{"id":4463,"date":"2015-06-11T16:03:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T15:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=4463"},"modified":"2015-06-12T11:13:07","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T10:13:07","slug":"georges-economic-mind-bender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=4463","title":{"rendered":"George\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic mind-bender"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

If the Tories were not already planning new laws to prohibit mind bending legal highs then Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speech to the London banker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dinner last night would force their hand. It seems as if more laughing gas is being pumped through the air conditioning at the Treasury than available on a Magaluf weekender.
\nIn the comfortable world of George Osborne and the Mansion House diners, perhaps the economic sun is now shining.
\nBut for the rest of us, the economic sun does not have his hat on. Economic growth is poor and forecasts have been cut again. Lowering inflation is creeping into deflation, a big warning sign.
\nUK productivity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what we individually produce – has not risen at all since the recession hit. We are importing more goods from abroad than we are making and exporting \u00e2\u20ac\u201c huge balance of payments deficits are \u00e2\u20ac\u0098entrenched\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to use George\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new buzzword.
\nWage increases are pretty stagnant and well below their real value pre-recession \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it may be 2015 on the calendar but today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wages are being paid at 2007\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rate.
\nFood banks are handing out over one million parcels, record numbers are being threatened with court action to recover council tax debts.
\nHousehold debt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c leaving out mortgages \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is reaching record levels with more to come as people borrow to stay afloat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mortgage costs \u00e2\u20ac\u201ceven at record low rates \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are climbing because of house price rises in some parts of the country and greater numbers are being evicted for non-payment of their rents.
\nInvestment is lower than it should be – billions of pounds of business cash is sitting in bank vaults, not doing what it should be doing which is investing in skills and boosting productivity. Manufacturing is still five per cent below the pre-recession peak with Mr Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s `march of the makers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 stuck on the road to nowhere.
\nBut instead of addressing the place of austerity in deepening the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s financial woes, George Osborne is looking at making austerity a permanent feature of British life.
\nSeeking to force a permanent commitment to Government budget surpluses – alongside his plans to also legislate against tax rises, national insurance rises and VAT rises, the big three in Government revenue terms \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that can only mean more austerity and more cuts.
\nBecause once you have ruled out tax and other rises to help \u00e2\u20ac\u0098balance the books\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 that only leaves public spending cuts in what George considers \u00e2\u20ac\u0098normal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 times.
\nOsborne is not just pushing through more spending cuts to propel himself down the road to Wigan Pier. When he gets there he plans to jump off and swim some more.
\nStill, he is providing gold plated lifebelts for the City bankers. The public\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shares in Royal Bank of Scotland will be flogged off at a \u00c2\u014113 billion loss to the taxpayer \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which to the City suggests there may be \u00c2\u014113 billion profit for them, even though some argue he is selling too soon and at 50p per share too low.
\nThe RBS bailout cost UK taxpayers \u00c2\u014145 billion. Current share value is around \u00c2\u01413.50, down from the \u00c2\u01414 mark earlier this year, so the City sniffs some proper bonus money there to take the edge off the bank levy.
\nAnd they are flexing their muscles in that sphere. HSBC is threatening to move its international HQ out of London because they have to pay around \u00c2\u0141700 million in bank levy.
\nEven if they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and expect a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098review\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of the bank levy in the budget \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they want thousands of job losses (from the bottom up) and potentially hundreds of branch closures.
\nBanks are now too big to fail, too big to jail and too big to demand your money back from. Osborne and the Tories would be happy to see them back to business as usual.
\nHowever, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney struck a different tone accusing the sector and regulators of overseeing \u00e2\u20ac\u015bethical drift\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, telling the same 400 elite bankers last night: \u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnethical behaviour went unchecked, proliferated and eventually became the norm. Too many participants neither felt responsible for the system nor recognised the full impact of their actions.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165
\nAnd not for him blaming the previous Labour Government – the fires were blown over from the US. Banks and the financial sector were just not set up to deal with \u00e2\u20ac\u015bthe spark of the US subprime crisis\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 which lit \u00e2\u20ac\u015ba powder keg under UK markets, triggering the worst recession in our lifetimes.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165
\nThe result was that \u00e2\u20ac\u015bglobal markets were engulfed in flames\u00e2\u20ac\u0165. And who were the firefighters?
\nThe chief \u00e2\u20ac\u0098fire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 officers were Labour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling and the water was the huge sums which came from us, the very UK taxpayers who instead of our moment in the sun will have to endure Mr Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic mindbender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the Tories were not already planning new laws to prohibit mind bending legal highs then Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speech to the London banker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dinner last night would force their hand. It seems as if more laughing gas is being pumped through the air conditioning at the Treasury than available on a Magaluf weekender. In the comfortable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[178,123,44],"wps_subtitle":"Business as usual for Mansion House diners","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4469,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463\/revisions\/4469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}