Debt
Thanks to Liberal Demolition for this:
"During yesterday’s budget George Osborne continued to peddle the myth that the UK economy is in an extraordinary mess with an extraordinary level of debt.
Today he told the Evening Standard that “having inherited from Labour the largest budget deficit in Europe bar Ireland, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has been forced to take drastic action”.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23848140-george-osborne-we-had-to-deal-with-the-problem.do
The reality is that as a result of the prudent early decisions of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown we entered the recession with the second lowest level of debt of any of the G7 countries. One of Labour’s key decisions was to use the £20 billion plus windfall from the G3 auction (the mobile phone spectrum) for debt repayments.
The OECD figures for 2010 show that the UK’s general government net financial liabilities as a percentage of GDP was 53.5%. Lower than the Euro zone average of 59.5%.
Other EU countries which have higher levels of debt are:
Italy – 104.1%
Greece – 97.8%
Belgium – 83.3%
Portugal – 64.3%
Hungary – 60.1%
France – 57.2%
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/51/2483816.xls
Labour put the country on a steady footing to weather the recession. Because of this the budget deficit could have been reduced at a steady pace, without the risk to future growth and without the raid on the most vulnerable in our society. Instead the Coalition has opted to slash public services and hike up taxes in a direct attack on hard working families in this country."
posted by Luke Akehurst at 3:50 pm
5 Comments:
Luke, this is bullshit. Gordon cooked the books and Enron'd the government finances. Pension obligations, PFI all off the books.
4:10 pm, June 23, 2010
Come off it Luke!
Not everyone is 'that' financially illiterate.
As Guido points out - what about all the crap that's been kept "off the books" by Labour? That all has to be paid for now, doesn't it Luke.
4:31 pm, June 23, 2010
ONe should compare also the level of debt that the UK was bearing when it entered the recession in the early 1990's (which, from memory was about 26%) and the level at which we entered this last recession - and note that debt peaked after the early recession in the 90's at about the level at which we entered this last recession.
The reality is that the Labour Government spent more than it received in taxes in every year after 2000 - and that if you spend more in the boom years than you receive in taxes you are not saving for the lean years that almost inevitably follow. The asset price bubble (a boom) was hidden by the shenanigans Gordon Brown undertook with the measure for trend growth rates - which he was warned him not to do - he conveniently hid the inflationary effect of the asset price bubble by converting the mearure of inflation from RPI to CPI (which excludes the cost of housing - and the result was that we spent too long with interest rates too low which fed the asset price boom even more.
In addition, we ended up with tax receipts appearing to support a massive increase in expenditure, when in fact some of those receipts were down to an asset price bubble - and even then the Government did not think to save money, rather it thought it best to spend and spend some more.
The idea that the debt is not a problem is absurd - the idea that the deficit isn't is foolish in the extreme.
Of course, some of this is hindsight talking (although you will find people who predicted some of the difficulties) - but unless we analyse what has gone wrong we will never understand how to prevent it from happending again!
5:24 pm, June 23, 2010
First time I've agreed with you EVER Luke,
The 'deficit' is being used as a smokescreen for neo-liberal Cameron's assault on the welfare state.
you should check out my blog. I've been making this point for ages!
8:56 pm, June 23, 2010
"Labour put the country on a steady footing to weather the recession."
Lol, that one would do Pravda proud!
8:15 pm, June 29, 2010
Post a Comment
<< Home