The interest rate on UK government 10 year bonds fell to 1.26% today.
That is the lowest UK government borrowing cost in history.
Any sane government would, as a result, be borrowing as a consequence to stimulate the economy, drive up investment, build a vision for the UK that will last for a generation and create jobs in every constituency in this country.
At least that is what I wiull be saying at a Green Party event this evening in London.
I fear Mr Osborne is not listening. He seems to think that if fianncial markets tank we should tank with them. A wise chancellor would see what is happening as an opprtunity. So would a wise opposition.
I'm not hearing that message, from anyone right now.
And that worries me.
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We’ll certainly find out whether Osborne has “fixed the roof while the sun was shining” as he often liked to quote, although not many ordinary working people will have noticed that the sun was actually shining economically between the last set of dark clouds in 2008 and the current ones overhead right now.
Of course the asset owning classes have got a suntan over the last few years because the sun was shining so brightly on them with vast amounts of QE to invest. Have they invested in things that will give the UK economy a water tight roof? I have a feeling that Osborne is getting brown trousers at the moment and desperately running around trying to work out just how many new holes have appeared since the Tories took over the reigns.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Now where is the little bugger?
This is the old assertion that when one method of doing something is cheap we should do even more of it than we already are. The government is already financing about 1/10th of its expenditure this year by borrowing, well above the long term proportion. So is this a call for ‘even more’, or is it a call to change what the borrowing is spent on?
It can’t be the latter because that would involve cutting spending on bad value non-investment items in the budget and reallocating the funds to investment. The cost of such re-allocation would be 0% per year rather than the more expensive 1.26% being advocated.
So this must be a call for even more overspending and borrowing.
Just go and read The Joy of Tax and stop wasting my time
Labour still hasn’t found the ‘cojones’ to challenge the Tory memes. Blanchflower/Mazucatto et al? Anybody there?
Simon
Those people are not Laboyr
That is John McDonnell’s job
I am not sure any of the advisory panel are Labour members
Like me
Richard
Love Keith Fletcher’s comment!
I rather hope Osborne falls off the roof while inspecting it (no scaffolding as unfortunately unaffordable as a result of austerity) because he certainly hasn’t done any mending.
Do I hope he has to wait 7 hours for treatment on a trolley somewhere in Casualty?
I could not possibly comment but I think Mr Hunt will be ready with the answer.
But also – we must not surely lose sight of the fact that we should give the banks a wake-up call and not simply roll over QE but roll it over to the country for infrastructure as previously and frequently proposed – and all at the even lower rate of – zilch!
Sorry, but we’ve been here before.
Why would a bunch of disaster capitalists want to do something as positive as you suggest?
Osbourne is the Victorian quack-doctor of economics: his ‘medicine’ will only make us all more ill and that means more justification to make more draconian cuts on state investment and rich pickings for the vulture funds in the financial sector where the private sector operators begin to suffer.
The more I see the man, the more I see him wearing an SS officers hat with the deaths head motif on it – he is an economy killer – simple as that.
I see The Iron Heel.
Is that borrowing from the private bond market or from the Bank of England? If the former, wouldn’t that beat the point of people’s QE which is to borrow from the Bank Of England instead?
The two can happen in parallel: judgement would be needed
Can you please elaborate on that? As in which one would be best to use in which scenario?
I wrote about this extensively last summer
Meanwhile instead of finding a negotiated settlement with the BMA over junior doctors contracts (which may have cost a little more money but in the overall scheme of Tory incompetence and corruption just a drop in the treasuries ocean).
So instead we see the true nature of the elected dictatorship that the UK government has been reduced to yet again by the nice but dim public schoolboys who still to this day believe Thatcher is their hero and live in the “we must be right bubble world” no matter how many junior doctors disagree. And they even have the gall to manipulate the letters of senior NHS officials to support their position.
It is a sad day, but all these things will hopefully show the blinkered people who voted for these lunatics that they have brought upon this country.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/12/health-chief-letter-whatever-necessary-contracts-not-agreed
Richard
you are absolutely correct. I really struggle to find any intellectual credibility on the Government Side Economically or with the “Right Wing Brain” in general. I appreciate that we as humans are not totally rational but it is beyond me to explain their behavior through “Cognitive Bias”. I remember the last Tory Government all too well and dread to think what the country will look like after 5 (or even more years) of the current crowd. It seems clear they want to shrink the state for ideological reasons. I presume they understand the difference between macro and micro economics (and simply pretend they do not to appeal to their simple minded electoral base).
The Tory’s seem to have gotten away with the “big lie” that the Labour government was responsible for the 2008 crisis. They think people are stupid enough to believe it if they say this loudly enough and often enough. (And sadly it seems to have worked with the general public). What is sadder is the lack of vision from the current Labour Party. I had expected better from John McDonnell.
The left has struggled for many years with a pragmatism/idealism. It is very interesting to see the Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton debates and how this will play out. Anyway Good luck tonight and should you get a chance to meet Larry Sanders it would be interesting to learn what you make of him.
Good luck tonight and I’m sure you will get a very warm welcome; or should I say that it is now the morning after that I have every confidence that things would have gone very well.