Sunday 31 January 2016

The financial crisis awakens while too many are blaming the powerless


The tories have exposed the UK to global instability


In the last few months there have been no shortage of signs that another financial crisis is coming. Osborne and the tories will probably blame it on Labour while they are responsible for steering the nation through it:



Yet this government are happy to prostitute our resources, markets and workforce to any country as long as the right people are reaping the benefits:
  • Our railways are actually two-thirds nationalised but not domestically - the German, French & Belgian states run large swathes of it. So the supposedly patriotic, Queen & country flag-waving tories are essentially saying "any state can run our railways as long as it isn't the British state."
  • Immigrants that our elites seem to like, Russian oligarchs and the new super-rich Chinese, are welcomed to inflate property prices for locals & citizens who've paid a lifetime of tax only to be priced-out.
  • As we know from 2008 our financial services industry is more open than ever under Osborne's light touch.
Our hyper-globalised economy can be a good thing, but not when run so unfairly for minority vested interests. While true that everyone is dependent on faltering China, the source of the turmoil but the tories seems to enjoy our status as one of the most globally exposed economies. If we had more control over our markets we could make decisions of economic sovereignity.

Anti-EU types seem to pick and choose when they speak about this lack of sovereignty, the much nastier global institutions of the G7 / G20 / IMF / WTO / TTIP are hidden from the spotlight - as is predatory global finance in general.

Stuttering growth is toxic for an unbalanced economy about to take a global hit. The graph below should have the tories apologising and using evidence-based economic solution instead of the austerity delusion. Yet they indulge in the rhetoric of empty triumphalism.





Domestic retail slowdown:

Weak figures over the 2015 Christmas shopping period do not present a optimistic future. The tories even had the gaul to blame it on mild weather. Seem to remember they used cold weather for a similarly disappointing yuletide results.

Meanwhile the supposedly anti-tax tories persevere with their ridiculous burden-on-the-poor VAT rate of 20% having raised it from 17.5% in 2011. Under the Labour it was 15% at one point encouraging consumer spending and liquidity after the 2008 crash.

UK productivity is one of the lowest in the G7 This particularly telling because it shows the lack of attention the tories pay to bottom-up long-term solutions. If there was a plan to incentivise small marginal gains for low-waged workers than the benefits would ripple-up. Instead trickle-down carrots do not permeate further than a small group, which as we know from wider economics.


Tories act as if certain groups are not essential parts of the economy:

While UK steelworkers suffer under market volatility the government does nothing. It appears they are completely at ease with skilled manual labourers losing employment through globalisation and ending up in the local Aldi for pitiful wages. While tax-take goes down it is also a complete waste of experience and expertise which tends to impact already-marginalised communities.

They sit on their hands apologising for dodgy Chinese market practices and provide no answers. No real surprise from the party who callously smashed the miners contributing to the regional issues in the first-place.

Meanwhile the Northern powerhouse has been moved from Sheffield to London. There are no words.




And the corporate media are up to their usual smoke & mirrors by again by failing to scrutinise the institutions which govern our lives. 




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