....and there was me thinking this country was broke....

[localzuk]

I don't care what happend in 1976, I care what happens now - and we keep getting informed we have no money for our OWN country but we continue to give to the IMF who then give it a country [ Greece ] who fiddled their books to get into Europe - sort of wants me to stick Cameron's Big Society up where the sun does no shine.

 

Why not move out of the UK then, you obviously hate it here Mattx. Do you just ignore all the actual facts of the situation and carry on with your own deluded view of the world? Or do you listen to the facts and dismiss them as they don't fit your view? Either way - facts are facts. Institutions in the various poorly performing countries in the EU owe the UK a massive amount of money, and if they are allowed to fail, the current measures of austerity will be positively lovely compared to what will need to be implemented.

 

EDIT: Not to mention, you seem to hate the Tories, but who would you prefer was in power? Labour, the party that got us into this mess in the first place? Lib Dems, the party who want us in the EU?

Edited April 21, 2012 by localzuk

[bodminman]

Te crux of the matter really is that countries were let into the euro that didn't meet the right criteria. Why? I haven't a clue! The likes of Greece and Italy with the internal politics and outright corruption should never have been allowed in.

 

If the euro didn't exist then some of the failing countries would still most likely need some sort of help but I think the issues would have been more palatable and easier to manage.

 

Other countries have seen property, energy supplies and food prices go through the roof since converting to the euro and yet their wages etc have remained pretty static. Greece will eventually fail and leave the eur and accepting this now and helping them revert back to the drachma would probably the best remedy for Greece.

 

I remember Greece before the euro and as a tourist you could eat and drink like a lord for next to nothing. Now I would pay almost the same for a meal and a few drinks as I would back here in blighty. The supermarkets used to be cheap there too. Now they're very expensive and I'm not just saying this from my point of view as I also asked various locals when I was there last year. They all said that the Greek economy was far healthier prior to joining the euro and that the country should never have joined it!

 

The wife is half Italian and when we get on the webcam to those in Italy they say the same. Putting food on the table, running the car and various other expenses have gone through the roof yet wages have only gone up slightly. Some of the Italian mob live in Verona an run businesses and they say that it is now so expensive that they have noticed a sever decline in footfall in there cafe/shop.

 

The euro is a shambles.

[bodminman]

Why not move out of the UK then, you obviously hate it here Mattx. Do you just ignore all the actual facts of the situation and carry on with your own deluded view of the world? Or do you listen to the facts and dismiss them as they don't fit your view? Either way - facts are facts. Institutions in the various poorly performing countries in the EU owe the UK a massive amount of money, and if they are allowed to fail, the current measures of austerity will be positively lovely compared to what will need to be implemented.

 

EDIT: Not to mention, you seem to hate the Tories, but who would you prefer was in power? Labour, the party that got us into this mess in the first place? Lib Dems, the party who want us in the EU?

 

LOL

 

I love this country and to be honest europe too. I just fail to see the point of ever having the euro in the first place and think it was just something to give the Germans some sort of power trip again!

[localzuk]

A lot of what you're saying is basically just guess work though - there are economists on both sides of the argument saying that the other side is wrong. The only thing we can really say right now is that countries need help basically.

 

And the cost of living going up in countries is not necessarily down to the Euro. The UK has had a massive increase in the cost of living, and we're not part of the Euro. Instead it is down to oil prices, and market instability as an effect of the economic crisis brought about by Bush and Blair/Brown (ie. the sub prime mortgage issue in the USA and similar over here).

[mattx]

Why not move out of the UK then, you obviously hate it here Mattx. Do you just ignore all the actual facts of the situation and carry on with your own deluded view of the world? Or do you listen to the facts and dismiss them as they don't fit your view? Either way - facts are facts. Institutions in the various poorly performing countries in the EU owe the UK a massive amount of money, and if they are allowed to fail, the current measures of austerity will be positively lovely compared to what will need to be implemented.

 

EDIT: Not to mention, you seem to hate the Tories, but who would you prefer was in power? Labour, the party that got us into this mess in the first place? Lib Dems, the party who want us in the EU?

 

Oh dear, with your constant rant of history you have actually forgotton it was Thatcher and Reagan that started this with the decentralization of the banks. See, you have selected to ignore those facts [ you so love ] but for that I forgive you as would not remember that being so young and naive. Oh and btw - that fact, is a fact.

Who would I like to see in power ? That's easy to answer, me of course.

[localzuk]

LOL

 

I love this country and to be honest europe too. I just fail to see the point of ever having the euro in the first place and think it was just something to give the Germans some sort of power trip again!

 

The idea of the Euro is sound - the implementation has been awful. Without truely centralised fiscal policy (like the USA has), it is never going to be a stable currency.

[localzuk]

Oh dear, with your constant rant of history you have actually forgotton it was Thatcher and Reagan that started this with the decentralization of the banks. See, you have selected to ignore those facts [ you so love ] but for that I forgive you as would not remember that being so young and naive. Oh and btw - that fact, is a fact.

Who would I like to see in power ? That's easy to answer, me of course.

 

So, what would you have preferred with the banks? I am not ignoring those 'facts', i'm more thinking they're no longer relevant.

 

And you in power, good god...

[bodminman]

A lot of what you're saying is basically just guess work though - there are economists on both sides of the argument saying that the other side is wrong. The only thing we can really say right now is that countries need help basically.

 

And the cost of living going up in countries is not necessarily down to the Euro. The UK has had a massive increase in the cost of living, and we're not part of the Euro. Instead it is down to oil prices, and market instability as an effect of the economic crisis brought about by Bush and Blair/Brown (ie. the sub prime mortgage issue in the USA and similar over here).

 

I'm just going to agree to disagree here. But I will say that the levels of inflation in certain countries have far exceeded what we have experienced in the last 10 years or so.

Edited April 21, 2012 by bodminman

[mattx]

So, what would you have preferred with the banks? I am not ignoring those 'facts', i'm more thinking they're no longer relevant.

 

And you in power, good god...

 

To be honest I'm not qualified to really answer that question, all I do know is the current system we have is clearly NOT working however, we keep pumping money into a black whole. And with me in power you would be in safe hands. 3 Day week, pubs open all day, VAT to be scrapped, free petrol / fuel for all and a complete blanket ban on ALL ICT in schools.

[bodminman]

?... with me in power you would be in safe hands. 3 Day week, pubs open all day, VAT to be scrapped, free petrol / fuel for all and a complete blanket ban on ALL ICT in schools.

 

if Carlsberg were to run your country . . . .

[sted]

So, what would you have preferred with the banks? I am not ignoring those 'facts', i'm more thinking they're no longer relevant.

 

And you in power, good god...

 

in an ideal world ALL banks do is take in money from customers (savers) and lent to customers. that is the only useful function of a bank the rest is moving non existent paper money with no real worth around. If you are diligent about who you lend to it should be a self sustaining business with little chance of overall failure (yes some debts will go bad but not enough to kill the system). If they must do the other stuff then do it as a 100% separate company that if it goes bust is no big deal as nothing it owes is real

[localzuk]

To the anonymous repper who left "I think you'll find Labour were left with the previous TORY mess to sort out!"

 

You may wish to check your history - in 1997, the UK budget was basically balanced. The Blair government took this balance, turned it into a surplus for a couple of years, and then turned it into a massive deficit (as in £152bn deficit by the time they hit 2009).

 

in an ideal world ALL banks do is take in money from customers (savers) and lent to customers. that is the only useful function of a bank the rest is moving non existent paper money with no real worth around. If you are diligent about who you lend to it should be a self sustaining business with little chance of overall failure (yes some debts will go bad but not enough to kill the system). If they must do the other stuff then do it as a 100% separate company that if it goes bust is no big deal as nothing it owes is real

 

How would that work with pension funds? Or savings accounts?

[mattx]

To the anonymous repper who left "I think you'll find Labour were left with the previous TORY mess to sort out!"

 

You may wish to check your history - in 1997, the UK budget was basically balanced. The Blair government took this balance, turned it into a surplus for a couple of years, and then turned it into a massive deficit (as in £152bn deficit by the time they hit 2009).

 

 

How would that work with pension funds? Or savings accounts?

 

Correction - the banks / bankers / greedy top executives turned it into a massive deficit. The governments were FORCED to bail them out [ as the banks knew they would ]

 

You now have a government who are clearly in bed with the bankers / top executives [ reduced top tax rates, selling off part of system we bailed out for song ] whilst in the process are making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Nothing different from any other Tory government - people are just too blind to see it. They think they are part of the Tory elite but really are just deluding themselves.

 

Labour are no better as the proper Labour party does not exist anymore - it's been taken over by Torys that have a touch of self doubt.

Edited April 22, 2012 by mattx

[SYNACK]

How would that work with pension funds? Or savings accounts?

 

It would just be going back to the fundimentals of banking before the imaginary money became more important than the real stuff. Savings make up the asset side of the balence sheet and loans are borrowed from that asset. The loan has interest charged and a portion of this interest goes to the bank, another portion goes back to the saver as interest.

 

The pention fund would just be another saver in this schenario. The problems show up when loans are not properly secured and many loans are taken out with one funding another.

 

Money markets now are just insane with people making up ways to 'create wealth' with very little actual backing in the real world. Unfourtunatly these oppertunities are only open to a few who get money from this system very easily while everyone else slaves away all their lives to make the real money.

[GrumbleDook]

IIRC, and happy to be corrected, this virtual pot of money was already allocated as part of programmes such as this and would not have been used for anything else. It hasn't actually been physically handed over to anyone or even borrowed yet (if required on a low rate loan to be handed over to gain a higher rate payback) so this is a lot of hot air about the promise of imaginary funds which has been done to give people more confidence that everything should work out ok as long as people trust one another.

 

Perhaps this is just over-simplifying it ...

 

And if we want to go back to were it started ... we have to look back further than the last few Govts ... we need to go back to the 18th century and the growth due to industrialisation. The removal of cheap foreign labour (slavery) and re-institution of cheap home labour was then moved off-shore again with the investment in India and other colonial areas. When then hit the wars (always costly) and the loss of home labour again, followed by growth, then loss, then growth but with the loss of cheap foreign labour (as we became the Commonwealth and not the empire!) and whilst we had growth after WWII it was from a bad position to start with. When you then add in the welfare state (which was pretty much the only option and seriously needed) it puts a strain on any economy and basically forces the economy to always grow to be able to cover it. If the economy dips, or other economies we rely on dip (i.e. they are the investors or buyers from our economy) then we rack up the debt at a faster rate.

 

Again, over-simplification and this is a short summary but the economists out there will argue long and hard about which key points in the above timeline are the true turning points for good or bad. And then politicians will use whichever points those experts find and twist them to argue a particular solution to fix things!

 

Except there is disagreement about what 'fix' actually means. For some it means going back to the boom time of the 80s, for others the near balance of mid 90s, for some the hope of early 00s but others want to go back to 50s and 60s, which is not going to work as people were used to austerity then and we had considerable manufacturing in the UK.

 

I don't know what the fix is ... but I am cynical enough to know that no matter what any political party or interest group wants there will be losers ... and I believe that the pain is probably going to have to be spread about ... and so we get onto whether it is spread evenly and can you define evenly. Hit the rich too hard and they will move out of UK and it hit us with investing elsewhere (resulting in lost jobs and no money for growth), hit the working class and we risk them losing jobs meaning less taxes in and more money out to help them, hit the poor (i.e. those below the line and really needing help to get them back into the system) and you commit millions to poverty and misery where they have no control and no chance of getting out meaning more of a drain on resources ... or you hit the middle-classes resulting in a reduction of the largest group with ready cash to pay for services, extras, niceties, gadgets, and all the other stuff which is likely to prop up a good portion of the UK economy.

 

Hey ... I'm just glad it is not my job to try to get it all working ... I can sit back and try to make my way in the world knowing that because of Local Govt freezes, increase in fuel costs, lack of local investment and cuts in services, I can no longer put into a private pension, my savings are seriously cut (and weren't earning anything anyway) and when we finally adopt there are no rewards or benefits for those who are good and active parents. My pain (if you could call it that) will be nothing compared to that experienced by others ...

[Flatpackhamster]

You are being far too 'black and white' about it. Whether or not the Euro survives, the economies of failing countries will still need investment in the form of loans, debt write-offs and other such things. The UK is stood to lose a *lot* of money if Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal simply collapse - they owe institutions in the UK a lot. By us underwriting loans to them, they will basically keep those countries afloat, and allow them to trade, thereby increasing the potential that they won't default on the massive amount they owe our banks.

 

So if we don't keep giving them money, they won't be able to service the debts they owe us?

 

Also, the money being lent isn't 'our money' as such, it is money that is borrowed using our AAA rating, and therefore has very low yields. We pay interest on this debt, yes, but at a much lower rate than the countries it eventually ends up in would be able to get. To get the money, they have to agree austerity measures and fix their broken economies.

 

They can't fix their broken economies while being inside the Eurozone. That's the whole point.

 

The money is not simply to shore up the Euro, it is to ensure we don't end up going bust because of a knock on effect! That is what is short sighted.

 

Your theory is fine so long as the Eurozone can be preserved. That requires several things to happen. First, southern European countries have to undergo a decade of spending cuts. Second, northern European countries have to agree to send their taxes south. Finally, all Eurozone countries have to hand more power to the EU.

 

Do you think that's likely?

[Flatpackhamster]

Correction - the banks / bankers / greedy top executives turned it into a massive deficit.

 

If the only place you get your news from is the Guardian and the Morning Star, you might believe such a ridiculous claim. However, Labour ran a deficit from 2001 to 2010. Did the 'evuhl banksters' need bailing out in 2001? No. If it would help I can provide you with the exact figures for Labour's overspend for ten years.

 

The governments were FORCED to bail them out [ as the banks knew they would ]

 

Balderdash. Brown bailed out the banks because they were in Labour areas. The banks which needed bailing out were Royal Bank of Scotland, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and Northern Rock. All three provided large numbers of jobs in Labour constituencies.

 

If Northern Rock had been called Southern Rock and based in Tunbridge Wells Brown would have let it go bust.

 

You now have a government who are clearly in bed with the bankers / top executives [ reduced top tax rates, selling off part of system we bailed out for song ] whilst in the process are making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Nothing different from any other Tory government - people are just too blind to see it. They think they are part of the Tory elite but really are just deluding themselves.

 

Labour are no better as the proper Labour party does not exist anymore - it's been taken over by Torys that have a touch of self doubt.

 

This class war BS died a death when Thatcher shoved a fat wooden stake through the rancid heart of the Trotskyite unions. It can't be revived.

[mthomas08]

:-)

 

Bless you too my child.....

 

Thumbs Up. Totally agree. It may not be their fault why we are here in the first place (I Blame the last 20 years of government policies) but it is now down to the government of today to help the problem not ignore it. AKA like the tax change for rich people and if I remember rightly according to them it only brings in 1Billion (When it was all being announced) yet another Billion gone which probably helped Davids friends more than any one else....

 

Nothing at all has changed, working class are still beng ripped apart, I wish I could be honest and tell the kids right now the truth of earning a career. That out of all those who actually get good jobs and careers only a small % of you will actually have money to do fancy holidays every year, nice house, nice car and actually be well off.

[localzuk]

So if we don't keep giving them money, they won't be able to service the debts they owe us?

 

In an overly simplified manner, yes. It will extend their debt over a longer period basically, meaning they can carry on servicing their short term debts, and pay them off over a longer term with more favourable rates, whilst allowing their economies to recover.

 

They can't fix their broken economies while being inside the Eurozone. That's the whole point.

 

That's the contentious point - many economists disagree with that. Sure, they're mostly German and French economists but still...

 

Your theory is fine so long as the Eurozone can be preserved. That requires several things to happen. First, southern European countries have to undergo a decade of spending cuts. Second, northern European countries have to agree to send their taxes south. Finally, all Eurozone countries have to hand more power to the EU.

 

Do you think that's likely?

 

Well, some countries would sign up to that, but others wouldn't. Over time, it could probably be achieved, but it would take a very long time. Realistically though, no it isn't likely.

[CHR1S]

Why don't we just print more money?

[localzuk]

Why don't we just print more money?

 

No need! Just add an extra zero to the end of the BoE's balance sheet. Job done.

[CHR1S]

Your wealth is only as good as your allocation of other countries debts.

 

The house of cards will fall, and we will never be see our digital money again! Now try and laff at those stupid cash for gold adverts on TV all the time!!

[localzuk]

I reckon the solution will come from that new space mining venture - they'll mine loads of precious metals, and we'll be able to switch the world's economies back to being backed up by gold or something!

[CHR1S]

I reckon the solution will come from that new space mining venture - they'll mine loads of precious metals, and we'll be able to switch the world's economies back to being backed up by gold or something!

 

Is this real or something you just made up? Space Mining?

[mthomas08]

Is this real or something you just made up? Space Mining?

 

Its real.

 

Asteroid mining could start this decade | TG Daily

 

I just saw it my self.