Rising Hegemon
The British Economy Is Now Doing Worse than it Did in the Great Depression This many months after the start of the Great Depression, the British economy was rapidly converging back to its pre-depression level of production under Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain's policy of using stimulative policies to restore the price level to its pre-Great Depression trajectory.
By contrast, the Cameron-Osborne policies of expansion-through-austerity have produced a flatline for real GDP, and the odds are high that British real GDP is headed down again.
In less than a year, if current forecasts come true, the Cameron-Osborne Depression will not be the worst depression in Britain since the Great Depression, but the worst depression in Britain… probably ever. That is quite an accomplishment. As Phillip Inman of the Guardian puts it:Right now the American economy, because it has been much closer to traditional stimulus models (though not ideally thanks to the GOP taking the House in 2010 with austerity bromides), has produced a recovery though not as strong as it could be (see first parenthetical).
the UK's plan for recovery from the financial crisis was based on a full-throttle recovery in 2012... consumer confidence, business investment and general spending would converge to send the economy on a trajectory of above-average growth... the lack of investment will perplex ministers. They have done what the right-wing economists told them to do and moved out of the way – the theory being that public sector spending and investment was ‘crowding out’ the private sector...It did not work: “Spain is showing the way with its austerity-driven recession. Where the weak tread, we [in Britain] look keen to follow...”
But the GOP continues to push something that will not work -- in large part somewhat successfully through an ignorant populace and a media that isn't much better and which is dominated by stock-market pushers only.
6 comments:
Austerity benefits the wealthy by so many different means--if you have a lot of money, you'll see deflationary tendencies protect that wealth along with low taxes, and if you're poor, you see downward pressure on wages, making it harder to hang onto the assets you do have, greater unemployment, which gives more control to employers, and if you can't save the assets you have, the wealthy get to pick them up more cheaply.
As I've repeated often, it was Andrew Mellon, Treasury Secretary to Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, who said, "it is during depressions that assets return to their rightful owners."
And we know exactly who Mellon, the banker, meant by "rightful owners."
You are absolutely incorrect. Austerity measures work wonderfully, if you are rich greedy capitalist thief.
When the austerity measures proposed by the 1% are applied the transfer of wealth is accelerated and exacerbated.
And now I've just read Montag's comment and see I can not phrase it any better.
Everyone who is debating how to fix the economy doesn't understand the 1% are not debating in good faith. They know how to fix the economy for themselves and they are doing it.
And Krugman noted today that Cameron's headlong rush to austerity had a big cheerleader in David "Soggy Depends" Broder.
same results as tax cuts for the RICH to strangle the federal govt so we can't afford ANYTHING.
except the military industrial complex.
we can't afford ANYTHING...except the military industrial complex.
And sixteen trillion (with a "T") dollar bailouts of the banksters.
And if you think I'm crazy, google the words "sixteen trillion dollar bailout".
So far, of all the US media, this has been covered by only Bloomberg News and John Stewart's Daily Show.
only the 1% can be saved.
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