Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 43 total)
  • UK Deficit Deniers & Credit Ratings
  • enfht
    Free Member

    According to a lot of lefties the defecit is NOT a bad thing and have been waving those “No Cuts” banners at every march they can.

    If the monumental pile of debt is not a bad thing why does it risk affecting the UK’s credit rating and therefore the cost of borrowing for us brits?

    Is this just more tory lies?

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Debt’s neither good nor is it bad. It’s the ability to pay it off thats the issue. So we either need to slash the expenditure (cuts) to reduce the debt or grow to increace the repayments. Problem is no one knows which is right, but we voted for cuts.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Or increase taxation. Increasing it to the level of France and Germany would solve the issue with no cuts required.

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    kimbers
    Full Member

    depends on the kind of cuts

    cant imagine any of those dastardly lefties waving placards if trident were being cut

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    True, although raising taxes is rarely a vote winner.

    Ro5ey
    Free Member

    So you’d like to be like france, who have lost triple AAA and are now paying over 50bps more than us on their massive debt pile….

    binners
    Full Member

    I’ve had a great idea for reducing the deficit. How about a tax break for people who are absolutely minted!

    Rubber_Buccaneer
    Full Member

    why does it risk affecting the UK’s credit rating

    I don’t know. Who sets the credit rating and would they gain in any way if the UKs credit rating were reduced?

    rkk01
    Free Member

    cant imagine any of those dastardly lefties waving placards if trident were being cut

    Really, that would be the Labour party who were in favour of replacing Trident

    ETA – What I find rather disingenuous, is that we are busily cutting things that dont* need cutting. I find it very hard to accept that there is not just pure political motivation in the way cuts are targeted / implemented. On top of that there are plenty of “business leaders” (ie capitalists) who feel that the cuts are damaging our capacity for growth

    * as in even the Tories didn’t think they needed cutting before they had the opportunity

    jota180
    Free Member

    Really, that would be the Labour party who were in favour of replacing Trident

    you’re confusing Labour with the left wing there

    wrecker
    Free Member

    Who does the discerning leftie vote for nowadays?
    Labour are apparently bad (not really left) and so are the lib dems (being in cahoots with the Tories).
    Decisions, decisions.

    ormondroyd
    Free Member

    Well last time I voted Lib Dem. For the last time.

    Lifer
    Free Member

    Debt =/= deficit and the type of debt is important. UK debt is long term so doesn’t need refinancing in the near future.

    Deficit reduction is reliant on growth, and the coalition policies haven’t been condusive to increasing that, have they? They have been cutting expenditure using the completely spurious and patronising example of household debt.

    How many countries have reduced deficits by cuts alone?

    mrmo
    Free Member

    as it seems the current credit rating statements are that the UK will loose its rating if it carries on cutting the deficit or if it doesn’t carry on cutting the deficit, you have to wonder what the point is?

    Oh and Greece anyone, deficit cuts are working well there! Ireland isn’t much better either.

    binners
    Full Member

    Surely in the case of Greece, the cuts are now just a self-fueling disaster. The economy is bawked, lets take yet more money out of it. Isn’t their economy contracting at 7% a year? Utter madness!!!

    And the credit ratings agencies gave Greece a clean bill of health. And Ireland. and Portugal. And Iceland. And Lehman Brothers.

    Why governments are in thrall to these shysters is utterly beyond me. So far, through this entire financial crisis, they have collectively failed to call anything correctly. Yet we’re all supposed to genuflect before them!!

    jota180
    Free Member

    Oh and Greece anyone, deficit cuts are working well there! Ireland isn’t much better either.

    Can anyone think of a country where austerity measures such as we’re seeing now has ever brought an economy back to life?

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    As usual enfht your ill-informed and muddled rant has completely missed the point. You appear to attach great importance to the opinions of the credit rating agencies, and yet you conveniently choose to ignore the fact that the present government’s policies are clearly not inspiring confidence as far as the credit rating agencies are concerned.

    If the current economic policies were the correct ones then you need to explain why two credit rating agencies have now announced that there is a greater than 50 per cent chance of a downgrade by 2014.

    The latest cause of concern for the credit rating agencies is rising UK unemployment.

    So what is it enfht ….do you attach much importance to the opinions of the credit rating agencies or not?

    Edukator
    Free Member

    Sweden and Canada.

    enfht
    Free Member

    Without the defecit reduction meansures the tories have chosen to take, the credit rating would have been dropped already.

    Ernesto, what would your hero Che have done, would he be marching with a “No Cuts” banner or would he simply have executed all his opponents?

    jota180
    Free Member

    This is an interesting article by Stephanie Flanders

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17398014

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    Ernesto, what would your hero Che have done, would he be marching with a “No Cuts” banner or would he simply have executed all his opponents?

    So, so, predictable…….the knee-jerk reaction from a political illiterate who lacks the intellectual capacity to present any sort of coherent comment to back up his muddled argument. I wish I could place bets on your tediously predictable reactions enfht – it would be a tidy earner.

    Without the defecit reduction meansures the tories have chosen to take, the credit rating would have been dropped already.

    So why was the UK triple A rated under the last government ? And why are they now talking about downgrading the UK 4 years into a Tory government ?

    Why is the government describing the latest announcement by the credit rating agencies as “disappointing” ?

    Personally I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the opinions of the credit rating agencies, after all, they gave Lehman Brothers a clean bill of health right up ’til the moment which they were responsible for the largest bankruptcy in history, but you seem to attach a great deal of importance to their opinions, so answer the questions.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    Without getting too far into it- is it not fair to say that these national credit ratings have been proven to be a total pile of ****? Greece was rated A or higher til mid 2010 by Moody’s and til late 2009 by Fitch, frinstance.

    jota180
    Free Member

    You know all those toxic sub-prime mortgage and loan packages that the the US banks sold on and pretty much started the whole house of cards collapsing?

    The same credit agencies gave those an Aaa rating

    julianwilson
    Free Member

    Who does the discerning leftie vote for nowadays?

    A worthy question I have asked myself many times since the last general election. I might just see if I can take up my French postal/proxy vote for once and go Parti Socialiste just to make me feel better. 😆

    Lifer
    Free Member

    Edukator – Member
    Sweden and Canada.

    Sweden had nationalised industries to sell off, cut the public sector but at the same time raised an extra tax on high income earners. Guaranteed liabilites and nationalised the banks most in danger rather than ploughing in billions that went on bonuses.

    “With luck, and to some extent understanding the situation, we didn’t make the mistakes you can see in Europe today … believing too much in austerity,” said Lundgren, who was minister for fiscal and financial affairs from 1991 to 1994 and who now heads Sweden’s Debt Office.

    Sweden’s lessons for debt crisis

    And didn’t Canada cut taxes?

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    There are important lessons to be learned from the Scandinavian response to similar crises, but note that in the Swedish case they entered the crisis with a government fiscal surplus – the UK, in contrast has much less fiscal room for manouvre. This explains why the UK has (correctly or not) focused more on deficit reduction.

    If anyone is interested McKinsey has published an interesting comparative analysis on these crises. Not easy reading for the UK!!

    Lifer
    Free Member

    Canada had 3 years of surpluses before the recession as well.

    konabunny
    Free Member

    I think you’re possibly overegging the pudding by comparing people who want to restructure public debt and spending in different ways to the government to Holocaust deniers.

    “Well last time I voted Lib Dem. For the last time.”

    Me too. Christ, what a disaster that was.

    julianwilson
    Free Member

    Holocaust deniers…

    Godwin’s law: (economic intellectual thread variant.)

    Farmer_John
    Free Member

    TandemJeremy “Or increase taxation. Increasing it to the level of France and Germany would solve the issue with no cuts required.”

    The level of income tax is already higher than that of France or Germany and has been for some time:

    FT 2009 UK Tax 4th Highest in Europe

    enfht
    Free Member

    The “No Cuts” banners really make their position quite clear, whereas “Less Cuts” could be rationally debated.

    Erny what’s the Marxist stance on the deficit?

    MrWoppit
    Free Member

    jota180 – Member

    You know all those toxic sub-prime mortgage and loan packages that the the US banks sold on all those stupid borrowers allowed themselves to take up even though they knew they couldn’t afford the debt and pretty much started the whole house of cards collapsing?

    FTFY…

    grum
    Free Member

    Ah yes, blame the poor. 🙄

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Farmer john – no its not. Remember that in the UK health care is from taxation and as a % of GDP taxation is higher in Germany and France and then you add healthcare insurance on top. Highest rate of income tax is also higher

    So if yo look at comparing like with like its much lower here

    Zulu-Eleven
    Free Member

    Hmmm, Financial Times or TJ, who to believe….

    mashiehood
    Free Member

    TJ – based on your analysis can you provide us some figures so we can compare!

    MrWoppit
    Free Member

    grum – Member

    Ah yes, blame the poor.

    Who presumably then found themselves without homes, having had them re-possessed by the banks to whom they couldn’t make the repayments.

    It’s always someone else’s fault, eh?

    Stoner
    Free Member

    a little data and a few graphs goes a long way in spunkfestthreads like these, so I give you:

    KPMG’s Individual Income Tax and Social Security Rate Survey 2011 is a cross-border survey of personal tax and social security rates with historical data from 2003-2011. The report covers 96 countries, concentrating on the highest level of personal tax payable to the central government.

    http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/individual-income-tax-social-security-rate-survey-September-2011.pdf

    Pages 8-15 worth perusing.

    julianwilson
    Free Member

    Mashiehood, off the top of my head, when I worked in France I was required to pay about 10% of my income into health insurance, deducted from my wage slip. (employer also contributes about half iirc) As the equivalent in the education system of a Teaching Assistant over here, I was not a high earner by any means. This was of course alongside income tax not instead of it, and the total of those two was well above what I would have paid in income tax and NI on those sorts of wages in the UK.

    I could probably find a page explaining it better but you’d have to rely on your franglais skillz or google translator to decipher it.

    [edit] There was also a thread on here recently about the frightening cost of healthcare for the average working person in Germany.

    Lifer
    Free Member

    Come now JW we don’t need your real-world experience muddying the waters!

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 43 total)

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