France votes for Socialism over austerity

[andygardener]

Or, "you've benefited from trading in a currency that is of a lower value than yours would be."

 

Fly free my little ones. Let the DMark fluctuate on the international currency market. And then we'll see how much Audi/Mercedes/BMW can afford to sell their cars for.

 

Interesting times beckon.

 

National currencies can be "tweaked" as we've seen for 15+ years with the RMB so the New Mark will not necessarily go through the roof and if it does there are methods available to deal with that and optimise it to suit the German economy. Better a little turbulent water as the tugboat that's been towing the holed Titanic that is the bulk of the eurozone casts off than remaining attached while it sinks.

[andygardener]

Haha, true to a point. A fair few of his promises will look like pure fantasy before May is out. But the austerity - I can't see a full climbdown on it.

 

The austerity is necessary unless he can generate more tax revenue to plug the gap between taxes and spending. A huge hike for the rich, who can easilly just move, will not plug the gap. More public spending will incease the gap. Spending masses of public money to save public money is shagging for virginity, it just won't work.

[I1L2T3]

The austerity is necessary unless he can generate more tax revenue to plug the gap between taxes and spending. A huge hike for the rich, who can easilly just move, will not plug the gap. More public spending will incease the gap. Spending masses of public money to save public money is shagging for virginity, it just won't work.

 

This is the trap.

 

You think the austerity is necessary because of all the debt we have

 

But the debt we have is because of a crisis generated by bankers

 

While the banks continue to operate as normal, we all suffer

 

Andy, what have YOU done to deserve to suffer because of mistakes made by others, and why are you so accepting of it?

[taxman]

The financial markets have reacted negatively to the results in France and Greece.

 

To quote Attila The Stockbroker:

 

"So the unfettered, fat cat scum who run the 'markets' destroy people's lives and their government stooges pay for their deliberate, calculated asset stripping of our jobs and savings by bailing their banks out with our taxes and then introducing an 'austerity' programme (for us, not them!) People vote against that in elections and the response of the 'markets' is to 'punish' the poor, disaffected and downright angry by doing the same thing again! What an insane economic system capitalism is!!!!!!"

[I1L2T3]

taxman, it is opportunistic economic shock doctrine. Nothing less.

 

The cheerleaders for austerity, ordinary people who the bidding for the elites, still don't realise that once the public sector has been taken apart their beloved private sector is next, that they and their children will be the people slaving away for below minimum wage so we can compete with the chinese. Idiots.

[mj.scuba]

taxman, it is opportunistic economic shock doctrine. Nothing less.

 

The cheerleaders for austerity, ordinary people who the bidding for the elites, still don't realise that once the public sector has been taken apart their beloved private sector is next, that they and their children will be the people slaving away for below minimum wage so we can compete with the chinese. Idiots.

 

Perhaps a lot of ordinary people realise you can't carry on spending indefinately what you don't have.

[Patriot]

This is the trap.

 

You think the austerity is necessary because of all the debt we have

 

But the debt we have is because of a crisis generated by bankers

 

While the banks continue to operate as normal, we all suffer

 

Andy, what have YOU done to deserve to suffer because of mistakes made by others, and why are you so accepting of it?

 

True to a certain degree but never forget that in Britain the banks and financial institutions were overseen by the weak and ineffective FSA, hence it's forthcoming demise. The last government believed a housing and credit boom would help to revive our economy but when mortgages were offered in multiples of 3.5 times earnings with low (ish) rates of interest it is not surprising our economy imploded. HM Treasury has full responsibility for economic and fiscal policy coupled with oversight of the banks via the Governor of the BoE and it is on record that A.Darling was ignored and bullied by Brown when he proposed in November 2009 that VAT should rise to 20% and monetary policy was tightened.

This does not excuse the behaviour of the bankers and the sad thing is that in the US. guilty bankers have been jailed, in Britain we make a song and dance about reducing and/or capping their bonus'.

Eventually-I hope-someone somewhere will publish the full story about the collusion between the Treasury,BoE and the banking sector CEO's when it became obvious that our economy was heading down the pan and the panic that ensued once it became clear that Joe Public would have to pick up the bills-irrespective of which party won the 2010 election.

[andygardener]

This is the trap.

 

You think the austerity is necessary because of all the debt we have

 

But the debt we have is because of a crisis generated by bankers

 

While the banks continue to operate as normal, we all suffer

 

Andy, what have YOU done to deserve to suffer because of mistakes made by others, and why are you so accepting of it?

 

The bank bailouts will in time turn a profit for the taxpayer. Short term they have been inconvenient and caused problems, hence various changes have been put in place in the sector. However it's simplistic and just plain wrong to suggest that the banking crisis is the cause of the deficit. Our capital and revenue budgets have not been balanced other than for a few years in the late 80s under Thatcher and under the last years of the Major government who handed over a balanced budget to blair and brown who then went on the spending spree of all spending sprees leading to the huge deficit we have today. We spend more on debt interest than we do on defence, we spend nearly five times more on debt interest than we spend in totality on Ulster.

 

And this is looking at the on balance sheet figures, without factoring in Labours massive hidden spending on PFIs which will massively inflate the running costs of many public services for decades to come..

 

We've been collectively living way beyond our means so we need to either increase the tax take radically or cut spending radically. Direct and indirect taxes are pretty damn high already and increasing them will discourage growth and investment so we need to make changes to spending.

 

I'll give you an example, NHS hospital food. It costs the NHS a lot of money as it has to dish out a lot of food. Poor quality food that from personal experience does not do anything to help patients recovery. Why are we doing this? Charge for meals, provide a lower and higher cost option but make them both nutritionally balanced. If inpatients paid a tenner a day for 3 meals it would be significantly more than the current budgets, would save the nhs millions and lead to better patient care. We can work a lot smarter than we are doing.

[Happ Hazzard]

How is the debt we have because of a crisis created by bankers? The Labour government were spending far more than they had coming in even during the economic boom!

[marshlad]

They will regret it. We had 13 years of socialism and it was a disaster.