Sunday, October 12, 2008
Brown Disingenuity
I do wish Gordon Brown would just Shut-Up. Every statement about the credit crunch is qualified by "Crisis/Credit Crunch/etc....WHICH STARTED IN AMERICA". And in this, he is, in no uncertain terms, attempting to absolve himself and new labour and hoist the blame upon the Americans. Now, by now, everyone will know that I am left-of-center, and by instinct naturally sympathetic to labour. But just as there was a lot of smoke-and-mirrors by new labour on the fiscal side (with PFIs, further lame-ass privatizations etc.), so too was Gordon Brown presiding over the largest continuous unadulterated real estate price rises Europe had ever seen with nary a thought or comment about the eventual effects upon bank-balance sheet, public finances, financial system risks, almost assuredly because of political repurcussions (The Carter Effect - Don't announce negative news). And so, now, he continues the charade by including in the same breath the fact it was the America's fault, and American disease, a yankee virus, when the reality is that it was homegrown, encouraged, and milked by Mr Brown for all it was worth until such time the chickens came home to proverbially roost. Shame on you, Mr. Brown. Shame! Shame! Shame!
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I noticed that too and it just makes me cringe everytime he utters those words.
he is a politian and politicians deceive...
stealth taxes are deceit...
see liam haligan -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/3180021/Banks-must-reveal-full-exposure-to-sub-prime.html
or read my blog today for a shorter version.
oh!..an he makes me cringe every time i see or here him!
You're left-of-centre AND sympathetic to Labour. The confused masses would love to know how you reconcile these two positions.
Note that Mr. Bush accompanied the dog and pony show to the IMF meeting - presumably out of respect for the (already evident) welfare of the developing nations present. Ah! The beauty of the comparative adjective.
Sarkozy told the same thing at the press conference following the eurogroupe meeting.
Touche, Charles!!
-C-
"I do wish Gordon Brown would just Shut-Up. Every statement about the credit crunch is qualified by "Crisis/Credit Crunch/etc....WHICH STARTED IN AMERICA". And in this, he is, in no uncertain terms, attempting to absolve himself and new labour and hoist the blame upon the Americans."
Don't worry. Once McPalin or Obama realize the worst of the structured finance deals were done out of the UK and facilitated by the UK's "light touch" regulatory position, the US will throw stones at the UK.
Oh yes, and the Europeans too will join the fun and hurl stones for the UKs Big Fish parasitic tax regime
Sowfeest Lundun might rival Detroit as a locale for anarchic fun....
-C-
And in this morning's NYT, the so-recently-annointed Paul Krugman 'hails' G. Brown as savior of Europe's bacon. And by implication everyone else's as well.
"Yes, but it's all so strange . . ." -Lizzie Bennett
Shaming Gordon Brown will need a lot more exclamation marks.
Laughter in middle of stock market madness. Details below:
http://marketwarnings.blogspot.com/2008/10/laughter-in-middle-of-stock-market.html
I find it fascinating that Brown may now be hailed as the "saviour" of the system, after spending 11 years making sure UK will came out worst out of this debacle.
Then, after TARP has been beaten to death by just about anyone exept for US Govt, and "direct equity injections" (more so) and "lending guarantees" (less so) banged around for a few weeks, Gordon reads the press and decides to take the preferred solution. Which, while most popular with a lot of pundits (he could have copied the legislation from some blogs as far as I'm concerned), may still not save us as it may be too late.
Cassandra - you are absolutely correct. UK is highly exposed to a much greater drop in house prices than the US and therefore a much greater fall in household sector wealth. This would be bad enough for all sorts of reasons (negative equity anyone?) but it is a disaster for many because there was (a misplaced) hope that housing would be a substitute pensions scheme. They thought this because tradiitonal pension saving was seriously damaged by simultaneous falls in equity markets and annuity rates between 2000-2003. Brown as Chancellor failed to recognise this as important and dodged the issue. Many have very harsh words for Brown about this, especially as he has contiinuously failed to address the scandal of (unfunded) public sector DB pension schemes and yet placed a £1.5 million limit on private sector pension pots. We should also not forget that Brown as Chancellor (and Mr Balls as his aide) allowed (forced?) the Treasury to redefine the date of the UK business cycle so that he could avoid raising taxes some years ago. Without that redefinition, Brown would have broken his golden rule of balancing the busget over the economic cycle. The UK economy would have been in better shape if taxes had been increased at the time or pubic spending slowed. There would be no guarantee that housing would not have continued rising but the budgetary position would have been a lot better. Brown's triumphalism is embarassing. His "Britain is leading the world in solving this cisis" (or words to that effect) are pathetic and demeaning to others. IB
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