Simon Jenkins is an immensely irritating man.
As I have said before on this blog, there are occasions when he writes quite profoundly in the Guardian and offers genuine insights that are of value. And there are days, often it has to be said when he writes about economics about which he appears to have considerable prejudice and little practical knowledge, when what he has to say offers nothing akin to insight at all.
Today's article by him in the Guardian falls well and truly into the second category. I think the flaws are self apparent.
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Simon really does offer nothing of substance or value here.
There isn’t a real economic boom only a phoney one for a start! I wish someone would remove the scales from Simon’s eyes. The current uptick in the economy is only benefiting a small minority. It is not the result of a wholesale restructuring of the economy away from finance, but built on the backs of consumers spending and borrowing more!
To continue with the JMK theme, far from being entrepeneurial, “Big Business” continues to behave at best, like a herd of domesticated animals. Not a wolf or tiger to be seen!
http://delong.typepad.com/egregious_moderation/2008/12/john-maynard-ke.html
As for “Big Finance” in the City of London a far less complimentary analogy springs to mind for this bunch of scavengers!
Surprised that you havent blogged on the story being peddled by the BBC that the economic growth of the UK might be almost entirely the result of PPI compensation being paid out, which is as close to “helicopter money” as you can get. Thought it would tick a lot of your boxes.
Sorry – I am finite
It certainly explains car sales
Something else that explains car sales is the increase in pay as you go purchases, i.e. more personalised debt being stored up to benefit finance companies. http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/jan/07/uk-car-sales-lease-credit-financing-repossession
FT letter:
Try asking the buyers why they bought a new car recently
From Mr Stephen Rodney.
Sir, I read with some astonishment the article by Henry Foy headlined “Car sales soar to pre-crisis levels” (January 7). The article states that “rising demand for new vehicles has become one of the more visible signs of the resurgent UK economy”.
As someone who bought a new car a few months ago, I completely disagree with the sentiment of the article.
Many, like me, have been offered deals, usually by their existing car dealerships. By buying the new car, I and others have simply enlarged the debt we owe on the car and pushed the payback date further into the (fairly) distant future. My monthly payment has actually reduced compared with my previous deal.
It is precisely because I and others are concerned by the parlous state of our economy going forward that we want to delay paying the final “balloon payment” for as long as possible, not because we have growing confidence in the future of the economy. In fact, the complete opposite! Therefore the credit bubble grows larger and larger until the ticking time bomb explodes yet again.
Your correspondent should be speaking to real car buyers rather than representatives of industry bodies, which plainly are delighted to have free advertising space for their constituent members.
Stephen Rodney, Fox Rodney Search, London EC4, UK
Indeed: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10250122/PPI-compensation-spurs-economy-through-spending-boost.html
It might be that incessant banking scandals and fines are the ONLY way of creating wealth circulation. No doubt the banks probably earn more from betting on the futures market on what the size of the fine might be!
I wonder where the 2 Billion JP Morgan fine is going -will it flood into the real economy?
I wish I could make any sense of the points he’s trying to make. I also agree wholeheartedley with the thought that he is an infuriating commentator in that he sometimes sound like a reasonable man but equally often gives the impression of having bought the coalition propaganda hook, line and sinker.
I used to let Simon Jenkins irritate me immensely, then I suddenly saw the light.
He’s a Fleet Street hack of the old school. His job is to churn out stuff at speed which poses as challenging some kind of current fashionable view by posing as good old fashioned common sense. He’s perfectly capable of saying completely contradictory things from week to week – often within the same article. That’s because he’s a hack – he can’t remember and doesn’t give a bugger what he said last week and he doesn’t expect anybody else to either.
In the old days, these guys were prodigious drinkers and would file copy completely pissed. I don’t think Jenkins is that colourful.
Simon Jenkins continually betrays his right wing background. In short he’s, yet another, Tory usually peddling the establishment line.
I can’t help but wonder what place he has writing for a progressive newspaper, though these days I’ve got strong doubts about the Guardian’s policy.
‘I come not to praise Caeser, but to bury him’ springs to mind.
The real problem is not that large sections of the National media are perpetrating the Tory myths, but that the Labour Party seem incapable of creating an alternative narrative to austerity. Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say, and the refusal or inability of Her Majesty’s Opposition to rebut the morally bankrupt, intellectually bereft, economically illiterate narrative of the current administration leaves a yawning chasm that will continue to be filled by everyone else, from ex-Murdoch, ex-public school/Oxford hacks like Jenkins to the inane nihilistic prattling of a dilletante comic.
The most frightening thing for me is that, talking to the man in the street, the absence of a strong voice on the left is ceding victory to those that will destroy everything that many of us hold dear.
If Labour don’t realise now that they are already losing the next election it will be all over.
We need lions, not apologists. Islington will not deliver you to power Mr Miliband!