Anyone catch the Today programme this morning and the BBC doing it’s very best to extract an apology from Hague for Osborne suggesting that Ed Balls “had questions” to answer over the fixing of Libor? My goodness but Ed must be happy with his pals at Broadcasting House and their valiant attempts to protect his good name. I mean the very idea that those people in the Labour Government with responsibility for the economy and banking could have ever even contemplated discussion on such an obscure issue as LIBOR is just an outrage, right? Cough.
Who do the BBC think they are fooling with their rush to embrace the thoughts of Paul Tucker? His opinions are afforded Papal infallibility. He could be right, of course, but he also could be wrong. The latter idea is dismissed by the BBC as it moves to undermine Osborne. Even worse, the witterings of Conservative Andrea Leadsom are now given national import since they may damage Osborne further.
The LIBOR scandal is awkard for the BBC and Labour but the idea is that it was all perfectly innocent, nothing to see, just evil bankers doing what they do, and just when will Osborne apologise for impugning the good name of sociopath good egg Ed Balls?
Same on Radio 5 Rusting Iron Lung where Phil ‘Poly’ Williams hijacked a discussion with a Tory on some other subject (which escapes me) to jump in with,
‘yeah, dyerthink George Osborne owes Ed Balls an apology?’.
To which the correct answer is,
‘No, but dyerthink you should stop stinking up the airwaves with your excuse for broadcasting.’
Note, in Gameshow’s absence, it’s the B Team at 5 Live. Though of course there is no A Team.
I don’t think I have come across so many unfounded sweeping statements and racist/bigoted nonsense in all my life, especially regards the economic waffle below from ‘Merlin’ and ‘Fred’! Where is all of the evidence for this? As far as I can see this is a site for bigots and chancers who are trying hard to hang on to traditional conservative values… well, change is inevitable and if you can’t keep up then society will leave you behind!
Please point out the racist and bigoted and unfounded comments.
Oh please, you have to be kidding right? Are you for real?! This entire site is like a last chance saloon for porky pie-peddlars and a smorgasboard of extremist Right-wing gibberish which is purely subjective with often zero supporting evidence; and some of the old cobblers about the economy below is beyond belief… I suppose one could post anything on here and the resident bigots and chancers would believe it. They have to have something to believe in I suppose.
Supply proof of your pathetic loony-left claims or just shut up. As you can’t you might as well run back home to your nanny who will give you a nice cuddle. Aaaahhh!
Your infantile name-calling neatly makes my point and really is pathetic. The proof of subjective bigotry is everywhere… BUT the big question is where is all of your evidence for BBC bias (apart from the Daily Mail, Jihadwatch or BNP website)?
You accuse others of “infantile name calling”. Try re-reading your own posts for the clearest examples of that on here. You have no evidence for your failed attempts to smear this site, whereas the proof of BBC bias can be measured by the thousands on this site. If you posh boys weren’t so blinkered and cock-sure of your own smug superiority, you would see that the proof is incontrovertible. Don’t waste your time replying to this as I won’t waste my time replying to a troll like you again.
Hello doinker, would you care to join in my game of “define a dhimmi” ?
definitions gratefully accepted.
Well then, choose what you rate as the most contentious post on Labour’s economic record, and respond – point by point.
Is this the same Ed Balls who was in the governmental department that wrecked the British banking system and economy, deregulated the banks, wasted billions on stimulus packages with little or no effect and wasted 12 billion on an NHS ICT system which didn’t work? But, of course, he’s now the BBC’s financial fount of endless economic wisdom… and those 13 years of abject incompetence and artificial economic growth, based on invisible derivative credit, have vanished like a bad smell in the wind.
“Invisible derivative credit”. Sounds like you think you know what you are talking about but clearly you do not. The explosion of government and personal credit in the uk was visible and not derivative-based at all.
As someone who has spent the last 24 years working in the financial industry as a chartered accountant and business analyst I will take no lectures from your blatant ignorance of rudimentary university level financial mathematics (PS I work for Aberdeen Asset Management ) I will ignore your ignorant and outspoken comment; the invisible hand in the market for derivatives was largely responsible for the credit crisis; if credit securements were concrete then none this financial crash would have happened.
It was credit derivatives largely based upon collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that enabled the asset bubble. These in turn were enabled by market deregularisation and a by-product of this was the blurring of the line between retail and investment banking.
While this was going on Economists (and politicians) were congratulating themselves for having tamed the business cycle. Remember GB’s “no more boom and bust” well he got that from his economists, and that was the prevailing view at the time.
The big mistake was to bail out the banks with public money. Bad banks should have been allowed to fail while guaranteeing their deposits.
Instead their debt was converted to sovereign debt by bailouts which ensured bankers faced no moral hazard and so no reason to change their behaviour.
We are now seeing the effects of the conversion of private debt into sovereign debt in the EuroZone. Whole countries are starting to go bust and there is a general unwillingness in Northern Europe to bail out the Southern countries.
Germany et al. blame corruption and bad practices, which while true of Greece, isn’t generally true in the cases of Spain and Italy which, prior to the collapse, had sound economies.
The root of their problem here is the “one size fits all” Euro. Except it doesn’t. It fits Germany. If Spain, Italy weren’t locked into the Euro they could simply devalue their currency and be on the road to recovery.
This leaves only two basic options. Either they drop out of the Euro or Germany accepts a higher rate of inflation so the debt can be inflated away. For historical reasons Germans fear inflation and any politician advocating this would be out of a job, so it looks like the Euro’s days are numbered.
‘Bad banks should have been allowed to fail’.
So if LloydsTSB hadn’t bailed out HBOS what would have happened? Guaranteeing customer deposits doesn’t allow a basket case bank to keep functioning.
Sorry, but some banks were just ‘too big to fail’.
Well that’s true. We were basically between a rock and a hard place and on the verge of a banking meltdown. The fact that we arrived at that position is negligent but that’s easy to see now in retrospect.
A Northern Rock and hard place, you mean!
Securitisation took banks out of the credit creation process – investment banks were the factories which created these products and which unfortunately were still holding too many of them when the market took fright in 2007. Securitisation did create more credit away from the fractional reserve system by matching savings with investments – there was a massive need for high yielding dollar investments to mop up all the cash from China and because US Treasury yields were low in 2001-2007. This was a balance of trade issue. Securitisation was not the cause – it was a factor. Subprime was a special case because it became polluted with fraudulent loans and mortgages with ridiculous terms.
What happened in 2001-8 was a typical credit boom and bust.
What a load of jargon…
Believe it or not but I my credentials trump yours.
The only role credit derivatives had in this was in the AIG blowup. I have written a well-used case study on this.
Securitisation is not a derivative. It is not invisible either. I can see a list of securitisations on my bloomberg monitor. So clearly quite visible.
The crisis was caused by low interest rates engineered in the US by Greenspan and in Europe by Germany, combined with a demand for assets by cash rich china, leading to a massive expansion in private credit and public credit. This bubble had to pop sometime. And subprime was the needle that popped it. Sure there were financial products such as CDS and swaps and Libor that lots of people are hearing about now. But these were not the cause although some made things worse.
Sorry for going off topic.
Straight off Wikipedia Fred? And, please… stop ‘liking’ your own posts! 🙂
Sorry but all my own. PS I did not “like” this even though I do like it.
Aren’t ABSs packaged and traded as derivative products? What you say abot the Greenspan interest rates is spot on. What I’m trying to understand is what caused that and why it was seen as desirable given that the economy was doing fine? It’s what caused the economy to overheat.
You can trade derivatives on ABX which is an index of a pool of ABS. So you can have a derivative on an ABS but an ABS is not a derivative.
Mate it’s arrogant financiers such as yourselves (I’m not sure I believe a word though) that have caused this crash with your fancy terms that don’t mean a God damn thing. Stop showing off; this is a sight about bias not your massive ego!
Rather than feel inferior, you could always read a book and learn something and then form an informed view. But I guess Janet and John books do not cover high finance.
PS It’s a “site” not a “sight”
A mere typo Fred, old bean 🙂 Anyway, ‘Inferior’? My friend… never mate. I am very comfortable with my existence and profession thank you very much; I might not be up there with you so called ‘Masters of the Universe’ but I am happy with who I am and what I contribute to society.
To be honest, I just find your manner really arrogant Fred as does a few others ostensibly… and I find your posts boring; perhaps the smug egotistical manner with which you’ve blasted on to this site epitomizes why this country’s banks are in so much of a mess.
You’re obviously very bright and talented and could offer lots to this site, but I sincerely hope that you re-think your ineffable arrogance… this site would be better for it! “:-)
Fred, I am no economist but the evidence for the causes of the financial crash are well known to all mate and it was, indeed, derivatives based on non-existent credit/funds that drove the sector to its knees…
Well I can tell you that you are misinformed. This credit crisis would have happened without derivatives. The low interest rates of the US post the popping of the dotcom bubble in 2001 were not caused by derivatives. The low interest rates in the eurozone in 2002-2007 were needed by Germany to cope with its recession following the absorption of the GDR. The demand for dollar assets from China was due to massive trade imbalances. As banks have no real limit on how much credit they can create, a lot of cheap credit was created. Derivatives and securitisation played a role in all this but they did not cause it.
The media, and especially the BBC have pushed this anti-derivative, anti-securitisation line hard since it gives them a stick to beat the city and to moan about overpaid bankers. But frankly they do not know what they are talking about. (I agree that bankers are overpaid)
I’ll take your word for it mate
What he says is right.
I agree that bankers are overpaid
I don’t. They get paid what they get paid and good luck to them.
If only some of that cash came my way I’d be more than happy.
If it was visible then how come all of those economists and bankers failed to see it coming?
Jeff Randall warned of the dangers of the massive personal and public debt that had built up under Labour over its first 10 years in office and saw through the illusion of the economic ‘boom’. The unsustainable business models of the likes of RBS, HBOS and Northern Rock must have been apparent to bankers and regulators alike – it is the degree to which the politicians of the day must have been aware and were complicit in encouraging it in order to continue the economic sham.
Remember the first crisis was the run on Northern Rock which had no involvement in sub-prime investments but had a dodgy loan book (125% and self-certified mortgages were freely available) which amounted to 11 times the amount of customer deposits it held. Nor, I think I’m right in saying, was there much if any direct exposure in HBOS or RBS to the sub-prime fiasco.
As a sign that Northern Rock was trading stupidly – a friend found they were offering the best interest rates for savings money he needed to deposit – while another friend found they had by far the most generous deal for a re-mortgage.
Crazy trading – just in the UK market – made Northern Rock come unstuck.
Well Northern Rock was a victim of a liquidity crisis as they funded themselves on short term basis. They also had a dodgy loan book. Mix these two factors together and sprinkle it with a subprime crisis in the background and you have a bank failure. No derivatives needed.
Fred, the common name (amongst the kids) for what happened there is you were PWND!
Why ? What he says appears to be true
I like this comment.
I like the fact that you like it.
However the fact that I don’t understand a fucking word that either of you wrote means I’m not sure I like the comment.
I think.
The evidence suggests that Fred – aka whitman, Jim Dandy and Nicked Emus – ‘likes’ his own posts as well.
Rubbish
Touched a wee nerve John? Are you a Fred sycophant? Lighten up… it was a joke; you’re too serious!
Fred makes his own case clearly. It is not sycophantic to agree with someone. Indeed I had not seen much if anything from him before.
Whereas you just seem to snipe without cause.
Is your second name Goodwin by any chance?
Clever phrases and business speak do not a problem solve or a successful business make. They confuse and undermine the truth. “Invisible derivative credit” indeed! Any wonder we are broke.
I am not a banker but I was a cost accountant and manager of a profitable factory for many years. To run a business successfully it is necessary to get margins right and then manufacture efficiently, along with a multitude of other important issues.
How is banking different? Selling 110% mortgages to poor folks that “self-declare” their income was not good business. A fool in blinkers with an IQ of one wouldn’t do it so why did our banks? Is it because they were encouraged to? And who would do that? Could it be politicians? And which politicians were in power at the time? And by the way who was the American civil rights lawyer who got to the top by encouraging such foolhardiness and then by promising change got to be president? It really did start in America you know, the home of business jargon and obfuscation and financial arrogance. And who were the idiots that followed them? Could it have been the Labour Party? Impugn my reputation indeed; the man should be locked up for incompetence in managing the country’s finances, along with his cohorts Brown and Blair.
I couldn’t agree more mate; you don’t have to be an economist to realise that the boom was based on invisible credit , i.e. non-existent; it’s hardly complicated and this knowledge is in the public domain… just a shame that people like Fred fail to acquaint themselves with basic well-known facts before they open their monumentally uninformed traps!
OK. Rather than become personal why don’t you define “invisible” credit.
yawn guys give it a rest… let’s get back to the topic. We’re not interested in whizz-kid financial groupseak. We ARE interested, however, in BBC Bias!
Excellent point – the role of Democrats from Clinton downwards in forcing banks to give mortgages to people who didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of repaying has hardly (make that ‘never’ by our treasured, impartial national broadcaster) been given an airing.
Well said, wayne. We did start the debt ball rolling with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Democrat-led Congress, along with Clinton’s scheme to encourage even more home ownership, in the mid 90s.
We’re now seeing the same kind of bubble looming in the student loan scene. That’s going to be the next killer.
Is this the same infallible Tucker who claimed – with a straight face – that he knew nothing about the LIBOR fiddling until about a month ago? Is this the same senior offcial at our central bank who, apparently, kept no notes of a conversation with the CEO of one of the world’s largest banks?
Tucker may be all the BBC dreams of in a state employee (asking for more regulation is a key qualification for approval here) but, listening to the BBC this morning, you’d have thought Tucker was Moses coming down the mountain with (or, in Tucker’s case, without) the tablets of the law.
It might be that all that Tucker says is true and that Diamond misinterpreted his conversations with him by design rather than accident. That’s not the point: the point is that there are massive grey areas concerning information about, at least, communications between Tucker and Diamond (and Tucker and the Cabinet Office) and the competence of the institutions and persons regulating the City during the collapse of the interbank market.
Forget about grey areas though, the BBC line is clear: “Get Osborne!”. Personally, AFAIAC Osborne is a sh*t – and an incompetent sh*t at that. However, he is not as heavily implicated in the collapse of this country’s finances as Balls although, don’t forget, he stood on the sidelines cheering while Labour ratcheted up state spending and borrowing which he also promised (until August 2009) to replicate. Balls and Osborne are as bad as each other although, listening to the BBC, you’d think Balls’ integrity makes Sir Stafford Cripps look like one of the Kray twins and Osborne’s slighting of Balls’ conduct reported in the Spectator is a page out of Mein Kampf.
Even if Mr Diamond misinterpreted Mr Tucker’s suggestions, wasn’t Libor being monitored? Therefore Mr Tucker should have quite quickly cottoned on to what was happening and asked Mr Diamond to stop doing it – as I understand this fiddling went on for years, how long would it take to put two and two together? Or is that too simple a thought?
It seems everyone who was anyone – and a lot who weren’t anyone – knew that something was seriously amiss with LIBOR setting. Blimey, news of these concerns was reported in the WSJ (but not by the BBC apparently) in August 2008. Forget about what was and wasn’t known by our regulators, why wasn’t the BBC front and centre with those concerns. Indeed, where was the Financial Times?
As a fairly regular reader of the FT then (but not now) I don’t recall any mention in the FT of such concerns: certainly, if there was mention it was not exactly headline stuff. Could it possibly be that both the BBC and the FT (the Guardian on pink paper – and failing financially in the same way) were determined to keep the Brown wunderkint/Labour “no boom and bust”/it’s all the fault of the Americans legends going?
The fiddling leading up to the Tucker conversation with Diamond was not by Barclays – they were reporrting the ACTUAL rates they were having to pay to borrow. The fiddling was by other banks pretending their borrowing rates were low.
Tucker is desperate to succeed Mervyn King at the BOE. He’s not going to say anything that will blot his copybook. As he wasn’t on oath when answering questions before the Select Committee, there was no incentive to be honest and open. In fact, given his ambition, Tucker has more incentive to dissemble.
What a contrast with the BBC’s endless speculation and innuendo when the Leveson inquiry was in full flow. Their efforts to implicate Cameron in the voicemail hacking (example the ‘spider’s web’ graphic heading an article on the BBC website) was partisan tabloid journalism of the worst kind. In contrast, their readiness to accept the word of a B of E deputy governor who might, just might, be trying to salvage what last chance he has of getting the head honcho’s job, is simply jaw-dropping.
Of course, had all this happened on a Tory government’s watch, we know darned well that daily, for the duration of the enquiry, we would have heard endless variations on the theme of ‘Is it really possible that the government, specifically the Treasury and the City Minister, were unaware of what was going on?’ – calling in such luminaries as Alastair Darling, Liam Byrne and Jabber the Prescott to add yet more bias – sorry, weight – to their theme.
Come on, Cameron, show some balls and sort out this festering heap of leftist, Labour-supporting, anti-democratic shite.
I regret to announce that Slick Cam the U-Turning Man does not have any of the said metaphorical spherical objects mentioned in your post. His lack of such units of courage is endangering the country and will without any doubt loose him the next election. C’est la vie.
‘Spherical units of courage’ – priceless!
It has been repeatedly confirmed that the Bank of Eng;land and the FSA both knew a good while beforehand – it is actually minuted at a big meeting – that some banks were not reporting LIBOR correctly. Barclays made the mistake of reporting what they were actually having to pay for money, that is why they were usually in the top rates. Other banks were under-reporting – and at the critical time they were reporting LIBOR rates when no bank in the whole world would lend to them.
It is Tucker who is the villain here, plus the FSA – for total failure of regulation, even when tipped off that there were serious problems. And behind them lies Brown and Balls – who screwed up the whole regulatory system for the City.
Paul Tucker was not telling the truth yesterday. His body language and the long hesitations over questions whilst he struggled to find the words to use and hide the truth were plain to see. These enquiries are a waste of time, they have no teeth.
There should be a police investigation, people should be interviewed hard and the paperwork trail looked at intensively. If there is evidence it should be sent to the CPS and if correct to do so people should be charged and then tried in a criminal court. If guilty they must be sent to prison. No one should be above the law and especially ministers or bankers, past or present.
This banking scandal and the one before, when the banks collapsed, are surely more important than listening to other people’s mobile answer-phone messages, these are matters of critical national importance that have brought the country to its knees. These high and mighty politicians and bankers can live through a bit of bad publicity; it has no long term problems for them, they should be put before a proper judge and jury.
The problem is that the top policemen are now politicians and will not act until the men in power tell them to do so and they will not do so because they are implicated.
I certainly agree that Tucker appeared very shifty yesterday. I wouldn’t trust his answers.
Connect the dots. BBC claims some stupid Tory bint who chairs the Treasury Select Committee says Osborne should aplogise to Balls (or she was probably tricked into answering a journalists question in order to set up Osborne), while quoting Hague saying he has nothing to apologise for. You would be forgiven for thinking our State Broadcaster had a dog in the fight.
They then tell us that the BoE was in daily contact with some or all banks over libor, yet no one in government knew or remembers anything. Complete amnesia. The Blair defence. No idea, we were only in charge for 13 years, but we knew nothing about anything.
“No idea, we were only in charge for 13 years, but we knew nothing about anything. ”
Which explains the state of the economy, defence, the health service and everything from local government to fishing….
“Labour knowing nothing about anything” is an accurate analysis of their disastrous 13 years in power.
Well said. Join the dots indeed.
The amount of noise and concern from both within the Bank, Regulator and Government at the time, make Tucker’s denials quite implausable. And of course the ‘worlds most trusted broadcaster’ immediately suffers a failure of the sceptiscism that it employed so potently at earlier committee hearings and at Leveson.
And yes! Wayne, I saw some of that body language also, particularly immediately after the denials of ‘leaning on Barclays’, I would like to see it again to test my sense of what I was seeing…but the BBC’s edit ends so abruptly, it’s not possible to do this.
I saw the evidence by both Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker.
I thought that Tucker was evasive, covering his ass. Ther Select Committee I hope he never gets near the Governor’s job.
I thought Diamond was a far better bloke. Even when being insulted to his face by Labour hacks. But he is the scapegoat in all this,
I agree with you about Tucker but cannot see how a couple of hours questioning and a pay-off of 20 million plus after many years of tens of millions p.a. salary can be seen as Diamond being a scape goat. At the moment there are no other issues for Diamond to worry about, there are no criminal charges and he will return to the USA to live in glorious retirement. May I humbly request that I take his place as a scape goat and suffer accordingly?
Tucker however should be sent back to being a bank counter clerk, after some seminars in customer service and lessons on how to look people in the eye.
Diamond has relinquished the £20 million payoff. The money he earned earlier was payment by results because he led Barclays into the big league globally. And Barclays avoided any need for a taxpayer bailout.
“The real Balls-up in the British economy”
By Brendan O’Neill.
http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/12617/
‘It is a strange ‘neoliberal era’ in which state expenditure rises from £103.9 billion to £703.4 billion. That is what happened in Britain between 1980 and 2012. If Britain really had experienced a period of unleashed free-market fundamentalism from the Thatcher era onwards, you would expect that the percentage of its gross domestic product that went on state expenditure would decline’.
What a clear-eyed observation. One for the anti-Thatcher, state education/BBC-brainwashed whingebags to mull over.
Tucker isn’t going to ‘incriminate’ himself by admitting Labour fixed the rate…because he is then culpable as anyone.
So let’s see the emails, phone records, texts and letters…..and let’s not merely rely on the word of Mr Tucker.
After all it was ‘common knowledge the Libor rate was being fixed by other banks….if this was illegal then the question shold be what did Labour do about it…obviously nothing……and if nothing…why not…and who?
” . . then the question shold be what did Labour do about it…obviously nothing……and if nothing…why not…and who?”
I hope you’re not suggesting that journalists employed by the BBC (whose self-described impartiality and excellence is the “envy of the world”) should ask such questions especially when the answers might make its political party of choice look bad.
You’ll be wondering next why no-one employed at the BBC explains how “cutz” can result in an an increase in aggregate state expenditure and an increase in government borrowing, not to mention how £300bn of money creation has failed to translate into commercial lending. Clue: the money’s being used to prop up government borrowing and . . . er . . . the banks happen to be bust and, knowing this about themselves, refuse to lend to other banks let alone SMEs.
BTW this explanation of the banks’ lending paralysis is, IMHO, pretty obvious but Stephanie is either too diplomatic to say so or, rather, damns the banks for not lending when they are sitting on “£500bn of idle liquidity”. F*ck me! How often must it be repeated that until the banks’ crap assets are fully recognised and written off – and that’s all the banks and all the crap “assets” – our banks will hold on to those “idle” assets and replicate the zombie behaviour of the banks in Japan; another £50bn or £500bn QE won’t make any difference although, in the end, unless QE is unwound/reversed (as if!) it’ll translate into hyperinflation.
BTW there might be somewhere on the BBC website (I can’t be bothered to use the BBC’s rubbish search engine to explore its archives) some kind of reference to, if not explanation of, these phenomena but you’ll rarely if ever hear (or see) anything but cutz cutz cutz on the broadcasting channels . . and, if you don’t believe the journalists, here’s Ed Balls to explain the government’s failures further.
Excellent piece by Jeremy Warner on this very topic…..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/9387910/A-turkey-shoot-that-brings-little-good.html
Had any of us even heard of Andrea Leadsome before her soundbite on The World Tonight?…yet, according to the BBC: she turns out to be a leading Tory and a critic of the Chancellor…verily a Heseltine then!
As for the likes of Humphrys sniffing round the laundry basket to see if anything is worth displaying….didn`t realise that Syria was the side salad ,when all Hague was there for was to provide the 9am soundbite…Hague calls for George to `fess up to Ed…he`s gor feelings, you know!
In a nutshell-the BBCs job is to get bitchfest and mud-wrestling soundbites to feed its own warped agendas…which all end up in voting Labour back into power.
How else do such slimy shits get jobs for life…unless their pals in Labour provide them?
When Balls says sorry for what he did to this country with his Godawful fellow travellers-THEN I`ll listen…until then, Nadine Dorries is only one “top Tory” due a few apologies…howsabout THAT then Humph, you partial prat!
Judging by her questions to Bob Diamond at the Select Committee, she seems bitter and twisted, aiming at scoring points. She claims to have been a “banker” – but successful City people seldom go into Tory politics these days.
Well said. It is not Osborne that needs to apologise to Balls, it is for Balls to apologise to the British people for screwing up our economy while he and his Master Brown were in charge. Can not the BBC trick some dopey Labour MP into saying it? Oh I forgot, it only works for one side. Helen Boden, you are a worthless shower of piss, at £350,000 a year.
Glorious btake-down of BBC favourite economist Paul Krugman – and everyone else such as Labour Ministers who promoted a disastrous credit bubble – and who still want to repeat the error of increasing public spending Starts a bit after 35 minutes in, then kicks off again at 1hour.09minutes :
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/10/video-the-ultimate-krugman-takedown/
Balls by name, Balls by nature.
Labour not only says it knows ’nuffink about anyfink Guv’ they airbrush Labour’s 13 years in power and go straight back to Thatcher of 30 years ago. The blantantly partisan and totally cringemaking Panorama programme was proof that the BBC is firmly in the pocket of the Labour party and is intending to airbrush them out of existence on the airwaves as well, prefering to interview Shadow MP’s instead of the Government.
I am beginning to think we live in Orwell’s la la land and have morphed in communism.