I stopped reading 9 early on when I came across the following sentence:
"Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable."
A 3.2% deficit at the peak of an unsustainable boom was "manageable". It would make you weep. Labour and their supporters have so much to learn.
Public spending or deficit didn't cause the global economic crisis, private sector bankers did.
Tories have peddled the myth as cover for ideological cuts and shrinking the State.
It also means Gideon and Co have failed to address our real economic problems, like our rotten banks and private sector big business, as well as abject Tory failure on the deficit.
I remain confused - if deficits are not in themselves bad if they are manageable, what does it matter that the Tories failed to reduce it, and if we are to condemn them for that failure (I do), presumably we should have had much harsher cuts or tax rises, as growth alone would not cover it. Labour would not sanction the former, and electorally would probably be cagey on the latter, so while I could criticise the Tories for failing on the deficit, the opposition cannot if they want to keep to the line about how harsh the cuts have been, so it can only be individuals and fringe groups making that argument, and who will have to condemn Ed M when he starts cutting too.
The deficit wasn't a problem pre-crash. It only became a problem after the private sector bankers wrecked the global economy.
That's why the Tory failure on the deficit and economy / living standards is so serious.
Spending money on public services didn't cause our economic problems, the bankers who caused the global crisis, and politicians like Cameron and Osborne who failed to learn lessons from it, are the ones to blame.
It wasn't a problem if you believed the hype that Gordon Brown had abolished the business cycle.
Once it became clear that he hadn't, in 2008, then the deficit became a problem.
The global crash the private sector / bankers caused wasn't part of the ordinary business "cycle". It was a once in a lifetime economic catastrophe.
Blaming the bankers for the recession is deranged there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy
Lol.
Ohhh, those poor bankers.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
Cameron's pathetic crawling to the bankers in the EU by vetoing a very mild measure like the Robin Hood tax shows where Tory allegiances lie. With bankers and big business, not ordinary people.
Ahh yes, the Robin Hood tax, a neat way of moving a few Billion from the UK economy into EU coffers.
Or moving billions from the pockets of bankers who caused the crash to the pockets of the ordinary hard workers who bailed them out.
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
Anyway, my new neighbour, as it approaches completion, has a suitably ridiculous new name, Solstice Point.
The development was meant to be affordable housing but - *cough* - this concept got lost somewhere in the last half decade as London boomed once again.
Ergo the flats are on sale on the open market. And how much will a small 1 bed flat in "Solstice Point" cost you?
What this means on a larger scale I dunno. It's great for me as my flat zooms in value (even as my stocks and shares collapse). But I fear this kind of pricing can only fuel envy of London, resentment of London, and the increasing division of the nation.
F*ck it, if they have a revolution I will sell and move to A CASTLE on the Costa Vicentina.
The next kick out against the elite will be the trafficking of social housing residents out of zones 1 & 2 and to the suburbs.. it's already happening, and people aren't happy
Where do the Elite hold the policy and planning meetings required to be so effective and cohesive?
Blaming the bankers for the recession is deranged there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy
Lol.
Ohhh, those poor bankers.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
Cameron's pathetic crawling to the bankers in the EU by vetoing a very mild measure like the Robin Hood tax shows where Tory allegiances lie. With bankers and big business, not ordinary people.
Banking has been hugely taxed and regulated for decades. Brown depended on the revenues that financial speculation generated.
Blaming the bankers for the recession is deranged there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy
Lol.
Ohhh, those poor bankers.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
Cameron's pathetic crawling to the bankers in the EU by vetoing a very mild measure like the Robin Hood tax shows where Tory allegiances lie. With bankers and big business, not ordinary people.
Ahh yes, the Robin Hood tax, a neat way of moving a few Billion from the UK economy into EU coffers.
Or moving billions from the pockets of bankers who caused the crash to the pockets of the ordinary hard workers who bailed them out.
Most of the ordinary hard workers I hear about are getting tax credits, so I doubt they are paying the nations debts.
September 2014 comes in (as widely expected) the warmest September ever recorded according to NOAA (following August 2014 which was the warmest August ever recorded).
The current year to-date is the warmest YTD ever recorded. It's now quite likely that 2014 will be the warmest year ever recorded globally.
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
Anyway, my new neighbour, as it approaches completion, has a suitably ridiculous new name, Solstice Point.
The development was meant to be affordable housing but - *cough* - this concept got lost somewhere in the last half decade as London boomed once again.
Ergo the flats are on sale on the open market. And how much will a small 1 bed flat in "Solstice Point" cost you?
What this means on a larger scale I dunno. It's great for me as my flat zooms in value (even as my stocks and shares collapse). But I fear this kind of pricing can only fuel envy of London, resentment of London, and the increasing division of the nation.
F*ck it, if they have a revolution I will sell and move to A CASTLE on the Costa Vicentina.
The next kick out against the elite will be the trafficking of social housing residents out of zones 1 & 2 and to the suburbs.. it's already happening, and people aren't happy
Where do the Elite hold the policy and planning meetings required to be so effective and cohesive?
They merge council back offices as a "cost cutting exercise" to start off with
I stopped reading 9 early on when I came across the following sentence:
"Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable."
A 3.2% deficit at the peak of an unsustainable boom was "manageable". It would make you weep. Labour and their supporters have so much to learn.
Public spending or deficit didn't cause the global economic crisis, private sector bankers did.
Tories have peddled the myth as cover for ideological cuts and shrinking the State.
It also means Gideon and Co have failed to address our real economic problems, like our rotten banks and private sector big business, as well as abject Tory failure on the deficit.
I remain confused - if deficits are not in themselves bad if they are manageable, what does it matter that the Tories failed to reduce it, and if we are to condemn them for that failure (I do), presumably we should have had much harsher cuts or tax rises, as growth alone would not cover it. Labour would not sanction the former, and electorally would probably be cagey on the latter, so while I could criticise the Tories for failing on the deficit, the opposition cannot if they want to keep to the line about how harsh the cuts have been, so it can only be individuals and fringe groups making that argument, and who will have to condemn Ed M when he starts cutting too.
The deficit wasn't a problem pre-crash. It only became a problem after the private sector bankers wrecked the global economy.
That's why the Tory failure on the deficit and economy / living standards is so serious.
Spending money on public services didn't cause our economic problems, the bankers who caused the global crisis, and politicians like Cameron and Osborne who failed to learn lessons from it, are the ones to blame.
It wasn't a problem if you believed the hype that Gordon Brown had abolished the business cycle.
Once it became clear that he hadn't, in 2008, then the deficit became a problem.
The global crash the private sector / bankers caused wasn't part of the ordinary business "cycle". It was a once in a lifetime economic catastrophe.
Recessions happen. It's foolish for any government to build it's fiscal policy on the assumption that this will never be the case.
You seem to think that a cabal of businessmen decided to engineer a crash for shit and giggles.
I stopped reading 9 early on when I came across the following sentence:
"Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable."
A 3.2% deficit at the peak of an unsustainable boom was "manageable". It would make you weep. Labour and their supporters have so much to learn.
Public spending or deficit didn't cause the global economic crisis, private sector bankers did.
Tories have peddled the myth as cover for ideological cuts and shrinking the State.
It also means Gideon and Co have failed to address our real economic problems, like our rotten banks and private sector big business, as well as abject Tory failure on the deficit.
I remain confused - if deficits are not in themselves bad if they are manageable, what does it matter that the Tories failed to reduce it, and if we are to condemn them for that failure (I do), presumably we should have had much harsher cuts or tax rises, as growth alone would not cover it. Labour would not sanction the former, and electorally would probably be cagey on the latter, so while I could criticise the Tories for failing on the deficit, the opposition cannot if they want to keep to the line about how harsh the cuts have been, so it can only be individuals and fringe groups making that argument, and who will have to condemn Ed M when he starts cutting too.
The deficit wasn't a problem pre-crash. It only became a problem after the private sector bankers wrecked the global economy.
That's why the Tory failure on the deficit and economy / living standards is so serious.
Spending money on public services didn't cause our economic problems, the bankers who caused the global crisis, and politicians like Cameron and Osborne who failed to learn lessons from it, are the ones to blame.
It wasn't a problem if you believed the hype that Gordon Brown had abolished the business cycle.
Once it became clear that he hadn't, in 2008, then the deficit became a problem.
The global crash the private sector / bankers caused wasn't part of the ordinary business "cycle". It was a once in a lifetime economic catastrophe.
Jeez, and there was Labour in the 70's going to the IMF too.... just how many more once in a lifetime events can I look forward to when Labour are in power?
I stopped reading 9 early on when I came across the following sentence:
"Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable."
A 3.2% deficit at the peak of an unsustainable boom was "manageable". It would make you weep. Labour and their supporters have so much to learn.
Public spending or deficit didn't cause the global economic crisis, private sector bankers did.
Tories have peddled the myth as cover for ideological cuts and shrinking the State.
It also means Gideon and Co have failed to address our real economic problems, like our rotten banks and private sector big business, as well as abject Tory failure on the deficit.
I remain confused - if deficits are not in themselves bad if they are manageable, what does it matter that the Tories failed to reduce it, and if we are to condemn them for that failure (I do), presumably we should have had much harsher cuts or tax rises, as growth alone would not cover it. Labour would not sanction the former, and electorally would probably be cagey on the latter, so while I could criticise the Tories for failing on the deficit, the opposition cannot if they want to keep to the line about how harsh the cuts have been, so it can only be individuals and fringe groups making that argument, and who will have to condemn Ed M when he starts cutting too.
The deficit wasn't a problem pre-crash. It only became a problem after the private sector bankers wrecked the global economy.
That's why the Tory failure on the deficit and economy / living standards is so serious.
Spending money on public services didn't cause our economic problems, the bankers who caused the global crisis, and politicians like Cameron and Osborne who failed to learn lessons from it, are the ones to blame.
It wasn't a problem if you believed the hype that Gordon Brown had abolished the business cycle.
Once it became clear that he hadn't, in 2008, then the deficit became a problem.
The global crash the private sector / bankers caused wasn't part of the ordinary business "cycle". It was a once in a lifetime economic catastrophe.
Recessions happen. It's foolish for any government to build it's fiscal policy on the assumption that this will never be the case.
You seem to think that a cabal of businessmen decided to engineer a crash for shit and giggles.
That's exactly what they did PURELY to spite Gordon Brown for so bravely abolishing boom and bust.
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
There's a tyre garage down the road on the west side of Regents Park (park road) that has similarly been re-developed.
An interesting location in that it has the Regent's canal (rats!) and the Metropolitan line (noise!) on the doorstep.
September 2014 comes in (as widely expected) the warmest September ever recorded according to NOAA (following August 2014 which was the warmest August ever recorded).
The current year to-date is the warmest YTD ever recorded. It's now quite likely that 2014 will be the warmest year ever recorded globally.
Blaming the bankers for the recession is deranged there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy
Lol.
Ohhh, those poor bankers.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
Cameron's pathetic crawling to the bankers in the EU by vetoing a very mild measure like the Robin Hood tax shows where Tory allegiances lie. With bankers and big business, not ordinary people.
Ahh yes, the Robin Hood tax, a neat way of moving a few Billion from the UK economy into EU coffers.
Or moving billions from the pockets of bankers who caused the crash to the pockets of the ordinary hard workers who bailed them out.
FTT is not a tax on banks or bankers' salaries/bonuses but on transactions. It is like VAT and will be paid by the person for whose benefit the transaction is done I.e. The person saving for a pension or someone saving in a stocks and shares ISA.
The ordinary hard workers saving for their future will be the ones hit by this tax. But who cares about them, eh Hugh?
I stopped reading 9 early on when I came across the following sentence:
"Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable."
A 3.2% deficit at the peak of an unsustainable boom was "manageable". It would make you weep. Labour and their supporters have so much to learn.
Public spending or deficit didn't cause the global economic crisis, private sector bankers did.
Tories have peddled the myth as cover for ideological cuts and shrinking the State.
It also means Gideon and Co have failed to address our real economic problems, like our rotten banks and private sector big business, as well as abject Tory failure on the deficit.
The deficit wasn't a problem pre-crash. It only became a problem after the private sector bankers wrecked the global economy.
That's why the Tory failure on the deficit and economy / living standards is so serious.
Spending money on public services didn't cause our economic problems, the bankers who caused the global crisis, and politicians like Cameron and Osborne who failed to learn lessons from it, are the ones to blame.
It wasn't a problem if you believed the hype that Gordon Brown had abolished the business cycle.
Once it became clear that he hadn't, in 2008, then the deficit became a problem.
The global crash the private sector / bankers caused wasn't part of the ordinary business "cycle". It was a once in a lifetime economic catastrophe.
Recessions happen. It's foolish for any government to build it's fiscal policy on the assumption that this will never be the case.
You seem to think that a cabal of businessmen decided to engineer a crash for shit and giggles.
Recessions happen cyclically.
Sudden massive global crashes aren't part of that cycle, they are one-offs caused by systemic flaws.
The Tories have failed to address those systemic flaws, instead preferring to use the crash as an excuse for ideologically motivated pro big business politics and cuts to public services.
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
There's a tyre garage down the road on the west side of Regents Park (park road) that has similarly been re-developed.
An interesting location in that it has the Regent's canal (rats!) and the Metropolitan line (noise!) on the doorstep.
Odd too that we once needed tyre-garages!
An interesting location in that it has the Regent's canal (rats!) and the Metropolitan line (rats and noise!) on the doorstep, is I think more accurate.
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
Anyway, my new neighbour, as it approaches completion, has a suitably ridiculous new name, Solstice Point.
The development was meant to be affordable housing but - *cough* - this concept got lost somewhere in the last half decade as London boomed once again.
Ergo the flats are on sale on the open market. And how much will a small 1 bed flat in "Solstice Point" cost you?
What this means on a larger scale I dunno. It's great for me as my flat zooms in value (even as my stocks and shares collapse). But I fear this kind of pricing can only fuel envy of London, resentment of London, and the increasing division of the nation.
F*ck it, if they have a revolution I will sell and move to A CASTLE on the Costa Vicentina.
The next kick out against the elite will be the trafficking of social housing residents out of zones 1 & 2 and to the suburbs.. it's already happening, and people aren't happy
Where do the Elite hold the policy and planning meetings required to be so effective and cohesive?
Blaming the bankers for the recession is deranged there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy
Lol.
Ohhh, those poor bankers.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
Cameron's pathetic crawling to the bankers in the EU by vetoing a very mild measure like the Robin Hood tax shows where Tory allegiances lie. With bankers and big business, not ordinary people.
Ahh yes, the Robin Hood tax, a neat way of moving a few Billion from the UK economy into EU coffers.
Or moving billions from the pockets of bankers who caused the crash to the pockets of the ordinary hard workers who bailed them out.
FTT is not a tax on banks or bankers' salaries/bonuses but on transactions. It is like VAT and will be paid by the person for whose benefit the transaction is done I.e. The person saving for a pension or someone saving in a stocks and shares ISA.
The ordinary hard workers saving for their future will be the ones hit by this tax. But who cares about them, eh Hugh?
Codswallop.
As if ordinary folk haven't suffered enough already, from multi-billion bailouts for bankers who caused the deficit and continue as before, to austerity and cuts, plummeting living standards, and rock bottom interest rates.
A Robin Hood tax is a very very moderate move in the right direction. But even that was too much for Big Business and Bankers Champion David Cameron.
I stopped reading 9 early on when I came across the following sentence:
"Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable."
A 3.2% deficit at the peak of an unsustainable boom was "manageable". It would make you weep. Labour and their supporters have so much to learn.
Public spending or deficit didn't cause the global economic crisis, private sector bankers did.
Tories have peddled the myth as cover for ideological cuts and shrinking the State.
It also means Gideon and Co have failed to address our real economic problems, like our rotten banks and private sector big business, as well as abject Tory failure on the deficit.
The deficit wasn't a problem pre-crash. It only became a problem after the private sector bankers wrecked the global economy.
That's why the Tory failure on the deficit and economy / living standards is so serious.
Spending money on public services didn't cause our economic problems, the bankers who caused the global crisis, and politicians like Cameron and Osborne who failed to learn lessons from it, are the ones to blame.
It wasn't a problem if you believed the hype that Gordon Brown had abolished the business cycle.
Once it became clear that he hadn't, in 2008, then the deficit became a problem.
The global crash the private sector / bankers caused wasn't part of the ordinary business "cycle". It was a once in a lifetime economic catastrophe.
Recessions happen. It's foolish for any government to build it's fiscal policy on the assumption that this will never be the case.
You seem to think that a cabal of businessmen decided to engineer a crash for shit and giggles.
Recessions happen cyclically.
Sudden massive global crashes aren't part of that cycle, they are one-offs caused by systemic flaws.
The Tories have failed to address those systemic flaws, instead preferring to use the crash as an excuse for ideologically motivated pro big business politics and cuts to public services.
On a domestic borrowing front they have. Tried applying for a mortgage recently?
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
Anyway, my new neighbour, as it approaches completion, has a suitably ridiculous new name, Solstice Point.
The development was meant to be affordable housing but - *cough* - this concept got lost somewhere in the last half decade as London boomed once again.
Ergo the flats are on sale on the open market. And how much will a small 1 bed flat in "Solstice Point" cost you?
What this means on a larger scale I dunno. It's great for me as my flat zooms in value (even as my stocks and shares collapse). But I fear this kind of pricing can only fuel envy of London, resentment of London, and the increasing division of the nation.
F*ck it, if they have a revolution I will sell and move to A CASTLE on the Costa Vicentina.
if it's big, round inflatable and looks a bit like a bubble. it's probably a bubble.
When I was first thinking of investing my money in London property (having NEVER had money before, apart from day to day cash to spend on drugs, ink, booze, hookers, interesting new fiction and curry) a lot of people on pb told me to rent, as they said "London property will crash". This was in 2009.
In the end, I bought my small-but-fairly-cute one bed flat here in Camden for £325,000, mainly cause I wanted to OWN, partly because I thought it might be a good investment. I had read a Bank of India report which said that over the last 50 years - i.e. since the 1960s - the London property market was the best investment IN THE WORLD - better than any other property market, better than gold, shares, oil, wheat futures, whatever.
As things stand, judging by present prices here at the posher end of Camden (which yearns but fails to be Primrose Hill) my flat is worth £550k or more. My investment has, therefore, almost doubled in value in five years.
Yeah, of course it's a bubble. Yet it's a bubble that never quite bursts. And even when it bursts, it blows right up again. It is remarkable.
It is also a self-fulfilling prophecy of course. The more people worldwide believe in London property, the more they are prepared to invest in it.
A bubble expands most rapidly before it pops, and there is a great prick called Ed coming along to pop it!
I suspect even at the worst you would still be up on 2009.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
I don't feel a massive amount of sympathy for "the bankers" - it's true that a lot of financial workers lost their livelihoods in the recession, but they'd generally been having a good time of it until then. My sympathy is the last thing they need. I do hope they've fallen on their feet, but I'd wish that on anyone.
The analysis that "bankers are evil and caused the crash" is puerile because it equates the actions of individuals as moral agents, with the economic consequences of the failings of the system they were working under. Putting it another way, if we replaced the last crop of bankers with another bunch, ones who had all passed some sort of "good character test" but who were working under the same system with the same flaws, then we'd have got landed with the same catastrophic outcome. It's the system that needed fixing, not the people. The people are just a very convenient focus of anger and blame. It's also very shallow to argue that just because something didn't cause a crash, that it was acceptable. Things that make a crash worse are also bad, they're just bad in a different way. There's no end of bad to go round; we're not facing a blame shortage any time soon.
Regulation and taxation are a fiddly issue. No serious politician, despite their bash-a-banker rhetoric, is going to want to harm the financial sector any more than they feel is necessary to reduce the probability of more financial disasters. If you completely crush the life out of the financial sector, it unsurprisingly becomes very difficult for consumers - and more importantly, growing businesses - to raise finance. Everybody who matters, agrees that if you smash the banks too harshly, you reduce long-run economic growth for everyone. Even more so in Britain than for other countries, because we export a serious amount of financial services.
What ticks me off is that the bash-a-banker bandwagon has very little substance to it, but provides a very convenient cover for politicians who can partake in the moral outrage and then duck policy debate using it. It would be possible to have a serious discussion about how government should deal with the "too big to fail issue" (some think we should break larger banks up, others think that a system of lots of small banks would still have correlated failures but would be weaker overall), or how big deposit guarantees should be. Instead we just get talking heads agreeing about how much they hate "the bankers" - an amorphous group which seems to take in all manner of financial professionals, very many of whom were working a decade ago having long since left the scene.
Already cutting prices at the top end of the London market. New taxes, non Dom restrictions and rate rises coming, there will be no massive sterling devaluation to prop up prices this time.
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
There's a tyre garage down the road on the west side of Regents Park (park road) that has similarly been re-developed.
An interesting location in that it has the Regent's canal (rats!) and the Metropolitan line (noise!) on the doorstep.
Odd too that we once needed tyre-garages!
An interesting location in that it has the Regent's canal (rats!) and the Metropolitan line (rats and noise!) on the doorstep, is I think more accurate.
I thought the tubes were well known for rodents.
The tube is plagued by mice generally. I've never seen a rat whilst travelling on the tube.
It's the system that needed fixing, not the people
Well, obviously.
The system needs to ensure these people in the Financial Sector who caused the crash don't get the obscene rewards, power, influence they currently have.
It needs to ensure they don't monopolise wealth at the expense of ordinary people like they currently do, by paying more tax for example.
It needs to ensure there is more stability inherent in the system by outright banning certain forms of trading.
Unfortunately, our current Government is nothing but the political wing of the financial sector and big business, so - dangerously - none of this has happened. The General Election can't come soon enough.
It's the system that needed fixing, not the people
Well, obviously.
The system needs to ensure these people in the Financial Sector who caused the crash don't get the obscene rewards, power, influence they currently have.
It needs to ensure they don't monopolise wealth at the expense of ordinary people like they currently do, by paying more tax for example.
It needs to ensure there is more stability inherent in the system by outright banning certain forms of trading.
Unfortunately, our current Government is nothing but the political wing of the financial sector and big business, so - dangerously - none of this has happened. The General Election can't come soon enough.
Evidence of yet more history being deleted 1997-2010
As if ordinary folk haven't suffered enough already, from multi-billion bailouts for bankers who caused the deficit and continue as before, to austerity and cuts, plummeting living standards, and rock bottom interest rates.
A Robin Hood tax is a very very moderate move in the right direction. But even that was too much for Big Business and Bankers Champion David Cameron.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
Blaming the bankers for the recession is deranged there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy
Lol.
Ohhh, those poor bankers.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
Cameron's pathetic crawling to the bankers in the EU by vetoing a very mild measure like the Robin Hood tax shows where Tory allegiances lie. With bankers and big business, not ordinary people.
As I'm rather stupid, could you just remind me which institutions HM Government (and the tax payer) bailed out during the financial crisis?
And could you also remind me *who* exactly was 'bailed out'? Who were the biggest winners from the 'bail out'?
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
Anyway, my new neighbour, as it approaches completion, has a suitably ridiculous new name, Solstice Point.
The development was meant to be affordable housing but - *cough* - this concept got lost somewhere in the last half decade as London boomed once again.
Ergo the flats are on sale on the open market. And how much will a small 1 bed flat in "Solstice Point" cost you?
What this means on a larger scale I dunno. It's great for me as my flat zooms in value (even as my stocks and shares collapse). But I fear this kind of pricing can only fuel envy of London, resentment of London, and the increasing division of the nation.
F*ck it, if they have a revolution I will sell and move to A CASTLE on the Costa Vicentina.
There is a devlopment (The Lexington) of two bedroom flats, at the grottiest point on the Finchley Road, and equidistant from Golders Green and Finchley Road tubes (and therefore near nowhere at all) being sold for 750k.
As if ordinary folk haven't suffered enough already, from multi-billion bailouts for bankers who caused the deficit and continue as before, to austerity and cuts, plummeting living standards, and rock bottom interest rates.
A Robin Hood tax is a very very moderate move in the right direction. But even that was too much for Big Business and Bankers Champion David Cameron.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
And what about if there's a global agreement on a transactions tax and various other wealth taxes, thus removing the threat of "we'll move elsewhere!!!!11" ransoms from the rich.
I think the electorate is divided between those who vote UKIP, and those who will vote UKIP.
There's a sizeable third group. Those who will never vote Ukip in a million years.
What about those that will vote Ukip and then regret it for 5 years as Ed is PM and there is no referendum and more immigration.
Many who vote UKIP will vote it, and be pleased that - for the first time in years - they are voting for someone who hears their concerns, irrespective of who ends up in number 10.
It's the system that needed fixing, not the people
Well, obviously.
The system needs to ensure these people in the Financial Sector who caused the crash don't get the obscene rewards, power, influence they currently have.
It needs to ensure they don't monopolise wealth at the expense of ordinary people like they currently do, by paying more tax for example.
It needs to ensure there is more stability inherent in the system by outright banning certain forms of trading.
Unfortunately, our current Government is nothing but the political wing of the financial sector and big business, so - dangerously - none of this has happened. The General Election can't come soon enough.
One problem with banning swathes of trading is that it tends to reduce liquidity of assets, which doesn't help much towards stability either. There are few easy answers. Much of the regulation, like Basel III, gets hammered out at an international level by pretty faceless technocrats.
You're clearly incorrect re the government not changing any financial regulations - things like self-certified mortgages seem to have gone the way of the dodo, for example. I wouldn't notch that off as a great credit to the coalition, since I'm sure any other governing party(ies) would have done the same, but it is a change.
And I don't understand what was codswallop about what @Cyclefree said - it's just a fact about how the proposed "Robin Hood Tax" would work in practice. My only complaint is that she used the term "hard-working" - one of those soundbites that is starting to fray my nerves I'm afraid! It is probably true that it would reduce the size of the financial sector, though doing so would come at a cost that many people and businesses working outside finance would also need to pay.
You seem to be under the impression that if someone replaces Cameron in 2015, then all of a sudden the financial sector is going to come under sustained political attack. While I can imagine it coming under sustained rhetorical attack, I think you're going to be sorely disappointed in terms of concerted government action to prune back the sector, whoever wins the election. All parties would say they want a flourishing financial sector as part of a "rebalanced" economy, but that rebalancing thing (by which they largely mean a return to industrial production taking a larger share in the economy, higher exports, and a smaller share for services - including financial services) isn't turning out to be easy anywhere else in the world either. Indeed the pressure to maintain or improve the balance of payments is likely to make any government act against perceived threats (such as EU regulation) to one of the few sectors we have with a rosy exports situation.
As if ordinary folk haven't suffered enough already, from multi-billion bailouts for bankers who caused the deficit and continue as before, to austerity and cuts, plummeting living standards, and rock bottom interest rates.
A Robin Hood tax is a very very moderate move in the right direction. But even that was too much for Big Business and Bankers Champion David Cameron.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
And what about if there's a global agreement on a transactions tax and various other wealth taxes, thus removing the "we'll move elsewhere!!!!11" ransoms from the rich.
The incentive to be the one country in the world that does not do sign up to the FTT would be overwhelming. You'd dominate financial market trading.
Essentially, it would be in the interest of every country to be Ireland. (In the way Ireland undercuts everyone on corporation tax.)
As if ordinary folk haven't suffered enough already, from multi-billion bailouts for bankers who caused the deficit and continue as before, to austerity and cuts, plummeting living standards, and rock bottom interest rates.
A Robin Hood tax is a very very moderate move in the right direction. But even that was too much for Big Business and Bankers Champion David Cameron.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
And what about if there's a global agreement on a transactions tax and various other wealth taxes, thus removing the "we'll move elsewhere!!!!11" ransoms from the rich.
The incentive to be the one country in the world that does not do sign up to the FTT would be overwhelming. You'd dominate financial market trading.
Essentially, it would be in the interest of every country to be Ireland. (In the way Ireland undercuts everyone on corporation tax.)
And what if the international community applied severe trading sanctions to any country that refused to comply?
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
There seems to be a very fine line between "clamping down on the speculators" (good!) and "slapping down the people who bring us liquidity" (bad!). I haven't come across anyone who seemed to have a good answer to the problem of where the good stops and the bad begins.
If you're so skeptical about the effectiveness of FTT - flaws that are well-known and well-understood by the policymakers - why do you think it's on the horizon at all? As a fig-leaf to make it look like "something is being done"? Or that the original intentions for something powerful were there, but a lowest-agreeable-denominator fudge was reached?
And what if the international community applied severe trading sanctions to any country that refused to comply?
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
Right. So if Saudi Arabia, home of 14% of the world's oil production, and more than 20% of its exports, decided it could do with a second source of revenue, how would you apply sanctions?
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
Anyway, my new neighbour, as it approaches completion, has a suitably ridiculous new name, Solstice Point.
The development was meant to be affordable housing but - *cough* - this concept got lost somewhere in the last half decade as London boomed once again.
Ergo the flats are on sale on the open market. And how much will a small 1 bed flat in "Solstice Point" cost you?
What this means on a larger scale I dunno. It's great for me as my flat zooms in value (even as my stocks and shares collapse). But I fear this kind of pricing can only fuel envy of London, resentment of London, and the increasing division of the nation.
F*ck it, if they have a revolution I will sell and move to A CASTLE on the Costa Vicentina.
There is a devlopment (The Lexington) of two bedroom flats, at the grottiest point on the Finchley Road, and equidistant from Golders Green and Finchley Road tubes (and therefore near nowhere at all) being sold for 750k.
I will not be buying.
The best place to buy in London right now is probably right on the edges, or just beyond. Places like Tottenham (big new investment from Spurs FC), or Hounslow.
Three-bed terraced houses in my area of Ilford North going for £360 K.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
There seems to be a very fine line between "clamping down on the speculators" (good!) and "slapping down the people who bring us liquidity" (bad!). I haven't come across anyone who seemed to have a good answer to the problem of where the good stops and the bad begins.
If you're so skeptical about the effectiveness of FTT - flaws that are well-known and well-understood by the policymakers - why do you think it's on the horizon at all? As a fig-leaf to make it look like "something is being done"? Or that the original intentions for something powerful were there, but a lowest-agreeable-denominator fudge was reached?
I very much doubt any FTT with greater scope than our stamp duty will be brought into existence.
Talking of property prices in London, elderly pb-ers, such as me, will recall that the tyre garage next to my Camden flat has been undergoing transformation into residential development for the last 60,000 years, sorry, 5 years (which, I believe, is longer than it took the Italians to build the entire and exquisite Renaissance city centre of Pienza)
Anyway, my new neighbour, as it approaches completion, has a suitably ridiculous new name, Solstice Point.
The development was meant to be affordable housing but - *cough* - this concept got lost somewhere in the last half decade as London boomed once again.
Ergo the flats are on sale on the open market. And how much will a small 1 bed flat in "Solstice Point" cost you?
What this means on a larger scale I dunno. It's great for me as my flat zooms in value (even as my stocks and shares collapse). But I fear this kind of pricing can only fuel envy of London, resentment of London, and the increasing division of the nation.
F*ck it, if they have a revolution I will sell and move to A CASTLE on the Costa Vicentina.
There is a devlopment (The Lexington) of two bedroom flats, at the grottiest point on the Finchley Road, and equidistant from Golders Green and Finchley Road tubes (and therefore near nowhere at all) being sold for 750k.
I will not be buying.
The best place to buy in London right now is probably right on the edges, or just beyond. Places like Tottenham (big new investment from Spurs FC), or Hounslow.
I remember walking, one summer Saturday night, years ago, a girl I'd picked up at the old Tottenham Royal Dance Hall. I had to walk home to Hackney as I'd spent most of my pocket money and the all night trolley buses were a sham. Tottenham then was a sea of not quite slums interspersed with a diamond or gem of a building, here and there. Horrible in it's sameness.
And what if the international community applied severe trading sanctions to any country that refused to comply?
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
Right. So if Saudi Arabia, home of 14% of the world's oil production, and more than 20% of its exports, decided it could do with a second source of revenue, how would you apply sanctions?
You apply the sanctions, be willing to take the short-term hit to your economy (especially when it comes with the reward of immediately increased tax revenues), and assume (probably correctly) that Saudi Arabia will be the one to blink first when faced with a collapse in its exports.
And what if the international community applied severe trading sanctions to any country that refused to comply?
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
Right. So if Saudi Arabia, home of 14% of the world's oil production, and more than 20% of its exports, decided it could do with a second source of revenue, how would you apply sanctions?
You apply the sanctions, be willing to take the short-term hit to your economy (especially when it comes with the reward of immediately increased tax revenues), and assume (probably correctly) that Saudi Arabia will be the one to blink first when faced with a collapse in its exports.
And you think you can persuade every single country on earth not to take the massive benefit of sanctions busting? Good luck.
And what if the international community applied severe trading sanctions to any country that refused to comply?
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
You're assuming that the entire "international community" could reach a unanimous decision on, for example, exactly how much to tax wealthy people, exactly how much to tax various financial transactions, the exact mechanism for doing so, and so on. Which, given the heterogeneity even within the relatively uniform EU (even the heterogeneity on tax and corporate regulation within the USA) that doesn't seem particularly likely when you extend it out on a global scale.
For an understanding of the problem, look at how resistant Ireland is to the introduction of a uniform corporation tax rate across the Eurozone, something that some other states are calling for. Their incentives are exactly those outlined by Rob - they've got no reason to comply with the wishes of the French or Germans now that they no longer need the bailout money. In fact they held their line staunchly even during the bailout when EU officials expressed their desire for Ireland to at least raise its rate somewhat. It's just how the incentives fall.
If that's the difficulty in getting agreement within the EU, where there are procedures in place for members to harmonise key policies (and that harmonisation often means accepting something you dislike in exchange for getting something you do like) how would it work in the wider world where there aren't such mechanisms in place? You can't just play hardball in the way your comment suggested: governments don't just go around imposing sanctions on a state because they disagree with its sovereign decisions. The entire system of governance for global trade, from GATT onwards, doesn't leave much room for that kind of behaviour. Moreover, it's well-established that the imposition of meaningful sanctions is harmful to both economies - again, something that governments are well aware of, and why they are wary of imposing sanctions for basically political ends even in pretty egregious cases (see the recent difficulties organising European sanctions re Crimea, the jumping through hoops to ensure US military sales could continue to Egypt, the softness of countless export restrictions against dodgy regimes).
And what if the international community applied severe trading sanctions to any country that refused to comply?
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
Right. So if Saudi Arabia, home of 14% of the world's oil production, and more than 20% of its exports, decided it could do with a second source of revenue, how would you apply sanctions?
You apply the sanctions, be willing to take the short-term hit to your economy (especially when it comes with the reward of immediately increased tax revenues), and assume (probably correctly) that Saudi Arabia will be the one to blink first when faced with a collapse in its exports.
And you think you can persuade every single country on earth not to take the massive benefit of sanctions busting? Good luck.
As I said, I totally concede it would need the agreement of most of the major economies in the world. But I believe some point within the next 10 years there's going to be a consensus that action like that needs to be done, since the main reason most countries have such big deficits is because the global super-rich think they're above paying taxes, and I (maybe over-optimistically) really don't think the poor and middle class in most countries are going to accept that public services and living standards should collapse just because it's too difficult to take on the super-rich. More standardised global (high) tax rates and international isolation of tax havens is inevitable.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
There seems to be a very fine line between "clamping down on the speculators" (good!) and "slapping down the people who bring us liquidity" (bad!). I haven't come across anyone who seemed to have a good answer to the problem of where the good stops and the bad begins.
If you're so skeptical about the effectiveness of FTT - flaws that are well-known and well-understood by the policymakers - why do you think it's on the horizon at all? As a fig-leaf to make it look like "something is being done"? Or that the original intentions for something powerful were there, but a lowest-agreeable-denominator fudge was reached?
I very much doubt any FTT with greater scope than our stamp duty will be brought into existence.
The FTT as proposed by the Eurozone is based on the asset being traded, not the jurisdiction. If a broker from USA buys a Siemens share in Singapore they are still liable to the FTT.
Three-bed terraced houses in my area of Ilford North going for £360 K.
Hello Dr Prasannan, hope all is well with you.
I was walking the terraced streets of Ilford last week, when a late middle-aged Indian lady noticed I looked impressed with her front garden. So I got given a little tour, and even a photospread of her (in her more glamorous days) and her garden (practically unchanged) in the Times magazine. Most impressive.
I wondered if she is a gardening rival to your green-fingered mother.
I have no great issue with an FTT. After all, we have stamp duty on share transactions on the UK, and - frankly - encouraging investment over (broadly defined) speculation is probably no bad thing.
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
There seems to be a very fine line between "clamping down on the speculators" (good!) and "slapping down the people who bring us liquidity" (bad!). I haven't come across anyone who seemed to have a good answer to the problem of where the good stops and the bad begins.
If you're so skeptical about the effectiveness of FTT - flaws that are well-known and well-understood by the policymakers - why do you think it's on the horizon at all? As a fig-leaf to make it look like "something is being done"? Or that the original intentions for something powerful were there, but a lowest-agreeable-denominator fudge was reached?
I very much doubt any FTT with greater scope than our stamp duty will be brought into existence.
The FTT as proposed by the Eurozone is based on the asset being traded, not the jurisdiction. If a broker from USA buys a Siemens share in Singapore they are still liable to the FTT.
True and not true.
It would be simply avoided, as ADRs today avoid stamp duty, by trading a certificate that allows the bearer to claim a share at a future point.
Three-bed terraced houses in my area of Ilford North going for £360 K.
Hello Dr Prasannan, hope all is well with you.
I was walking the terraced streets of Ilford last week, when a late middle-aged Indian lady noticed I looked impressed with her front garden. So I got given a little tour, and even a photospread of her (in her more glamorous days) and her garden (practically unchanged) in the Times magazine. Most impressive.
I wondered if she is a gardening rival to your green-fingered mother.
Yes, thanks all is well. Been working nearly a year in the W Midlands, but still visit Ilford at weekends. Are you from around there?
As for your observation - interesting!
Not sure if Redbridge in Bloom made it into the Times! Mum had to make do with a mention in the Ilford Recorder...
Thank you MBE for putting my argument much more eloquently than I could
More verbose though. I'm glad I type quite fast. If I could find a way to convert wordcount to remuneration, I'd be doing pretty well for myself.
Thanks for your comment re European FTT. It's been out of the headlines for a while, I was wondering how much progress was being made on that one - even the Commission's own reports on the issue seemed to pour some cold water over the whole affair, in some ways (I can't remember where, but I recall they estimated the effect of an FTT would be to lower the growth of the economy in such a way that tax revenue was projected to reduce relative to the no FTT position) and yet the official rhetoric that something important was going to come out down the line, still seems to pop up occassionally.
I wonder if those people upset (with some justification) about the tax-dodging rich have considered the lower tax fruit hanging elsewhere before demanding politically-implausible international coordination. If a country is desperate for revenue, there is revenue out there to be raised - it's just that you can't always get the person you want to pay it, and you have to live with the downsides of a tax (they tend to depress economic activity) as well as the money raised. In an ideal world you want to be taxing stuff which isn't very mobile, isn't very elastic and generally won't disappear when you try taxing it (taxing tobacco works much better on this front than taxing trading in people's pension fund) and where the tax is designed to minimise the reduction in economic activity. I'd expect to see more governments introduce a Land Value Tax as a source of revenue, if the need to generate more diverse revenue streams became particularly acute, before anything really radical happened.
Three-bed terraced houses in my area of Ilford North going for £360 K.
Hello Dr Prasannan, hope all is well with you.
I was walking the terraced streets of Ilford last week, when a late middle-aged Indian lady noticed I looked impressed with her front garden. So I got given a little tour, and even a photospread of her (in her more glamorous days) and her garden (practically unchanged) in the Times magazine. Most impressive.
I wondered if she is a gardening rival to your green-fingered mother.
Yes, thanks all is well. Been working nearly a year in the W Midlands, but still visit Ilford at weekends. Are you from around there?
As for your observation - interesting!
Not sure if Redbridge in Bloom made it into the Times! Mum had to make do with a mention in the Ilford Recorder...
Glad you've been working, waste of a brain otherwise. Did you get back into biology/academia?
I'm not a Redbridger but I get round and about a fair bit, for work and for life in general. Lots of development at the moment around Gants Hill, if you'd stayed away too long I'm not sure you'd recognise big swathes of Eastern Avenue! (Mind you, I had a drive around one of my old hometowns a few months back, and managed to get lost because several of the local landmarks I'd got accustomed to navigating by had been transformed or demolished, and there were some very prominent buildings I didn't recognise at all!)
The Recorder is a fine newspaper and I'm sure your mother was proud to be in it.
The problem with the Greens is that they are a bunch nasty authoritarians who want to control our lives using the "environment" as a pretext.
The Greens may or may not be nasty authoritarians (depending on one's definition or interpretation) but it is a reason, not a pretext. The ultimate authoritarian dictator is Mother Earth herself, who will cast us all into a cold dark dungeon of mass extinction if we're not careful. She has carefully and patiently stewed forests for hundreds of millions of years to provide us with coal and oil, yet we merrily squander much of it within a couple of hundred years with little more than a thought. And we cut down the rainforests, pollute the air, poison the sea, and send hundreds of species extinct.
I think the electorate is divided between those who vote UKIP, and those who will vote UKIP.
There's a sizeable third group. Those who will never vote Ukip in a million years.
What about those that will vote Ukip and then regret it for 5 years as Ed is PM and there is no referendum and more immigration.
Whoever is in power (Labour or Tory) there will be uncontrolled immigration (Barosso said as much yesterday) and the demand for an EU referendum will not subside just because Miliband refuses to hold one and given there will be two parties in opposition calling for it, I imagine the pressure will be quite intense especially as the rest of the EU move toward ever closer union. Denying the country the referendum only furthers people's desire to have one and advances the Eurosceptic cause
That is of course if the Tories are genuine about a referendum and will continue to pursue one in opposition and are not just posturing around it again purely to extort votes out of unsuspecting Eurosceptics (well there must be a few left out there).
And what if the international community applied severe trading sanctions to any country that refused to comply?
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
Right. So if Saudi Arabia, home of 14% of the world's oil production, and more than 20% of its exports, decided it could do with a second source of revenue, how would you apply sanctions?
You apply the sanctions, be willing to take the short-term hit to your economy (especially when it comes with the reward of immediately increased tax revenues), and assume (probably correctly) that Saudi Arabia will be the one to blink first when faced with a collapse in its exports.
And you think you can persuade every single country on earth not to take the massive benefit of sanctions busting? Good luck.
As I said, I totally concede it would need the agreement of most of the major economies in the world. But I believe some point within the next 10 years there's going to be a consensus that action like that needs to be done, since the main reason most countries have such big deficits is because the global super-rich think they're above paying taxes, and I (maybe over-optimistically) really don't think the poor and middle class in most countries are going to accept that public services and living standards should collapse just because it's too difficult to take on the super-rich. More standardised global (high) tax rates and international isolation of tax havens is inevitable.
Don't hold your breath. That wealth belonging to the super rich that you so desperately want to get your hands on can buy an awful lot of politicians and countries to make sure you don't get your hands on it.
I see the BBC are on their outrage soap box over the stupid UKIP song. Its racist you know, because a white man sings like a black man...but commissioning this kind of stuff is ok?
I see the BBC are on their outrage soap box over the stupid UKIP song.
yep, it's definitely a stupid song.
finding some other racist stuff on the bbc doesn't exonerate UKIP from having some racist members and fellow travellers though
(edited to add "some". I certainly don't believe all UKIP members or supporters are racist. On the other hand, they don't exactly appear to have gone out of their way to shake off people holding those views)
I see the BBC are on their outrage soap box over the stupid UKIP song.
yep, it's definitely a stupid song.
finding some other racist stuff on the bbc doesn't exonerate UKIP from having some racist members and fellow travellers though
(edited to add "some". I certainly don't believe all UKIP members or supporters are racist. On the other hand, they don't exactly appear to have gone out of their way to shake off people holding those views)
So parties that support immigration policies that discriminate against people coming from Africa, Asia and the Americas do?
I see the BBC are on their outrage soap box over the stupid UKIP song.
yep, it's definitely a stupid song.
finding some other racist stuff on the bbc doesn't exonerate UKIP from having some racist members and fellow travellers though
(edited to add "some". I certainly don't believe all UKIP members or supporters are racist. On the other hand, they don't exactly appear to have gone out of their way to shake off people holding those views)
So parties that support immigration policies that discriminate against people coming from Africa, Asia and the Americas do?
Are you advocating increasing immigration from Africa, Asia and the Americas in addition to that from the EU?
I see the BBC are on their outrage soap box over the stupid UKIP song.
yep, it's definitely a stupid song.
finding some other racist stuff on the bbc doesn't exonerate UKIP from having some racist members and fellow travellers though
(edited to add "some". I certainly don't believe all UKIP members or supporters are racist. On the other hand, they don't exactly appear to have gone out of their way to shake off people holding those views)
My point wasn't that UKIP may well have some racist fellow travellers, it is that screaming racist at everything they do or say doesn't work. Screaming racist at a bloody awful song, is just like the Daily Mail screaming immigrants to blame at every opportunity, people just switch off.
They should be holding their policies up to the fire. I rarely, if ever, see UKIP challenged on their actual policies.
I see the BBC are on their outrage soap box over the stupid UKIP song.
yep, it's definitely a stupid song.
finding some other racist stuff on the bbc doesn't exonerate UKIP from having some racist members and fellow travellers though
(edited to add "some". I certainly don't believe all UKIP members or supporters are racist. On the other hand, they don't exactly appear to have gone out of their way to shake off people holding those views)
My point wasn't that UKIP may well have some racist fellow travellers, it is that screaming racist at everything they do or say doesn't work. Screaming racist at a bloody awful song, is just like the Daily Mail screaming immigrants to blame at every opportunity, people just switch off.
They should be holding their policies up to the fire. I rarely, if ever, see UKIP challenged on their actual policies.
I agree, actually. It closes down debate. V. much like labelling Abe fascist here in Japan.
The trouble is there's nobody in the main parties with the balls to make the positive case for the status quo on immigration, or on europe
There seems to be an almost inverse political correctness in the labour party- "Don't offend Mrs. Duffy" . so we get this absence of debate with name-calling.
This in today's Mail. Labour election campaign strategy holed below waterline?
"Kirsty Williams, the Liberal Democrats’ leader in Wales, said: ‘Labour’s running of the NHS in Wales is nothing short of a national scandal. If English voters want to see what a Labour health service will look under Ed Miliband they should look no further than Wales.’"
I see the BBC are on their outrage soap box over the stupid UKIP song. Its racist you know, because a white man sings like a black man....
When will the likes of the BBC learn that just trying to smear UKIP as racist at every opportunity wont work.
When will they realise that they are actually the ignorant racists. There are many white West Indians and oddly enough they speak with the same Caribbean accent as black West Indians.
Many are the descendents of Catholic Irish transported there by Cromwell. Known derogatively as "redlegs" they have historically suffered terrible discrimination.
Comments
Most of the ordinary hard workers I hear about are getting tax credits, so I doubt they are paying the nations debts.
The squeezed middle may be contributing more.
September 2014 comes in (as widely expected) the warmest September ever recorded according to NOAA (following August 2014 which was the warmest August ever recorded).
The current year to-date is the warmest YTD ever recorded. It's now quite likely that 2014 will be the warmest year ever recorded globally.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/9
Global Warming? What Global Warming?
[records only begin May 2010]
Paging Neil.
That 50% early payment discount offer is still available on our Greens outpolling the Lib Dems bet.
Recessions happen. It's foolish for any government to build it's fiscal policy on the assumption that this will never be the case.
You seem to think that a cabal of businessmen decided to engineer a crash for shit and giggles.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/11484844-b565-11df-9af8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Gj07F2Yl
My offer to you to extend your stake is also open!
Greens outpolling the Lib Dems.
The Lib Dems now 5th in the polls (well a poll)
An interesting location in that it has the Regent's canal (rats!) and the Metropolitan line (noise!) on the doorstep.
Odd too that we once needed tyre-garages!
Global warming? Should have got on with it years ago! Saves flying south for the winter.
The ordinary hard workers saving for their future will be the ones hit by this tax. But who cares about them, eh Hugh?
Sudden massive global crashes aren't part of that cycle, they are one-offs caused by systemic flaws.
The Tories have failed to address those systemic flaws, instead preferring to use the crash as an excuse for ideologically motivated pro big business politics and cuts to public services.
I thought the tubes were well known for rodents.
As if ordinary folk haven't suffered enough already, from multi-billion bailouts for bankers who caused the deficit and continue as before, to austerity and cuts, plummeting living standards, and rock bottom interest rates.
A Robin Hood tax is a very very moderate move in the right direction. But even that was too much for Big Business and Bankers Champion David Cameron.
I suspect even at the worst you would still be up on 2009.
The analysis that "bankers are evil and caused the crash" is puerile because it equates the actions of individuals as moral agents, with the economic consequences of the failings of the system they were working under. Putting it another way, if we replaced the last crop of bankers with another bunch, ones who had all passed some sort of "good character test" but who were working under the same system with the same flaws, then we'd have got landed with the same catastrophic outcome. It's the system that needed fixing, not the people. The people are just a very convenient focus of anger and blame. It's also very shallow to argue that just because something didn't cause a crash, that it was acceptable. Things that make a crash worse are also bad, they're just bad in a different way. There's no end of bad to go round; we're not facing a blame shortage any time soon.
Regulation and taxation are a fiddly issue. No serious politician, despite their bash-a-banker rhetoric, is going to want to harm the financial sector any more than they feel is necessary to reduce the probability of more financial disasters. If you completely crush the life out of the financial sector, it unsurprisingly becomes very difficult for consumers - and more importantly, growing businesses - to raise finance. Everybody who matters, agrees that if you smash the banks too harshly, you reduce long-run economic growth for everyone. Even more so in Britain than for other countries, because we export a serious amount of financial services.
What ticks me off is that the bash-a-banker bandwagon has very little substance to it, but provides a very convenient cover for politicians who can partake in the moral outrage and then duck policy debate using it. It would be possible to have a serious discussion about how government should deal with the "too big to fail issue" (some think we should break larger banks up, others think that a system of lots of small banks would still have correlated failures but would be weaker overall), or how big deposit guarantees should be. Instead we just get talking heads agreeing about how much they hate "the bankers" - an amorphous group which seems to take in all manner of financial professionals, very many of whom were working a decade ago having long since left the scene.
Well, obviously.
The system needs to ensure these people in the Financial Sector who caused the crash don't get the obscene rewards, power, influence they currently have.
It needs to ensure they don't monopolise wealth at the expense of ordinary people like they currently do, by paying more tax for example.
It needs to ensure there is more stability inherent in the system by outright banning certain forms of trading.
Unfortunately, our current Government is nothing but the political wing of the financial sector and big business, so - dangerously - none of this has happened. The General Election can't come soon enough.
No EU head-bangers allowed in!
That being said, people who expect FTTs or "Robin Hood" taxes to raise a great deal of money are deluded. Because:
1.These are easiest taxes in the world to legally avoid because once a transaction takes place off-shore, then the legal ability of HM Government (or the EU) to tax it goes rapidly to zero.
2. It's like slapping a 50 quid charge on a packet of cigarettes: it will cause the volume sold to decline markedly. If you make it so you have to pay (say) GBP100 on every personal share transaction, then you'll trade less often. This means less speculative activity, but also lower than expected tax revenues and also less liquidity (which means firms will choose raise money in alternative markets like the US, and that savers will face wider spreads when they are buying or selling).
Finally, the EU FTT is currently looking so denuded that it might as well not happen. The virtual elimination (which will probably end up total) on derivatives is a boon for inventors of 'financial products', while traded loans (zero % FTT) will largely replace bonds.
And could you also remind me *who* exactly was 'bailed out'? Who were the biggest winners from the 'bail out'?
I will not be buying.
You're clearly incorrect re the government not changing any financial regulations - things like self-certified mortgages seem to have gone the way of the dodo, for example. I wouldn't notch that off as a great credit to the coalition, since I'm sure any other governing party(ies) would have done the same, but it is a change.
And I don't understand what was codswallop about what @Cyclefree said - it's just a fact about how the proposed "Robin Hood Tax" would work in practice. My only complaint is that she used the term "hard-working" - one of those soundbites that is starting to fray my nerves I'm afraid! It is probably true that it would reduce the size of the financial sector, though doing so would come at a cost that many people and businesses working outside finance would also need to pay.
You seem to be under the impression that if someone replaces Cameron in 2015, then all of a sudden the financial sector is going to come under sustained political attack. While I can imagine it coming under sustained rhetorical attack, I think you're going to be sorely disappointed in terms of concerted government action to prune back the sector, whoever wins the election. All parties would say they want a flourishing financial sector as part of a "rebalanced" economy, but that rebalancing thing (by which they largely mean a return to industrial production taking a larger share in the economy, higher exports, and a smaller share for services - including financial services) isn't turning out to be easy anywhere else in the world either. Indeed the pressure to maintain or improve the balance of payments is likely to make any government act against perceived threats (such as EU regulation) to one of the few sectors we have with a rosy exports situation.
Essentially, it would be in the interest of every country to be Ireland. (In the way Ireland undercuts everyone on corporation tax.)
These problems can ALWAYS be gotten round if there's the political will to do it, and the people putting forward these bogus arguments about how it wouldn't be "possible" to force the rich to cough up some of their undeserved money are usually coincidentally the very people who would stand to lose from such policies.
If you're so skeptical about the effectiveness of FTT - flaws that are well-known and well-understood by the policymakers - why do you think it's on the horizon at all? As a fig-leaf to make it look like "something is being done"? Or that the original intentions for something powerful were there, but a lowest-agreeable-denominator fudge was reached?
(It's juvenile, but that was such a cracking line)
'Recessions happen cyclically.'
Had you forgotten one of your heroes? 'No more boom or bust'
For an understanding of the problem, look at how resistant Ireland is to the introduction of a uniform corporation tax rate across the Eurozone, something that some other states are calling for. Their incentives are exactly those outlined by Rob - they've got no reason to comply with the wishes of the French or Germans now that they no longer need the bailout money. In fact they held their line staunchly even during the bailout when EU officials expressed their desire for Ireland to at least raise its rate somewhat. It's just how the incentives fall.
If that's the difficulty in getting agreement within the EU, where there are procedures in place for members to harmonise key policies (and that harmonisation often means accepting something you dislike in exchange for getting something you do like) how would it work in the wider world where there aren't such mechanisms in place? You can't just play hardball in the way your comment suggested: governments don't just go around imposing sanctions on a state because they disagree with its sovereign decisions. The entire system of governance for global trade, from GATT onwards, doesn't leave much room for that kind of behaviour. Moreover, it's well-established that the imposition of meaningful sanctions is harmful to both economies - again, something that governments are well aware of, and why they are wary of imposing sanctions for basically political ends even in pretty egregious cases (see the recent difficulties organising European sanctions re Crimea, the jumping through hoops to ensure US military sales could continue to Egypt, the softness of countless export restrictions against dodgy regimes).
If a broker from USA buys a Siemens share in Singapore they are still liable to the FTT.
I was walking the terraced streets of Ilford last week, when a late middle-aged Indian lady noticed I looked impressed with her front garden. So I got given a little tour, and even a photospread of her (in her more glamorous days) and her garden (practically unchanged) in the Times magazine. Most impressive.
I wondered if she is a gardening rival to your green-fingered mother.
It would be simply avoided, as ADRs today avoid stamp duty, by trading a certificate that allows the bearer to claim a share at a future point.
As for your observation - interesting!
Not sure if Redbridge in Bloom made it into the Times! Mum had to make do with a mention in the Ilford Recorder...
Thanks for your comment re European FTT. It's been out of the headlines for a while, I was wondering how much progress was being made on that one - even the Commission's own reports on the issue seemed to pour some cold water over the whole affair, in some ways (I can't remember where, but I recall they estimated the effect of an FTT would be to lower the growth of the economy in such a way that tax revenue was projected to reduce relative to the no FTT position) and yet the official rhetoric that something important was going to come out down the line, still seems to pop up occassionally.
I wonder if those people upset (with some justification) about the tax-dodging rich have considered the lower tax fruit hanging elsewhere before demanding politically-implausible international coordination. If a country is desperate for revenue, there is revenue out there to be raised - it's just that you can't always get the person you want to pay it, and you have to live with the downsides of a tax (they tend to depress economic activity) as well as the money raised. In an ideal world you want to be taxing stuff which isn't very mobile, isn't very elastic and generally won't disappear when you try taxing it (taxing tobacco works much better on this front than taxing trading in people's pension fund) and where the tax is designed to minimise the reduction in economic activity. I'd expect to see more governments introduce a Land Value Tax as a source of revenue, if the need to generate more diverse revenue streams became particularly acute, before anything really radical happened.
I'm not a Redbridger but I get round and about a fair bit, for work and for life in general. Lots of development at the moment around Gants Hill, if you'd stayed away too long I'm not sure you'd recognise big swathes of Eastern Avenue! (Mind you, I had a drive around one of my old hometowns a few months back, and managed to get lost because several of the local landmarks I'd got accustomed to navigating by had been transformed or demolished, and there were some very prominent buildings I didn't recognise at all!)
The Recorder is a fine newspaper and I'm sure your mother was proud to be in it.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/21/gough-whitlam-dies-at-age-98
That is of course if the Tories are genuine about a referendum and will continue to pursue one in opposition and are not just posturing around it again purely to extort votes out of unsuspecting Eurosceptics (well there must be a few left out there).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Kvu6Kgp88
I do so love the irony of the songs origins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zLuGwQyLyE
When will the likes of the BBC learn that just trying to smear UKIP as racist at every opportunity wont work.
Polls all the way back to 1970.
finding some other racist stuff on the bbc doesn't exonerate UKIP from having some racist members and fellow travellers though
(edited to add "some". I certainly don't believe all UKIP members or supporters are racist. On the other hand, they don't exactly appear to have gone out of their way to shake off people holding those views)
They should be holding their policies up to the fire. I rarely, if ever, see UKIP challenged on their actual policies.
The trouble is there's nobody in the main parties with the balls to make the positive case for the status quo on immigration, or on europe
There seems to be an almost inverse political correctness in the labour party- "Don't offend Mrs. Duffy" . so we get this absence of debate with name-calling.
Meanwhile in the european parliament...
"Kirsty Williams, the Liberal Democrats’ leader in Wales, said: ‘Labour’s running of the NHS in Wales is nothing short of a national scandal. If English voters want to see what a Labour health service will look under Ed Miliband they should look no further than Wales.’"
Ouch!
Many are the descendents of Catholic Irish transported there by Cromwell. Known derogatively as "redlegs" they have historically suffered terrible discrimination.