St Gordon, The Prince Of Darkness And The Cycle of Doom
Yes I know I said I wouldn’t blog about economics again, but I swear I was asked to. But it’s the very last time. No I really mean it. Honest, guv.
I’m sitting here on the sofa, covered by a mountain of financial articles and my laptop. I am furious. That NY Times article on Gordon Brown by Paul Krugman really got to me, and I can guarantee that I’m not alone in my opinion.
This is Week One of The Brave New World. How are we all feeling? Happy? Relieved? Now that all the countries followed St Gordon’s lead, our banks have been nationalised, the world has been saved from certain destruction, and we can all just forget about the last ghastly year and go back to our nice, comfy little happy place of borrowing and spending and buying houses. All hail Mr Brown! Such swift determined action! Such incredible leadership! Surely he deserves a medal.
The very same Gordon Brown was nearly ousted as Prime Minster last month for being a dithering, weak leader. He narrowly avoided being kicked out by his own cabinet, and it seemed certain that his career was over. The financial debacle followed a year of continuous poor judgement on practically everything: whether to hold a general election, changing fiscal rules to suit his own statistics, stealing policies from other political parties and claiming them as his own (he does this constantly) and failure to help the British people in times of dire need and natural disaster. He has been hailed as the worst PM the UK has had. Ever. When dear Gordon was Chancellor of the Exchequer he borrowed and spent so much that the national debt accelerated to over £1.35 trillion, and through his love of debt, he encouraged ordinary people to do the same. Borrow and spend! Support your national economy! Gordon was adopting the same philosophy as Greenspan, only worse. The British racked up so much debt on credit cards and loans that the total borrowed exceeded the entire value of the economy. Up until recently the economic situation had become so bad and the public hated Gordon so much that he was pretty much finished.
So what happened? Considering St Gordon nearly lost his job a month ago, that’s one heck of a turnaround. The truth is that Gordon may be a weak leader, but he’s a great schemer. In essence he is Machiavelli, a devious political plotter. The lightening fast image change has been largely due to one man: Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair’s best friend and the arch-enemy of Gordon Brown. Nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness” in the UK, the EU trade commissioner was twice forced to resign from Tony Blair's cabinet under scandalous circumstances, and the fallout was so severe that less than two months ago Mandelson was heard to drip venom from every pore when speaking about his nemesis. Despite their differences, Gordon was clever enough and desperate enough to realize that he was in dire need of a quick solution to the banking collapse, and he decided to end the feud with his enemy and rehire him. The price? £1m and a peerage. Genius doesn’t come cheap nowadays.
The new Lord Mandelson has unrivalled experience in global trade, incredible contacts and is well known as someone who gets things done fast. His reputation is well deserved because he’s certainly reinvented Gordon as the consummate leader in less than three weeks. Now that’s fast work! IMO, Gordon owes his nemesis a heck of a lot more than £1m.
So is the financial crisis now at an end? In one sense, yes. St Gordon will no longer let banks go bust, so the banking crisis is pretty much over I think. But for the rest of us ordinary mortals, the price of everything continues to rise, our taxes are widely predicted to increase (gotta pay for those banks somehow) and we are already in recession. Contrary to popular belief, those of our banks which were nationalized earlier this year have not relaxed their lending criteria as they were told to, there are still less mortgages available than ever, and food, fuel and energy costs continue to rise exponentially. Think more debt, more interest, more repayments and more companies going bust. And this is just the beginning.
If the markets had been allowed to do their job and simply crash then everyone would have saved more, spent less and slowly paid off their debts. The markets would then have stagnated for a while and reset themselves, and living standards would have adjusted to a new lower level. Capitalism would have continued as normal.
However this won’t happen now. Because the normal rules of the markets have been blocked, investing will now be increasingly difficult and it is unclear what will happen to the normal market cycle. By meddling with the markets, by succumbing to a fear of another depression and hiking up our national debts, all St Gordon has done is perpetuate the very same problems that caused the crisis in the first place. There is now simply too much debt, and no matter how much new money is printed and injected into the economy, all that will happen is that the debt pile will be devalued in real terms as the economy grows through inflation.
Ultimately this bold new rescue plan will only make matters much worse. In the UK, the latest £37 billion part nationalisation of the leading banks will push public sector debt above 100 per cent of GDP for the first time in half a century. Inflation rose to 5.2% today.
Britain is not saving the world. It is ruining it.
May our children’s children forgive us.
Images are of Iveta. She's a lot better looking than Gordon. (You can trust me on this.)
I’m sitting here on the sofa, covered by a mountain of financial articles and my laptop. I am furious. That NY Times article on Gordon Brown by Paul Krugman really got to me, and I can guarantee that I’m not alone in my opinion.
This is Week One of The Brave New World. How are we all feeling? Happy? Relieved? Now that all the countries followed St Gordon’s lead, our banks have been nationalised, the world has been saved from certain destruction, and we can all just forget about the last ghastly year and go back to our nice, comfy little happy place of borrowing and spending and buying houses. All hail Mr Brown! Such swift determined action! Such incredible leadership! Surely he deserves a medal.
The very same Gordon Brown was nearly ousted as Prime Minster last month for being a dithering, weak leader. He narrowly avoided being kicked out by his own cabinet, and it seemed certain that his career was over. The financial debacle followed a year of continuous poor judgement on practically everything: whether to hold a general election, changing fiscal rules to suit his own statistics, stealing policies from other political parties and claiming them as his own (he does this constantly) and failure to help the British people in times of dire need and natural disaster. He has been hailed as the worst PM the UK has had. Ever. When dear Gordon was Chancellor of the Exchequer he borrowed and spent so much that the national debt accelerated to over £1.35 trillion, and through his love of debt, he encouraged ordinary people to do the same. Borrow and spend! Support your national economy! Gordon was adopting the same philosophy as Greenspan, only worse. The British racked up so much debt on credit cards and loans that the total borrowed exceeded the entire value of the economy. Up until recently the economic situation had become so bad and the public hated Gordon so much that he was pretty much finished.
So what happened? Considering St Gordon nearly lost his job a month ago, that’s one heck of a turnaround. The truth is that Gordon may be a weak leader, but he’s a great schemer. In essence he is Machiavelli, a devious political plotter. The lightening fast image change has been largely due to one man: Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair’s best friend and the arch-enemy of Gordon Brown. Nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness” in the UK, the EU trade commissioner was twice forced to resign from Tony Blair's cabinet under scandalous circumstances, and the fallout was so severe that less than two months ago Mandelson was heard to drip venom from every pore when speaking about his nemesis. Despite their differences, Gordon was clever enough and desperate enough to realize that he was in dire need of a quick solution to the banking collapse, and he decided to end the feud with his enemy and rehire him. The price? £1m and a peerage. Genius doesn’t come cheap nowadays.
The new Lord Mandelson has unrivalled experience in global trade, incredible contacts and is well known as someone who gets things done fast. His reputation is well deserved because he’s certainly reinvented Gordon as the consummate leader in less than three weeks. Now that’s fast work! IMO, Gordon owes his nemesis a heck of a lot more than £1m.
So is the financial crisis now at an end? In one sense, yes. St Gordon will no longer let banks go bust, so the banking crisis is pretty much over I think. But for the rest of us ordinary mortals, the price of everything continues to rise, our taxes are widely predicted to increase (gotta pay for those banks somehow) and we are already in recession. Contrary to popular belief, those of our banks which were nationalized earlier this year have not relaxed their lending criteria as they were told to, there are still less mortgages available than ever, and food, fuel and energy costs continue to rise exponentially. Think more debt, more interest, more repayments and more companies going bust. And this is just the beginning.
If the markets had been allowed to do their job and simply crash then everyone would have saved more, spent less and slowly paid off their debts. The markets would then have stagnated for a while and reset themselves, and living standards would have adjusted to a new lower level. Capitalism would have continued as normal.
However this won’t happen now. Because the normal rules of the markets have been blocked, investing will now be increasingly difficult and it is unclear what will happen to the normal market cycle. By meddling with the markets, by succumbing to a fear of another depression and hiking up our national debts, all St Gordon has done is perpetuate the very same problems that caused the crisis in the first place. There is now simply too much debt, and no matter how much new money is printed and injected into the economy, all that will happen is that the debt pile will be devalued in real terms as the economy grows through inflation.
Ultimately this bold new rescue plan will only make matters much worse. In the UK, the latest £37 billion part nationalisation of the leading banks will push public sector debt above 100 per cent of GDP for the first time in half a century. Inflation rose to 5.2% today.
Britain is not saving the world. It is ruining it.
May our children’s children forgive us.
Images are of Iveta. She's a lot better looking than Gordon. (You can trust me on this.)
posted by Lin at 10:35 AM
5 Comments:
A week is a long time in politics; human greed (banks and ordinary people) is the problem and peoples reliance on the supposed value of their home as the basis of their wealth. We all knew that houses were over priced and that young people could not enter the market. We all increased our debt but regrettably many people have not felt any type of hardship or interest levels of 15% so it hurts when we hit hard times. Don’t blame Gordon Brown ( I am not a Labour supporter) blame banks and their schemes to increase your supposed wealth, buy today, get rich quick with “Buy to let” why wait and save, have a loan.
John, who is a lot poorer today than he was the other day!!!
Welcome to American style politicks. By every standard out standing in the world has plummeted along with our economy. It maybe that it was inevitably but it’s so pointless not to mention damaging. It’s our own greed that got us into this trouble and no one is going to pay for it but the children of the world in a lower standard of living. Well over seven in ten people believe that we’re on the wrong track and people are scared. Gas prices have come down but so have the shoppers in the markets, diners in our restaurant and even traffic of the roads. This is not going to be pretty or fun and both out candidates for president persist in telling us the sky is not falling. Going to be an interesting time to come. Thanks Lin for giving your view about it. I feel it is so important to have a world view that isn’t dominated by the movers and shakers that got us into this mess.
M
Count your blessings Lin. You could have to deal with "shrub", not as easy to get rid of either.........
Thanks for your thoughtful essay. It's difficult to not feel helpless in the midst of this mess. It appears as though our friends on the other side of the Atlantic are in just as big a mess as are the colonies. I have two thoughts to help me in the short term. I'm encouraging my grandchildren to learn Chinese and I'm increasing my consumption of French wine.
I'm not sure if the international investments in the banking system was or is right. But if you think about it, we were the customers. We must bare some personal responsibility.
But the real reason I wanted to comment is the extraordinary use of light and poses in the pictures. Fine art work.
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