Thing is mikerdriod - you do know that the tories systematically manipulated unemployment stats during the eighties to reduce the count by 1/3 or so and that the labour party actually restored the count to the method that counts higher and is more accurate.
Not that you could be accused of bias in any way of course.
I am, afraid on this one I am sure you are wrong. the number of unemployed is still far less than at the tory peak
Does anyone know what the £XXXXXXXXXX that the govt have borrowed could physically buy? Like miles of motorways, or Hospitals or XTR Groupsets
Yes. I have been doing the maths on that today
It would buy 1 Yumeya groupset.
TandemJ
I'm not saying the Tories didn't do similar. I'm just commenting on the unemployment levels of the UK.
I AM wrong on my figure as that is about two months old. It's no doubt over 8 million now.
you know a figure is becoming significant when people start debating its validity
do any of you actually believe that statistical spin is an exclusive trait of any one political party?
silverpigeon - MemberDoes anyone know what the £XXXXXXXXXX that the govt have borrowed could physically buy? Like miles of motorways, or Hospitals or XTR Groupsets
Yes. I have been doing the maths on that today
It would buy 1 Yumeya groupset.
Does anyone know what the £XXXXXXXXXX that the govt have borrowed could physically buy? Like miles of motorways, or Hospitals or XTR Groupsets?
Probably 200 M class star-ships of a mass of 63,000 metric tons each dependent on the exchange rate. Capable of atmospheric re-entries and for surface landings. The micrometeorite and particulate shielding is sufficient enough to withstand rough re-entries.
Possible downsides are the Laretel WF-15 2.8 Terawatt fusion reactor. A tad troublesome, the newer P class star ships use the Laratel ZN-5 reactor which has a significantly longer Meantime Between Failures. But we'd oly get 80 of those....
IMHO Its bad and but its going to get worse, for a few reasons firstly apart from Financial services Britain doesnt own much to pull it out of recession, Financial services have been affected directly of course and indirectly by the global downturn and reputationaly - Browns changes to the UK regulatory framework were catastrophic.The collapse of sterling will help exports a little but we will be vunerable to further foreign investment/takeover in particular the LSE which Germany and the USA have been interested in buying for years, once the uk is downgraded as a debtor the interest rates will increase. As a nation we are severly in debt and we have an incompetent labour government who despite receiving an excellent economy described as "golden legacy" have succeeded through taxation and red tape increases to make our country totally uncompetitive and practically bankrupt (standard labour performance then!)Despite all the extra taxation they have largely wasted all the money squeezed out of taxpayers in a series of mistakes instead of consolidating the nations finances with a warchest for a rainy day. There seems little cause for any optimism to help start a recovery - increasing stimulus by borrowing more to spend our way out of it via the Public sector can not really be taken much further without literally bankrupting the Uk, in any case having a huge unproductive (in many senses!) Public sector is not really desirable when its already so disproportionately large compared to your productive Private sector - despite what all the Labour tssers keep saying!
What needs to happen is to scrap some of the big projects, e.g. ID cards - a total waste of money in these times; Crossrail - demanded by the City, well they can f*^k off now
indeed...where is the inflation to go with all of this ? why are we not seeing inflation... it MUST happen in this economic climate..
sirJohn
Spot on!
As for inflation/deflation:
Job cuts, wage freezes/cuts, house price instability, reduction in car prices, decrease in consumer goods prices all contribute to deflation. Despite the government's attempt to flood the markets with available capital to kick start the economy, inflation won't be with us just yet.
However when it does, I think inflation will be aggressive, drive up interest rates and we'll be back seeing 14% mortgage rates etc.
A lot of pain for many yet to come.
Britain's people have spent two decades-worth of effort/cash/credit buying and selling over-priced housing to each other. We're exhausted.
It's the long-term choke on the supply of housing, with its resulting inflation, compensated by excessive lending that has really trashed the money supply.
They talk about "fixing structural issues" by re-capitalising banks who invested in bad mortgages, but the underlying structural problem in the UK is the weak supply of property.
Just my opinion.
I would suggest inflation is a certainty because sterling has crashed and the UK is a net importer of goods.
If you import things priced in currencies against whcih Sterling has declined, the price in Sterling is greater, Inflation.
the UK is a net importer of goods.
konabunny, it doesn't cover the gap though, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=199
Hmm - but otoh, the volume of GBP's that actually bought and sold to pay for imports/exports is tiny compared to the amount that's traded speculatively, so what we're talking about maybe irrelevant to currency strength.
Also, just a question that's semi-related, how does GBP bought to trade in bonds affect GBP rates (because that's not goods or services)?
Konabunny, it may not impact on the strength of the currency, i don't know. My point is simply if the GBP is worth less but the price remains the same in the manufacturers currency you can get less of something for your GBP and the shop price has to rise. As we import most goods, it means things will cost more, ie inflation.
Possibly, but not necessarily. It might be that the exporter sucks up the lower profit margin (because, for instance, no-one else in the world is buying their stuff), or that the retailer/manufacturer does etc etc. Also, a weak pound is great news for exporters (except of course if they use a lot of imports in their exports IYSWIM).
I'm actually not really disagreeing with you here and take your point. I suppose I am really just saying that in economics (as a academic observation), it's practically impossible to come up with any rules/laws that always work so that you can predict ahead of time what's going to happen.
Prices are already going up because of the weak pound, have a look at car prices for example. Everyone seemed surprised that CPI remained high whilst they were panicing about negative RPI. I think the low RPI figure will work itself out after a while (variable rate mortgages are as low as they are going to go) and the underlying real inflation is going to go up, if anything.
Konabunny, i see your point and if the pound had moved a few percent i would tend to agree, 30%, which is the devaluation, is a bit more than can be absorbed IMO. I can't see how it can't be passed on at some point.
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