I just posted this on Twitter:
I can offer no other interpretation for this unprecedented pre-Budget speech at such an unusual time of the day. She either knows that markets are about to topple, and wants to get her word in before they do, or she knows that she's going to deliver a Budget so bad that it will go down in history, and she is getting in her excuses early.
And listening to her, what is this speech all about? It's all about supposedly reassuring the City. They, she says, must be kept happy because they must keep buying our debt, which, she claims, is crucial to funding the government and paying the interest on debt. The costs of that debt, she characterises as being beyond her control when the reality is, as I have shown time and again, that this is untrue: she can change this cost whenever she wants by taking control of the Bank of England, ending quantitative tightening, requiring reduced base rates and reducing interest paid on central bank reserve accounts, but it is clear that she does not wish to do any of these things, and wants to imopsie hardship and economic decline instead.
There is a reason why Reeves looks like a robot in the headlights this morning: she is. She has chosen to live in fear of financial markets because she has forgotten that she makes the money this country needs and wants, and the City does not make a penny of it. All they do is deposit the sums not taxed back, with the government being the only safe place of deposit for such sums, which is what is then called debt.
The reality is that, as Reeves is comprehensively proving, she has no clue how the macroeconomy works. We will all pay a massive price for her incompetence.
Taking further action
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Couldn’t agree more. RR is now Rachel Rabbit.
Having listened to your dire forecast of the looming ai bubble collapse, it might be that she is aware of this too, but with better insider knowledge. I can see the wider benefits that ai could bring, but have always thought that moderate steps forward would be the best approach. Sadly humans never do moderate…
From the National this morning:
“LOBBYING organisation for the financial services industry has been allowed to place staff temporarily inside the Treasury, information secured by Abolish Westminster ahead of this month’s Budget reveals.
Released under the Freedom of Information Act, it shows that TheCityUK, which describes itself as the industry-led body representing UK-based financial and related professional services, has placed “between one and five” staff on secondment in the Treasury since Labour came to power last year.
A number of big financial services institutions have also been allowed to appoint their staff to be temporary civil servants, under a second-ment scheme.”
City lobbyists are inside the Treasury and other departments.
That is all down to Emma Reynolds, who worked for them and became a Treasury minister.
appalled at this revelation! this govt isnt even pretending to be socialist any more!
Appalling.
Disagree.
What happened was expected.
In other blogs the Chomsky-Marr interview is cited wrt “if Marr thought differently he would never be in the position he is”.
Reeves: if she thought differently she would not be in the position she is.
BoE-FinMIn-City (BFC) a system that does not want change & ensures that it cannot happen by ensuring that the right people are in the right place – always.
Right now, BFC is grooming fart-rage and Deform to maintain the status quo – thus: “you can check out any time but you can never leave” – style of.
Systems implacably against/incapable of change – invite destruction.
One might be forgiven for thinking that this government had been given 14 minutes to prepare for government and not 14 years.
But it’s not just her is it? She is surrounded by people who believe the same thing, despite there being other economist out that who could show her a different perspective.
I too listened to it – and wholeheartedly agree with you Richard. I came to a couple of ‘conclusions’ (well – printable ones) – 1st that she can (in her forthcoming budget speech) say ‘I did warn you’ (but of what I wondered? -) and 2nd that none of this was her fault or indeed any fault of Starmer, the Labour party and etc etc etc ad infinitum – just pass the buck.
“Robot in the headlights”
Sublime autocorrect moment?
Yes
I’ll leave it
Yes, you should. I think you may have inadvertently coined a new phrase. One that is perfectly suited.
You may also leave ‘Labout’, Richard, as I’ll take it to be elliptical for ‘Labour out’.
Thank you, Freud.
Too much haste
After watching your vid warning of possible ai bubble collapse, i think this is exactly what she’s trying to do. get “ahead” of the coming bad news to position herself as an economics “genius”. Charlatan more like & Clueless opportunist, Just like most in parliament. Barring a few sage heads. Sadly too few.
Everything to agree with, Richard. What an absolutely appalling mess Reeves – with Starmer and the puppeteer(s) behind the scenes – has steered herself into. It would be funny if her/their actions weren’t going to impact so many people who deserve better, and thought that was what they’d get when they voted Labour last year.
And as you say, what other reason can there be for such a strange press conference at such an odd hour, apart from this being a device to get the bad news out there several weeks in advance of the budget so that it “sinks in” and dissipates
For me, one of the defining issues is going to be whether – if the situation is actually so very, very, bad, – the interest on the central bank reserve accounts is touched, to at least bring it in line with the ECB. If not I think it MUST confirm to everyone in this country that Reeves and this entire Starmer “Labour” party are entirely in hock to the City. I simply cannot see any other reason not to take that action, and I know that you and many other professional commentators take the same view, and seem unable to come up with any valid reason against taking action.
Anyway, we shall see soon enough. In the meantime – and picking up from a theme of one of your weekend blogs – God help us as and when the AI bubble bursts, because I cannot see we have a hope in hell of getting the same degree of sane action taken by Gordon Brown in 2000 or Brown and Darling in 2008.
Much to agree with
It’s been obvious for a very long time that the Labour Party has lost the plot! Keir Hardie fought for the establishment of the Labour Party because at last here was a party that would choose to act for the many not the few. Keir Starmer decided a long time ago to choose not to do this and gathered others around him who lacked the intelligence to understand the implications of this choice and especially in the context of the UK’s economic decline.
Rachel Reeves is one of these shallow MP’s. She is shallow because she fails to understand the country’s economic and monetary history. Here is an article by Nicholas Dorn that points out the consequences of that history. Fundamentally, he modifies the MMT dictum “taxes drive money” first stated by Randy Wray. Dorn tells us that this country’s history reveals that in fact “political relations defining sovereign credit plus jurisdictional enlargement drive money.”
In the context of the UK currently a good example of this is the failure to ensure private enterprise pays adequate wages and doesn’t rely upon the state to provide top-up benefits as a subsidy. Why does this affect political relations? Because such subsidies also entail increased taxation to provide them and that taxation is being increasingly resented by the many not to mention the few who are often sufficiently well situated to resort to tax havens and other manipulations to evade their increased taxation demand.
Post Second-World War there appeared to be a consensus that the state should directly intervene much more with tangible goods and services such as social housing, health and education services, etc. Many failed to realise that state money creation operated as a loop where created money also needed much of it to be drained or syphoned off to maintain a stable value medium of exchange. The few were able to use the fact that much of this drainage required taxation to drive a wedge between the many and the state, hence the development of Thatcherite Neoliberalism which cleverly both reduced the taxation burden on the few as well providing them with huge state subsidies for their businesses!
https://scispace.com/pdf/from-credit-to-debt-a-political-history-of-english-sovereign-30wng2wqvc.pdf
Reeves has been kept in government to deliver an inept budget, that will create such a backlash. that she will need to be removed and sacked.
Starmer and the rest of his jolly idiots will then take political gain from rolling back some elements of the budget deemed most unpopular, while looking like some champion of the people.
I tend to agree
Farage was also in-hoc to the markets during his speech yesterday…
——-
Challenged during a Q&A session after his speech over how the public could trust Reform if it reversed promises it had made before the last election, Farage said: “We are being mature, we are being sensible and we are not over-promising.
“But for us not to take account of the dire state of our public finances, that, I think, would be irresponsible.”
He promised to make savings by cutting the benefits bill, reducing the size of the Civil Service and getting a “grip” on public sector pensions.
“But we can’t have massive tax cuts until the markets can see we’ve at least got these things in hand,” he added.
——-
Just heard a few snippets from Rachel from accounts on the news on the radio station that was playing in the cafe I am sat in and all I kept on saying was ‘shut the f*** up, shut the f*** up, you are talking b******s!’
Sadly, my b******t buzzer is at home at the moment otherwise that would have been going like the clappers 🙂
Craig
P.S. Yes, the profanity is strong in this one. Although you can insert your own suitable words instead 🙂
Disgusting.
This isnt a political issue, its a moral one.
We are going – sooner or later – to have stand up for our morales and ethics.
IF only ONE presenter in the corporate media would stand up to them.
I weep.