Rishi Sunak

[NPBlue]

I have to say, there are some absolute pearlers in your post, particularly the bit about Darling and Brown saving the world’s financial system from collapse. Bloody hell.

Actually, when I suggested you look at the government debt levels and what happened under Gordon Brown, I meant exactly that. Not the infamous note, but the actual data. Government debt as a share of GDP was already rising before the financial crisis, and then it went from 42% of GDP in 2007 to 141% in GDP in 2008, because the UK had to make by the largest intervention into the financial sector in the G7, due to the UK government’s disastrous failure to properly regulate the financial sector.

In fact the situation in the UK got that bad that at one point the government had to underwrite all interbank lending to stop the entire system folding, and the level of all guarantees extended surpassed a trillion pounds, again because the Labour government had a catastrophic failure in terms of financial sector regulation.

Of course, it’s just a coincidence that Fred Goodwin was at Chequers every other week, that Blair had been cosying up to the banks for years as part of his third way bollocks, that the Labour government enjoyed spending all the tax revenues generated by the banks or that Labour liked all the extra growth when consumer credit doubled under its watch. If you’re really interested, you might want to look at the difference between the UK banks’ loan and deposit growth in the lead up to the crisis, or the frankly ridiculous way UK banks were funding this gap, and ask why the government didn’t do something about it when a disaster was obviously brewing. But they didn’t and we ended up with a fiscal implosion that we’re still paying for now.

Of course, there’s a debate to be had about how to address austerity, but I’m afraid that the fiscal situation the coalition government inherited meant that years and years of austerity were always a given, and you shouldn’t try to kid yourself on that.

I'm not really bothered asbout your pseudo economics. Austerity was a political decision, and not a financial necessity. At least in those days the government worked to help people, and as I said we had the largest increase in living standards in our history at that time.

A tory government came along, and crushed everything to the barest minimun. Schools are to recieve £50,000 a year less than they were last year. Explain to me how that has happened?

Look, we all know there is an election coming and you tory boys are desperate to keep hold of power, but you know, at the end of the day, people have had enough of the lies and obsufcation. Everything is turning to dust, and it's no use trying to to kid us we are better off than we were nearly 14 years ago, which is why you are being crushed in the polls and will, hopefully, result in you having an awful night whenever the next election is.

I'm not kidding myself. I'm seeing the country as it is. It's in the worst state I've ever seen it in my 66 years, and it's down to the most incompetent government in our history.

It matters not one jot what happened in the past with regard to policies today. Antony Barber screwed the economy in the early 70's when he was Chancellor, but that has no impact on what happens today.

Given your dreadful results in recent by-elections, and your absolute lack of support in every poll, it will be one of the happiest days of my life when the election happens and you lot suffer the largest election crush in history.

 

[Brewster's millions]

As you say, the austerity programmes were on the periphery not in the core countries of the Eurozone in Northern Europe whose economies were more comparable to ours.

How do you think the US managed to combine low interest rates with healthy growth and high investment in the Obama years of the 2010s?
Spoiler: They proved that austerity doesn’t work and that applying a financial stimulus when an economy is under stress is a much better solution, because the growth generated keeps the increasing debt manageable thereby not causing interest rates to rise. The trick is to target the financial stimulus into areas where there will be a return rather than by the proposed Truss trickle down method of just borrowing more money to give it to the rich who wouldn’t spend it anyway.

Unfortunately, my post seems to have gone completely over your head, as is often the case.

The first and most obvious point is that the eurozone provided a clear example of how concerns over fiscal policy caused very large differentials to develop between government borrowing costs around the bloc. That’s a fact. And we don’t have to use Greece as an example, you can look at Spain, Italy, even France. You might also want to look again at what actually happened in Germany, given that they introduced an unprecedented austerity programme in 2010. The idea that the core Eurozone economies experienced strong growth in the first part of the last decade and avoided austerity altogether is pure fantasy.

The second point, and the one you clearly failed to comprehend, is that the ECB’s actions were motivated by the fiscal problems across the bloc as a whole, and their actions reduced borrowing costs for all governments across the bloc.

So to say that the toughest austerity programmes were on the periphery, but the core economies still experienced very low borrowing costs, advertises a fundamental lack of knowledge. Due to the size of the respective bond markets, the ECB had no choice but to buy core economy debt when it began doing large scale QE. Fact.

Finally, you might also want to consider the reserve currency status of Treasuries before you start making simplistic comparisons between what happened in the UK and US. Again, the idea that the UK government could somehow borrow at rates below those in the US - as it could for significant periods during the austerity programme - and run funding requirements every year above 10% of GDP is just a non-starter.

Anyway, have a good one.

 

[Brewster's millions]

I'm not really bothered asbout your pseudo economics. Austerity was a political decision, and not a financial necessity. At least in those days the government worked to help people, and as I said we had the largest increase in living standards in our history at that time.

A tory government came along, and crushed everything to the barest minimun. Schools are to recieve £50,000 a year less than they were last year. Explain to me how that has happened?

Look, we all know there is an election coming and you tory boys are desperate to keep hold of power, but you know, at the end of the day, people have had enough of the lies and obsufcation. Everything is turning to dust, and it's no use trying to to kid us we are better off than we were nearly 14 years ago, which is why you are being crushed in the polls and will, hopefully, result in you having an awful night whenever the next election is.

I'm not kidding myself. I'm seeing the country as it is. It's in the worst state I've ever seen it in my 66 years, and it's down to the most incompetent government in our history.

It matters not one jot what happened in the past with regard to policies today. Antony Barber screwed the economy in the early 70's when he was Chancellor, but that has no impact on what happens today.

Given your dreadful results in recent by-elections, and your absolute lack of support in every poll, it will be one of the happiest days of my life when the election happens and you lot suffer the largest election crush in history.

Call it pseudo economics if that makes it more palatable to you, but I’m afraid everything in my post was a fact and you can have a look at the government debt figures yourself if you like, as I suggested in my original post.

Had Labour won in 2010, an austerity programme would still have followed, and while it may not have looked exactly as it did under the coalition government, it still would have hurt and large areas of government spending would still have fallen in real terms over the course of that parliamentary term.

You shouldn’t kid yourself on that, and if Starmer does indeed win the election next year, he’ll face the same challenges on fiscal policy as we’re facing today. He may get slightly lucky in terms of debt servicing costs - any cut in Bank rate by the BoE will directly reduce costs now, due to QE (@west didsblue is a expert on this, like everything else) - but the scope to do anything radically different doesn’t really exist and that’s one of the reasons why I think he could be replaced within a couple of years, as the clamour to do more will remain.

 

[west didsblue]

Call it pseudo economics if that makes it more palatable to you, but I’m afraid everything in my post was a fact and you can have a look at the government debt figures yourself if you like, as I suggested in my original post.

Had Labour won in 2010, an austerity programme would still have followed, and while it may not have looked exactly as it did under the coalition government, it still would have hurt and large areas of government spending would still have fallen in real terms over the course of that parliamentary term.

You shouldn’t kid yourself on that, and if Starmer does indeed win the election next year, he’ll face the same challenges on fiscal policy as we’re facing today. He may get slightly lucky in terms of debt servicing costs - any cut in Bank rate by the BoE will directly reduce costs now, due to QE (@west didsblue is a expert on this, like everything else) - but the scope to do anything radically different doesn’t really exist and that’s one of the reasons why I think he could be replaced within a couple of years, as the clamour to do more will remain.

You only show yourself up making sarcastic comments about me being an expert on everything following a series of posts where you’ve quoted the full glossary in the ladybird book of economics in an attempt to demonstrate how clever you are.

 

[Brewster's millions]

You only show yourself up making sarcastic comments about me being an expert on everything following a series of posts where you’ve quoted the full glossary in the ladybird book of economics in an attempt to demonstrate how clever you are.

Actually I shouldn’t be so sarcastic, you’re quite right.

Lowest form of wit.

 

[hcblue95]

Call it pseudo economics if that makes it more palatable to you, but I’m afraid everything in my post was a fact and you can have a look at the government debt figures yourself if you like, as I suggested in my original post.

Had Labour won in 2010, an austerity programme would still have followed, and while it may not have looked exactly as it did under the coalition government, it still would have hurt and large areas of government spending would still have fallen in real terms over the course of that parliamentary term.

You shouldn’t kid yourself on that, and if Starmer does indeed win the election next year, he’ll face the same challenges on fiscal policy as we’re facing today. He may get slightly lucky in terms of debt servicing costs - any cut in Bank rate by the BoE will directly reduce costs now, due to QE (@west didsblue is a expert on this, like everything else) - but the scope to do anything radically different doesn’t really exist and that’s one of the reasons why I think he could be replaced within a couple of years, as the clamour to do more will remain.

Predicting the future and then saying it's a fact makes you look a bit stupid.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Unfortunately, my post seems to have gone completely over your head, as is often the case.

The first and most obvious point is that the eurozone provided a clear example of how concerns over fiscal policy caused very large differentials to develop between government borrowing costs around the bloc. That’s a fact. And we don’t have to use Greece as an example, you can look at Spain, Italy, even France. You might also want to look again at what actually happened in Germany, given that they introduced an unprecedented austerity programme in 2010. The idea that the core Eurozone economies experienced strong growth in the first part of the last decade and avoided austerity altogether is pure fantasy.

The second point, and the one you clearly failed to comprehend, is that the ECB’s actions were motivated by the fiscal problems across the bloc as a whole, and their actions reduced borrowing costs for all governments across the bloc.

So to say that the toughest austerity programmes were on the periphery, but the core economies still experienced very low borrowing costs, advertises a fundamental lack of knowledge. Due to the size of the respective bond markets, the ECB had no choice but to buy core economy debt when it began doing large scale QE. Fact.

Finally, you might also want to consider the reserve currency status of Treasuries before you start making simplistic comparisons between what happened in the UK and US. Again, the idea that the UK government could somehow borrow at rates below those in the US - as it could for significant periods during the austerity programme - and run funding requirements every year above 10% of GDP is just a non-starter.

Anyway, have a good one.

A ****
And arrogant with it.

 

[Vic]

I have to say, there are some absolute pearlers in your post, particularly the bit about Darling and Brown saving the world’s financial system from collapse. Bloody hell.

Actually, when I suggested you look at the government debt levels and what happened under Gordon Brown, I meant exactly that. Not the infamous note, but the actual data. Government debt as a share of GDP was already rising before the financial crisis, and then it went from 42% of GDP in 2007 to 141% in GDP in 2008, because the UK had to make by the largest intervention into the financial sector in the G7, due to the UK government’s disastrous failure to properly regulate the financial sector.

In fact the situation in the UK got that bad that at one point the government had to underwrite all interbank lending to stop the entire system folding, and the level of all guarantees extended surpassed a trillion pounds, again because the Labour government had a catastrophic failure in terms of financial sector regulation.

Of course, it’s just a coincidence that Fred Goodwin was at Chequers every other week, that Blair had been cosying up to the banks for years as part of his third way bollocks, that the Labour government enjoyed spending all the tax revenues generated by the banks or that Labour liked all the extra growth when consumer credit doubled under its watch. If you’re really interested, you might want to look at the difference between the UK banks’ loan and deposit growth in the lead up to the crisis, or the frankly ridiculous way UK banks were funding this gap, and ask why the government didn’t do something about it when a disaster was obviously brewing. But they didn’t and we ended up with a fiscal implosion that we’re still paying for now.

Of course, there’s a debate to be had about how to address austerity, but I’m afraid that the fiscal situation the coalition government inherited meant that years and years of austerity were always a given, and you shouldn’t try to kid yourself on that.

And of course the Tories had all been in favour of stronger regulation of the banks.... yeah, sure. (Sarcasm alert)

Brown’s £37bn rescue: did it go too far?

www.ft.com

Plenty more recent assessments of how Brown's save the banks process did save a wider economic meltdown.

 

[west didsblue]

Actually I shouldn’t be so sarcastic, you’re quite right.

Lowest form of wit.

You also shouldn’t be so full of yourself and state opinion as fact like you’re some sort of intellectual. It makes everyone think you’re a bit of a ****.

 

[Brewster's millions]

You also shouldn’t be so full of yourself and state opinion as fact like you’re some sort of intellectual. It makes everyone think you’re a bit of a ****.

Everybody already thinks that anyway.

And that’s a fact, not opinion.