[Politics] Brexit

[larus]

There is always a danger, isn't there, in pretending to know what we don't? I don't know much at all about economics, which is why I hardly ever stray into that area, even to quote journalists in pro-my-opinion newspapers. This isn't a problem, because the debate has never been all about money for me - although if I could be persuaded that leaving the EU would have a fabulous economic dividend that would be used to help people poorer than me then I would be duty-bound to consider my position.

Having said all that, it is remarkable to learn, even from the Telegraph, that Mark Carney is basically a liar, or at least an unprincipled spin-merchant. Surprised by this I hit Google and the piece below was the first thing that came up on the page. It is a few months old but does seem to paint a very different picture to the one presented by our Ambrose. Given time I suppose I could unearth the fact that they are actually talking about slightly different things.

The one thing that worried me about the Telegraph piece was the underlying suggestion that the UK should tear down all trade barriers. It brings to mind the blessed pro-Leave economist who said the same thing, adding that it would almost inevitably mean the elimination of British manufacturing but that this isn't something that should worry us.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-b...d-g7-after-2017-growth-rate-cut-idUKKCN1G6110

So, if I can paraphrase what you’ve posted.
1. You don’t know much about economics.
2. You don’t agree that the revised GDP figures paint a different light on the ‘initial’ published figures.
3. You think the figures from the Telegraph must be lies as they are a ‘Tory’ paper.

Your supporting evidence for this is a Reuters report which is a few months old, which obviously will be before the REVISED GDP figures. Do you know why they revise GDP figures? I will assume not (as you said you don’t understand economics) - it’s because not all data is available, so as new data becomes available this may impact the earlier estimates. I’m sure you can then see that your Reuters report is irrelevant.

Lots of remainers were very quick to jump on the ‘gone from the top GDP growth G7 nation to the bottom’ bandwagon, whereas in fact, it is far from the case. If you bothered to read and understand the figures, it explains the various factors which would be impacting GDP growth, such as QE still being carried out by the ECB.

(By the way, QE and negative interest rates are expansionary tools to boost the economy, carried out when the economy isn’t performing well enough on it’s own. Interest rates gets raised to head off inflationary pressures when an economy is expanding/growing which is what has happened in the UK finally).

 

[The Clamp]

#oops #hangyourheads #ruinedtheuk #nodeal

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...isk-of-a-no-deal-brexit-is-uncomfortably-high

The deflection of blame from the leave voters is despicable but luckily everyone sees through it #itisyourfault

 

[nicko31]

Before someone 'tries' to be clever as point out that I said I would be out of here for a few days, I'm just adding this which disproves some of the 'FACTS' certain posters like to go on about.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/08/03/lies-damned-lies-mark-carneys-statistics-brexit/

Paywalled


The Governor of the Bank of England made two Pinocchio assertions on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. One was categorically false; the other was sophistry dressed in pseudo-science.

Both give credence to Remainer canards. They therefore become political instruments.

Mark Carney has been a good Governor. I do not share the widespread view among Brexiteers that the Bank disgraced itself two years ago as a supporting chorus for Project Fear. It is the guarantor of financial stability. It had to plan for the worst.

This is in sharp contrast to the Osborne Treasury, which misused the full power of the British state to propagate serial lies. George Osborne then threatened a pro-cyclical punishment Budget that would have set off a recessionary downward spiral. This would have been a deranged and irresponsible policy in such circumstances.

The Bank of England, of course, did the exact opposite after the Brexit referendum. It cut interest rates and doubled down on quantitative easing (QE). It built up a shock absorber. This was a well-advised insurance policy. I would support Mr Carney’s reappointment as Governor (should he wish it), but he needs to rein in his emotional bias on Brexit.

Mr Carney stated - perhaps unconsciously lapsing into a Kensington dinner party view - that the UK had fallen to the bottom of the G7 growth league. This claim is repeated so widely, and so often, that it has taken on the status of established fact. Many Brexiteers assume it must be true. It is not true.

The early evidence so far this year is that Brexit Britain is growing faster than France under Emmanuel Macron, the Gallic wunderkind supposedly reviving animal spirits and unleashing the floods investment. Would you ever have any inkling of that reading a certain pink newspaper or listening to our national broadcaster?

Britain grew 0.2pc in the first quarter, the same as France (revised data in both countries). Japan contracted by 0.2pc.

We do not yet have the UK figures for the second quarter but the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NESR) said its GDP tracking monitor suggests 0.4pc growth. France and Italy have already published. They are both on 0.2pc.


Broadly speaking, the UK is puttering along in step with the sluggish eurozone. If NIESR is right it may even sneak ahead in the second quarter. I would certainly accept that the British economy has slowed a bit as a result of Brexit but it is less than I feared. Descriptions of a crippled economy spinning into crisis that pervade the European, American, and global press coverage of Britain have degenerated into caricature.

Ah, but what about last year? It was indeed a poor year for the UK in relative terms. Yet the economy still grew 1.7pc, the same as Japan. Italy grew 1.5pc. Last time I looked, Italy was still in the G7.


Britain’s lacklustre performance in 2017 needs context. The low-hanging fruit of the post-Lehman expansion had been picked. The UK had closed the "output gap". It was running into capacity constraints and hitting its speed limit. (Too low unfortunately, but that is a story of stalled productivity that occurred during EU membership and has nothing to do with Brexit.)

By contrast, the eurozone still had slack. It had yet to complete a V-shaped catch-up phase after its Lost Decade. The output gap was enormous in the South. The stars were aligned in 2017: EMU fiscal austerity ended; the European Central Bank was printing money with gusto; commercial banks finally had emerged - stunned but alive - from idiotic regulatory overkill.

Meanwhile, the UK was still in the grip of austerity. The Chancellor carried out net fiscal tightening of 0.6pc of GDP last year. I base this loosely on the "cyclically adjusted" budget balance in the IMF’s Fiscal Monitor. The G7 as a whole was basking in net fiscal stimulus. The US let rip. The eurozone was roughly neutral. If you adjust for all the variable, there is no Brexit slump. It is propaganda.

Mr Carney made a second claim. He began by stating that the direct loss in GDP due to Brexit has been 1pc. Then he added that the synthetic loss is nearer 2pc once you take account into the remedial actions of the Bank of England.

Excuse me. What is this extraordinary concept dished out at our breakfast table, a hideous twisting of the counterfactual? The Governor is surely pulling our leg.

Britain’s unemployment rate is the lowest in 42 years. The economy is at full capacity. If it had been growing a full percentage point faster over each of the last two years, overheating would have run rampant.


The Bank of England would have had to raise rates much faster. The pound would have been much stronger (not good). The UK might have stolen a bit of extra growth from the future by running the economy hot but once you do all the arithmetic, the flattened figures over the medium term would have been more or less the same. There has been no 2pc loss in GDP. It is self-evident rubbish.

As a matter of pure science, nobody at the Fed, the ECB, and Bank of England knows how to calculate the potency of QE, or even how the mechanism works. An intense debate is under way in academic and central banking circles over the exact effects of bond purchases once long-term yields are already nailed to the floor. Many think that the Fed’s QE3 was a blank.

What struck me about the Governor’s remark is that it smacked of spin. The Biblical script in hard Remainer circles is that Brexit has lopped 2pc off GDP. He went out of his way to validate it.

The pro-EU Centre for European Reform (a worthy body, but not on this occasion) has been making the running with a study based on a macro-economic algorithm. It concludes that the “cost of Brexit so far” has been 2.1pc of GDP. This claim has been repeated all over Europe as if it were hard fact.


The algorithm compares UK growth with three main control countries. One is Hungary, currently in the grip of a blow-off boom driven by loose policies. A second is the US, currently in the grip of a disgraceful, reckless, ‘Peronist’, late-cycle blast of debt-driven fiscal stimulus that will come back to haunt. These are the controls? It is not analysis. The algorithm is pastiche.

The Governor is certainly right that a no-deal is “highly undesirable”. Even a British assertion of full self-government on WTO terms requires a deal to avert cliff-edge stupidities. The £39bn exit fee should be made contingent on civilized behaviour by Brussels over landing rights, medicine, Euratom, visas, etc. This would still be a deal.

If the EU refused to recognise our legal right to trade on WTO terms, it would be an act of international piracy and a declaration of economic and political war. Should that happen, it really would be the end of Europe as a relevant civilisation in the world.

I hope the Chequers deal breaks down since it locks us into the EU’s legal and regulatory regime in colonial settlement, and does so on economic terms that are not even appetising.

Should it happen, either because the EU rejects it or because of a change of British leadership, the UK would most likely have to grasp the nettle of unilateral free trade and tear down all barriers in the initial phase. This would remove the immediate need to impose any restrictions at the Irish border, leaving Brussels with the invidious choice of either compelling the Irish to raise border barriers on their own territory (a political disaster for the EU) or coming to the table with a new post-Brexit plan.

In such a case, prices in Britain would fall, ceteris paribus. There would be no net rise, contrary to what the Governor claimed on the Today programme. We are being taken for fools.

Apart from that, Governor, keep up the good work.

Question, why do you always cut and paste whole articles from the Torygraph?

Your offshore billionaire mates the Barclay brothers need to all the clicks they can get...

 

[larus]

Question, why do you always cut and paste whole articles from the Torygraph?

Your offshore billionaire mates the Barclay brothers need to all the clicks they can get...

Answer - it’s paywalled so non subscribers can’t read - doh !.

Question 1. Are we in the Eurozone?
Question 2. Do you still think we are or have been bottom of the G7 growth figures over the last 18 months?

Come on. Let’s have a proper debate about this, as you constantly bleat on about this ‘fact’ which is clearly false. If you want to disprove his report, then show us growth rates from the G7 using the latest up-to-date data.

Just because the article is in the Telegraph it doesn’t make the GDP data, it only reports on public domain data. Now, when people state opinions about the outcome of Brexit, that’s opinion and not facts.

 

[nicko31]

Answer - it’s paywalled so non subscribers can’t read - doh !.

Question 1. Are we in the Eurozone?
Question 2. Do you still think we are or have been bottom of the G7 growth figures over the last 18 months?

Come on. Let’s have a proper debate about this, as you constantly bleat on about this ‘fact’ which is clearly false. If you want to disprove his report, then show us growth rates from the G7 using the latest up-to-date data.

Just because the article is in the Telegraph it doesn’t make the GDP data, it only reports on public domain data. Now, when people state opinions about the outcome of Brexit, that’s opinion and not facts.

Did you ask permission to re-use?

 

[larus]

Did you ask permission to re-use?

Wow, you really are an a*se aren’t you.

Typical remainer response. Had your arguments shredded so don’t bother to reply on the topic nor the questions.

 

[The Clamp]

Wow, you really are an a*se aren’t you.

Typical remainer response. Had your arguments shredded so don’t bother to reply on the topic nor the questions.

#quicktoinsult
#nosolidargument

 

[melias shoes]

You're one of the ones shouting that you want WTO 'no deal' aren't you ? In which case there are two possibilities

You understand what it is you're asking for - in which case you're a swivel eyed loon

You don't understand what you're asking for - in which case you're a swivel eyed loon

On the balance of probabilities, I would probably go for the latter

Personal dig again. Nasty remainers.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Personal dig again. Nasty remainers.

I never had you down as a snowflake?

 

[Lincoln Imp]

So, if I can paraphrase what you’ve posted.
1. You don’t know much about economics.
2. You don’t agree that the revised GDP figures paint a different light on the ‘initial’ published figures.
3. You think the figures from the Telegraph must be lies as they are a ‘Tory’ paper.

Your supporting evidence for this is a Reuters report which is a few months old, which obviously will be before the REVISED GDP figures. Do you know why they revise GDP figures? I will assume not (as you said you don’t understand economics) - it’s because not all data is available, so as new data becomes available this may impact the earlier estimates. I’m sure you can then see that your Reuters report is irrelevant.

Lots of remainers were very quick to jump on the ‘gone from the top GDP growth G7 nation to the bottom’ bandwagon, whereas in fact, it is far from the case. If you bothered to read and understand the figures, it explains the various factors which would be impacting GDP growth, such as QE still being carried out by the ECB.

(By the way, QE and negative interest rates are expansionary tools to boost the economy, carried out when the economy isn’t performing well enough on it’s own. Interest rates gets raised to head off inflationary pressures when an economy is expanding/growing which is what has happened in the UK finally).

Bingo! You are right that I don't know much about economics (the clue will have been my comment "I don't know much at all about economics") but your paraphrasing is poor, as is your comprehension - I didn't say that the article must have been a lie because the Telegraph is Tory and I didn't claim that the Reuters report proved that. Your final para wins you points for stating the obvious - not even I am that ignorant of the subject - although its two punctuation errors detract a little.

 

[Garry Nelson's teacher]

I'm not quite sure why there's so much excitement about the revised GDP figures. They don't really paint much of a bullish picture of the UK economy and the source article actually concedes that a no-deal Brexit would be very bad news.
I think the reality is that

a) our economy is trundling along somewhere at or near the bottom of the league table;

b)these are 'lag' indicators (rear-view mirror) and have no predictive validity;

c) we enter a period of almost unprecedented economic uncertainty with a creaking economy which will have low resilience to any major shock


My advice: move on and look at the road ahead.

 

[WATFORD zero]

Personal dig again. Nasty remainers.

Sorry, obviously if it's a nasty dig, that means you must be one of those who knows what it is your asking for with the WTO 'no deal'.

So what do you think we should do about the US, New Zealand and Brazil turning down our quota requests already ?

And what proportion of the WTO do you think will find issues with our submission over the next 90 days ?

When do you think we should start building the border and customs posts in Northern Ireland ?

And how much lead time will we need to build the lorry parks at Dover and the other ports ?

When should we start on the requirements analysis to start building the IT systems to run the new WTO rules and Tariffs ?

How many extra customs staff do you think we will need and when should we start recruiting them ?

No hurry for answers, we have until 29th March




*edit* cue that chap who has given up posting on here and doesn't for days at a time 'We are going to implement WTO but we aren't going to have any borders or customs'.

Definitely taking back control

 

[Baldseagull]

So, if I can paraphrase what you’ve posted.
1. You don’t know much about economics.
2. You don’t agree that the revised GDP figures paint a different light on the ‘initial’ published figures.
3. You think the figures from the Telegraph must be lies as they are a ‘Tory’ paper.

Your supporting evidence for this is a Reuters report which is a few months old, which obviously will be before the REVISED GDP figures. Do you know why they revise GDP figures? I will assume not (as you said you don’t understand economics) - it’s because not all data is available, so as new data becomes available this may impact the earlier estimates. I’m sure you can then see that your Reuters report is irrelevant.

Lots of remainers were very quick to jump on the ‘gone from the top GDP growth G7 nation to the bottom’ bandwagon, whereas in fact, it is far from the case. If you bothered to read and understand the figures, it explains the various factors which would be impacting GDP growth, such as QE still being carried out by the ECB.

(By the way, QE and negative interest rates are expansionary tools to boost the economy, carried out when the economy isn’t performing well enough on it’s own. Interest rates gets raised to head off inflationary pressures when an economy is expanding/growing which is what has happened in the UK finally).

Japan has a labour shortage and has been limping for a long while, Italy was being tipped to go bust around the time of the referendum and is performing at about the same level as us, to be just nosing ahead of those two, which have deep seated issues is not really a point to crow about. But I accept that it might be a little unfair to say we are the slowest growing today, even if it was true a couple of months ago, but so is describing it as "far from the case", it is a 3 way race for worst performer this year, and we are in with a very good chance.

 

[melias shoes]

Sorry, obviously if it's a nasty dig, that means you must be one of those who knows what it is your asking for with the WTO 'no deal'.

So what do you think we should do about the US, New Zealand and Brazil turning down our quota requests already ?

And what proportion of the WTO do you think will find issues with our submission over the next 90 days ?

When do you think we should start building the border and customs posts in Northern Ireland ?

And how much lead time will we need to build the lorry parks at Dover and the other ports ?

When should we start on the requirements analysis to start building the IT systems to run the new WTO rules and Tariffs ?

How many extra customs staff do you think we will need and when should we start recruiting them ?

No hurry for answers, we have until 29th March




*edit* cue that chap who has given up posting on here and doesn't for days at a time 'We are going to implement WTO but we aren't going to have any borders or customs'.

Definitely taking back control

You need to chill out Watford. It's a nice evening get some sun.

 

[Two Professors]

Japan has a labour shortage and has been limping for a long while, Italy was being tipped to go bust around the time of the referendum and is performing at about the same level as us, to be just nosing ahead of those two, which have deep seated issues is not really a point to crow about. But I accept that it might be a little unfair to say we are the slowest growing today, even if it was true a couple of months ago, but so is describing it as "far from the case", it is a 3 way race for worst performer this year, and we are in with a very good chance.

So what you are saying is the EU has France,Germany ,and 25 lame duck economies?

 

[melias shoes]

I never had you down as a snowflake?

I'm not. Couldn't care less. If I'm getting called names I'll take it as a compliment. Just pointing it out. Have a nice evening.

 

[melias shoes]

So what you are saying is the EU has France,Germany ,and 25 lame duck economies?

That's about it. No wonder they're in a panic.

 

[WATFORD zero]

You need to chill out Watford. It's a nice evening get some sun.

So you are one of these people asking for WTO 'no deal' without any idea what it means. I was right first time, but thanks for the confirmation

(And I'm in the garden, thanks )

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Personal dig again. Nasty remainers.

Sorry, obviously if it's a nasty dig, that means you must be one of those who knows what it is your asking for with the WTO 'no deal'.

So what do you think we should do about the US, New Zealand and Brazil turning down our quota requests already ?

And what proportion of the WTO do you think will find issues with our submission over the next 90 days ?

When do you think we should start building the border and customs posts in Northern Ireland ?

And how much lead time will we need to build the lorry parks at Dover and the other ports ?

When should we start on the requirements analysis to start building the IT systems to run the new WTO rules and Tariffs ?

How many extra customs staff do you think we will need and when should we start recruiting them ?

No hurry for answers, we have until 29th March




*edit* cue that chap who has given up posting on here and doesn't for days at a time 'We are going to implement WTO but we aren't going to have any borders or customs'.

Definitely taking back control

[MENTION=17469]melias shoes[/MENTION] owned

 

[larus]

Japan has a labour shortage and has been limping for a long while, Italy was being tipped to go bust around the time of the referendum and is performing at about the same level as us, to be just nosing ahead of those two, which have deep seated issues is not really a point to crow about. But I accept that it might be a little unfair to say we are the slowest growing today, even if it was true a couple of months ago, but so is describing it as "far from the case", it is a 3 way race for worst performer this year, and we are in with a very good chance.

Sorry to be pedantic, but we were never the slowest. The initial estimate was revised up, so that invalidate that point.

Next, you might want to consider that France is limping along too, so we are far from being an outlier. Also, the expectation is that our GDP will be 0.4% for the next figures compared to the 0.2% just achieved by France.

Assuming this does happen, this will further invalidate all of the scare storied about what is happening to the economy.

You also need to factor in that the UK is still ruining ‘austerity’ (however, this is very misleading as if you want austerity look at Greece, Spain, Portugal), and the Eurozone is running QE and negative interest rates which are expansionary.

So, all things considered, the UK is doing remarkably well