Sir! Keir! Starmer!

IF Stephanie Kelton’s ideas hold water then I’d argue it only applies to the US which has the luxury of controlling the world’s global reserve currency.

Ultimately the world has ONE currency issuer and it is not the UK government. Even if a country prints it’s own currency, it is still always going to be a currency user.

Totally nails the MMT fallacy. Ultimately, we have to buy stuff in US dollars. If the markets see (which they do – instantly) the UK creating more £s, the ability to purchase in USD is downgraded.

‘Why I started petition for fresh general election’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4ly6p2wxvo

Tory voter Michael Westwood’s online document has in a matter of days secured more than 2.5 million signatures backing his plea.

 

Mr Westwood, who runs the Wagon and Horses pub in Oldbury in the West Midlands, said he launched it because he believed the Labour government – elected on 4 July – had “gone back on the promises” the party made.

Surely admitting that he didn’t even support the promises that Labour allegedly made completely undermines his claim to be dissatisfied? Shouldn’t he be celebrating the fact that Labour are not carrying out promises which he never supported in the first place?

Claiming to be a dissatisfied Labour voter would make far more sense, instead of publicly confirming what everyone suspected in the first place.

And this also slightly surprised me a  :

He added of the petition: “To have my opinion and my thoughts put out there and to find out actually, quite a lot of people agree, I think it’s fantastic. It just shows that you’re not on your own.”

You would have thought that in hindsight he might feel a tad embarrassed with how he expressed his ‘opinion and thoughts’,  I don’t think that I have ever seen a more badly worded worded epetition, it looks as if it was written by an eight year old child. I actually feel embarrassed on his behalf.

Everything else is Tory lies driven by Starmer and Reeves’s lack of understanding of the wider economy.

Or they do understand how this works but also understand that they’d get annihilated by the media (and the Opposition).

It’s beyond the ability of Joe Public to see beyond tax & spend and the likes of Mrs T’s household budget.

I’d suggest you wait and see, Starmer has a history of playing the long game – ask Johnson.

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Whenever I’ve seen this comment online I’ve asked what these “promises” are, that Labour went back on – currently no one has actually been able to list them, or wanted to.  All I get is along the lines of “do your research” crap.

So can anyone here list them?

Mr Westwood is a classic example of what I was getting at on the previous page.

Whatever the ‘politically correct’ term for it is.

I’d suggest you wait and see, Starmer has a history of playing the long game – ask Johnson.

This is what I’m hoping. The feeding frenzy and expectations that Labour will put right the last 14 years in 6 months is ridiculous and demonstrative of the “everything now” culture. Given the shitshow that was the Tory fiasco from Cameron onwards, I’m happy to let the current administration crack on.

As for the petition mentioned earlier. Please. Some people really do have very little going on in their lives.

Surely the issue with SKS is that he’s doing exactly what he said he would, thereby undermining all of those (including many on this thread) who were previously proclaiming that it was all bluff and things would be different once he was elected.

The MPs panel on Five Live is comedy gold. It’s an insight into  the mindset of the type of person who signed the petition for a general election.

Some tinfoil-helmeted worzel is presently spouting absolutely crackpot conspiracy theories and complaining about the treatment of the ‘white’ working class.

They hardly needed to ask who he voted for but they did. Lifelong Tory voter who went for Reform this time

Totally nails the MMT fallacy. Ultimately, we have to buy stuff in US dollars.

No one is talking about printing pounds to pay for oil or US goods. That will be done via the time-honoured mechanisms of international trade. What they are talking about though is creating money (as the govt currently does) to spend here in the UK on things that UK businesses and public sector organisations provide. That doesn’t need to be bought in dollars, because the entities providing these goods and services don’t want to be paid in dollars because they need to pay tax in pounds. The only way this wouldn’t be true is if you could go down the supermarket right now and buy your shopping in dollars. I think you’ll find you can’t.

Right… what’s in front of me… right now…

Coffee.

Orange Juice.

Laptop.

Software on said laptop paid by subscription.

…I think you can see where I’m going with this…

No one is talking about printing pounds to pay for oil or US goods

Unfortunately, in a global market, how your currency performs against the dollar affects the price of pretty much everything.  Even if you aren’t buying oil or goods directly from the US, literally anything you import is going to be from a country that holds significant reserves of dollars.

Like it or not, the UK is a currency user not a currency issuer in the global scheme of things.

By the way, I don’t think MMT is a fallacy.  I just think Stephanie Kelton takes a very US centric view and doesn’t really consider properly countries that aren’t the issuer of the global reserve currency.

…I think you can see where I’m going with this…

You’re mistaking international trade with how the govt spends money. It spends money in pounds, not dollars. Yes we need to buy things in dollars, and other countries also need to buy lots of stuff off us in pounds. That will result in a trade surplus or deficit. Traditionally we have a deficit these days but that is miniscule in relation to the entire UK economy. A quick google says our overrall 2023 trade deficit was 15bn against GDP of 2.274tn. The end result is that fluctuations in currency values tend to cancel each other out and do not affect the amount of money the govt can spend. If we bought *all* our goods and services from abroad then you would have a point, but we don’t, the balance of trade is pretty much even.

Surely the issue with SKS is that he’s doing exactly what he said he would

Not quite. Five days before the general election :

Starmer’s promise to voters: ‘I will relight the fire of optimism’ in Britain

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/29/starmers-promise-to-voters-i-will-relight-the-fire-of-optimism-in-britain

Since winning the general election it has all been doom, gloom, black holes, and tough decisions.

Voters are clearly not feeling this promised “fire of optimism” which presumably explains why support for Labour is now at approximately the same level as support for the Tories was under Liz Truss’s premiership.

So that is one promise to voters which has obviously been broken.

fenderextender
Mr Westwood is a classic example of what I was getting at on the previous page.

Whatever the ‘politically correct’ term for it is.

Tory voter.

Both accurate and insult at the same time.

You’re mistaking international trade with how the govt spends money

OK, how does a government spend money?

I would guess it’s much the same as anything else that spends money.  It either buys things or it pays money to people (ignoring the various accounting tricks to move money around cleverly, money eventually has to be exchanged for goods or services for it to actually be money).

If it buys things then the global supply chain means the exchange rate is going to be an issue.  No goods are completely insulated from international trade.

If it pays money to people then that money is going to end up getting spent on stuff that has interacted with the dollar, again, thanks to the global supply chain.  It’s pretty much unavoidable.

Unless you happen to be the US government.  Then much of what you do with your currency is insulated thanks to the massive amounts of USD treasury bonds held by foreign countries and the various goods that can only be traded for in dollars.

Mr Westwood, who runs the Wagon and Horses pub in Oldbury in the West Midlands,

Curiously, although he’s been the leaseholder for seven years, apparently, there’s another bloke named as the leaseholder from a story earlier this year in the Daily Heil. He runs a drink supply business, which I guess doesn’t sound quite as good as ‘struggling pub landlord’.

OK, how does a government spend money?

Rone has explained it many times. I doubt we want to go over it again. The key point is that we don’t *only* buy things in dollars, we also sell *a lot* of things in pounds, and these pretty much cancel each other out. It applies to all fiat currencies whether you’re the dollar or not. Yes the US govt is in a better place because many countries use their currency instead of their own, but that doesn’t apply to us. We use the pound in this country and nothing else, and the UK govt as the sole issuer of the pound can use that power to spend more money or not irregardless of what is going on with the dollar.