City fears of 'Great Depression Mark II'

[Vague_Boy]

Forgive me for harping on about this yet again but I do sincerely believe that this is the greatest crisis facing us at the moment.

 

City fears of 'Great Depression Mark II'

 

Leading City experts have started raising the prospect of "Great Depression II" amid worries that the European economic crisis could trigger a deeper bout of chaos.

 

Andrew Roberts, head of European rates strategy at RBS, said "Great Depression II" could now be approaching, adding: "It now has potential to speed toward its conclusion; a European $1trn package which does little and political panic tells you we are about to reach the end of the road."

 

LINK

 

Did Gordon Brown "save the world" in 2008? Did he 'eck as like!

 

He and the other bail-out stooges put a plaster on an amputation wound and hoped we wouldn't notice. And with some trusting souls, it worked.

 

All that has been achieved is the continual deferment of the inevitable reckoning.

 

It's a bit like putting off going to the dentist. If you went on time, you might have a filling to endure but at least the pain and discomfort would be over fairly soon.

 

But if you put things off (and continue to put things off), and merely mask the pain to make it seem like nothing's wrong, then when you're finally forced into that dentists chair, the verdict may be that the tooth is past saving.

[Wildcat]

Forgive me for harping on about this yet again but I do sincerely believe that this is the greatest crisis facing us at the moment.

 

 

 

LINK

 

Did Gordon Brown "save the world" in 2008? Did he 'eck as like!

 

He and the other bail-out stooges put a plaster on an amputation wound and hoped we wouldn't notice. And with some trusting souls, it worked.

 

All that has been achieved is the continual deferment of the inevitable reckoning.

 

It's a bit like putting off going to the dentist. If you went on time, you might have a filling to endure but at least the pain and discomfort would be over fairly soon.

 

But if you put things off (and continue to put things off), and merely mask the pain to make it seem like nothing's wrong, then when you're finally forced into that dentists chair, the verdict may be that the tooth is past saving.

 

Has the fact that all the commentators like the FT, the Economist etc, accepted that Gordon's intervention at the time he made it was far superior to the Tory plans of letting otherwise profitable businesses go to the wall and the fact the article you quote expresses concerns about the Eurozone's ongoing commitment to fiscal leverage escaped you?

 

One worry is that European leaders are not sufficiently behind the $1 trillion bail-out fund they announced, in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund, last week.

[I1L2T3]

My view is that history will judge the actions of Gordon Brown in 2008 as being very prudent.

 

The loans to the banks were all conditional and have to be paid back, starting in March 2011. The Con-Libs will benefit from that fiscal inflow but no doubt won't want to credit Mr Brown too much for it. The projected profit for the taxpayer is £50bn, i.e. it cost us £800bn but we will get £850bn back.

 

In terms of sovereign debt even without the banking crash we had a growing (but manageable) issue in 2008 and we were due for some painful cutbacks anyway. Sorting that out becomes more difficult when you have to find nearly a £1 trillion for the banks. But again credit is due to Mr Brown - the majority of our sovereign debt has long expiry in that we don't have to pay back fully for another 10-14 years. That is a very different situation to the PIIGs in the Eurozone where they have sovereign debt expiring in 1, 2 and 3 years.

 

Even with the banking crisis arguably the Libs and Labs in their election manifestos were correct to pledge that cuts could be deferred this year. Even the cuts this year proposed by the Cons are wishy-washy and don't really have any fiscal impact. It's cutting for cutting sake and a token signal to the markets, nothing more.

 

At the end of the day this IS a global crisis. Sure you can try and blame Gordon Brown for everything but to take an example, he didn't force French banks to take on £400bn worth of short-term Italian sovereign debt or German banks to do the same kind of thing with Greece. Did he? He's not responsible for the sub-prime lending fiasco in the US. Is he?