Official: UK in recession
Friday 23rd January 2009, 11:42AM GMT.
Britain was officially in recession today for the first time since 1991.
New figures show the country’s beleaguered economy shrank by 1.5 per cent in the final three months of 2008 – the second successive quarter of falling growth – making the recession official.
The sharp decline is the UK’s worst economic performance in more than 28 years.
But shock retail figures also announced today show Britons are still spending more.
Sales in stores grew by 1.6 per cent in December while the UK’s gross domestic product shrank by 1.5 per cent, the biggest decline since 1980.
The Office of National Statistics estimates also showed GDP growth for 2008 as a whole fell to 0.7 per cent, the poorest full-year output since 1992.
The recession announcement sent sterling to a 24-year low against the dollar, with £1 buying $1.36.
The FTSE 100 also fell to below 4,000 points.
Shropshire business bosses said companies across the county had been feeling the effects of today’s confirmed recession since last year.
President of Shropshire Chamber of Commerce, Tony Randall said: “The news is no surprise.
“For the past six months, most businesses in Shropshire have felt they were already in the recession. However there are signs in various sectors of improvement and we are working as a chamber at launching new products and strategic partnership programmes which will help combat negativity.”
The ONS said the manufacturing industry saw output decrease by 4.6 per cent quarter-on-quarter in the last three months of 2008.
The powerhouse services sector, which accounts for around 75 per cent of the economy, fell by one per cent. Total production, which includes manufacturing and accounts for 18 per cent of the economy, plunged by 3.9 per cent.
There are fears the recession will be deep and prolonged, with Bank of England governor Mervyn King warning that the recession was tightening its grip.
This year is predicted to be far worse, with the economy forecast by some to shrink by two per cent or even closer to three per cent in what could be the biggest decline since the Second World War.
By Business Editor Amy Bould
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how long did it take them to work that out?
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Boom & Bust is a thing of the past!!!!
Things can only get better!!! 10 x Worse!
Apologise Bliar & Clown
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The Media love bad news more than anything! whilst I am no fan of Brown and Co just imagine if Cameron and Osbourne had the reins! no experience and no idea!
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Why do newspapers think we need to hear the same news every day?
Yesterday they were reporting that the report was about to come out showing we were in recession. Today they are reporting the report has come out and we’re in recession.
WE KNOW !!!
And thanks to the endless harping on about it by the media, the recession is going to be more severe and longer lasting than if they actually started trying to help by reporting some of the positive news out there. But then that’s not in their interest is it.
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so, what do I care, its not as if the Government are here to help, oh wait the clown with the melted face that calls himself the PM said were in recession, so that’s why the prices are going up slowly and why woolworths and other stores have closed down.
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Listen to today’s pundits, almost to a man, they say what we have been landed with here is a recession worse than the 1980s and the 1970s when Dennis Healey had to go cap in hand to the IMF for a loan to stop us going bankrupt.
Finally and at last, the oft quoted lie by Clown and Darling “it’s all down to the Global crisis” is being put to rest and the prime cause of this disaster is squarely being laid at Clown’s feet.
In a Sky TV discussion this lunchtime, the question was asked, straight out. Who was to blame for this?. A Professor from the LSE was not convinced either way, Clown or the global situation, whereas an Economic Journalist on the Financial Times said pure and unequivically, Clown, he took all the questionable credit for 10 years, boasted of his prudence, every member of the Labour Party lauded his financial and economic skills and said that he was the best Chancellor that we ever had. “Then, bang, it all went pear shaped and suddenly, he is no longer responsible. Everybody and everything else is responsible but no longer is Clown. He can’t have it both ways, he was responsible for the self alleged good based on excessive borrowing over 10 years, now he is responsible for the consequences of that excessive borrowing, recession which even now is the worst we have known since the war.”
The Labourite term, “global economic crisis” will be etched in the psyche of this country for years and years to come and finally it is catching on that it was all a lie, a myth, a fantasy, conjured up by Clown and Darling to get them off the hook when the proverbial really hit the fan. Well it’s hit it now good and proper and we know who is to blame for it. Clown and Darling.
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oh ye of little faith, blame the government blame the usa blame global meltdown. this recession is totally different to other recent recessions caused by boom and bust. this recession or depression is a relative of the great depression of 1930, caused by too much toxic lending by the banks. gb has stepped in and had to rescue those banks concerned. he is not finished yet as barclays may need rescuing. if he had not stepped in millions of us would have lost our houses and life savings.
how can it all be the governments fault. we may now be in debt for decades to come but we still have our money in propped up banks. northern rock have paid back billions to the government and when all these disgraced nationalised banks are sold off in better times then it will be pay back time for the government enriched by billions raised by the sell offs. come on smell the coffee, yes it will be tough for 18 months but be grateful you have a government in power that is leading the world out of this depression. well done gordon and alistair.
at least sitting on your hands and doing nothing is reminiscent of 1981 and 1991, and who were in power then, remember negative equity, 4 million out of work, yes those ruddy tories. please do not diddy david cameron, gorgeous george and suede shoes clarke cock it up again.
well done, gentle socialism at work again, hurrah!!
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Oh behave it is a world issue .It is down to how Brown and co handle it. Wishing another party was in charge is not going to solve anything .
How ever people are still spending
(what they actually have now) it helps know one that the media is saying all this doom and gloom many will loose jobs but many more will not .Credit culture (spending what you have not got and that is YOU LOT)has been with us since the 80s and who pushed that?? and who told people you can all have it?? when infact hey you are only on 15k of course we shouldnt be giving you a credit cards , of course you have a sub prime mortgage so we will not lend you money as well, your paying enough as it is and before that you were paying a modest councill/private rent.Of course we cant lend you that much you are selfemployed your income is up and down.Of coure we cant give you a 100% mortgage if you havent got a bean to put down as a deposit you cant afford a mortgage.oH and of course these house’s arnt woth that amount of money and property prices just only just may go down so you cant secure any more debt against it.
Britain since the 80s has become full of people who believe they have the right to everything when they realy arnt earning enough to have these things with out saving for it.I have seen married couples who are teachers fileing for bankruptcy and the only reason for this i bet is living above your means sweeping statement but private people going bust in the main is down to living above there means .New cars, 2 holidays a year, latest gadgets, and a wish to have it all and show it all off is why things will be much worse for some .
And the good old british public will blame all and every one excpet themselves.
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Which Party deserves to inherit Browns borrowing?
He and his NuLabour cronies have well and truly dropped us in it.
They will all be rewarded with nice non-jobs and directorships, most of which they create!
Nothing like a Socialist!!!
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Well, Andrew is back to the disproved assertion that it is a “world issue” so I won’t comment on that, except to say, utter rubbish.
I don’t wish another party is in charge though, I have no wish at all for my party to pick up the tab for this little lot, it is a poison chalice. Clown and Darling caused it, now let them get us out of it, why should another party take over and get the blame for what they caused. To catch the flack for many, many years afterwards is going to be bad enough, that shouldn’t be wished on any party other than Labour.
As for Devon, what can we say, pure fantasy, this is what he say’s.
” remember negative equity, 4 million out of work, yes those ruddy tories. please do not diddy david cameron, gorgeous george and suede shoes clarke cock it up again.
well done, gentle socialism at work again, hurrah!”
Well Devon, you are not keeping up with events, repossessions/negative equity are reaching astronomic proportions. Did you not listen to yesterday’s mid-day news. Northern Rock repossessions alone have risen 70% and financial institutions are not going along with Clown’s ideas to stop repossessions. Negative equity gets worse by the day due to massive house price falls but then we come to either a deliberate untruth, a fertile imagination or downright jiggery pockery. Unemployment was never 4 million under the Tories, it was 3 million at it’s worst. Under Clown and Darling we are already, at December’s close figures 1.92million, then we have to add on all those that have lost jobs this month and the prediction is 3 million and rising higher by June/July.
It is to puerile to continue devon, Clown “saving the world”, you are arguing kid’s stuff.
Notice anything different about Clown and Darling yesterday, didn’t they look ill, haggard, long, grey faced, flickering, unfocused eyes,stuttering speech and body laguage that of an embattled, pathetic man. They could have been on the pop together I suppose because they certainly looked punch drunk and Clown went positively green when he had to admit that the FSA hadn’t regulated banks as tightly as it should have done, after all, it was his brainchild and Bliar told the FSA not to regulate to tightly. And, as for Darling, well, he almost collapsed when he had to admit that they “didn’t see it coming”.
They are not sleeping devon but you seem quite content, settled and at peace with the world and more than satisfied with your lot, why don’t you give them a bell and tell them the secret of life’s contentment, sublime peace and at one with the world. They surely need someone to tell them because the men in white coats will be calling on them if it continues like this.
Why don’t they throw themselves on the pity of the British people, resign, admit that it is to much for them and go for another election. As I say though, I hope the Tories don’t win it until the mess is sorted out. the legacy of this little lot is going to live with Labour forever and a day.
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Browns to blame for it all(poor deluded stu) If people are stupid enough to buy property that was over valued in the first place thats there problem .As for the torys return yes ok not at the next one but may be the one after that . Mind you if they did win the next election they would have to go on some type of course to see what to do. As they have all been in the wilderness for a while they may need retraining.
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Stuart, you said that the global economic crisis is a ‘Labourite term’, and that it is ‘a lie, a myth, a fantasy, conjured up by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’.
I’m sorry, Stuart, but the crisis IS global.
If it is not global, then I would be grateful if you could explain how the collapse of the sub-prime market in the USA or the collapse of ICELAND’s economy was Mr Brown’s fault.
Could you then explain in what way Mr Brown was responsible for ECUADOR defaulting on its debt obligations in December 2008?
When you have finished, could you explain how Mr Brown is to blame for 5,000 people being laid off every week in IRELAND in January 2009?
Taking a domestic example, is it Gordon Brown’s fault or US investor Michael Glazer’s fault that Manchester United could be the next victim of the global debt crisis, because the banks allowed him to borrowed far too much money to buy the club, which he will never be able to repay, no matter how many AIG strips he sells?
The cause of this week’s collapse of the global economic system is not Mr Brown, who has only played a bit part, but the GLOBALISATION project of the past couple of decades, which protesters around the world have tried so hard to fight.
Politicians around the world adopted the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ and created a liberalised, unregulated global economic system, based on unsustainable debt, where the growth of financial assets was allowed to outstrip the growth of the REAL ECONOMY.
This globalised system swept all before it and has brought about untold damage to people in LEDCs and the life support systems of our planet.
It is time, now that this system has collapsed and has lost the confidence of the global public to re-build our economy again, and make it REAL.
People living in Shropshire know what the real economy is; buildings, machinery, oil, gas, timber, cows, pigs, poultry, manufactured products etc.
The real economy is tangible.
Real wealth is concrete.
The globalised, liberalised, ecologically destructive economy, which is collapsing around our ears, is intangible.
Financial assets are abstract.
You are right to lay the blame at the foot of Mr Brown’s door IN THE UK, Stuart, because he is prescribing the wrong cure.
Like all conventional economists, he believes that we have to GROW our way out of difficulties.
Green economists would say that Gordon Brown has not learnt anything.
After the DEBT crisis, prompted by banks lending absurd levels of DEBT and suddenly realising that they will never be paid, Gordon Brown has landed this country with his solution: EVEN MORE DEBT.
He is spending money, which even our children have not yet earned to prop up a system, which is dead.
However, I believe that you are wrong to say that Mr Brown is uniquely wrong and that the Conservatives will be right. Both they and the Lib Dems are stuck in the infinite-growth-in-a-finite-world-is-possible-expand-the-global-market-stimulate-consumerism-in-China-and-India mentality, which many people now recognise as totally unsustainable.
It’s time for people to come together again, join political parties with people they feel comfortable with and share ideas democratically on the way forward out of the ruins of the global financial system.
This time, though, it should be people and democracy, not big corporations, which determine how our economy should be run.
If anyone is interested in finding out about the Green New Deal, one possible way out of this crisis, you can read it on the new economics foundation website.
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so stuart would have liked brown and darling to have sat on their hands and done nothing just like those tories. if this had happened let me remind him of the consequencies.
bank of scotland, royal bank of scotland, natwest, lloyds tsb, bradford and bingley, halifax, northern rock etc all allowed to go bust. do hope you had no money in these accounts stuart. any other solutions stuart, no ah well back on our hands with diddy david, gorgeous george and suede shoes ken. anyone for the soup kitchens. come on get real!!thank goodness for a pm and chancellor with guts and who will ensure labour are there for decades, anyone with cramp in their hands.
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Many of the repossessions taking place now, unlike those is the 80′s, are repossessions of buy-to-let properties, which were always going to be the first to go.
Obviously any repossession of a family home is an individual tragedy, but I don’t believe we’re yet near the levels of the 80s.
Now of course, Germany, Japan and the US are also officially in recession.
If this isn’t a global recession, or caused by following in the long-term the failed market-led Monetarist policies of the 80s, then who is to blame for their recessions? You can’t blame Brown for those!
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ha ha brown is a clown there goes the election labour, unlucky! you messed up the country now you messed up the economy! thats because taxes are too high, labour failed AGAIN! ha ha
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Come on Andrew, wev’e got “Hush Puppy Ken” in the driving seat now, the only snag is the hush puppies are slip on’s, they don’t have laceholes which would enable Ken to put half a dozen of them up the proverbial of Lord Mandy and kick him into touch.
Our Ken will teach my Tory boys all they need to know, they won’t need to go on courses. He handed over the best economy to New Labour in 1997 that we had seen for donkey’s years, it took Bliar and Clown all of 6 months to wreck it and start all this borrowing that we are now up to our necks in.
If going on courses and being skilled in finance and economics like Clown and Darling brings about this current fiasco, give me someone who doesn’t know how many Euros or dollars to the £, cos Im’e certain they don’t.
If I remember correctly, it was £10 to the dollar and £20 to the Euro yesterday wasn’t it. Now who’s to blame for that I wonder, the trained and economic wonder kids, Clown and Darling.
Oh! keep your distance from No 10 and 11 Downing Street Davy boy, don’t touch it with a bargepole, you will only get the blame if you win the election. Let Clown keep the job, blame an all.
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if the tories had elected ken clark as leader in 1997, he might have wpon the last election, instead we have had a succession of right wing nonentities thus ensuring years of labour government. the liberals are also trying very hard to keep the status quo.
global is a round thing, the earth, the world. please name me one country unaffected by it
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one further point i alway thought very highly of ken clarke, he is a jazz lover, wears brothel creepers and was most influential in deposing maggie in 1990. if only he had kept his euro views to himself he might have been leader in 1990.
when enoch powell and tony benn are singing from the same hymn sheet, then you know they were right. both wanted a simple alliance of europe and as trading partners. ted heath took us fully into europe without explaining the consequencies.
as for our slump, recession, deflation, i now believe this is too serious a problem for party politics and gordon brown, alastair darling, david cameron, george osborne, ken clark, lord mandelson and the liberal’s vince cable should join in a coalition of ideas to pull uk ltd out of the mire. once out a general election should be fought. i for one would not blame the libs or tories if they did not want to be involved, but just now and again the country comes first
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Clarke certainly makes the current shadow chancellor look like the posh school toff, playing at politics that he is. But the Tories will never allow Clarke any real power – because he has sensible views on Europe.
I note that reassurances from Barclays bank this morning have given their share price a boost. Perhaps the money men are finally taking note that things really don’t need to be as bad as they are becoming.
This recession is caused by a knee-jerk lack of confidence based upon the loss of inter-bank lending precipitated principally by irresponsible lending by banks within the US.
If you look at problems in places like the Northern Rock, the fact is that they were victims of a rumour which took hold and nearly caused a run on their deposits – they didn’t lend irresponsibly, and their success in paying back government loans thus far is proof of their basic prudence.
Their staff (not their senior execs) got a well-deserved performance bonus last week to reward their efforts. The Daily Mail were up in arms about it – funny I can’t ever remember the Daily Mail with a banner headline criticising the massive bonuses paid to fat cats…
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well said peter, a certain amount of left wing one nation toryism would not go far amiss at present and old suede shoes is just the man to lead it
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Well, blimey, where does one start on that little lot. There’s Huw who is “sorry, but the crisis is global” to devon, a pseudo tory from Grangefields who is just being deliberately provocative, to Peter who just manages to slip in a little “class” snippet which is to be expected. So, what does one do, answer everyone and write a book or just make the essential points and shoot you all down in flames. I think the latter so here goes.
1. When Bliar and Clown took over, our borrowings stood at some 37 Billion, a reasonable % of our GDP. The economy was healthy and all experts, yes, even now say it was one of the best this country has ever had when Clown took it on.
2. Remember, “no more boom and bust”.
3. So what did Clown do to ensure no more boom and bust. Why, he took all the regulatory functions away from the Bank of England and set up the FSA (Financial Services Authority) to oversee and regulate all financial and economic issues and institutions.
4. In the meantime, to curry favour and political advantage, this pair of clowns embarked on the largest ever public spending spree in the countries history. ALL ON BORROWED MONEY.
5. Look it up, Im’e to lazy, after setting up the FSA TO REGULATE, Bliar said that “over regulation” would strangle the economy and the brakes had to come off. Clanger! big time. The B of E and the FSA, didn’t know what they were to do with their separate remits, all they knew was that the economy was to be liberalised and regulation over financial institutions and practices, eased. There was not even a smell of a credit crunch or “global financial crisis” when Brown took over but now the shoots of one start to grow.
6. We all know it, if you were a hedge hopper without a penny to your name, yes, sky’s the limit, borrow what you want, false name and address, lie about your income, can’t repay it, no problem. Not enough for a house deposit, fine we will give you 125% mortgage with astronomic premiums, if you can’t afford the premiums, fine we will give you a few years before we repossess it. Stumbling along with a few quid saved to buy that double glazing or conservatory, don’t bother, get a credit card or ten if you want them. In affect, we all knew it, it was easy come, easy go, borrow what you want.
7. But with the big money, it went further than this, there was all that lending and borrowing between our banks and those in America and elsewhere. If we were lending money here to buy unaffordable houses, why not do the same in the good old US, why not invest over there and why not borrow from there. Not just a few quid mind, but what about 30 or 40% of a banks capital, in fact so much that if the balloon went up, the bank was in a dire situation. And, this is what happened because there was nobody and nothing to stop them. Disaster.
8. We are well on the road to a catastrophe if America can’t pay us this money back, but hang on, what about all this money that Bliar and Clown and now Clown and Darling have been borrowing hand over fist. Simple, the cupboard is bare, nothing for a rainy day so we get iniative after iniative and suddenly, American banks can’t pay their debts to ours, they call in ours to them and so that puts our in a predicament and the sub-prime problem comes home to roost in UK.
9. What we had in the world to quote Huw, was a “liberalised, unregulated, global economic system, based on unsustainable debt where the growth of financial assetts bore no resemblance to the real economy”. But hang on again, that’s what I said we had here, with Clown and Darling being responsible for it. We have exactly that here, no more no less, just put it in a national and not an international context.
10. And that is exactly what I do say. Brown and Bliar between them took off all the brakes, we ended up with no regulation, banks were allowed to do as they wished without restraint or morals – or legality in some cases I would think, and we are where we are.
22 You can pontificate all you wish Huw, you assert one thing I diametrically oppose what you say. This problem is home-grown, bankers and banks have been allowed to do business as something akin to the “money changers outside the walls of the synagogue”. And, who allowed that, who encouraged that, who saw what was happening and did absolutely nothing about it, Brown, Blair and Darling and, what is worse, having caused it, they know not what to do to cure it. Never before in our financial and economic history has such a failure of regulation and oversight been so wilful, irresponsible and culpable.
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Official: Brown is a clown
Official: labour isnt working
Official: left wing policies like high taxes and generous dole benefits caused this
Official: Broken britain in bankrupt
Official: 20 more years in oppostion for the socialist minority and their leftie liberal tree hugging mates
Official: cameron is coming halalujah
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Well, I suppose one quite effective way of dealing with inconvenient arguments is to ignore them.
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Touche’, Huw. I answer all your points by saying that if there had been proper regulation, the banks would not have been allowed to get involved in the sub-prime market in the way that they did. I am not in the least concerned with Ireland, Iceland, Ecuador or any other door although I do notice the Icelandic Prime Minister has just thrown in the towel after accepting his responsibility for Iceland’s problems. If these countries were daft enough to become over involved with USA – that’s their problems and they suffer and answer for the consequences, We are no different, Brown allowed it to happen, he must take the consequences and he can wriggle all he wishes. the game is up for him.
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Stuart, who started the financial deregulation -continued by Blair and Brown -which has turned out to be so damaging to the international economy?
Mrs Thatcher and Ronal Reagan.
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Ann Pettifor, one of the authors of the Green New Deal, ( http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/07/21/experts-call-for-credit-and-climate-crunch-action/ ), which called last summer for the financial sector to be reined in, predicted the current crisis in 2003 in an article in the New Statesman.
Her 2006 book, The Coming first World Debt Crisis, examines the history and roots of where the current international debt crisis stems from economic liberalization, promoted by Thatcher and Reagan, and the restructuring of the international financial architecture in the early 1970s.
I agree with you about the follies of deregulation, Stuart.
But who started it?
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Huw, I question the assertion that Maggie really started this free for all, but let’s assume that you are correct and she did. Labour have been in for over 11 years, If they didn’t like what they found and disagreed with it either on economic or even political grounds, they have had that long to alter it to the model that they thought was to their liking. They CLEARLY FAILED TO DO SO.
Not only that, they actually removed regulation (remember what Blair said) and encouraged profligacy to unheard of levels. They are to blame – period.
Now, the international scene, yes, there is no doubt that the American “crash” has caused world wide problems – that goes without saying but what started off with a world wide belief and acceptance of a “global crisis” has now been “pooh pooed” by countries who now recognise that their own problems were home grown and perhaps accentuated by America calling in their debts and failing to pay their own.
Ask those people in Iceland, France Spain,Greece, Portugal Germany and Italy if their Governments were not responsible for their problems, the answer can be seen on the streets of Iceland, France, Greece and Portugal where rioting crowds blame their own people in power. And, where there is no rioting, it is yet to come. Economic upset brings social disorder and the people we see on the streets are not blaming America or the “global” crisis, they are blaming “home grown” reasons.
The only honest man to accept responsibility so far is the Icelandic Prime Minister who has voluntarily resigned.
I appreciate where you are coming from and that you have an election interest to fullfill but your assertions will not wash. Uncle Tom Cobley could have started it, Brown could have ended it. What difference does it make, he has presided over the biggest disaster to hit this country since the year dot and nothing the Green’s can say can alter that one jot albeit, it’s good strategy to blame every other party irrespective and not just the guilty one, when one is “politicking”.
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Stuart, it is indisputable now that Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Republican President Ronald Reagan, cheered on by publications like The Economist and the rest of the financial press, started the liberalisation of the international financial system, which came to be known as ‘globalisation’.
This, as you rightly said, was then continued by Blair and Brown.
But all were following conventional economic thinking.
It is this flawed conventional economic thinking, which, Greens believe, has got to change.
The financial system cannot be divorced from the real economy for long without major consequences.
And the financial system cannot ignore the impact it is having on our life-support systems around the world.
When we rebuild the financial system, these fundamental mistakes can never be allowed by democratic societies to happen again.
I am flattered to think that you think I am ‘politicking’. (I got about 40 votes in the last local election and will be lucky to push it up to 3 figures.)
No, I’m in this for the ideas.
And I’m in for the long term.
The Greens are the tortoise to the richer parties’ hare.
I am utterly convinced that we must listen carefully to the people, like Ann Pettifor (whose blog Debtonation is always interesting), who saw this crisis coming.
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By the way, Stuart, you said (#27) ‘Brown could have ended it.’
How exactly would the Conservatives, whose intellectual heirs helped construct globalisation when in power, have ended this crisis without admitting that its fundamental philosphy of the last 25 years was wrong?
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Huw, it is generally agreed by most economic pundits that “global capitalism” as we have experienced it over the past ten years or so has got to change if what has happened is not to happen again. The only thing that will stop this is “regulation”, it was Blair who said at the time of the start of the FSA, “over regulation will stifle the economy” and, it was that philosophy that got us where we are.
Most western countries were guilty of this approach, the Banks of many countries poured money into America into the sub-prime market and they also borrowed money from America to fund our own property bubble, the problem was, to much money was loaned to and borrowed from one single market. When that market went pear shaped, all the banks etc involved and the countries in which they were located were in the draft. It is these sort of issues and the tight “global” interlinking of finance and economies which must change, the Greens and yourself are not alone in thinking that, indeed, need for changes etc were being mentioned at the start of this disaster.
The Tories would not admit that their “fundamental philosophy” was wrong over the last 25 years because in 1997 it was very far from wrong, indeed, our economic position was very good, so good that Blair said that he would continue with it for at least 2 years. Remember in the run-up to the 1997 Election when the Tories were talking about public sector expenditure, the tremendous hoo-haa that Labour kicked up when they accused the Tories of having a £5 Billion “black hole” and that they would have to raise taxes or borrow it in order to fill it. £5 Billion, if that sum was to be the Sword of Damocles over the head of the Tories if they took office in 1997, it was very small beer indeed and well within a healthy economy to fund without trouble.
The Bank of England was the “regulator” under the Tories, was there even a hint of a crisis of any sort when they handed over, not at all. The crisis started when Brown brought the FSA into being, took the regulatory role away from the B of E but didn’t give it to the FSA. Many would say that it was the lack of regulation by the FSA that is wholly responsible for letting the banks get away with blue murder.
Count me out now Huw, we will agree to differ, good luck in your “politicking”, I wholly agree with your “green” policies, it is when your party start getting involved in non green matters and become involved in the rough and tumble of everyday politics that we part company.
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Thanks for getting back, Stuart. I appreciate the chance to discuss these issues with you.
You said that ‘most economic pundits’ want more regulation for “global capitalism”.
While I’m glad that you now recognise this IS a global crisis, and that GLOBAL (my capitals) capitalism needs more GLOBAL regulation, I hope you will agree that ‘most economic pundits’ have been saying the opposite since the early 1980s.
Which party criticises ‘red tape’ (regulation) more than any other?
The Conservatives.
The realisation that regulation is essential has been forced on these pundits by the political reaction to this crisis.
Outraged tax-payers are insisting on binding red tape after witnessing the jaw-dropping bonuses, which the bankers they bailed out have been paying themselves.
PROPER REGULATION was the call of protesters outside WTO meetings in Seattle, Genoa and Davos for many years.
Now it is becoming a widespread call, as people realise that the extent is GLOBAL and that it is not just British bankers that need to be kept in check.
So the Tories would have stopped FRENCH rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel, who racked up £3.7bn in losses for Société Générale last year?
How would the Tories have uncovered Wall-Street’s Bernard Madoff who executed the biggest scam in history: $50bn?
I’m sorry, Stuart, but a GLOBAL system needs GLOBAL REGULATION and Tories have been just as enthusiastic, if not more, than Labour in their efforts to remove red tape from international trading rules.
The WTO-protesters (anti-poverty activists, environmentalists, church groups, anti-debt campaigners, trades unionists etc) have made clear that the ‘globalisation’ promoted by Labour and the Tories privileges the rights of investors and lenders, NOT the rights of workers and indigenous people, who -with watered down or non-existent regulation- have found their environment degraded.
Multinationals have moved to less developed countries because there is less regulation there, and leaders of the world’s democracies of left and right have promoted this form of ‘globalisation’.
Surely, Stuart, if you are ready for the rough and tumble of everyday politics and the Greens are not, then you should be willing to go a few more rounds with me, shouldn’t you?
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