From George Osborne's speech, available at HM Treasury:
... these events did not come out of the blue. They all have the same root cause.
Debt.
In particular, a massive overhang of debt from a decade-long boom when economic growth was based on unsustainable household borrowing, unrealistic house prices, dangerously high banking leverage, and a failure of governments to put their public finances in order.
Unfortunately, the UK was perhaps the most eager participant in this boom, with the most indebted households, the biggest housing bubble, the most over-leveraged banks and the largest budget deficit of them all.
History teaches us that recovery from this sort of debt-driven, financial balance-sheet recession was always going to be choppy and difficult.
That's all refreshingly honest, coming from a politician, especially one who's actually in power and could do something about it. Problem is, he and his ilk have absolutely no intention of reducing household borrowing, allowing house prices to fall, making banks sort themselves out or reducing his own government deficit, but hey.
Via Dill at HPC.
Grand theft Labour
59 minutes ago
3 comments:
It would also be a change if the nice Mr. Osborne told us who led this participation and gave them a good kicking at the same time.
But as you say Mark, these lilly-livered, pastel coloured NuBlues are not going to bite the bullet to save our country.
I wonder what an Enoch Powell type of leader would be doing now?
Its alright saying these things now
but the trick is to say them while they're happening or even to warn that they might happen in the future.As the increase in house prices, mortgages and credit card debt to pay for things after the mortgage has been so blinking bleedin obvious with huge crashes in the whole economic system to underscore it,you have to believe that there are major forces opposing the simple,age -old solutions that have been proferred by land taxers mainly .
I wonder what the anti-lvt flat earthers think when they read things like this.
BB, the fact that a disproportionate amount of these looters appear to have been of the darker skin colour persuasion is a symptom rather than a cause.
DBC, the Homeys already have their counter-propaganda in place; OT1H they will blame the crisis on reckless borrowers and reckless lenders; while OTOH imploring the banks to lend more money to young people to enable them to buy unaffordable houses.
They don't do intellectual coherence - because their starting point is that house prices are a given (the higher the better) and that everything else has to mould itself to that.
Post a Comment