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Osborne: UK has run out of money


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Another two paragraphs you haven't understood.

 

Keynes didn't say you should cut spending and put up taxes in hard times because he never dreamed in his wildest economic nightmares of the stupidity of ending the good times with a debt of 150% of GDP.

 

YES HE DID, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HE DID. He was living through his wildest economic nightmare when he published his economic theories, that's why they called it the great depression.

 

Another link you haven't clicked. http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?chart=G0-total&year=1900_2011&units=p&state=UK

 

We had a debt over 150% of GDP when Keynes said these things. His theories are from the 1930s. So prove to me that he didn't say any of the things he said, that he didn't write the books he wrote, that the UK didn't suffer & get massively in debt during the great depression, or that he wasn't around during the great depression. It goes against all of recorded history. You just take half a sentence out of context for your entire economic theory.

 

Your ignorance is breathtaking. You've resorted to making up your own figures & you forgot to look at what actually happened in the past (pre 2001) or read anything at all about Keynes.

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Another two paragraphs you haven't understood.

 

Keynes didn't say you should cut spending and put up taxes in hard times because he never dreamed in his wildest economic nightmares of the stupidity of ending the good times with a debt of 150% of GDP.

 

Keynes was right about three key points. 1) High unemployment can persist forever because the market is not self-correcting. 2) Confidence matters. 3) Government can and should intervene to fix things. But the orthodox Keynesians are wrong: fiscal policy cannot provide a permanent fix to the problem of high unemployment. We need a new approach that directly attacks a lack of confidence in the asset markets by putting a floor and a ceiling on the value of the stock market through direct central bank intervention.

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Another two paragraphs you haven't understood.

 

Keynes didn't say you should cut spending and put up taxes in hard times because he never dreamed in his wildest economic nightmares of the stupidity of ending the good times with a debt of 150% of GDP.

 

Keynes was right about three key points. 1) High unemployment can persist forever because the market is not self-correcting. 2) Confidence matters. 3) Government can and should intervene to fix things. But the orthodox Keynesians are wrong: fiscal policy cannot provide a permanent fix to the problem of high unemployment. We need a new approach that directly attacks a lack of confidence in the asset markets by putting a floor and a ceiling on the value of the stock market through direct central bank intervention.

 

Most of the stock market does work pretty well with the majority of stocks being fairly and correctly valued, especially when businesses and sectors are well understood and well established. And the market is populated by traders behaving in a rational way.

 

The problem comes when new sectors develop that are poorly understood (dot.com in 90s and latest embryonic tech bubble) and when existing sectors evolve in directions that are not understood (financial sector). When the market is distorted by bubbles and mis-priced sectors (e.g. banks where risks were not understodd and priced in) participants potentially begin to behave irrationally and exuberantly. It's spotting those sectors that have the potential to cause issues that is the key. But then it isn't like there hasn't been a whole industry (ratings agencies, millions of analysts etc...) based on assessing the markets - it was their job and they screwed it up :|.

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Most of the stock market does work pretty well with the majority of stocks being fairly and correctly valued, especially when businesses and sectors are well understood and well established. And the market is populated by traders behaving in a rational way.

 

The problem comes when new sectors develop that are poorly understood (dot.com in 90s and latest embryonic tech bubble) and when existing sectors evolve in directions that are not understood (financial sector). When the market is distorted by bubbles and mis-priced sectors (e.g. banks where risks were not understodd and priced in) participants potentially begin to behave irrationally and exuberantly. It's spotting those sectors that have the potential to cause issues that is the key. But then it isn't like there hasn't been a whole industry (ratings agencies, millions of analysts etc...) based on assessing the markets - it was their job and they screwed it up :|.

 

 

 

You make some very good points. I can buy the argument that new market sectors cause problems for analysts and I can see that today with the likes of FaceBook sell off. But, I just can't buy the argument that the entire financial sector could be allowed to run so out of control. Boom and bust has been around for hundreds of years and every time it happens governments claim to have put in place checks and balances to stop it happening again. Yet we have had the biggest boom and bust of them all. And we had that only 11 years after the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

 

The analysts and auditers got caught up in the hysteria but so did the regulators. What chance have we got of avoiding the problem if the regulators are actively encouraging reckless behaviour by nodding through absurd takeovers based on 100% borrowing and no due diligence? Isn't the problem not just that we need reform of the banking system but we also need reform of the regulatory system?

 

Gordon Brown seems to have deliberately fudged the regulatory system so that the various bodies each thought the other was responsible and then he leaned on them to excercise a light touch. I am not sure Osborne has straightened things out. He is huffing and puffing making political capital out of bashing the banks with taxes and cutting bonuses but has he really given the regulators the powers and more importantly the green light to get stuck into the financial sector and ensure they act responsibly with other people's money? After all politicians aren't the best people to be preaching fiscal responsibility with other people's money. They make policy based on short term political gain not long term fiscal responsibility. It seems to me that the real problem lies between the politicians and the regulators and it's difficult to see how that can ever be resolved as long as politicians appoint the regulators.

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Jim posting poorly thought through' date=' chip on both shoulders, reactionary, ranting nonsense with no evidence whatsoever to back it up? Never![/quote']

 

 

Like you know anything about economics.

 

Just to evidence one of my statements that we will get back money from the bank bailouts; not only will we get our money back from Northern Rock but we'll make a profit as well. It's quite possible we'll make a profit from RBS and Lloyds as well

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/northern-rock-will-make-the-taxpayer-9bn11bn-7462571.html

 

Contrast that with the £4,000,000,000 a week we have been borrowing since 2008 to bail out the public services. Not much chance of getting that back or even getting value for money.

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