back
The Labour voters are a volatile mix of manual works, public sector workers, those reliant on benefits, the young, immgrants etc – I am not sure you could manufcature such a dangerous cocktail of people to disrupt UK plc if you set out to do it.
Only 3.4 voters per million currently support Brown
Just been polled by “YouGov”. I told them that I would be voting for Labour and Brown as he was the right man to steer Britain through our present crisis. Hopefully that will help in “conning” Brown that he can go to the country as Cameron’s lead narrows still more. I’ve told ICM exactly the same (how many more are doing the same I wonder ?)Then at the election I can cheerfully vote Brown and Labour out, So the polls are “shite”.The only one that matters is the one that Brown calls when he get’s up the courage
ReJoyce, I have been a busy boy recently.
O/T Legg report data HERE
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmmemest/348/34802.htm
Shameless Piggy Bastards
Here’s just a few to start with
Ms Nadine V Dorries MP
Mid Bedfordshire
Ms Dorries was paid £882.31 twice for hotel expenses in January 2007.
She was also paid £161.04 twice for internet service in April 2007.
She was further paid £271.02 twice for a telephone bill in 2008-09.
Total repayment recommended: £1,314.37
Total repayments received since 1 April 2009: £0.00
Balance recommended to be repaid: £1,314.37
Rt Hon Geoffrey Hoon MP
Ashfield
Mr Hoon was overpaid by £1,013.13 for mortgage interest in 2008-09.
He was also paid £138.29 twice for a gas bill, also in 2008-09.
Total repayment recommended: £1,151.42
Total repayments received since 1 April 2009: £383.76
Balance recommended to be repaid: £767.66
Mr Mike Hall MP
Weaver Vale
Mr Hall was paid a total of £10,364.28 during the period 2004-05 to 2007-08 for cleaning, laundry, dry cleaning and ironing. This exceeds £2,000 per year by £2,364.28.
He was paid £250 per month for petty cash from April to August 2004. This is not allowable under Green Book rules.
He was also paid £250 per month for incidental expenses in September and October 2004. Incidental expenses are not allowed under the Green Book rules.
He was also paid a total of £8,789 for household sundries (variable amounts up to £250 per month during the period November 2004 to March 2008, and £24 a month for 11 months in 2008-09). No receipts were provided.
Total repayment recommended: £12,639.28
Total repayments received since 1 April 2009: £0.00
Balance recommended to be repaid: £12,639.28
Rt Hon David Heathcoat-Amory MP
Wells
Mr Heathcoat-Amory was paid cleaning costs of £12,995.35 over the five years of the review period. That exceeded £2,000 a year by a total of £2,995.35.
He was also paid a total of £30,696.58 for gardening during the four years 2004-05 to 2007-08. This exceeded £1,000 a year by £26,696.58.
Total repayment recommended: £29,691.93
Total repayments received since 1 April 2009: £6,122.24
Balance recommended to be repaid: £23,569.69
A lot of cleaning here. The piggies are filthy in their pens, it seems. Maybe it’s psychological, like Lady Macbeth washing her hands endlessly.
According to David Miles of the BoE a recession comes to an end after 2 consecutive quarters of growth. One – as current figures are related to 40% of the data, we are not yet certain that the Q4/09 result will show growth and two – even if it shows growth, it is only 1 quarter. It will need growth in Q1/10 to technically end the recession and I don’t see that happening.
Did QE work?
If a casino allows you to give them a cheque which they exchange for chips and allow you to gamble and if you win and so are able to buy back the cheque you gave them earlier in the evening then it works.
If you do not win more than the amount of the cheque then it doesn’t work.
The wages in this country have not increased, unless you are one of the six million public sector workers or a professional or a banker.
So for the majority of people in this country QE has not worked.
They are on the same or less wages than last year and yet they will now have to service the QE debt which means most people in this country will experience a lower standard of living for the forseeable future.
Brown’s gamble has not paid off and it was never going to. But of course Brown never gave a damn whether it did nor not, his sole reason for introducing it was to prolong the life of his discredited government.
That’s it in a nutshell.
he did miss out on it being a tax on savings.
good rationale
Open letter to David Cameron,
Dear sir,
You have an open goal. This is the most corrupt, venal and incompetent government in the history of the UK.
As an organisation, they are effectively insolvent.
Stop pissing about reacting to minor events and go for the jugular.
Use your election war chest now.
The majority of people in this country have little understanding of politics, history or economics.
Explain to them the true nature of Labour. Label them as Marxists. Highlight the difference between these ideals and the millionaire lifestyles of their
leaders.
Explain how they have infiltrated every public organisation in the country.
This is important ! Explain Common Purpose and how all of these public bodies are linked and use their funds to further the socialist agenda. Explain how public funds are given to the unions to be given back to Labour to swell their coffers.
Explain that they are traitors and how everything they do is a step closer to a socialist european superstate, a step closer to their ulimate goal of a socialist world order.
Explain the underhanded, devious and corrupt nature of the Fabians.
Explain how this has been tried and failed. Explain how Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao were socialists and Marxists and how their police states failed.
Explain how unchecked socialism always leads to economic collapse and oppression.
Explain to them that Gordon Brown cannot create jobs. Business and enterprise create jobs. We cannot all be employed checking each others diversity credentials. Somewhere down the line, we need to create wealth and export. Explain how giving money away is not ‘investment’ unless it produces a benefit.
They are Marxists. Label them as such and FFS stop being so timid.
And another thing…… Show some balls and get off the global warming bandwagon. It is about redistribution of wealth to Africa.
Get on with it. You are running out of time.
To be honest I find this opposition malarky a little tiresome. I want the limo’s, No 10, Chequers, meetings with world leaders and so on.
Don’t worry, Mr Brown will arse it all up anyway and we have plenty of time before the election to get our act together
No you haven’t. Three months maximum. Get your finger out….
Dear Anonymouse,
thank you for suggestions. Your suggestions were welcomed and informative.
However, it was with regret that I must inform you that Common Purpose is endemic within my own party. My Lord and Master; Rothschild of Bilderberg has me by the balls. His grip upon British and European politics is watertight.
I am only here to promote the perception of opposition to New Labour.
I am sorry. I had no choice.
Good luck
Call Me Dave
Candidly – and I speak frankly here, – I honestly haven’t got the first idea or any vague notion of what I’m supposed to be doing.
I’m sure a lot of other people think so too.
very fair comment ..for me I would substitute ‘pseudo socialists’ for marxist as I don’t believe marxism figures in the present government’s motivation.
We’re pretty much all agreed that we’re in a whacking great economic hole, and still digging. We ‘re all agreed that we’ll have to stop digging at some point, and work out how deep the hole is.
Then what? How do we get the nation out of the hole? How do we stimulate the economy so that tax-take (NOT tax rates) and export earnings start to rise? Will government steer us in the right direction, or will we have to do the job ourselves by building viable businesses? In this economic environment, how do we do that sucessfully?
We need to create an economy first – since about 1970 politicians have managed to destroy our manufacturing abse.
Wait for the inflation – coming in 3, 2, 1…..
EVERYTHING has now to be aimed at jobs, production and worthwhile employment. All businesses have to be treated as precious and encouraged to grow. All benefits MUST be less than gainful employment can bring workers.
This is the number one priority. I want to hear no more about ring-fenced schools and other such money-pits. I want to hear no more about child poverty that is not real poverty at all. I want to hear no more about social engineering. I want real engineering. You’d think with such a shitty infrastructure, we’d actually have a lot to do in this country.
Any party which says that employment and production are the main priorities gets my vote.
And to cap all this expenses fiddles the R. Hon. Bliar is trying to get this country to have another war with Iran, could be a ruse to try and divert peoples attention away the mega financial disaster that may happen to this country, if the idiots do go to war with Iran, straws and camel’s back comes to mind. If the R. Hon. Bliar wants to go to war he has enough money to go himself, leading the first charge (if only).
Let the Israelis pay for it……..
Blair the Nom Dom. My sources tell me he is going to go to America late this year or 2011 to avoid ICC as they fear Chilcott will lead to a trial.
Wtach this space.
On a very general basis I see various reactions to the financial crisis
those who actually own their own businesses, financed by their own money, made hard cuts in 2008
those who own their own businesses, financed by bank money, made more moderate cuts in 2009
those who work for businesses, financed by bank money, are just getting around to make cuts
Public sector have been increasing spending throughout this period
last line spot on
Looking at my Chart today before the announcement, sterling will now start the aggressive move lower. I look for 1.5500 tomorrow afternoon after USNFP.
My target is still 1.35 and Euro 1.20.
Brown is incompetent
I think most serious minded pundits believe Cameron is holding his best work in hand until the true election starts and once the starting bell sounds he will be hammering on the government’s performance in 13 years and very particularly Brown’s presiding hand as chancellor and subsequently as PM.
QE is a fuel to inflation, devaluation and amassing debt that is difficult to switch off…the recession is not over in the UK officially or otherwise…we all know it.. we’re paying for the privilege of feeling it.. the chances of the next set of figures being better are remote except by fixing them.
The Government no longer has time to cover the mess with medium term ’solutions’ merely double talking, weasel words,wild electoral gambles and
fronted PR offensives by creeps like the prime mincer.. edbutnoballs.. bradshaw and similar slugs waiting for their own tilt at the top when the cards collapse.
As the scramble for the Labour party crown progresses towards the election expect a lot more ‘truths’ to emerge, briefings off the record, more chilcott, more number rinsing to suit Brown’s latest prime mincer fed soundbite rebuttal of what we all know to be true..they are floundering.
We all have to face and deal with a tough period ahead thanks to this corpulent government but the faster we can get on with the process the better. Listening to this daily tirade of nonsense is a joke.
Thanks for the advice. Must tell George to stop changing his mind. Now where’s Lord Ashcroft?
I just bought myself a high quality photocopier, time for a little “quantative easing” of my own. That’s how it works, right Gordon?
Purr-fect. Game over for Gordon.