Did Labour crash the economy?

[Soulman]

on what planet?

this must be him in 2011 explaining how he warned everyone before the crash happened that it was going to happen


"We know in retrospect what we missed. We set up the Financial Services Authority believing that the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution,So we created a monitoring system which was looking at individual institutions. That was the big mistake.
We didn 't understand how risk was spread across the system, we didn't understand the entanglements of different institutions with the other and we didn't understand even though we talked about it just how global things were, including a shadow banking system as well as a banking system.
That was our mistake but I'm afraid it was a mistake made by just about everybody who was in the regulatory business."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gordon-brown-admits-big-mistake-on-banks-2266233.html

"Did not understand" , "our mistake " etc. They made many "mistakes" and still expect the public to have short memories and vote for them. Milliband and Balls the dream team

 

[beorhthelm]

It's out there.

but it isnt, because it never happend. and if it did it makes it even worse that he hadnt done anything to avoid it.

 

[Nibble]

but it isnt, because it never happend. and if it did it makes it even worse that he hadnt done anything to avoid it.

He wasn't perfect that's for sure.

 

[Kevlar]

Agree......A global crash....the countries with the weakest governments/economies fared worst.....It`s simpler than most think...spend more than you get and you`re in the proverbial.We are but fortunately to a lesser degree than Greece,Spain/Italy etc
In the coming months Labour/Conservatives/Ukip/Greens will be promising to give NHS/teachers/pensioners/schools/police etc etc loads of money...what they will fail to say is where this extra money is coming from.

Spanish government run a government sector surplus between 2000-08
did them absolutely no good when crisis hit .
taxes stagnated more than spending and still had to bale out their banks

 

[Triggaaar]

The notion I had in mind is that you regularly indicate that so long as there's growth, it doesn't matter how much the wealthy get as it'll be spread around

Actually what I say is that as long as the standard of living increases for the poor, I don't care if the rich also get richer. And if that's your example of me saying things without justifying them, then it's a poor effort.

I have two problems with this:
First, it's not happening.

Although your referring to something I must have said a while ago in a different thread, I'm fairly confident I didn't say it was.

Second, even if it was happening, increasing wealth inequality mean that the rich will colonise key parts of society (the media, most prominently) and peddle their own agenda.

That would happen even if wealth gap was the same as 50 years ago, only legislation could stop it.

 

[portslade seagull]

Labour just can't run the economy properly as they always want to spend too much

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Labour just can't run the economy properly as they always want to spend too much

Excellent work. And cyclists should pay road tax.

 

[Beach Hut]

Excellent work. And cyclists should pay road tax.

Genius, are you standing for Labour this time with that policy ?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Genius, are you standing for Labour this time with that policy ?

I was being sarcastic.

 

[Beach Hut]

I was being sarcastic.

Noooooo

I would never have guessed

 

[Hampster Gull]

Spanish government run a government sector surplus between 2000-08
did them absolutely no good when crisis hit .
taxes stagnated more than spending and still had to bale out their banks

They had a huge property boom with lax lending that when the crisis hit left their banks in trouble. The government ran surpluses but on the back of hugely inflated revenues for in no small part property taxes. They bloated their spending too and when the tide went out that was exposed.

 

[sten_super]

[MENTION=4019]Triggaaar[/MENTION] didn't like Simon Wren-Lewis' last column - he's likely to like this one even less. It's a lengthy read but a good (relatively non-technical) economic assessment of government behaviour since 2009.

Simon Wren-Lewis - The Austerity Con

 

[Triggaaar]

@Triggaaar didn't like Simon Wren-Lewis' last column - he's likely to like this one even less.

If it's not dressed up as an unbiased view, I don't mind it. It was my high expectations last time that led to my disappointment.

"How did a policy that makes so little sense to economists come to be seen by so many people as inevitable?"

Is there a link to show that the consensus among economists is that the austerity policy is a bad one? If so, I'll have to re-evaluate my view.

 

[sten_super]

"How did a policy that makes so little sense to economists come to be seen by so many people as inevitable?"

Is there a link to show that the consensus among economists is that the austerity policy is a bad one? If so, I'll have to re-evaluate my view.

The FT do a survey of prominent economists annually, but I don't think that would show the consensus that SWL is talking about.

I think it depends what he means by the policy. Pretty much any half-decent economist would have told you that austerity was going to have a negative impact on the economy (which George Osbourne refuted, citing nonsense on crowding out). However, they'd disagree on the scale of the impact. I also think that the vast majority of academic economists would have suggested that austerity was 'bad', in that there was little risk from the size of the government deficit and debt. There would probably be a more mixed picture from 'financial' economists, but whether that's because they genuinely hold the view that there was a risk from the scale of government debt, or because it's in their firms interest for them to hold those views is difficult to ascertain.

 

[Hugh'sDad]

To be pedantic, ......

Yep....sounds about right.

 

[Weststander]

New Labour, in government from 1997 onwards, openly believed in 'soft touch' supervision of the banks, The City, and the financial services sector in general, rather than strong regulation. Leading to the explosion in risky financial products, reckless lending and tax evasion.

Government, bank, public-private initiative debt and personal debt levels in a credit boom, all grew exponentially from 1997, giving us a far higher debt level per capita than all/most other developed nations when the crisis came.

The early years of Brown's chancellorship were marked by "prudence" as he carried on the sound work of Ken Clarke. After just a few years (but before the Northern Rock crash), Brown and Blair abandoned all that with debt laden budgets on a spend-spend-spend.

All giving the UK many decades afterwards of paying the financial price.

 

[Seagull58]

But the goods you buy are paid for out of your net income, so you've already paid tax once when earning and then again when you spend the money.

But only when you spend the money. Inheritance tax is levied on all the money that you haven't spent, plus the current value of a property that you might have bought 30 or 40 years ago for only a small percentage of the current value. Inheritance tax is robbery.

 

[drew]

But only when you spend the money. Inheritance tax is levied on all the money that you haven't spent, plus the current value of a property that you might have bought 30 or 40 years ago for only a small percentage of the current value. Inheritance tax is robbery.

You are aware that the person who bought the property 30/40 years isn't the one paying the inheritance tax! When you inherit exactly what have you done to earn that income?

 

[Soulman]

New Labour, in government from 1997 onwards, openly believed in 'soft touch' supervision of the banks, The City, and the financial services sector in general, rather than strong regulation. Leading to the explosion in risky financial products, reckless lending and tax evasion.

Government, bank, public-private initiative debt and personal debt levels in a credit boom, all grew exponentially from 1997, giving us a far higher debt level per capita than all/most other developed nations when the crisis came.

The early years of Brown's chancellorship were marked by "prudence" as he carried on the sound work of Ken Clarke. After just a few years (but before the Northern Rock crash), Brown and Blair abandoned all that with debt laden budgets on a spend-spend-spend.

All giving the UK many decades afterwards of paying the financial price.

Good post. Sums it up.

 

[drew]

New Labour, in government from 1997 onwards, openly believed in 'soft touch' supervision of the banks, The City, and the financial services sector in general, rather than strong regulation. Leading to the explosion in risky financial products, reckless lending and tax evasion.

Government, bank, public-private initiative debt and personal debt levels in a credit boom, all grew exponentially from 1997, giving us a far higher debt level per capita than all/most other developed nations when the crisis came.

The early years of Brown's chancellorship were marked by "prudence" as he carried on the sound work of Ken Clarke. After just a few years (but before the Northern Rock crash), Brown and Blair abandoned all that with debt laden budgets on a spend-spend-spend.

All giving the UK many decades afterwards of paying the financial price.

Of course, the Tories were for harsher, more hands on regulations of the city which would have meant the UK would have been one of the only countries not to go into recession!!! Or are you going to come back with the old 'it's irrelevant what the tories would or wouldn't have done as they weren't in power' argument!!!