Friday, Feb 27, 2009
Mandy vs Rogers. Place your bets.
Telegraph: Peter Mandelson rejects 'foolish' claims by Jim Rogers that Britain has 'nothing left to sell'
Sorry, I wouldn't normally post this but it's Friday night and I see some light relief in this article: 'Lord Mandelson rebuffed the accusations from Mr Rogers, the former business partner of George Soros, who has said that Britain has been crippled by the global financial crisis. Lord Mandelson acknowledged that the UK was in the grip of a “painful recession”, but insisted that it would be among the countries best placed to recover.' Sure Mandy. Sure.
Posted by quiet guy @ 11:45 PM (1291 views) Add Comment
20 Comments
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1. hpwatcher said...
Lord Mandelson.......HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
2. britishblue said...
Whilst it is fashionable to knock the government I think Mandlesons argument is reasonably cogent. Rogers and Soros agenda in this financial crisis is to make money, they have no concern for any economy. If the bail outs work and there is no guarantee that it will here, in the States or elsewhere, then the UK may well come out of this injured and battle worn, but will grow to be a strong economy again. Apart from production which is lost to Asia (which all of Europe suffers), the UK will be in a good position to regenerate manufacturing with a more competitive labour base and will also have a banking system in place. The real issue is not what Rogers is saying, it is that the gap between now and when green shoots start to emerge could be several very painful years that will rip into every area of society. Many people will lose their jobs (through no fault of their own), lose their homes and be forced into bankruptcy. It is the human cost that will be the tragedy, not that the UK is going to go back to being a third world country, which will not happen.
3. Rimmer said...
Britishblue
I would live to agree with you but sadly having travelled and knowing whats happened the past 10 - 15 years i have to say the UK is very poorly placed to weather the storm, in the USA which is suffering badly from the downturn everywhere you look are factories, manufacturing or farms ( basically lots and lots of producing something ) - Given our population what big industry do you assosiate with the UK?
My sad belief is unemployment will reach at least double what it currently is and probably more - my reasons for that is a large proportion of current employment is based on each other ( ie service industry ).
Basing the UK economy on the financial sector will cost the UK Very dearly - will the people that did this be heltd accountable ? of course not it wouldnt be british now would it.
I love the UK at heart even though i would rather live in a democracy - i have to agree 100% with the article what ever its motives - we shouldnt be bailing out banks we should be building factories !
4. Crunchy said...
Who would I listen to, Rogers of course.
I still have clear thinking and it is uneffected by spin.
Meanwhile we will all pay a massive future tax bill for what is simply printed money and to rub salt into those wounds we will pay interest on loans from that fiat money. Do you call that a sustainable economy?
Now that's clear thinking. Go Rogers!
5. drewster said...
Obviously you can't believe a word Mandy says because he is speaking for the government. However Jim Rogers is also showing signs of self-delusion. He lives in Singapore and his investments are (apparently) focused towards Asia, so he has a vested interest in talking up his position. To find out the truth you have to look at the facts behind the posturing. This article is very thin on facts.
6. titaniccaptain said...
Sorry I just f#cking hate Mandelson........
7. quiet guy said...
Well, as an effort at humour I'll count this as a misfire.
@britishblue
"Apart from production which is lost to Asia (which all of Europe suffers), the UK will be in a good position to regenerate manufacturing with a more competitive labour base and will also have a banking system in place."
Sorry, but regenerating manufacturing and simultaneously losing production to Asia seems like a contradiction to me - or have I missed something?
"It is the human cost that will be the tragedy, not that the UK is going to go back to being a third world country, which will not happen."
Agreed. We will not be third world but surely it's time for a little drop in living standards? Can we really avoid living within our means?
@drewster
"To find out the truth you have to look at the facts behind the posturing. This article is very thin on facts."
Yes, the posting was a bit lightweight. Perhaps I'm being naive but is Rogers really so psychopathic as to move his family to Singapore for future stock market gains? Once you get to that level of distrust there is no practical way forward; we'll just have to see how events unfold.
8. who stole my pension? said...
Mandy needs to stop spinning before we start to trust him. Or have we forgetten why we call him Mandy, his dodgy mortgages and the people he sucks up to. Most people would take the extra effort to cross the road to avoid the people Mandy sucks up to. Sorry Mandy is only in it for himself - just like Jim Rogers. It is time we thought for ourselves.
9. shining wit said...
TitanicCaptain...
I couldn't agree more.
The man is a chuffin Nazi. Hate is a very, very strong word, but in Mandelson's case it's never wrongly used.
10. Divadwg said...
Mandy got a shock after seeing quite how hostile the reactions were to him telling wildcat strikers that they should get a job in Europe. He realized that he'd get much more political support by joining the patriotic mob than keeping to the globalization mantra that had clout with the people around him who are rapidly losing power.
His 180 degree turn shows that he can even spin himself, but more worryingly that he's prepared to become a Nazi if Nazi's are popular. And Nazi's are popular in times like these.
11. hpwatcher said...
Mandelson has been publicly disgraced twice.....i know who i believe.
12. Iblewitlasttime said...
Its amazing that the British economy's flexibility and capability as a financial hub are now adopted by New Labour as the reason Britain will recover so well - they are promoting everything they have previously disdained. What hippocrites. Mrs Thatcher could have delivered Mandy's statement.
13. ketha said...
BritishBlue
I agree. Some of this hyperbole really is only based on the stock investments of fund managers. Sometimes what makes a country is more than it's stock value. England will learn the price of getting seduced by finance. Our 'solution' isn't going to please the investors but we might follow america and *if* this goes really wrong, remake modern society around 'society' and not materialism. An obsession with house price crashes is the flip side of an obession with financial value over social value. I'd live in a hut eating soup if England was a country of decency, compassion, hard work and moderation... the credit boom has made us a country of nihilistic bores and the 'house crash' voyeurism which sometimes goes on here (albeit with a morality behind it) is not the real solution in my view.
14. it_is_going_with_a_bang said...
Regardless of who or what Mandy is - he is the UK Business Secretary and therefore anything he says about UK Business is likely to be spin full stop. That is what his job is - talk it up and paint a rosey picture as best he can. If he wasn't doing that then he would surely face the sack once more - which would be mildy amusing.
Remember he said " I'm a fighter not a quitter"
Except of course the 2 times he was forced to quit his cabinet posts in disgrace....
15. drewster said...
Quiet guy,
I agree with what you said to BritishBlue. There's no way we can rebuild our manufacturing sector overnight, especially when we're competing with the Germans, Japanese, and Chinese. However this crisis has shown that the world has too much manufacturing capacity. We're good at services, we should stick to them! London is still a center for advertising, for accountancy, for international law, and the UK in general is good at design. Best build on our strengths.
16. hpwatcher said...
@2. britishblue said... not that the UK is going to go back to being a third world country, which will not happen.
Well - under Labour - probably most of the people from the third world are here anyway...so we are third world ;-)
But, anyway, let's just see what happens. If you just do the maths on the massive debts, drop in taxes, cost of huge public sector etc Britain is absolutely bust for years and years.
17. stillthinking said...
britishblue,
While it's very laudable that Mandelson talks up the UK, and I am sure that we all agree that maintaining confidence is important. It is patronising to suggest that the UK is in anything other than dire straits and rapidly getting worse.
Government borrowing is out of control, the BoE is about to print money to cover government expenditure, mass employment is coming, the state represents over 50% of the economy...
I doubt very much that Mandelson adopts his public view when he is discussing policy with his secret circle, and personally I am not interested in being fobbed off. Surely the whole point of this site is brutally honest discussion about the economics of the crash in housing, not some New Labour forum. I wonder who you are addressing your comments to?
"it is fashionable to knock the government ". Nothing to do with fashion, they have been a terrible force of destruction for the UK and we will suffer the consequences for decades.
18. stillthinking said...
"a more competitive labour base ", really, you have to be joking. You mean poor. We are going to poor and our wages are going to be lower. Why not put it like that?
19. materialistic weasle said...
Only thinking out loud, but just think what an industrial base we could have had if we had used all those billions to set up useful business's instead of throwing it down the well
20. Rimmer said...
Drewster
I have the greatest respect for you based on past posts
However "We're good at services, we should stick to them! London is still a center for advertising, for accountancy, for international law, and the UK in general is good at design"
A good post but a sad understanding of world economics ( sorry ), most of the UK service sector is actually servicing each other and thats why i feel we will have gross un-employment, the comment you make is very valid but it will only sustain a small fraction of the 40 million working UK population, Brown tried to base the Uk on financial services and i think its obvious like the credit boom to him at the time it seemed a good shot, problem is reality has set in and financial services arent what he thought they were, is that a problem? - well when you base your countries economy and the future of 65 million people on it i would say it is.
We will have to rebuild out manufacturing industry - It will cost many Trillions of pounds and you and i will pay considerably more tax ( if we have a Job naturally ) for the rest of our natural lives, in 5 years time you may find house prices far cheaper and a lost cause as an asset at all - The UK population may well have more important things on their minds than worrying about the price of houses.