It won't just be Iran, chief. Only way out of this massive economic mess is a global conflict. Been proven time and time again through history.
Global war. Not a chance.
A war with Iran? I very much doubt it - they export something like 10% of the world's daily oil needs, much of which is sold to India and China. As soon they get attacked those oil exports will stop and the loss, even the partial loss of that amount of oil will send oil sky high. If don't you like paying £1.30 to £1.40 a litre now wait until the ports get bombed, that will look cheap.
The American right want to attack Iran however, they think that Iran is building nuclear weapons and the Israeli's are getting nervous, and they are the little puppet that control their master.
I just don't think people in the modern west will buy into a third world war. It's one thing invading countries where they don't have a fighting impact on the streets of London but anything more died out when we stopped singing god save the queen when a movie finished at the cinema.
It won't just be Iran, chief. Only way out of this massive economic mess is a global conflict. Been proven time and time again through history.
Global war. Not a chance.
Really? Why's that then?
War with Iran seems inevitable as well now.
It won't just be Iran, chief. Only way out of this massive economic mess is a global conflict. Been proven time and time again through history.
Global war. Not a chance.
Really? Why's that then?
In recent years the only wars that the west have been involved in are (or were designed to be) limited wars. Iraq was the wake-up call (and Afghanistan) that trying to roll over small third world nations isn't as easy as it looks on paper. The US spent around $2 trillion on Iraq and Afghanistan alone and have nothing to show for it - although some large corporations involved in defence contracts did do rather well out of it.
These days, ambulance-chaser economists like yours truly have an embarrassment of riches: so much is going wrong, in so many places, that one hardly knows where to start.
But let’s spare a moment for a disaster that’s being overshadowed by the euro crisis: Britain’s experiment in austerity.
When the Cameron government came in, it was fully invested in the doctrine of expansionary austerity. Officials told everyone to read the Alesina/Ardagna paper (which is succinctly criticized by Christy Romer(pdf)), cited Ireland as a success story, and in general assured everyone that they could call the confidence fairy from the vasty deep.
Now it turns out that contractionary policy is contractionary after all. As a result, despite all the austerity, deficits remain high. So what is to be done? More austerity!
Underlying the drive for even more austerity is the belief that the underlying economic potential of the British economy has fallen sharply, and will grow only slowly from now on. But why? There’s a discussion in the Office for Budget Responsibility report, p. 54, that basically throws up its hands — hey, these things happen after financial crises, it says, and cites an IMF report(pdf).
So I wonder: did they read the abstract of that report? Because here’s what it says:
Short-run fiscal and monetary stimulus is associated with smaller medium-run deviations of output and growth from the precrisis trend.
That is, history says that a financial crisis reduces long-run growth potentialif policymakers don’t limit the short-run damage it does.
And yet what’s happening in Britain now is that depressed estimates of long-run potential are being used to justify more austerity, which will depress the economy even further in the short run, leading to further depression of long-run potential, leading to …
It really is just like a medieval doctor bleeding his patient, observing that the patient is getting sicker, not better, and deciding that this calls for even more bleeding.
And the truly awful thing is that Cameron and Osborne are so deeply identified with the austerity doctrine that they can’t change course without effectively destroying themselves politically.
As the Brits would say, brilliant. Just brilliant.
And the truly awful thing is that Cameron and Osborne are so deeply identified with the austerity doctrine that they can’t change course without effectively destroying themselves politically. ................
This assumes that they had any political credibility in the first place.
What did either man achieve before becoming an MP and then somehow ascending to the two top jobs? Cameron went straight from Eton to Oxford to being a policy wonk at Tory party HQ where he "advised" Norman Lamont around the time of the ERM fiasco. Then he spent a few years as head of PR at Carlton TV before winning a safe seat in 2001. A few years as a backbencher was followed by one year as shadow education secretary and then he was elected Tory leader.
George Osborne followed pretty much the same route,only going to St Pauls before Oxford and being shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Neither spent any time between university and becoming an MP working in the real world. You can't govern a country from a text book, a few years experience running something would have been better.
This assumes that they had any political credibility in the first place.
What did either man achieve before becoming an MP and then somehow ascending to the two top jobs? Cameron went straight from Eton to Oxford to being a policy wonk at Tory party HQ where he "advised" Norman Lamont around the time of the ERM fiasco. Then he spent a few years as head of PR at Carlton TV before winning a safe seat in 2001. A few years as a backbencher was followed by one year as shadow education secretary and then he was elected Tory leader.
George Osborne followed pretty much the same route,only going to St Pauls before Oxford and being shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Neither spent any time between university and becoming an MP working in the real world. You can't govern a country from a text book, a few years experience running something would have been better.
Agreed ... but what did Gordon Brown do before becoming MP ... some lecturing? And Blair? A period of time as a barrister.
"And the truly awful thing is that Cameron and Osborne are so deeply identified with the austerity doctrine that they can’t change course without effectively destroying themselves politically."
And there you have it. Cameron and Osborne would rather risk destroying the economy in the name of ideaology, and cling to power at all costs.
After all, if their political careers are lost, they'll be crying all the way to the bank. It won't hurt them financially.
Well Australia is supposed to have one of the strongest economies in the world. But unless you work in the mining sector, or have a job in the City, everyone else struggling. Myself and my family have been living below the poverty line for four years now, no hope of finding a job, can't offload my loss making investment property, no income, savings all but gone. House prices declining/not selling, the worst performing stock market in the developed world (20% below the US and UK) this year alone. We also have the highest interest rates in the developed world (around 7%) to contend with. At least in the UK the price of almost everything bar petrol is so much cheaper, but more importantly you've got the super ADDICKS. So much for living in a strong economy! I read the other day that record numbers of Brits are returning to the UK, if I thought I had any hope of selling my house, I might consider doing the same.
I've got a pal living in Queensland who is a top (and I do mean top) qualified electrician...he's in his early 50's.
Been in Oz for many a year in Burley Heads near Southport......can't get any work and is returning to The UK after 20 odd years.
Very surprised that a fully qualified electrician can’t get a job here in QLD at the moment, the economy here (with a Labour government, too!!!) is still strong compared to most other places in the world.
Most of that is coming on the back of the resources sector and the demand for electricians in that sector remains very strong indeed, you just need to be prepared to work in regional areas.
The building boom has, thankfully, finished and house prices here are falling at long last so he won’t get much housing work but if you are prepared to travel and be a FIFO (Fly In Fly Out) worker then you can make a lot of money.
Put it this way, if you are prepared to go and work out at Roma or Dalby (300Kms west of Brisbane) then you will earn around A$150,000 PA for working as an UNSKILLED LABOURER!!!
At first I thought these stories of riches in the mining industry were largely urban myths but a good mate of mine is a recruiter for several of the big mining firms and he has told me that these wages are in fact true, they can’t get enough workers so they need to offer huge wages.
He had one young bloke in his office last week, sub-30 years old, about to take a job as a site engineer over in WA for a cool A$400,000 PA salary!
I would say that an electrical worker at one of the mines should be looking to pull down at least A$180,000 upwards, probably more.
Well Australia is supposed to have one of the strongest economies in the world. But unless you work in the mining sector, or have a job in the City, everyone else struggling. Myself and my family have been living below the poverty line for four years now, no hope of finding a job, can't offload my loss making investment property, no income, savings all but gone. House prices declining/not selling, the worst performing stock market in the developed world (20% below the US and UK) this year alone. We also have the highest interest rates in the developed world (around 7%) to contend with. At least in the UK the price of almost everything bar petrol is so much cheaper, but more importantly you've got the super ADDICKS. So much for living in a strong economy! I read the other day that record numbers of Brits are returning to the UK, if I thought I had any hope of selling my house, I might consider doing the same.
I've got a pal living in Queensland who is a top (and I do mean top) qualified electrician...he's in his early 50's.
Been in Oz for many a year in Burley Heads near Southport......can't get any work and is returning to The UK after 20 odd years.
Very surprised that a fully qualified electrician can’t get a job here in QLD at the moment, the economy here (with a Labour government, too!!!) is still strong compared to most other places in the world.
Most of that is coming on the back of the resources sector and the demand for electricians in that sector remains very strong indeed, you just need to be prepared to work in regional areas.
The building boom has, thankfully, finished and house prices here are falling at long last so he won’t get much housing work but if you are prepared to travel and be a FIFO (Fly In Fly Out) worker then you can make a lot of money.
Put it this way, if you are prepared to go and work out at Roma or Dalby (300Kms west of Brisbane) then you will earn around A$150,000 PA for working as an UNSKILLED LABOURER!!!
At first I thought these stories of riches in the mining industry were largely urban myths but a good mate of mine is a recruiter for several of the big mining firms and he has told me that these wages are in fact true, they can’t get enough workers so they need to offer huge wages.
He had one young bloke in his office last week, sub-30 years old, about to take a job as a site engineer over in WA for a cool A$400,000 PA salary!
I would say that an electrical worker at one of the mines should be looking to pull down at least A$180,000 upwards, probably more.
I think he no longer wants to travel and work away from home. Local work has dried up by all accounts.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Thomas Jefferson (Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, 1802)
Said from by a Republican genius, but an Economic fool. A slave owning, indebted cad couldn't have said it better.
The simple truth is that 15 years of people living beyond their means, spending a dollar twenty to fifty for every dollar they earn is impossible to maintain. The developed world did not grow through production increases but through American indebtedness. We all followed with debt at every level in the system. This isn't a five year thing, Japan are still in it 20 plus years on. Bernanke believed in the printing press, and like most Friedman acolytes thought they were oh so cleverer than the Japanese and Hoover. Turns out when you re-capitalise banks they're not interested in investing in the domestic economy, instead they love a bit of clueless on China-Bolton's new fund in.... you guessed it China. And wait a minute China's full of bad personal debt - by that I mean the individual at the 'corporate' level - and huge amounts of bullshit infrastructure projects and bullshit private real-estate projects. Oh no Bolton's bought 3-4 companies that actually never existed, and reverse merged into erm nothing.
Hoover came to power ideologically against big government, and for volunterism. Hmm big society. He went out of government on the back of a campaign where the public's vitriol against him was said to be the worst seen. Yet Hoover strongly pushed for an investigation into Wall Street, without this there would have been no enlightened policy like Glass Steagall and SEC Act so early in Roosevelt's term. Hoover also increased taxes for top end earners and created the Reconstruction Finance Corportation: Which was federal loans to states and businesses. He made his mistakes but also set the ground completely for Roosevelt's volte face New Deal, in two and half years. After a year and a half of more laissez-faire but radical Monetarism, I don't see any statist action from Cameron and certainly no preparation for it. FFS the infrastructure spending is scheduled to trickle next year, and none of it is aimed at immediate productivity improvements, that's up to the markets.
With luck we may be out in another ten years, but that timescale is probably down to some armed conflict as Leroy says.
I just don't think people in the modern west will buy into a third world war. It's one thing invading countries where they don't have a fighting impact on the streets of London but anything more died out when we stopped singing god save the queen when a movie finished at the cinema.
Since when has whether people will 'buy into' a war ever stopped them from happening? Just because people can't imagine it happening doesn't mean it won't happen - history is littered with massive offs that sprung up seemingly out of nowhere, and every major civilisation that ever existed follows the same predictable pattern expansionism, consolidation, conflict - culminating in an extended period of decadence before the inexorable slide into oblivion. Look around you - we've been in the 'decadent' phase for thirty years. Oblivion HAS to follow, it isn't a question of 'when', but 'if'. I've said this before - I'm not being morose saying this, I just long ago accepted it as reality, and believe that it's more likely to happen in my lifetime now than it was, say, five years ago.
we're not yet back to the 'good old days' of the 20s and 30s and not back as far as the norman invasion if you like. MacMillan had it right in the 1950s .. 'you've never had it so good' .... we've lost an empire, our industry our markets and our sense of nationhood .. things are bad but compared to our grandfathers day, things are still pretty good. What's needed is a government that is not in thrall to a bunch of thieving bastards. a k a the bankers and that will put England (if Scotland floats off alone) and not the EEC first. The voters need to lose the apathy and sense of despair and to elect a 'government' not a bunch of old Etonian 'fags'. I hope that the next set of riots will be for a better cause than trainer nicking and revenge for the shooting of a drug dealing gunman, I hope the next set of riots is aimed at giving the people some real power
we're not yet back to the 'good old days' of the 20s and 30s and not back as far as the norman invasion if you like. MacMillan had it right in the 1950s .. 'you've never had it so good' .... we've lost an empire, our industry our markets and our sense of nationhood .. things are bad but compared to our grandfathers day, things are still pretty good. What's needed is a government that is not in thrall to a bunch of thieving bastards. a k a the bankers and that will put England (if Scotland floats off alone) and not the EEC first. The voters need to lose the apathy and sense of despair and to elect a 'government' not a bunch of old Etonian 'fags'. I hope that the next set of riots will be for a better cause than trainer nicking and revenge for the shooting of a drug dealing gunman, I hope the next set of riots is aimed at giving the people some real power
Yup, I much preferred the scottish public schoolboy 'fags', multimillionnaire Blair and Brown
Guy on the TV just said that Italy could default on their debt anytime in the next FIVE years. So thats five years of total choas re shares --banks--pensions and God knows what else.
Comments
Global war. Not a chance.
A war with Iran? I very much doubt it - they export something like 10% of the world's daily oil needs, much of which is sold to India and China. As soon they get attacked those oil exports will stop and the loss, even the partial loss of that amount of oil will send oil sky high. If don't you like paying £1.30 to £1.40 a litre now wait until the ports get bombed, that will look cheap.
The American right want to attack Iran however, they think that Iran is building nuclear weapons and the Israeli's are getting nervous, and they are the little puppet that control their master.
In recent years the only wars that the west have been involved in are (or were designed to be) limited wars. Iraq was the wake-up call (and Afghanistan) that trying to roll over small third world nations isn't as easy as it looks on paper. The US spent around $2 trillion on Iraq and Afghanistan alone and have nothing to show for it - although some large corporations involved in defence contracts did do rather well out of it.
Bleeding Britain
These days, ambulance-chaser economists like yours truly have an embarrassment of riches: so much is going wrong, in so many places, that one hardly knows where to start.
But let’s spare a moment for a disaster that’s being overshadowed by the euro crisis: Britain’s experiment in austerity.
When the Cameron government came in, it was fully invested in the doctrine of expansionary austerity. Officials told everyone to read the Alesina/Ardagna paper (which is succinctly criticized by Christy Romer(pdf)), cited Ireland as a success story, and in general assured everyone that they could call the confidence fairy from the vasty deep.
Now it turns out that contractionary policy is contractionary after all. As a result, despite all the austerity, deficits remain high. So what is to be done? More austerity!
Underlying the drive for even more austerity is the belief that the underlying economic potential of the British economy has fallen sharply, and will grow only slowly from now on. But why? There’s a discussion in the Office for Budget Responsibility report, p. 54, that basically throws up its hands — hey, these things happen after financial crises, it says, and cites an IMF report(pdf).
So I wonder: did they read the abstract of that report? Because here’s what it says:
That is, history says that a financial crisis reduces long-run growth potentialif policymakers don’t limit the short-run damage it does.
And yet what’s happening in Britain now is that depressed estimates of long-run potential are being used to justify more austerity, which will depress the economy even further in the short run, leading to further depression of long-run potential, leading to …
It really is just like a medieval doctor bleeding his patient, observing that the patient is getting sicker, not better, and deciding that this calls for even more bleeding.
And the truly awful thing is that Cameron and Osborne are so deeply identified with the austerity doctrine that they can’t change course without effectively destroying themselves politically.
As the Brits would say, brilliant. Just brilliant.
................
This assumes that they had any political credibility in the first place.
What did either man achieve before becoming an MP and then somehow ascending to the two top jobs? Cameron went straight from Eton to Oxford to being a policy wonk at Tory party HQ where he "advised" Norman Lamont around the time of the ERM fiasco. Then he spent a few years as head of PR at Carlton TV before winning a safe seat in 2001. A few years as a backbencher was followed by one year as shadow education secretary and then he was elected Tory leader.
George Osborne followed pretty much the same route,only going to St Pauls before Oxford and being shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Neither spent any time between university and becoming an MP working in the real world. You can't govern a country from a text book, a few years experience running something would have been better.
Agreed ... but what did Gordon Brown do before becoming MP ... some lecturing? And Blair? A period of time as a barrister.
.........
And Ed Milliband's lack of hours spent toiling on the shop floor is no comfort either.
We need a few more politicians all round with some genuine experience of real life - and that's on both sides of the House.
identified with the austerity doctrine that they can’t change course
without effectively destroying themselves politically."
And there you have it. Cameron and Osborne would rather risk destroying the economy in the name of ideaology, and cling to power at all costs.
After all, if their political careers are lost, they'll be crying all the way to the bank.
It won't hurt them financially.
And when you wake up normal service will have resumed...
Very surprised that a fully qualified electrician can’t get a job here in QLD at the moment, the economy here (with a Labour government, too!!!) is still strong compared to most other places in the world.
Most of that is coming on the back of the resources sector and the demand for electricians in that sector remains very strong indeed, you just need to be prepared to work in regional areas.
The building boom has, thankfully, finished and house prices here are falling at long last so he won’t get much housing work but if you are prepared to travel and be a FIFO (Fly In Fly Out) worker then you can make a lot of money.
Put it this way, if you are prepared to go and work out at Roma or Dalby (300Kms west of Brisbane) then you will earn around A$150,000 PA for working as an UNSKILLED LABOURER!!!
At first I thought these stories of riches in the mining industry were largely urban myths but a good mate of mine is a recruiter for several of the big mining firms and he has told me that these wages are in fact true, they can’t get enough workers so they need to offer huge wages.
He had one young bloke in his office last week, sub-30 years old, about to take a job as a site engineer over in WA for a cool A$400,000 PA salary!
I would say that an electrical worker at one of the mines should be looking to pull down at least A$180,000 upwards, probably more.
On the bright side, though...
WE ARE TOP OF THE LEAGUE
I believe
that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than
standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks
will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up
homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Thomas
Jefferson (Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin,
1802)