Economy

[Grimes]

Surely you don’t think dictators, oligarchies, etc, take the least bit of notice of their electorate – indeed, all the less, the more reasonable they are! The US is an example, and it’s not even a formal totalitarian state.

Re the depression, start counting… Some estimate that the level of unemployment in the US is already equal to that during the Great Depression, and it is certainly higher than the official figures. And since when have governments issued them?

There are apparently reasons to believe that the world is facing a perfect economic storm: a coincidence of the effects of the extreme polarisation of wealth in the US and the UK, in particular, resource depletion generally, peak oil, in particular, the effects of climate change – and the way things are going, soon there will be wars over resoruces, such as water.

These oil finds always being reported are increasingly expensive to extract, even were industry thriving; but industry in the West is on a downward spiral (finance, which was supposed to supplant it, was a house of cards -marked ones at that).

In the UK, the arms industry of all things is probably our industrial flagship industry! No, don’t laugh. Money goes into the pockets of the directors, shareholders and to a much lesser extent the workforce. And then what? What use is the end product, except as a murderous aid to plunder other countries?

We’re still obtaining everything useful and domestic from German, French, Scandinavian, Japanese and Korean firms, whether at home or abroad. ‘Corporate outsourcing’, you might call it.

The level of oil available to industry is rather like water to the human body. It only needs to fall by, I believe, 10% for the body to die. It doesn’t need to be completely used up at all.

In other words, not only are we facing a regular depression, the resource depletion means that our way of life will have to change fairly radically. Capitalism is a busted flush.

In any case, as Dom Helder Camara, former Bishop of Recife in Brazil, once remarked: "To examine capitalism is to indict it." He was the one who also famously remarked: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint; but when I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist."

[Cav]

In other words, not only are we facing a regular depression, the resource depletion means that our way of life will have to change fairly radically. Capitalism is a busted flush.

We have nothing to fear in the West except a declining birth rate.

I’ve seen the competition, there’s not much out there. Not on a grand scale anyway.

[clivexx]

Whatever grimes

Given that the US have just elected a (part) Black president with a fairly liberal agenda and came from nowhere to win over a huge proportion of the electorate against many perceived odds, i still see a very healthy democracy at work. Not a totalitarian state

Re the depression, start counting… Some estimate that the level of unemployment in the US is already equal to that during the Great Depression,

There is no way on earth that the current unemployment level and complete breakdown of social fabric is anything like that seen in the 30s. This is nonsense

As for the rest, well its economic opinion from the conspiracy/doom laden end of the internet isnt it? I will stick with the more qualified, experienced and conventional commentators

I agree with Carv.

[Grimes]

More on Chile, Clivexx. They’ve obviously had a version of our own dear, neoliberal NuLab in power, and now have jumped (or more likely been fraudulently pushed) into the far-right fire. As for the building codes, they didn’t repeal them; they apparently just skirted them.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/09-4

[clivexx]

Individual firms "skirting" building regulations is not the same as a goverment reprealing them. Not by a long shot. Im not sure what the point of that is

Its a good article, but at the end of the day Chile has the highest standard of living in south america, by any indicator.

Also I would look at this link and compare the levels of those below poverty line with other south american countries

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=ci&v=69

Chile has the LOWEST % below the poverty line. And for what its worth, people I know who have travlled there say it is easily the most advanced and relatively prosperous country on the continent

Compare with oil laden Venezuela. With their incompetent "socialist" goverment their poverty levels are TWICE those of Chile. And a goverment with boundless energy resources that incredibly cannot supply electricity to its population

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8543469.stm

And as reported in the Observer last week, as always seems to be inevitable in failed socialist states, freedom of speech is increasingly being curtailed

i doubt that Chile is a perfect state, but a failed state it isnt

[Grimes]

You miss the point completely, Clivexx. Before Pinochet’s demonic reign, it had been the most socially-advanced country in South America. That was why they had voted for Allende!

And you know this is nonsense. Indeed, the billionnaire about to accede to power, we are told in the article, owns one of those "individual" companies.

Rupert Murdoch owns some "individual companies". He also has British prime ministers licking his boots to win his patronage. Politicians are bought and paid for in the UK, particularly, now that the likes of Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan are gone and forgotten. How much more so in South America under the tutelage of the CIA’s School of the Americas?

[insomniac]

From the Sunday Telegraph’s Liam Halligan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/8224342/The-UK-inflation-genie-is-out-of-the-bottle.html

Here’s the guts of it:-

…November’s national accounts, released last week, were shocking. Government spending last month was sharply up on the same month in 2009 – yes, up! British state borrowing is still escalating, with the national debt rising very quickly.

Anyone who takes an intelligent interest in current affairs could be forgiven for inferring from the political rhetoric that the UK’s fiscal squeeze is not only well under way but that the worst is actually behind us. If this was indeed your impression, you may want to pour yourself a large Yuletide sherry and possibly take refuge in another bowl of trifle. For the grim reality, as the latest figures show, is that Britain’s fiscal squeeze hasn’t even begun.
I’d hoped to end what has been a nerve-jangling year for the UK economy on an upbeat note. A couple of weeks ago, though, new figures showed that CPI inflation was 3.3pc higher in November than the same month the year before. Inflation has now been above the Bank of England’s 2pc target for 40 of the past 49 months.
Some of us have been warning this would happen. Since late 2008, this column has asserted that the UK faces inflationary dangers and that talk of British “deflation” was deeply disingenuous, an intellectual conceit to justify massive virtual “money printing” and the extension of endless soft credits to banks that should, in fact, be allowed to fail.
Such a position has been seen as heresy – not least because “quantitative easing” has friends in high places. QE, for now, has helped politically connected bankers to dodge the implications of their own hubris and incompetence. It has allowed successive British governments to stick their fingers in their ears and avoid tackling root-and-branch banking reform.

To argue that QE is dangerous and that, as a corollary, the UK faces high inflation has been to be treated by the UK’s policy-making elite as some kind of economic Herod. I might as well have been suggesting we slay the first born. In recent weeks, though, the mood has changed. Reality has thankfully broken through.
…the more immediate danger is fiscal. During November, the Government borrowed an astonishing £23.3bn – the highest total for a single month since records began. While tax receipts were 3.1pc up on November 2009, government spending was no less than 10.9pc higher. And you thought we were in the middle of a fiscal squeeze!

Am I alone in thinking that politicians, be they Conservative, Labour or LibDem are totally incompetent at running the economy? Very few give me any confidence that they have more idea how to run things than any random person one might meet in the pub.

[grey dolphin]

Unfortunately the so-called experts at the Bank of England appear to be no better.

Economic Policy at the moment appears to be geared to one outcome only; prevent a house price crash at all costs.

This is at the cost of removing the ‘value’ of money, at least for savers – not for the banks, however, whose rates bear no relation whatsoever to base rate.

Unfortunately whilst a fall in house prices would undoubtedly cause widespread short-term pain, it’s also one of the few things which might really help kickstart the economy.

[dave jay]

What we really need to do is join the euro, let all of the immigrants in (who want to come and maybe round up a few who don’t, entice them in with new leather jackets, free houses and mobiles phones), and have a regional small war with someone like N Korea, who can put up a bloody good show but can’t win.

.. that sounds like the ticket

[Author]

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