Yes, it’s a lot better than it was, but still not there yet. Gordon Brown has a lot to answer for, running up massive ‘investments’ while times were good.
One of the sillier notions of Brown - and what should have been a warning sign he didn't know what he was talking about - was that he claimed he had abolished 'boom and bust' I.e. cyclical economics, but then said he was able to 'borrow to invest over the economic cycle.'
The resulting borrowing binge for current account spending was shall we say unfortunate.
Gordon Brown later qualified this by saying he had only promised to abolish 'Tory Boom and Bust' - the implication being that an electorate would find Labour Boom and Bust quite all right. Gordon was so tribal in his mindset (Labour = goodies; Tory = baddies) that he probably even believed this.
Yes, it’s a lot better than it was, but still not there yet. Gordon Brown has a lot to answer for, running up massive ‘investments’ while times were good.
One of the sillier notions of Brown - and what should have been a warning sign he didn't know what he was talking about - was that he claimed he had abolished 'boom and bust' I.e. cyclical economics, but then said he was able to 'borrow to invest over the economic cycle.'
The resulting borrowing binge for current account spending was shall we say unfortunate.
Gordon Brown later qualified this by saying he had only promised to abolish 'Tory Boom and Bust' - the implication being that an electorate would find Labour Boom and Bust quite all right. Gordon was so tribal in his mindset (Labour = goodies; Tory = baddies) that he probably even believed this.
Actually Brown had managed to steer the economy round downturns overseas so it did seem to be working.
Yes, it’s a lot better than it was, but still not there yet. Gordon Brown has a lot to answer for, running up massive ‘investments’ while times were good.
One of the sillier notions of Brown - and what should have been a warning sign he didn't know what he was talking about - was that he claimed he had abolished 'boom and bust' I.e. cyclical economics, but then said he was able to 'borrow to invest over the economic cycle.'
The resulting borrowing binge for current account spending was shall we say unfortunate.
Gordon Brown later qualified this by saying he had only promised to abolish 'Tory Boom and Bust' - the implication being that an electorate would find Labour Boom and Bust quite all right. Gordon was so tribal in his mindset (Labour = goodies; Tory = baddies) that he probably even believed this.
Actually Brown had managed to steer the economy round downturns overseas so it did seem to be working.
@SeanT is wrong, he had the full benefit of our most esteemed and excellent thoughts on here before the referendum, including very clear direction from Richard Nabavi and Alastair Meeks. We are not rerunning the referendum just because he's flounced - he should have thought harder before he voted to leave.
I'm sure it is nothing to do with this.
London property prices fall as much as 15% as Brexit effect deepens
Average price in Wandsworth dips more than £100,000 with falls of up to 15% in capital in 12 months
I wish some of that house price plunging would happen in Edinburgh.
Alas the big fall is in the most expensive homes, London as a whole fell 1.8% - useful, to me at least, but not a gamechanger
So it is hurting those most able to afford it, and marginally useful for those who could do with some relief on house prices.
Yes. The ordinary homeowner is basically not affected, with no prospect of negative equity.
I think this is a little naive.
A huge portion of the stock of housing loans are in London, and LTVs are highest here. A decline in London house prices negatively impacts the ability of your bank to lend in Bolton. If the decline was serious, new lending dry up, and that would affect the whole country.
But presumably prices would fall?
It would be interesting to see some figures around the percentage of bank lending on a regional basis. After all we're obsessed with all kinds of other regional metrics.
Prices would fall, but the difficulties with housing would persist. I bought my first house in 1992 after a couple of years of negative equity, a 2 up 2 down terrace in Leicester. Despite a secure job as a junior Doctor, I struggled to raise the large deposit needed, and the interest rates were eye watering.
House prices need to come down, but don't expect a painless process.
House prices went mad from 1996 to 2007. The average price went from £55,000 to £181,000. Since then, they've only risen to £214,000. But, they've still gone up by 70% in London since then, while the the North, Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland have seen no rise.
No wonder there was such a feel-good factor under Blair, and such subsequent resentment for those who suddenly found housing out of reach.
@SeanT is wrong, he had the full benefit of our most esteemed and excellent thoughts on here before the referendum, including very clear direction from Richard Nabavi and Alastair Meeks. We are not rerunning the referendum just because he's flounced - he should have thought harder before he voted to leave.
I'm sure it is nothing to do with this.
London property prices fall as much as 15% as Brexit effect deepens
Average price in Wandsworth dips more than £100,000 with falls of up to 15% in capital in 12 months
I wish some of that house price plunging would happen in Edinburgh.
Alas the big fall is in the most expensive homes, London as a whole fell 1.8% - useful, to me at least, but not a gamechanger
So it is hurting those most able to afford it, and marginally useful for those who could do with some relief on house prices.
Yes. The ordinary homeowner is basically not affected, with no prospect of negative equity.
But presumably prices would fall?
It would be interesting to see some figures around the percentage of bank lending on a regional basis. After all we're obsessed with all kinds of other regional metrics.
Prices would fall, but the difficulties with housing would persist. I bought my first house in 1992 after a couple of years of negative equity, a 2 up 2 down terrace in Leicester. Despite a secure job as a junior Doctor, I struggled to raise the large deposit needed, and the interest rates were eye watering.
House prices need to come down, but don't expect a painless process.
House prices went mad from 1996 to 2007. The average price went from £55,000 to £181,000. Since then, they've only risen to £214,000. But, they've still gone up by 70% in London since then, while the the North, Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland have seen no rise.
No wonder there was such a feel-good factor under Blair, and such subsequent resentment for those who suddenly found housing out of reach.
Of course, as I'm sure Sean skates over only for reasons of brevity, dig deeper and the pattern is more nuanced: many of the more econcomically active parts of the north have seen pretty steep rises since 2007 too. I suspect a map of house price growth since 2007 would look remarkably like a map of the results of the referencdum.
That is remarkable. I immediately thought of extreme feminists. They maintain that they live in a misogynist world where discrimination is rife despite, on every objective measure, discrimination in fact having been at the least significantly reduced. Being cynical I wondered if this was driven by the number of careers built on the concept but this is a much, much better explanation. They genuinely believe it because their concept of discrimination will expand to fill the lack of more obvious examples.
Mr. Cookie, the 2010 election did feature Labour attacking the prospect of evil Tory cuts. Unlike kind Labour cuts...
Mr. JohnL, Brown gave us the biggest recession in British history. I'm not sure that qualifies as success.
Surely Brown's success lay in completely avoiding the global financial meltdown. Unless of course he did not -- in which case it is false to say Brown "gave us" the recession.
That's all very well. But if this is true, the US is also signalling they are also giving up their No.1 superpower position. The position does not come just with how many times you can blow up the world , but also with your "presence". The US is going back to pre WW2 or even pre WW1.
Mr. JohnL, I'm bemused by your position, which completely voids any responsibility for UK economic performance from the man who was Chancellor for a decade and then Prime Minister for three years.
Mr. Cookie, the 2010 election did feature Labour attacking the prospect of evil Tory cuts. Unlike kind Labour cuts...
Mr. JohnL, Brown gave us the biggest recession in British history. I'm not sure that qualifies as success.
Surely Brown's success lay in completely avoiding the global financial meltdown. Unless of course he did not -- in which case it is false to say Brown "gave us" the recession.
The Great Recession was an infection that came directly from US sub-prime lending and associated derivatives.
The only way you could say Brown was implicated was that he did not force the FSA and BoE to regulate much more tightly than any other western country was doing. At the time the Opposition was calling for even less regulation.
Mr. Cookie, the 2010 election did feature Labour attacking the prospect of evil Tory cuts. Unlike kind Labour cuts...
Mr. JohnL, Brown gave us the biggest recession in British history. I'm not sure that qualifies as success.
Surely Brown's success lay in completely avoiding the global financial meltdown. Unless of course he did not -- in which case it is false to say Brown "gave us" the recession.
God forbid there is another crisis whilst Trump is in office.
As it is he is sending us towards another Great Depression.
Mr. JohnL, I'm bemused by your position, which completely voids any responsibility for UK economic performance from the man who was Chancellor for a decade and then Prime Minister for three years.
I have repeatedly and for years said Brown should be excoriated for PFI. I am no fanboy. But it is absurd to repeat these Tory attack lines from 2010. There was a global financial crisis, which (as the saying goes) started in America. Every economy was affected. It is simply absurd to say that Britain somehow avoided the global meltdown and instead was brought low at precisely the same time by Brown's own fumblings. It is nonsense.
Mr. JohnL, I think hoping Russia might help fill a theoretical NATO void or defend the EU is optimistic.
I do wonder about seeing Russia as European, though. Geographically, it's mostly Asian.
Three quarters of the people live in the European part of it. It's a historic European power whose empire happened to stretch over land rather than over the seas which is why they still hold most of it.
That's all very well. But if this is true, the US is also signalling they are also giving up their No.1 superpower position. The position does not come just with how many times you can blow up the world , but also with your "presence". The US is going back to pre WW2 or even pre WW1.
Is Trump a sleeper KGB spy of many years ?
A very good question.
I don't believe that our politicians, let alone the public, have woken up to the threat that is the Trump-Putin axis of co-operation and mutual admiration.
Distracted completely by Brexit the political class is asleep at the wheel on this.
"We spend X on the NHS lets send it to the EU instead"
Won't have the same impact if Brexit is associated with economic ruin.
Plus the comments of Leavers pre referendum will be used to damage the case of staying out.
We keep on being told that it will be economic ruin yet the people predicting that have so far been continually wrong in their predictions.
Now what happens in the future I don't know and nor do you yet you seem very unwilling to accept that there might be any other outcome than economic ruin.
Let us just imagine that over the last year UK retail sales had fallen by 1.6% while Germany's had increased by 3.9%.
It would be headline news and we would be being told that Brexit had destroyed the UK economy, there would be political uproar and the media would be interviews with redundant shop workers etc.
But that's not happened.
Instead its German retail sales which have fallen 1.6% over the last year and the UK's which have risen 3.9%.
Got an email from my financial advisor pointing out that since Germany got put out the WC their stock market is down nearly 5% whilst the FTSE is fractionally up. There used to be a legend that a test win at Lords was worth 1% on the index although evidence is weak in more recent times. I don't think that there is any doubt, however, that sporting success affects the animal spirits that Keynes referred to.
Mr. JohnL, I think hoping Russia might help fill a theoretical NATO void or defend the EU is optimistic.
I do wonder about seeing Russia as European, though. Geographically, it's mostly Asian.
Three quarters of the people live in the European part of it. It's a historic European power whose empire happened to stretch over land rather than over the seas which is why they still hold most of it.
Putin and his aides talk a lot about Eurasia as a concept.
Mr. JohnL, I'm bemused by your position, which completely voids any responsibility for UK economic performance from the man who was Chancellor for a decade and then Prime Minister for three years.
I have repeatedly and for years said Brown should be excoriated for PFI. I am no fanboy. But it is absurd to repeat these Tory attack lines from 2010. There was a global financial crisis, which (as the saying goes) started in America. Every economy was affected. It is simply absurd to say that Britain somehow avoided the global meltdown and instead was brought low at precisely the same time by Brown's own fumblings. It is nonsense.
Things can have more than one causal factor. You can build a building in sand at the beach, and then blame the tide when it comes in for destroying it. Yes, the tide was to blame, but a massive causal factor was the decision to build out of sand at a beach.
Likewise, saying the financial crisis was *caused* by Brown and Labour is mostly wrong. However they put the economy on such a footing that a small push would cause massive damage: using the analogy above, they built the economy out of sand. Much of the growth we saw in the early 2000s was illusory and unsustainable.
If he'd been more sensible, we'd have been able to withstand the tide better, and the damage it caused would have been lessened. But his own short-term electoral ambitions mattered more than long-term prosperity.
So it's 'simply absurd' to absolve Brown and Labour of responsibility for the mess, even if the trigger was not their fault.
Mr. Cookie, the 2010 election did feature Labour attacking the prospect of evil Tory cuts. Unlike kind Labour cuts...
Mr. JohnL, Brown gave us the biggest recession in British history. I'm not sure that qualifies as success.
Surely Brown's success lay in completely avoiding the global financial meltdown. Unless of course he did not -- in which case it is false to say Brown "gave us" the recession.
The Great Recession was an infection that came directly from US sub-prime lending and associated derivatives.
The only way you could say Brown was implicated was that he did not force the FSA and BoE to regulate much more tightly than any other western country was doing. At the time the Opposition was calling for even less regulation.
Brown is not to blame for the misselling of US derivatives. He is not to blame for the insane pyramids of debt built on those derivatives which came crashing down when the inevitable defaults occurred.
He is to blame:
*for running a deficit in what was a boom created by this ridiculous expansion of credit. * for hiding the true extent of that deficit by having so much additional debt off balance sheet in PFIs * For setting up a regulatory system where no one was monitoring risk. It is not the quantity of regulation that is important, it is its utility. He took this away from the BoE and gave it to no one. * For building into our financial system engines for additional public spending such as WTCs which made controlling the deficit even more difficult. *For refusing to face disaster when it occurred, refusing to accept that the collapse of his tax base required spending cuts and refusing to have a spending review just so he could go on about Tory cuts. *For allowing our economy to become so heavily based on consumption and debt doing incredibly little to assist investment and production. *For expanding the size of our public sector well beyond the capacity of the economy to fund it in anything other than a boom. *For mendaciously reducing trust in the Treasury by, for example, constantly reannouncing the same money as new money, rolling up several years expenditure to make his numbers bigger, etc etc.
Mr. JohnL, I think hoping Russia might help fill a theoretical NATO void or defend the EU is optimistic.
I do wonder about seeing Russia as European, though. Geographically, it's mostly Asian.
If you look at a globe you have to wonder whether Europe and Asia are geographical entities anyway. The distinction was invented by those parochial xenophobes* the Greeks to distinguish the two sides of the Aegean and make it easier to hate foreigners, and kinda grew from there. Eurasia works as a concept for me.
We keep on being told that it will be economic ruin yet the people predicting that have so far been continually wrong in their predictions.
Now what happens in the future I don't know and nor do you yet you seem very unwilling to accept that there might be any other outcome than economic ruin.
I said overturning 43 years membership should be a process not an event, but the man who is charge of Brexit thought it would be easy.
We are in month 16 of triggering article 50 and we still haven't worked out what we want, that's something we should have sorted before we triggered Article 50.
Economic ruin will flow because we're running out of time to get stuff sorted.
There's only one realistic option as I don't think BINO will be sellable, and that's to trigger an extension of Article 50.
In less than 12 weeks time the organisation I work for will have to make decision to move several business divisions to the EU because we won't be able to function with a no deal.
I know several other firms in the field are making similar contingencies.
Not to worry, this sector only exported circa £25 billion per year of services to EU customers.
What predictions ???
All you ever do is show that tweet full of gibberish.
Show us some actual predictions about unemployment or house prices or the stock market or the trade deficit or the construction industry or retail sales or business investment or anything to do with the economics of the last two years.
If you made any there's no shame in them being wrong, whatever they were they wouldn't have been as bollox as those that the Treasury made for George Osborne.
in the first quarter of this year, the country's households spent £5.8 billion more than they received.
And the government continues to borrow and the whole lot of excess spending goes on imported consumer tat and foreign holidays.
Though at least the situation has improved somewhat in recent years.
Comments
Mr. JohnL, Brown gave us the biggest recession in British history. I'm not sure that qualifies as success.
No wonder there was such a feel-good factor under Blair, and such subsequent resentment for those who suddenly found housing out of reach.
https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1012797391412527105
(Is that pedantic enough?)
The two strongest military nations in Europe are us and the French.
https://twitter.com/keohanedan/status/1012826091248119808?s=21
As always, I hope there’s actually a bunch of adults working behind the scenes as all the politicians posture in public.
Is Trump a sleeper KGB spy of many years ?
The only way you could say Brown was implicated was that he did not force the FSA and BoE to regulate much more tightly than any other western country was doing. At the time the Opposition was calling for even less regulation.
I do wonder about seeing Russia as European, though. Geographically, it's mostly Asian.
As it is he is sending us towards another Great Depression.
I don't believe that our politicians, let alone the public, have woken up to the threat that is the Trump-Putin axis of co-operation and mutual admiration.
Distracted completely by Brexit the political class is asleep at the wheel on this.
We will rue the day.
NEW THREAD
Likewise, saying the financial crisis was *caused* by Brown and Labour is mostly wrong. However they put the economy on such a footing that a small push would cause massive damage: using the analogy above, they built the economy out of sand. Much of the growth we saw in the early 2000s was illusory and unsustainable.
If he'd been more sensible, we'd have been able to withstand the tide better, and the damage it caused would have been lessened. But his own short-term electoral ambitions mattered more than long-term prosperity.
So it's 'simply absurd' to absolve Brown and Labour of responsibility for the mess, even if the trigger was not their fault.
He is to blame:
*for running a deficit in what was a boom created by this ridiculous expansion of credit.
* for hiding the true extent of that deficit by having so much additional debt off balance sheet in PFIs
* For setting up a regulatory system where no one was monitoring risk. It is not the quantity of regulation that is important, it is its utility. He took this away from the BoE and gave it to no one.
* For building into our financial system engines for additional public spending such as WTCs which made controlling the deficit even more difficult.
*For refusing to face disaster when it occurred, refusing to accept that the collapse of his tax base required spending cuts and refusing to have a spending review just so he could go on about Tory cuts.
*For allowing our economy to become so heavily based on consumption and debt doing incredibly little to assist investment and production.
*For expanding the size of our public sector well beyond the capacity of the economy to fund it in anything other than a boom.
*For mendaciously reducing trust in the Treasury by, for example, constantly reannouncing the same money as new money, rolling up several years expenditure to make his numbers bigger, etc etc.
*and liars.
Though at least the situation has improved somewhat in recent years.