So, let me see if I get this right. Shares are down again, the pound is at a five year low, the economy is heading into deep recession, unemployment is rising, the banks are not lending to each other — and yet Gordon Brown stands as an economic colossus. The great Brown Bail Out has been such a success that it is now the global template, apparently. Have I missed something? The BBC seems to have decided that it is possible to report all this economic gloom and doom but simultaneously detach it from the actions of a government that has been in power for more than decade. Can you just IMAGINE the headlines if this was all happening under a Conservative government? It is shocking to see inherent BBC bias provide a tatty pass to Prudence Brown when to any remotely neutral commentator, it is obvious that considerable culpability lies with the British government for the aware of the British economy. But we must not speak the obvious lest it offend the Great Leader – the man who also provides the cash for the BBC.
THE GREAT COP OUT ON THE BAIL OUT.
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Lets not mention the thousands losing their homes shall we? Well when we have the next general election (even the fat one eyed one can’t avoid that) the BBC will see how people really feel.
Um, this entire post is just a hypothetical.
The triumph of socialism is inevitable. The BBC knows that. It’s only the timing they get wrong.
Some people are just now cottoning on to the fact that The Biased BBC are Sinful.
The one good thing to come out of this is the growing general realisation of the BBC’s rampant pro-ZaNuLabour bias.
Anti-BBC comments are appearing all over the web these days and I’m hearing adverse comments about Peston, Robinson et al dropped into everyday conversations, even by people who normally give politics a wide berth.
GCooper | 22.10.08 – 11:07 am
The one good thing to come out of this is the growing general realisation of the BBC’s rampant pro-ZaNuLabour bias.
Quite so.
I confess to have become a bit of a pub bore on the subject of BBC bias in recent months. But last night people who’d once have rolled their eyes toward Heaven at my mention of the subject were indignantly bending MY ear with how appalling and outrageous it all was.
I’m a bit dim, and unable to grasp all these big economic issues going around. So I have to ask, if the UK’s current economic troubles are due solely to a global downturn, and Mr. Brown is right that the US is going into recession along with everyone else, why is it that the pound is lower against the dollar than any time in the last five years? The dollar is gaining only slightly against the Euro, so somebody is having extra difficulty somewhere. Especially since we’ve been told for the last three weeks that this all started in the US, and the current UK difficulties are mere spillover from the US problems.
Further, this report says that Mervyn King warned that Britain was probably entering its first recession in 16 years.
Doesn’t this mean, then that the positive economic success in Britain started, you know, nearly five years before Mr. Brown became Chancellor? Wasn’t some other awful party in charge then? Perhaps I don’t understand because I’m a bit dim and can’t grasp these big issues.
Martin said, “Lets not mention the thousands losing their homes shall we?”
Or, in reverse, those who are not. In the US, 97% of home owners are making their mortgages on time, including yours truly, thank you very much. And we had a hell of a time getting our loan, but we work, and we are both white.
I find it very odd, and those of you who keep defending the BBC, might consider, that in the US, while the economic emergency can clearly be traced back to loan practices by democrats in the ninties – reversing safe gaurds set up after the great depression to prevent such circumstances as these – the republicans, who blew the whistle years ago, are being blamed from the rooftops by the media.
In the Uk, the opposite is true. Correct me if I have anything amiss, but the emergency was caused by liberals, but they are in office, and so they stand and wring their hands “Oh Dear! Those evil Americans caused this!” and the BBC have their backs, never blaming the true culprits.
Now we have the Saudis intending to choke the crude supply to hike prices again – just when gas here has gone back down under 2.80 a gallon in many places. What has gas done over there, BTW, in the last month? I have a big Ford pick up, this means alot, the difference between 60 bucks a fill up and 85. We drive long distances here, gas hikes hurt.
“while the economic emergency can clearly be traced back to loan practices by democrats in the ninties”
There’s an argument that the economic emergency doesn’t result from sub-prime loans per se but from the failure to accurately price the risk on these loans due to Republican’s failure to effectively regulate derivatives markets. You can’t just pin this entirely on “liberals” but equally Obama’s repeated claim that this is all Bush’s fault is equally ridiculous (as is the claim that Bush=McCain for that matter).
In the UK the Conservatives deregulated financial markets but the derivatives boom has happened mainly on Labour’s watch. You might say that the trigger to the crisis is US mortgages and hence this problem comes from the US but a) it’s not subprime mortgage defaults that are the main problem – it’s the pricing of the risk of default which the UK government could have overseen b) we’ve got a lot of dodgy loans here also not helped by Brown taxing the f*** out of everyone and c) if he hadn’t blown all the tax revenue on not improving public services we’d wouldn’t be needing to rack up quite such enormous deficits to bail ourselves out, thereby causing the pound to collapse and potentially limit my champagne consumption in St Moritz shortly.
tossers
There are two types of boss.
Type 1 is sure of himself and his role.Of course he wishes to be seen head and shoulders above his staff. This is visble leadership. The type 1 boss will encourage and strengthen his staff, thereby enabling them to carry his aloft on their shoulders.
Type 2 is insecure and fearful. He also wants to be seen as a big man. His tactic however, is to beat his staff down so that he is the only one left standing.
Guess which one’s Gordon?
I bet the Beeb won’t see it like that
One of the best things I ever read about leadership was carved into a desk at school (a long time ago, so excuse the non-PC terminology):
‘A great man makes others feel small. A truly great man makes other feel great’.
No idea of what became of the student vandal or the teacher that may have inspired them (by quoting another or by trying to brow-beat them?) to this act of poetic vandalism, but I reckon it’s not a bad way to conduct oneself.
Few, these days, do.
Cockney | 23.10.08 – 1:04 pm |
Well said. I believe we’ve both previously laid some of the blame with Republicans for creating some of the circumstances which allowed the mortgage problem to happen (1999, the Graham-Rudman Act, which made the SEC toothless, I think it was?).
But, as you point out, Mr. Brown’s faux-redistributionist policies are responsible for putting Britain in a worse position to handle it than the US is in. Granted, Bush’s spending has been out of control as well (even if we don’t count the wars), which has disappointed so many conservatives. But he didn’t do any accounting sleight of hand the same way that Mr. Brown did. Well, maybe that’s because he can’t, since the President doesn’t have that kind of power. But still, nobody will learn any of this from the BBC business editor.
Instead all anyone hears from the Pestilence and his minions is that Mr. Brown saved the world.
Cockney:
My hat off to anyone who can make heads or tails of the many market products, and the economics behind them. I used to know these things, I was a stock broker and options trader during the tech boom. I understand puts and calls, and after a little home work I wondered where the hedging was – a client in my book with a huge long position more than 20% up kept puts on the books, or we sold calls.
I saw the crash coming in 98, took my clients to cash and put them in the money markets, then resigned the business. It was not difficult to see the signs, they must have seen this mess coming – nothing goes straight up, not even whole markets. I know my co-workers and their clients lost millions in the tech crash, I warned them with sound evidence, and they stayed and lost due to greed, refusing to admit correction was inevitable.
Correction to my comment above at 3:09pm:
It was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, not the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. The latter (which I misspelled) was much earlier, and was about deficit reduction.
Same Gramm in both, even if I had his name spelled wrong in my head.