Tuesday 23 March 2010

The BAD news, UK in deep Sh*t

I could not help myself from bringing these graphs to you. [Source BBC]

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Look at the HUGE boom in our budget deficit, and now can you see why the EU is insisting we take fast action to cut spending?

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And our longer term debt is peaking also to almost 80% of national income.

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Compared to other countries we are not so bad, and for sure this is the international game... if they can get away with it so can we. But don't forget that UK is not part of any huge currency block like France, Germany, Italy, etc who are all Euro land. We are very vulnerable.

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Unemployment is rising, so is the cost. This is systemic. We have too small a manufacturing industry, and a top heavy financial and service industry, which makes us inflexible.

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And now to "growth". But many will start to argue that our way out of the problem is NOT growth. That is what got us into it, apparent growth in the financial sector. And others will argue that growth is no longer possible, we are already using up 44% more than resources of the planet which it cannot replaced quickly enough.

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More growth, GDP this time. From four different sources. But it will take a long time to overcome the disaster of 2009.

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Now here is the political nub of the problem. Labour's Social Protection spending. We have taken away people's autonomy to take responsible care of themselves and forced them into dependance on social welfare. We must cut Social Protection spending. And then cut taxation (for low earners and pensioners to zero), and stimulate spending on industrial investment and jobs.

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Financial markets are very flexible, they can make a buck out of almost any circumstance. The challenge of government is to get them to make hay out of the right things. That means profits from successful industries.

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Finally our dearly beloved Pound. We are simply too small in the world to continue to have an independent currency and should join the euro ASAP. If not we will be blown back and forth and simply suffer the consequences. For example a falling pound right now has no benefit to exports, as we have little industry left to export, and the things we need we import which cost lots more. It is just a financial game the bankers can play.

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