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Well, the money markets didn't like the mini budget. I met Liz Truss in a hotel in Monmouth a few years ago. She said her solution to pensioner poverty would be to feed them on Pedigree Chum. Not only would this save a lot of money, it would give them shiny coats and a nice cold nose.
We shouldn't forget that 2008 wasn't that long ago and we've had a pandemic. To get out of these issues, the government borrowed heavily when the magic money tree ran out of fruit, and the economy has been weakened accordingly.
Leaving political ideology aside, I've not encountered a positive response to this budget from anyone you could reasonably consider sensible and/or knowledgeable. It seems to have been met with derision and universal condemnation
A poster above (QPRJim I think) raised a really valid point I read over the weekend. If this budget was aimed at borrowing to fund key necessary investments and cut taxes that had greater wealth generation for many, then you could see it as a bold gamble, and possibly one to get behind.
It is however, the antithesis! So soon after the worst PM in living memory, the right-wing of the Tories have utterly surpassed themselves with someone more useless.
There's two more years until the next election, I shudder to think what the state of the UK economy, society and social cohesion will be like by then.
Yup
I think if you look up the word Clusterf*ck on Wikipedia there is a picture of the UK and this government.
The whole idea of giving more money to the super-wealthy to in some way benefit the economy is ridiculous. They don't spend that money, they hide it - "investing" in art or property. Just as dirty Russian money had the knock-on effect of making buying a home London unaffordable for most people, some multi-millionaire buying up property doesn't see money "trickle down", it makes things worse for people further down the income chain. And we come down to who these people are making these decisions. Truss - worked for energy companies, Kwarteng - worked for hedge funds, Rees-Mogg - owned a hedge fund. And who are their donors? They almost seem to be claiming their aim is to get super-rich bankers to move to London from Europe. Of course such freedom of movement has been denied to the rest of us.
So Sterling has fallen 6% against the Euro in a month.I think not.
You can't watch the exchange rates as closely as I do.
The collapse in the £ will hit people in UK as well. Oil is traded in $. UK imports about 50% of its food. Both will add to inflation. BOE may have emergency rate hike, which will add 100s to peoples' mortgages.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky
I think it's worth pointing out that the Euro is also at a 20 year low, so this is not a UK-only problem. As I said in an earlier post, the roots of this go back a long way, with successive failures on behalf of all the Western economies to address the deep systemic problems with running fiat currencies.
The only people who benefit from the constant cycles of inflation are the banksters and those who are invested in them. Keynesian economics could be viewed simply as a licence for banks to make endless amounts of money, to the detriment of working people and national economies. Put simply, we are being robbed, and have been for decades. The hyper-infated debt bubble is now so unsustainable that it takes a phenomenal level of trickery to keep everything going. The net result is that the banksters get richer, pretty much everyone else gets poorer. Fortunately, the mainstream media acts as the illusion-weaving arm of the banking cabal, meaning the vast majority are completely unaware of this grand larceny.
As I said in an earlier post the Government and Bank of England are out of step with each other. The Bank of England are now in a bit of a quandry should have stepped in earlier in the year to raise interest rates to cool inflation, may now have to raise interest rates to stabilise sterling, a double whammy. Truss and Kwarteng's experiment to underpin utility bills and tax cuts through massive borrowing which will now cost us even more looks very very risky.
When I was a nipper we used to call a half crown “arf a dollar”, because before WW11 there were four dollars to a British pound. With further falls in the pound this morning we could be at parity with the dollar in the not too distant future.
The markets seen through this hollow fiscal stitch up and the BoE is now in a difficult place. The Tories will be all over the committee at the bank not to raise interest rates, but that is exactly what is needed. Something has to give and I doubt the BoE will budge. Kwarteng is a clown. He is a very intellectual individual with a Phd in Economic History from Cambridge. He seems to have abandoned common sense economics for some reason only known to himself. This is not ending well for him and Lizzy or us!
The markets seen through this hollow fiscal stitch up and the BoE is now in a difficult place. The Tories will be all over the committee at the bank not to raise interest rates, but that is exactly what is needed. Something has to give and I doubt the BoE will budge. Kwarteng is a clown. He is a very intellectual individual with a Phd in Economic History from Cambridge. He seems to have abandoned common sense economics for some reason only known to himself. This is not ending well for him and Lizzy or us!
"This is not ending well for him and Lizzy or us!"
That's the problem here isn't it. Those two will simply lose their jobs and go find someone to pay them more elsewhere. The rest of us will be royally screwed for good. The younger you are, the more screwed you'll be, unless you up sticks and away.
I like the comment about the Dollar as being "just the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry basket" The Euro will be the first currency to collapse.
What makes you think the last sentence will be correct?
Much of the Eurozone is overdependant on Russian fuel, but there are measures in train to reduce dependence on fossil fuels
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky
"This is not ending well for him and Lizzy or us!"
That's the problem here isn't it. Those two will simply lose their jobs and go find someone to pay them more elsewhere. The rest of us will be royally screwed for good. The younger you are, the more screwed you'll be, unless you up sticks and away.
When Kay Burley can tie the PM up, you've got to worry or laugh.
'Always In Motion' by John Honney available on amazon.co.uk
"This is not ending well for him and Lizzy or us!"
That's the problem here isn't it. Those two will simply lose their jobs and go find someone to pay them more elsewhere. The rest of us will be royally screwed for good. The younger you are, the more screwed you'll be, unless you up sticks and away.
Your spot-on and I should have added that caveat.
I am a financially comfortable 60plus something, but my two lads in their mid 20's are fecking screwed along with their friends. I am able to support my family but there will be plenty of families who are going to get into trouble.
You can literally hear the IMF knocking at the door and that will be a real dose of austerity.
As someone who pays certain things off in dollars on a regular basis I am not exactly eh, impressed, with what's going on. That's the politest way I can put it.
Post-Brexit the pound dropped to just under $1.30 as I remember it - went down as low as about $1.22 around this time in 2016 - I remember changing dollars in Ruislip while the wife and I were looking for jobs over here and neither I nor the bloke behind the counter could believe it.
But this is something else really. I do have the flexibility of UK and US passports, and accounts on both sides of the 'pond' (very little money in them Liz - before you get excited...) and am going to have to think creatively about how to handle the next couple of years - I may even take on a bit of virtual work that pays in $, who knows?
We'll most likely be ok because our jobs over here pay reasonably and we don't have kids, mortgages and the rest, but that exchange rate has become alarming and strangely insulting in equal measure. Fcuking mental.
Reports surfacing of no confidence letters in Truss being sent to the Conservative 1922 Committee, wonder if we are heading for a u-turn on the tax cuts in Friday's mini budget.
The whole idea of giving more money to the super-wealthy to in some way benefit the economy is ridiculous. They don't spend that money, they hide it - "investing" in art or property. Just as dirty Russian money had the knock-on effect of making buying a home London unaffordable for most people, some multi-millionaire buying up property doesn't see money "trickle down", it makes things worse for people further down the income chain. And we come down to who these people are making these decisions. Truss - worked for energy companies, Kwarteng - worked for hedge funds, Rees-Mogg - owned a hedge fund. And who are their donors? They almost seem to be claiming their aim is to get super-rich bankers to move to London from Europe. Of course such freedom of movement has been denied to the rest of us.
Can’t argue with most of that but I’ll give it a go.
We desperately need in this country people who are capable of making serious money. We also need a tax system that encourages companies to keep that income declared in this country otherwise billions of potential tax income is lost abroad. Understandably we equate million pound earners with the subprime mortgage disaster of 2008 and fraudulent trading but there is a world of highly intelligent people within the finance industry who, through their endeavours, individually earn this country more taxation in one year than most of us pay in tax over a lifetime.
Ultimately, well run successful companies with high earners across their industry are not the problem, we should be applauding them instead of castigating them. On the other hand, we seem to be giving firms who pay their staff barely the minimum wage a free ride. It’s a destructive school of thought that needs to change.
Also, inflation isn’t the devil it’s made out to be. It’s an opportunity for companies to put their prices up and an opportunity for employees to demand higher pay. Eventually inflation comes under control and once that’s achieved both companies and employees should be better off. This is essentially what happened after the 1970’s and the young prospered considerably in the 1980’s.
Finally we have to become net exporters. Without that it will always be boom and bust and debt.
Truss might have this right but about 12 years too late.
Reports surfacing of no confidence letters in Truss being sent to the Conservative 1922 Committee, wonder if we are heading for a u-turn on the tax cuts in Friday's mini budget.
Labour locked in darken offices working out how to criticise any u-turn should it happen. Always good to be prepared
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