Monday, Jun 08, 2009
More like 'Gordon the Insanely Deluded'
New York Times: Gordon the Unlucky
Article by Paul Krugman in the NY Times to feed Gordon Brown's manic delusion even more. He's just unlucky in having been caught up in the bubble, it's not a condemnation of left-wing governments, he just got caught up in wider global events... oh dear. Someone stop GB from seeing this or it will finally push him over the edge into Nero-style mania...
Posted by an bearin bui @ 12:14 PM (745 views) Add Comment
11 Comments
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1. 51ck-6-51x said...
I imagine any politician or civil servant who showed such talent would have been snapped up by private enterprise anyway (hence I tend to agree, any politician would have suffered the same fate unless they were selflessly committed to serving the public good [could you imagine such a politician?!])
2. Roberto Birquet said...
I agree totally with this article. A closer reading than this site's editor has given it will show you that he does blame Brown for the mess we are in. It is just that he believes the Tories would have made the same mistake, as they believed in the same light touch or no-touch regulation of financial markets and markets in general.
Almost the entire economics profession has been asleep for two decades, assuming that we have all the answers, economics has been worked out. Utter nonsense! No-one forced anyone to pay £250K for a one-bed flat. They agreed to. And the banks agreed to finance them. Market forces created this mess, and where is the proof that they are self-correcting? It takes so many bloody years, we are left having to decide: Get into hock, or rent till you’re 40. Great! Some of the measures taken by the government have been right since last year, but that does not excuse the mess they allowed us to get into. The only difference we would have had with the Tories would have been lower government debt, but also worse public services. The 250% private sector debt would still have been there. A pox on both their (Lab/Tory) houses.
3. Roberto Birquet said...
I agree totally with this article. A closer reading than this site's editor has given it will show you that he does blame Brown for the mess we are in. It is just that he believes the Tories would have made the same mistake, as they believed in the same light touch or no-touch regulation of financial markets and markets in general.
Almost the entire economics profession has been asleep for two decades, assuming that we have all the answers, economics has been worked out. Utter nonsense! No-one forced anyone to pay £250K for a one-bed flat. They agreed to. And the banks agreed to finance them. Market forces created this mess, and where is the proof that they are self-correcting? It takes so many bloody years, we are left having to decide: Get into hock, or rent till you’re 40. Great! Some of the measures taken by the government have been right since last year, but that does not excuse the mess they allowed us to get into. The only difference we would have had with the Tories would have been lower government debt, but also worse public services. The 250% private sector debt would still have been there. A pox on both their (Lab/Tory) houses.
4. hpwatcher said...
@ 3. Roberto Birquet
site's editor has given it will show you that he does blame Brown for the mess we are in. It is just that he believes the Tories would have made the same mistake, as they believed in the same light touch or no-touch regulation of financial markets and markets in general
Would the tories have sold half the UK's gold?
Would the tories have effectively destroyed UK private pensions?
Would the tories have had a policy of mass immigration?
I'm curious....
5. Roberto Birquet said...
The sale of gold is piffling against the mess we find ourselves in. A mess we would have been in under the Tories or for that matter the Lib Dems. Had we kept the gold, it would be worth what? another £2 billion? How many shares in a bust bank would that buy? Get a grip! The UK's private pensions have partially been destroyed by the "masters of the Universe" who were gambling on the markets by doing what, exactly? Just aping the investment that other brokers were making. I invest on my own as I’m neither better nor worse than the professionals.
And mass immigration has not hurt the country. It’s daft nonsense to say it has. Immigration merely increases the size of the economy. Jobs are not lost, they are displaced into other sectors. Immigrant gets job, spends money, creates other job. Simples! The overall effect on the positive side is: greater range of skills in the economy, and greater competition for jobs, improving outcomes. On the negative side: Increased demand on housing, against the well-known restriction on supply. Immigration as a political discussion on the economy is a red herring.
The major problem we face is not the loss of some Gold, but a severely unbalanced economy that almost no politician ever noticed. Check out the speeches from Cameron and Osborne of the past few years, extolling the great virtues of a City's booming economy, and the necessity of light/ even lighter-touch regulation. Oh, for when there is some focus on this. The Tories have had it ludicrously easy so far. Labour deserve to lose; the Tories do not deserve to win. It's like replacing Eriksson with McLaren as England manager. Act in haste, repent at leisure. It is so drearily depressing.
6. 51ck-6-51x said...
hpwatcher.
Yes
Yes
No, but they would have skimped on border control I'm sure.
rant
Two sides of the same coin; two management teams bidding for control of Slavery PLC.
It's very sad how the man in the street votes for Labour when the Conservatives leadership becomes weak and/or the public services are falling apart only to then vote Conservative again when Labour leadership becomes weak and/or they take on too much debt, ad infinitum.
7. drewster said...
Robert,
It's unfair to say the Tories would have done the same - there's no knowing what they would have done. Certainly the Lib Dems would have done better - Vince Cable is one of the few MPs who saw this coming and tried to warn about it for some time.
International comparisons are useful too. Although this is a global recession, some countries are faring much better than others. The countries which will fare best are the ones which aren't massively in debt - the total of public, corporate, and household debt. Gordon Brown chose to dig us deeper into debt (public debt, household debt, and corporate debt); while other countries from Germany to China to Canada were far more restrained. There was nothing inevitable about Gordon's decision to inflate our bubble, just as there was nothing inevitable about Germany's decision not to do so.
8. shipbuilder said...
It's incredibly depressing to think that after everything that's happened over the past few years, most people still believe that the solution lies with another political party.
The evidence that those in power, no matter what their colour of politics, or indeed whether they are politicians or businessmen, have all our best interests at heart, is overwhelming, isn't it?
9. drewster said...
Shippy,
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Kicking this lot out won't solve everything, but surely it's better than keeping them in.
10. britishblue said...
Brilliant article. Must print this one out. Browns biggest mistake was not calling and losing an election when he was first in power. the electorate and the media are fickle and Cameron not Brown would be in the firing line now.
11. inbreda said...
4. hpwatcher said...
I am no fan of gordon the fuggwit, but lets not forget which party employs KRUSTY THE CLOWN as an adviser on housing!!