Calis Beach and Fethiye Turkey Discussion Forum
General Topics => The Debating Chamber => Topic started by: Colwyn on October 05, 2011, 10:26:38 AM
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Just when you were thinking that George Osbourne had cornered the market for halfwitted analysis of the national and global economy, his boss steps in to show he is even more clueless. A pre-conference press release says that the following will be in this afternoon's speech: The only way out of a debt crisis, the Prime Minister will say, is to ‘deal with your debts. That means households - all of us - paying off the credit card and store cards bills,' Mr Cameron will say. Brilliant, eh. He will possibly be telling us where we can all find the money for this. Borrow some?
I believe an entire convocation of spin-doctors is working flat out to devise some form words, accompanied by smoke and mirrors, to try to put a better face on this so he doesn't show himself up as a megatwerp.
[In case people think this is some kind of left wing smear, I took the quote from that favourite of the right - Daily Mail. Proper newspapers also carry the story].
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Have you also noticed how many Corporal Jones are in the Cameron's government, every other economic spoke-person from the government seems to be saying 'Don't Panic .. Don't Panic'. Well I wasn't, but I'm now beginning to wonder if I should be .... no no we must Stay Calm and Carry On.
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The message has already begun to metamorphosize. A Tory spokesperson on Radio 5 tells me Mr Cameron didn't mean we should spend less; this would be catastrophic and lead to many small businesses going bankrupt - as a number of listeners were keen to phone in and tell him. Spending has already dropped by 0.8% in the second quarter of 2011, contibuting to a miserly growth rate of 0.1% over the period.
What Cameron really meant was that we should pay off our credit cards and carry on spending. Oh dear. Shouldn't politicians carry round with them a card that states Dennis Healy's Law of Holes so they can remind themseves of it before thay open their mouths? I wonder what Cameron will be telling us he really really means this afternoon.
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But can you think of anyone who can do better Colwyn? the last lot certainly couldnt, allthough Mr Blair seems to have done alright for himself doesnt he.
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When I look at, and listen to, Osbourne I find it difficult to believe there are many politicians could do it worse. Surely there must be someone in the Tory party who has a better grasp on how economies work. But perhaps they are not such good chums of Cameron? Pity Uncle Vince shot himself in the foot - he does have an understanding of economics - but he has been a naughty boy and ruled himself out.
Meanwhile things are moving on apace. Cameron has rewritten the part of speach that refers to credit cards.
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Certainly agree with regards to Vince.
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Brown and Darling did it worse. They got us into the mess in the first place and ran up the biggest deficit in the developed world.
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here here!
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Here here....lots of complaints/criticisms are coming from people's mouths but my take on it is, they're trying to sort out the mess left behind by the party prior to them(and what a mess they left behind). No one on this earth could sort it out without the hard cutbacks, but many seem to do nothing but bitch about it. Would those who complain /criticise prefer the country to go bankrupt?
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Well said Fiona, the one thing Blair and Brown did for me was they made up my mind to get out of Britain,so sad to have to leave your country, but just couldnt stand being screwed anymore, so much for the working mans party.:(
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Totally agree Fiona, what is so annoying about the last government was that they presided in a time of ecomonic growth and wealth and all they did was squander it away.For most of the the Blair/Brown years the coffers were overflowing with tax revenue and they managed to do nothing with it. If they had left the country with first class transport,education and health systems it would not be too bad.We have none of these. We will have the Labour supporters belly aching that things have got worse in the NHS. They probably have but money has got to come from somewhere.
As people I do not like the current lot as I find Cameron,Clegg and Osbourne smug. But that is not a reason for me to say that I disagree with what they are trying to do.Someone has got to sort out the mess.
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quote:
Originally posted by Firo
Would those who complain /criticise prefer the country to go bankrupt?
Well I can't speak for all critics/complainers, but I wouldn't want the country to go bankrupt. My problem is that Osbournes ill-informed, badly-considered policies seem to me the most likely way of accellerating the bankruptcy possiblity. I think Brown did brilliantly well in first preventing key UK banks from going bankrupt (without simply giving them billions for free as Eurozone Finance Ministers are currently determined to do) and second persuading other major governments to follow suit. Has everybody forgotten that pre the financial collapse, only the first couple of thousand of your earnings was fully protected by Government. The next slice up to £35k was covered at 90%, and anything over that you were to lose entirely. I remember because was preparing for retirement and saw my life savings about to be wiped out. But Brown stepped in and used taxpayers' money to ensure that no private saver in the UK lost a penny during the banking crisis. He then persuaded suffient other government to adopt similar polices so that the feared global banking meltdown didn't happen.
The Coservative Party opposed all of this. They may try to forget, and now say that our national debt was all down to Brown's mismagement of the economy, but this - for me - is lies, damned lies, and Tory lies. And I don't suppose that will change. I thought Brown's Prime Ministership was a disaster, and I know he couldn't smile very well, but how long are the Tories going to go on, and on, and on about this when they are in charge now and are whipping the horses faster and faster towards the precipice?
George, it's not too late to listen to someone who knows about economics. For all our sakes - do it.
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good reply Colwyn, but you forgot to mention how (BRILLIANTLY) Mr Brown did with our gold reserves ;)
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Brown did brillianly he saved the western world so he says. Let us remember how the banks got into this mess. Brown has admitted that the banks were not properly regulated and policed. Who is at fault for that?
British taxpayers had to pay more into our big banks to bail them out than any other country had to pay into their banks. It was poorly regulated British banks that had most exposure to these toxic assets.It goes full circle and finishes back at the same start point of poor regulation of the banking industry.
Colwyn you tell me what any government can do to get out of this mess without introducing hardship. Cameron turned this thing about paying off debt into a fiasco but in truth he is right. You have got to live within your means and rolling up more debt on credit cards finally catches up and it cannot be paid off.People finish up having to go to loan sharks to borrow at excessive interest rates. That scenario for an individual bear up equally for any country. A stage is reached where debt cannot be raised without having to pay for it and bond markets react by expecting excessive yields.
Austerity measures do work.Ireland got it itself into a terrible state and had an ECB bailout. As part of this bailout conditions it had to slash public spending. Although not out of the woods the green shoots of recovery are being seen. The economy is seeing growth and the recent unemployment data has shown a stabilisation in the market.The IMF are now saying it is the model that needs to be adopted.
The UK has not yet seen the worst as todays economic data highlights. Whatever government is in power all they can do is move the deckchairs around. The boat will still sink until some fixes the hole.In the UK economy that is excessive government debt.
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quote:
Originally posted by desmartinson
Well said Fiona, the one thing Blair and Brown did for me was they made up my mind to get out of Britain,so sad to have to leave your country, but just couldnt stand being screwed anymore, so much for the working mans party.:(
And welcome to economically successful Turkey, where the government does not try to screw its people ;)
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you obviously dont live here Peter ;)
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quote:
Originally posted by desmartinson
you obviously dont live here Peter ;)
And you obviously have not lived here very long Des ;)
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OPO
Again, I agree with your economic analysis but not with the political one; agreeing with economic cause and effect but not about at whom to point the finger.
Of course the banks were under-regulated and poorly regulated. From my perspective, all British governments over the last fifty years have done far too little to control capitalism. In doing so we have allowed the development of a fairly extreme form of capitalism that, whilst not identical to that of the USA, is sufficiently like it to justify the term Anglo-American capitalism. There are different ways of doing things. The economies of Germany and France, for example, follow rather different models of capitalism and many people in those societies see the banking collapse as a failure of precisely this Anglo-American capitalism. Under-regulation of the finance sector in the UK runs directly from Thatcherism, through the Major lacuna, and on through the New Labour years. Brown is as reprehensible as all the other chancellors in this. (A caller to a phone-in radio programme this morning reminded the audience that when profitability was high, and the country was enjoying "the good times" the government disastrously allowed businesses to take a "pension holiday" to avoid paying employer's contribution. I remembered this happening but I couldn't remember which government was involved. It could have any of them). Brown may have been worse than most due to the pathological fear of New Labour that they might be thought of as hostile to business, and thus be seen as just like old Labour, and hence unelectable. This is one of the main reasons why I have never voted New Labour.
On the question of bringing down the debt. Of course this needs to be reduced, in fact one of the notable things about Brown's early years as Chancellor was his bringing down of the National Debt; a policy for which he was attacked by people who couldn't see what the problem was as long as the UK could pay off the interest. I haven't heard anyone seriously arguing against debt reduction. Only the most naive would assume this could happen without hardship. The issues for disagreement are what should be speed and depth of debt reduction, and what the balance should be between this and economic growth. For eighteen months Ed Balls has been saying that the Coalition policy has got both issues wrong - and I agree with that. It is interesting that now even that orthodox neo-liberal institution the IMF is urging governments to put more emphasis on growth. The phrase "double dip recession" is appearing more frequently in discussions of market analysts.
You also use the analogy of individual/household economic action being like government/country action. I am very suspicious of any such analogies - but perhaps that's for a separate post.
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Colwyn, I do not totally disagree with what you are saying and we have much more in common than we may think. My main point is that Osbourne seems to be the man that is taking the blame for what is happening and that is not right. The whole of the developed world is in trouble. The US, France, Germany and Japan are also in deep trouble and we all seem to be heading for a double dip recession.We are in uncharted waters and we have never seen such instability since the depression. The IMF, the ECB, the Fed or the BOE do not have a cast iron solution to what we are encountering.
The world is on a roundabout and has not found a way to get off it. Cut the debt slows the economy down. Spend your way out of the recssion and we are back to where we started.The IMF, a few weeks ago, were saying Osbourne has got it right. Then there was a slight change in the IMF view in what he is doing is right but he should have this famous plan B. Now the IMF is talking about growth.The argument with debt reduction is the speed that it is done. Debt is like a cancer how much of it can you cut away and the patient still survives. What you do not want to do is have to perform the same operation twice.Equally if you are not careful you can cut away healthy tissue.
France and Germany are now heading into the realms of serious debt problems because they are the main carriers of raising the bailout funds for the Eurozone.
We can debate and argue over the flaws in capitalism and whether it has failed or not.The alternatives to capitalism have also collapsed. In the developed countries I do think that the main cause of the current situation is greed. In the Uk an attitude has developed that wealth is no longer earned and it is a given right.Most governments have actually pushed this ideal and have financed by borrowing. You might be surprised with this comment but Thatcher was one of the fundemental developers of this attitude. It has carried through all governments since. I remeber when I bought my first TV as I saved up for it. This attitude is old fashioned and now it is do not bother waiting just go and get it on tick. It is now I am Ok and sod the rest of you. We have become very materialistic.
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quote:
Originally posted by desmartinson
Well said Fiona, the one thing Blair and Brown did for me was they made up my mind to get out of Britain,so sad to have to leave your country, but just couldnt stand being screwed anymore, so much for the working mans party.:(
Des - I was wondering if you would care to expand/explain that in a little more detail please
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Why pump more money into the economy to boost it - a far better idea is to make everything half price so we can afford to buy twice as much - this would mean all factories would have to make twice as many and have to take on loads of more staff, solving the unemployment problem and of course reducing the price of everything by 50% would solve rising inflation at a stroke.
It's so easy you do wonder why these toffee nosed snivelling idiots bother wasting their unearned money sending their grovelling, creepy little misfit junior snobs to Oxbridge and Eton. I suppose this is what we have come to expect from the party that can't deport a murderer because he hasn't finished his Mars bar.
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Shame, if it were only that simple.Maybe it is.
Today was one of the blackest days about the ecoonomy and while watching the news I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Item 1 was about the state of the the UK economy and the possibility of depression. Item 2 was about the argument between 2 senior members of the cabinet on whether a cat prevented prevented a Bolivian from being deported.
What is the country coming to and Have we lost the plot?
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sold the plot more like
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Ah a subject I love politics! I am astounded how short memory many voters have, or maybe they just don't care and vote traditionally? If a political party caused a problem to you, you don't vote them back in do you? This current dire financial situation was managed by the Labour Party and I use the term managed very loosely, it is now down to the Conservatives and dare I say the party that came 3rd in the last election to sort it out, and that is where part of the problem currently lies, the Conservative cannot take full fiscal control over their desire to tackle this situation. Labour solution is spend your way out of it (add to the debt) Conservative solution (pay off the debt asap) Liberal solution (sit on the fence but appear to support both and none). I was brought up if you have a debt you need to pay it off, better still try not to get into debt in the first place, so I support the Conservative stance in tackling this, knowing that with all the financial cuts made and proposed it is still not going to tackle the countries debt mountain as stands and growing daily, frightening isn't it.All this is also not helped by the media which joys on doom and gloom (invention) even when it is not so, I watch the Moody downgrade of the UK banks and Sky News say's it has caused a sharp collapse in Bank Share prices this morning, as I watch the FTSE is up and still rising and the bank shares are still positive riding on yesterday's gains, albeit negative on today's prices but half of what is being reported, so scare monger reporting. Just like Moody's official statement saying their downgrade makes no difference to the UK Bank's financial stability just reflecting their links into the European debt crises, this is not how the story get's put across though.It's a no wonder that no one is happy at the governments attempts to solve not going into a double dip recession if you rely on the media's take on everything! Relying on the media to report what is going to be said before it is said or reporting factual of a situation is as naiev as voting Labour back in to sort the problem they let happen in the first place! Alistair Darling or George Osbourne, I know who I prefer, as I said short memories!
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Some politicians like to discuss the national economy as though it was just like the household writ large. Perhaps some economists explain their views in this way, but it is not the way that economists think or how they frame their own views. Some people may find the household analogy useful but I find it fundamentally unhelpful in understanding national and international economies. Perhaps a couple of examples will highlight its inadequacies.
Yesterday we saw the BoE going for another dose of quantitative easing. Although this doesn't actually mean physically rolling the presses to print more money (more like generating virtual computerized money) its impact is much the same. Essentially governments, in the short term, can pay their way out of trouble by creating more money. If I decided to follow suit and sort out my household budgets by printing money I would soon find myself looking at the world through iron bars. Message: households cannot act like governments.
Cameron has introduced the credit card into the argument. I pay off my card in full at the end of every month, always have done (yes, I'm of that generation that saved up to buy things). But if I did have a large credit card debt I would take advantage of all those 0% interest on balance transfer offers, and move the debt on to the next bank when the introductory period finished. Paying 0% interest for your money when inflation is running at 5%-ish is a bloody good deal. Governments don't have this opportunity. Message: governments cannot act like households.
So, I am very suspicious of the household analogy; the assumption that individual action and societal action are equivalents. I am pleased to see how often politicians find that the analogy trips them up - from Harold Wilson's notorious "the pound in your pocket" speech to the current dither and spin about Cameron's "credit card" speech.
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Colwyn living within your means applies to a country as with any household.You cannot continue to roll up debt. The interest payments on UK debt is in excess of £42 billion a year. That amount has to come from tax revenues which are about £450 billion. So 10% of all the tax we pay goes out in interest and this equates to nearly half the NHS budget.
Your argument against Camerons credit card is flawed and actually contraadicts what you are trying to say. The government does not have the luxury of being able to select interest free period credit deals. They have to pay the market rate and that rate is determined by the probability of default. The higher the risk the higher the return. Italy is a prime example. It is percieved that the probability of default is high and that is why the Italian bond yields are now way above the 7% mark. This is the level that is the maximum that a country can afford for credit.Thus investors like to see the lowering of government debt.
The model of comparing individualsand household to government spending is not a drastically different as you say it is.The mechanics available may be more complicated but it still comes back to fundementals of you must live within your means.
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quote:
Originally posted by Ovacikpeedoff
Your argument against Camerons credit card is flawed and actually contraadicts what you are trying to say. The government does not have the luxury of being able to select interest free period credit deals.
I thought that was what I was trying to say when commenting "Governments don't have this opportunity. Message: governments cannot act like households". I wonder if I have lost the ability to communicate effectively. Or perhaps you skipped reading this bit.
I don't really how saying "living within your means applies to a country as with any household" adds anything to our understanding of economies; it is merely a simplified homily. I am not even sure it is true since it is so vague. If we introduce a time dimension into the analysis things become more complicated. Are you saying that countries and households live within their present means? I would have thought this to self-evidently false. Many countries and individuals rely upon credit and in effect borrow against the future. So we might say they must live within their anticipated future means - i.e. at some day in the future they will be able to payoff their debts, or at least maintain the interest payments. Even this may be too vague. Perhaps we should be saying that people/countries should live within reasonable expectatons of what their future means will be, and not absurb optimism of "something will turn up". Then that brings with it a whole set of issues about what "reasonable" means - or just fed up with all of this and go and do something else instead.
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I live in the real world where the majority do not have the luxury of being able to switch credit cards as and when they please. Switching credit cards is just a temporary solution to debt problems. When you apply for credit your previous history is checked and constant switching is noted. Eventually the balance gets to a stage where you become a serious risk and credit will not be given or given at a higher rate. It still boils down to be being able to manage your paymets. If you have an income of £20k a year and you are spending £25k you are running up debt and it cannot be sustained over the medium to long term. You will get very little satisfaction from the bank if you go looking for a loan and tell them it is alright as I expect to earn £50k next year. You calculate debt on the ability to be able to pay on your current income.If you were really prudent you would calculate your level of borrowing on a worst case scenario. If you are expecting to lose your overtime you slim your budget back to cover such events. For example, you would cancel your luxury spending like the gym membership or the sky subscriptions. You would not just go and continue spending.
The last budget by Darling proposed spending of £671 billion against £498 billion of tax revenues. This leaves a hole of about £180 billion.So approximately a third of spend would have to be borrowed. Who has to pay the £1.1 trillion debt that the country has.It will not be any of us on here it is future generations that will be lumbered with it.
Your proposal of spend against future income is what Brown and darling did and look what it did to the economy. The problem is when you start to spend beyond your means you create expectation. You cannot give all of these handouts and then the next year take them away because we had not achieved the revenues expected. That is political and economic suicide.
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quote:
Originally posted by Highlander
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Originally posted by desmartinson
Well said Fiona, the one thing Blair and Brown did for me was they made up my mind to get out of Britain,so sad to have to leave your country, but just couldnt stand being screwed anymore, so much for the working mans party.:(
Des - I was wondering if you would care to expand/explain that in a little more detail please
not really John, but screwing my final salary pension after working for 46 years(never unemployed and never claimed a penny off the state)didnt help, the only thing i know in my time is every labour government increases income tax even if it is called something else,and i was always better off under the torys.
Watch this space now John ;)
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OPO once again you do not bring anything new to the debate. You simply bang on repeating the same old homespun mantras such as 'living with in means' or simplistic Micawber like statements on income and outgoings leading to happiness or misery. All of which continues to demonstrate an untutored understanding of the economics of a modern complex national economy operating in an even more complex world economy.
So I am thinking about putting together a short economics reading list for you. Which I hope will enlighten not only your understanding of the subject, but more importantly will enrich your thinking and ideas about the great imprecise science.
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quote:
Originally posted by desmartinson
the only thing i know in my time is every labour government increases income tax even if it is called something else,and i was always better off under the torys.
Watch this space now John ;)
Clear that space
If we're going to have sweeping generalisations then how about every Tory government increased indirect taxation that always hit the working man a lot harder than the rich high earners.
By the way Des which industry/company were you in where your final salary pension was screwed with?
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UBT, Anyone who suggests that the only way to solve a debt problem is to spend, spend, spend is in no position to lecture anyone on what economics is about. You obviously have not read an economic book since Keynes was preaching failed theories. These theories had been practiced in the UK from the 2nd world war to the mid 80s and failed. I think I read many more economics books than you have.
By the way not to confuse you, I am talking about John Maynard Keynes who was an economist and not Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.
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quote:
Originally posted by Ovacikpeedoff
I live in the real world ... You will get very little satisfaction from the bank if you go looking for a loan and tell them it is alright as I expect to earn £50k next year. You calculate debt on the ability to be able to pay on your current income... Your proposal of spend against future income
I am really disappointed with this reply OPO. I have enjoyed jousting with you so far because your prvious replies were usually strong enough to require me either to change my mind or to think more carefully about the case I was making.
The notion that banks calculate loans against your current ability to is historically inaccurate. The sub-prime mortgage market, one of the major triggers of the banking collapse, based exactly upon bankers lending money to people that a rational analysis would show would be unable to pay off in the future. But bankers who were being offered millions of dollars of bonuses for this year's performance didn't seem to give a damn about long term prospects, or perhaps thought that by packaging all these sub-primes with other "assets" and selling them on to other financial institutions would somehow make the risks disappear.
As for saying that my proposal to spend againt future spending is wrong - it wasn't "a proposal". It was my view about what happens in the "real world" and not in some dream world where people and governments should live within their means (according to you) but quite clearly do not, in reality, do so.
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Colwyn, I spent 35 years working in the banking industry and I do know how we calculate credit risk. What I find with some of your points is that you cherry pick sections and do not give the whole picture. You say that I make comments like comparing households to governments simplistic and I say sometimes you give distorted views. For example, Sub prime lending was not a problem when we had low interest rates and employment in the US. It is when interest rates and unemployment started to rise that the problems began.Also there was an asset that secured the loan. The final nail was when the price of property started to fall and debt that was secured had become unsecured.
I am not defending the banks as I still thought it was irresponsible lending and the situation became worse by the packaging of these loans in Special Purpose Vehicles that allowed the sale of these loans to bondholders. This removed the risk from the banks balance sheet and the funds raised from the bonds allowed the whole process to start all over again. It even became more complicated in that these bonds and SPVs were repackaged and sold on. We saw the irresponsiblity in the Northern Rock lending doing 130% LTV mortgages and look what happened to them.
Before I retired I wrote a report about thsese SPVs and I always thought they were close to pyramid selling and the whole thing was built on a house of cards.
I am not against borrowing but it is borrowing that you can afford. Back to my simple example of the household, if you came to us we would calculate your disposable income and decide if you could afford to pay back the loan. We also built the model with a safety factor to cover interest rate rises.
The trouble with government is once you start the handouts it is difficult to take them away. If they do they will lose the next election. What governments tend to do is borrow more and more.So when tax revenue falls then the government even borrows more and hopes to repay it some time in the future. The way I see it is that you should reign back your borrowing to an afforable level. How many times have we heard Chancellors of all parties telling us this is what is going to happen in each of the next 5 years. In most cases those targets are over optimistic and are the wrong basis to set borrowing targets on.
We are not that much apart in what we think.
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quote:
Originally posted by usedbustickets
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Originally posted by desmartinson
the only thing i know in my time is every labour government increases income tax even if it is called something else,and i was always better off under the torys.
Watch this space now John ;)
Clear that space
If we're going to have sweeping generalisations then how about every Tory government increased indirect taxation that always hit the working man a lot harder than the rich high earners.
By the way Des which industry/company were you in where your final salary pension was screwed with?
Confidential information im afraid Peter. ;)ps, i wasnt a rich high earner. but got hit more by labour.
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quote:
Originally posted by desmartinson
Confidential information im afraid Peter.[ ;)[/quote]
I've got you sussed now Des you must have been working for the Secret Service.. 00Des:D
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quote:
Originally posted by Ovacikpeedoff
UBT, Anyone who suggests that the only way to solve a debt problem is to spend, spend, spend is in no position to lecture anyone on what economics is about. You obviously have not read an economic book since Keynes was preaching failed theories. These theories had been practiced in the UK from the 2nd world war to the mid 80s and failed. I think I read many more economics books than you have.
By the way not to confuse you, I am talking about John Maynard Keynes who was an economist and not Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.
Oh dear OPO I seem to have touched a raw nerve or two.
Let's begin by asking you not to keep making up things I have said. Such as solving the debt problem by spend spend spend etc. I didn't say that nor indeed did I imply it. You should try to read and understand what I have said. Instead of inventing what you perceive my views are, to suit the arguments you make. The point I was trying to help you with is that a wide knowledge and understanding of macro economics does not come through in your posts on CBF.
However, seeing some of your posts earlier I now begin to see where some of your confusion lies, and why you struggle with the subject. You are looking at the situation from a banking perspective. You should never confuse banking and economics. They are not the same thing. I say that after a number of years of working for a bank, where I often saw this mistake being made by 'bankers', when offering their opinions on the economic, particularly the macro economic, situation
As to your claim that you have read more economic literature than me, perhaps you have, I only managed to study the subject as a student at Ruskin College, Oxford, and then as part of my masters degree at the University of Warwick Business School, with a bit of further reading and experience since.
Have a nice day :)
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Interesting you did a degree and MBA. I happened to do a distance learning MBA that was sponsored by work through Harvard. I did not think it was necessary to have to boast about it.
So far all you have contributed is criticism and nothing else. If you have something constuctive to say let us hear it.
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What's all this about Keynes preaching failed theories? Keysianism was concerned with the management of national economies and was a sound economic policy through the long post-war boom until the end of the 1960s. At the time many economists thought that is was because of the economic crisis that followed the "oil shock" as producer counries hiked up the cost of oil. Later, others came to see it as function of far wider and more fundamental economic change. In a globalizing world it became more and more difficult to manage economies within the confines of the nation-state. For some, this meant that Keynesianism had to be abandoned as a failed theory (but a quarter of a century after Keynes' death so he could hardly be accused of preaching failed theory). Others thought that the problem was how to recreate Keynesianism but this time on an international level of supra-nations (such as the EU) or, looking further into the future, world government (with institutions such as the IMF and World Bank). Today we are still struggling to gain an understanding of the global economy and how we can manage it. The prospects for Global Keynesianism look rocky in the foreseeable future at just the time, after banking crisis and in sovereign debt crisis, when a means of international management of economies is a much sought after goal.
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quote:
Originally posted by Ovacikpeedoff
Interesting you did a degree and MBA. I happened to do a distance learning MBA that was sponsored by work through Harvard. I did not think it was necessary to have to boast about it.
So far all you have contributed is criticism and nothing else. If you have something constuctive to say let us hear it.
OPO I seem to have touched another raw nerve and so my dear chap apologies if you think I was boasting. I was simply responding to your earlier assertions that I had little or no knowledge of economics. Congratulations on your distance learning MBA - always a tough, but worthwhile, route to learning - but I would observe that occupational modular based MBA courses are so often academically thin in areas such as economics and rather overblown with occupational learning in such areas as marketing, accountancy and banking. Which perhaps explains the gaps in the learning as presented by you.
Always happy to be of service and guidance. ;)
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UBT as I stated earlier you contribution so far has been nothing more that criticism of everyone. You remind me of the old guys in the muppets who sat in the box passing judgement on everyone without adding anything. Of course your attendance at these noted places of learning makes you superior to the rest of us and gives you the the right deride qualifications we have obtained from other places of learning. Poumpous is a word that comes to mind. You have been very lucky you have been able to attend 2 universities. Unfortunately I could not even afford to go to one full time. I worked 50 hours a week for an accounting firm and studied at night and weekends for nearly 4 years.
I certainly would never go to you for advice or guidance because from what I have seen so far you would have little to contribute.
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Colwyn, we can go round the houses on this subject. I think the world has reached a stage where it appears to be struggling to find a solution. I do not think that you and me have the answer. The big problem is that all current economic thinking is not getting us out of the situation. We have tried the spend your way out and it has not worked. We have tried the use of interest rates to stimulate growth and it has not worked.There is no more scope in using interest rates.We are using QE but that has in one hand some benefits in that we may generate growth but the flip side is that inflation will go up.
We have had recessions before and they have never been anything like this. The real comparison that can be made is to the depression in the 30s and look where that led us. Germany eldected a madman who promised heaven and we had a world war.
Colwyn so I am getting off the roundabout as I am getting dizzy from going round in circles.I am going to leave those that are paid to run the economy to sort it out.
I do enjoy a bit of banter with you.
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quote:
Originally posted by usedbustickets
quote:
Originally posted by desmartinson
Confidential information im afraid Peter.[ ;)
I've got you sussed now Des you must have been working for the Secret Service.. 00Des:D
[/quote]Very close Pete, could have done with you in my team. ;)