Daring Duo now rescue the real economy!
Fresh from their heroics as saviours of the West’s banks, the Daring Duo are making a bid for another accolade – the Brits who saved the global economy.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he will tell leaders of the rich nations, at a meeting next month, how to lay the foundations for a stable future. For the reasons I spelt out at the Foreign Press Association press conference (see youtube channel) - he will fail.
But what about his side-kick, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling? He’s leading the Keynesian “pump-priming” rescue of the UK economy, promising to fund mega-projects to create jobs. Does he know what he’s doing?
A Taxing Challenge
I spelt out the fiscal policies for sustainable economics for Darling’s benefit, when he moved into the UK Treasury as Chief Secretary in 1997. The Treasury’s reply (dated November 2) said he was “making enquiries”. I never did hear the outcome of his investigation, but we can guess what happened: nothing. The rest is history.
Darling and his boss, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, set Britain on a course of boom/bust which will now blight the lives of 2m families: their chief asset – their homes – will be worth less than their mortgages by 2010.
Darling didn’t get his public finance policies right in the good times, when the economy was plain sailing for the Daring Duo. Don’t expect him to succeed now, as the economic tsunami batters Britain.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Brown knows one thing and one thing only: cheap credit. Low interest rates and a`lax fiscal policy worked during the boom times and rather than admitting he was wrong he’s attempting to follow the same course of action now, and to hell with the long term financial consequences.
He’s set upon being the Saviour that Britain never needed.
Dumping more money into the system created ex nihilo is sure to weaken the currency and destroy the investments of all those whose savings have been *guaranteed* by the treasury. What good will your nest egg be when rampant inflation has destroyed it. I know Fred tends to think deflation my occur but would be interested in learning why that would be the case.
The advent of television may have spelled the deathnell for freedom and sound judgement in the hearts of people. It is the chief tool of the goverment propagandist and I despair of ever finding a way out of this. Perhaps not in our generation. Perhaps when all has been destoyed and people begin to reflect on the reasons.
Hello Fred – Do not despair…Gordon Brown and the rest of them will be seen for what they really are.
You have at the very least helped me and my family, and I thank you for that.
Gordon Brown has really only one economic policy…. if there is a problem throw a lot of money at it. What Messrs Darling and Brown are proposing to do is entirely in line with general Socialist and Labour Party policy for the whole of the 20th century. Redistribution. Take large amounts of money from those who create wealth and give it as bribes to those who are your immediate supporters, or who are likely to continue to maintain you in power by their vote. This is one of the fundamental problems in democratic systems, voters forget yesterdays bribes, and exert pressure for more tomorrow. And so the bribes exponentially consume ever greater amounts of the wealth of a nation.
This leads to ever increasing amounts of national debt: large government debt, forcing increasing corporation debt, and even personal debt as the population struggles to house themselves and live on incomes seriously raided by government plundering. The combined debt has become so large over the last decade, and especially during these last few months, that there must be some doubt that it will ever be repaid. Even a future program of spending austerity would take a decade or two to repay such debt. The only solution is contriving inflation to whither away most of it, or printing very large amounts of new money. I suspect it is this later strategy that Brown and Darling have secretly in mind, enabling them with confidence to go on an orgy of Keynesian pump-priming. An even more cynical view is to see an underhand intention to scorch-and-burn the economic landscape so that the likely incoming Conservative government will have to pursue a very unpopular austerity regime. Oh yes… they know what they are doing. And it is very very sick. Anything to maintain the system to their Party’s advantage rather than studying and examining the fundamental flaws and injustices in the economic system itself?
But… we have been here before?