An interesting couple of links for you: Iain Dale doesn’t mention the BBC but says
“The value of the Pound is about to become the big story in town. And if not, why not?”
John Redwood meanwhile, names and shames the BBC as the culprit behind the non-story. He says the BBC are misrepresenting the credit-crunch to present the situation in Britain as having nothing to do with domestic factors (aka the lengthy incumbency in Downing Street of one Gordon Brown).
N omatter what rubbish the BBC comes out with, people know Brown is to blame.
Coming up on the BBC Politics show:
“So, you’ve spent your whole political career eschewing the limelight, basking in anonymity and judging success by the degree to which you keep your government department OUT of the headlines when along comes the mother of all global financial crises, and you are pitched right into the middle of it at the Treasury.
Cometh the hour, cometh, err… Alastair Darling.
And though, when it all started going a little pear shaped, he may have looked as if he were a rabbit caught in the headlights – since then, the Chancellor has been a good deal more deft.
So much so that the rescue plan adopted first by this government to deal with the banking crisis, is now being widely copied around the world.
We’ll also be talking to Vince Cable who has just been named, by the Spectator magazine, Parliamentarian of the Year.”
A fact that seems not quite yet accepted by sister programme Newsnight, at least on their blog.
Seems Mandy was more their speed.
Bless.
Looks like John Redwood has been following this blog.
As for China, my view has always been that, contrary to what even respectable business analysts have been saying (never mind the love letters the BBC presented as news during the months leading up to the Olympics), the supposedly robust, world-beating Chinese economy is largely built on smoke and mirrors. It’s no surprise what happens when the smoke machine is turned off.
Sadly, it’s not so different from Britain, where Mr. Brown cooked the books spent so much money on public sector construction. The construction crash, and a not insignificant portion of the unemployment problem, are directly related to this, not just the mortgage and home value problem.
Not sure about that David, the Chinese economy is based on real production – making things and selling them at a profit. It’s as robust as you like.
The UK economy has been based on a single square mile profiting massively from playing with numbers which supports an unproductive and diminishing manufacturing sector (hobbled by red tape, general laziness and managerial ineptitude)and a massively expanding public sector that makes the private sector look efficient. Happy days.
David, Cockney, where I live we get news reports that differ from the make-believe that is pumped out on BBC World.
I haven’t an accurate figure, but it’s fair to say that the majority of consumer goods on sale here have ‘Made in China’ stamped on them.
Retail sales are going down here as in most parts of the world. People are being more careful with their money, which is why on some of the news channels I have access to we are seeing demonstrations in China over job lay-offs. Particularly hard hit is the toy industry which is based on the premise of ‘sell it cheap, stack it high’. Unfortunately for them it is no longer ‘cheap’ when people’s considerations turn to the mortgage or food prices.
In contrast all I get from BBC World is a diet of The West Bank or the latest basket-case in Africa.
Cockney,
Only a portion of the Chinese company is based on real profit-making, and most of that goes into corruption. The yuan has been at artificial levels for years, and their export orders are down. They’ve sold too much virus/spyware-infested computer equipment, too much poisoned food, too much problematic merchandise. I thin it’s going to come back to haunt them shortly.
Their massive construction projects are paid for (using that term loosely) by printed money, and not part of the regular economy, similar to Mr. Brown’s PFI construction projects.
This is the kind of thing I’m thinking about:
Larry Hsien Ping Lang: How to Survive the Economic Downturn
Further, there’s inflation, and the consumer price index is way up. I know everyone says they have such great foreign reserves, etc., but what happens when the value of that money goes south? What happens when they can’t keep throwing all those apartment blocks, roads, and shopping malls around? The various riots which happen in China every day will be harder to keep under the radar.