Martin Wolf's column in the FT today is entitled:
Time has come for some intelligent policymaking
It was meant to be rude. As he concluded:
There are two big points here. First, fiscal and monetary policy converge when interest rates are close to zero. The authorities have to co-operate closely, to prevent an unnecessary disaster. As Deng Xiaoping said: “It does not matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.” Who cares if a policy is called fiscal or monetary, so long as it works? Second, without economic growth, it is almost impossible to deleverage an economy. The prime minister revels in his pre-Keynesian views. When weak demand is the immediate constraint on output, that is simply terrifying.
And he's right, the Tories attitude is now simply terrifying. They're wrecking the country. And still they don't care.
Keep going Martin. Some of us appreciate what you're doing.
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As you, Ivan Lewis et al commented on a previous post, it seems that George Osborne is deliberately wrecking the economy in order to re-structure the social and economic relations of the UK. IMO we are sleep-walking into Neo-feudalism or Plutonomy.. and the baby-boomers need to rediscover their radicalism. Charles Moore and Peter Oborne seem to have already found their inner ‘Martin Wolf’. I hope others will join them quickly. This time it is not just the working classes who are under threat. The 99% of us who are irrelevant to the City, and the global power elites, need to put a stop to this madness.
http://think-left.org/2011/10/14/capitalism-neoliberalism-plutonomy-and-neo-feudalism/
Great article by the way – will link to it
Ivan who (Lewis)? 🙂
Yes, an excellent piece Syzygy. Who wrote the Plutonomy Update you reference, by the way?
I consider that a huge compliment .. thank you.
Ivan.. I am mortified … I should have checked first. Many apologies for misnaming you!
The link to the Plutonomy update is:
http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/“plutonomy”-update/
Martin Wolf is one o many economists who did not fore see the credit crunch and property bubble, Deng Xiaoping might have said “what use is an economist if he cant find his backside with the torch light and a map?
Why not listen to those who foresaw the problems, I doubt they get much coverage in the mainstream media.
As one of them, no I don’t
George Monbiot had a very good piece in The Guardian this week on Steve Keen – another who predicted this mess.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/10/stop-another-great-depression-debt
Re George Monbiot:
So what was wrong with old fashioned credit controls? The proliferation of all sorts of consumer credit,and borrowing to speculate could have been seen to pose future problems surely-well to some experts I`d hope,but maybe not to those in power seeking to apply an untenable boost to the economy-largely sucking in imports as well,to a nation whose export performance is declining. I`m not talking severe post WW2 controls here-but some surely!
I also read that Canada and Australia have largely avoided the current problems-the latter telling the EU to get it sorted! Maybe someone can explain how they achieved this?
We have a brilliant market analyst in the Houses of Parliament, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who predicted the bankruptcy of the UK mortgages banks about 5 years before it happened. Also the late great Dr. Kurt Richebacher. Ravi Batra, Lyndon Larouche, John Hussman. sadly those who get their information from the corporate controlled media will never hear true economic knowledge rather some useless pablum from the likes of Wolf and his fellow travellers.
Respectfully, I do not recognise the validity of your claims
Larry Levin seems to be, putting it kindly, misinformed. In fact Martin Wolfe was saying, back in 2005 that the consumerist bubble of constantly rising house prices & consistently rising personal debt was unsupportable.
If you don’t believe me Larry, I’m pretty sure I can point you to articles in 2005/6 where Martin Wolfe says exactly that. I know because this was a point where my wife was giving me a lot of earache because we were renting a house.
As for Jacob Rees-Mogg, presumably his views were that his nanny, if prudent, shouldn’t put her pittance into property ! D’oh !
Fred Harrison, Boom Bust: House prices, banking and the depression of 2010 (2005) predicted precisely the UK house price peak as end 2007.
there is a book called “the corruption of economics” by. Prof Mason Gaffney which explains how they turned economics into a clown science. The US constitution was designed to protect the people from these bankers. Wars have occurred in the USA which no one can explain the reason for and the history books cannot tell us anything.
“Wars have occurred in the USA which no one can explain the reason for and the history books cannot tell us anything.”
Well there was the civil war, which I’dve thought has had quite enough academic attention paid to its antecedents.
Not aware of too many others except the ‘war’ waged unrelelentingly on the poor, particularly the black poor, by the rich.
[…] during removing a economy growing. Also, here’s a brief explanation from Tax Reasearch UK: Can Martin Wolf get most some-more unsubtle and still be respectful about a Prime Minister? This entry was posted in Blog and tagged need to sell a house fast, sell my flat, sell my house […]
@FT . why did the British declare war on USA in 1812??
Just back from a cultural tour of Greece and I have witnessed the decline of Athens into chaos – refuse strike for over a week, public transport strike, taxi driver strike. Greeks are really angry. Personal observation suggests that France and Germany have benefited from loans given by their banks to Greece – many French and German car on the roads. Terrific investment in new roads but the problem is there are few vehicles travelling on them. Most of these new roads have been part funded by the EU but whether the business case for them stacked up is anyone’s guess.
Cameron and his cronies are not interested in rational policymaking, their desire is complete chaos from which will rise the new state devoid of any concept of welfare for the less fortunate. We are on the verge of 1970/1980s Latin American style economics/politics in the UK courtesy of the Chicago School. We need to remember that this would not have happened without the complicity of the Liberal Democrats.