Using Mr Osborne’s method of assessing economic loss we have already lost far more than he fears we might by belonging to the EU. (The approx. figure for losses is based on current price levels and level of GDP). Just look at the losses we can directly blame on our membership:
- Membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism forced on us by John Major, the CBI, the TUC and the Labour party. It led directly to a large recession, costing us 5% of our National Income, with losses in the years that followed.
- Membership of the Common Fisheries policy, losing us a third of our fishing output and putting us into trade deficit on fish.
- Forced premature closure of our coal fired power stations, and consequent loss of coalmines.
- Loss of heavy industry as a result of high energy prices required by EU energy regulations.
- Loss of export opportunities during Euro crisis of 2011, and over the long term thanks to slow growth in Euroland resulting from the currency scheme and its austerity policies.
There is no evidence that our growth rate increased as a result of our membership of the single market, and no favourable upward wobble in growth when they “completed” the single market in 1992 or widened it again in the years thereafter. This is not surprising as the “single market” is a set of complex and expensive rules and laws, not a proper free market. The growing complexity of EU single market measures coincides with the last decade when growth has been slower than before.
It would not be right to blame the EU on its own for the banking crash of 2008, as this also occurred in the USA. The EU version of the banking crash has however turned out to be deeper and longer lasting than the US version thanks to the ill constructed Euro.
It is right to blame the EU for the recession of 1992 when the European currency scheme swept aside any possible benefits of the single market completion that year.
May 3, 2016
Perhaps it might be right to cast some blame on the quality of MP as well? Does anyone remember the 2014 survey of 100 of them. In which 90% of the respondents thought money was created exclusively by the Royal Mint? Despite probably all of them being “graduates” and of that quite a few coming from Oxbridge too. I would demand anybody standing for Parliament passes a sort citizenship test. So like any new immigrant to the UK, they can show that they have a basic knowledge of how the state works. Without that you can only expect the country to limp from one economic disaster to another until its finally too late.
May 3, 2016
Yesterday we read 181 of the 222 places at a school were occupied by Slovaks and Roma’s. None of whom could apparently speak English. Where is this cost taken into account? Etc ed
May 4, 2016
Indeed and the majority of the parents likely to be on low pay. Thus paying little or no net tax. Certainly not enough to cover the cost of schools, police, roads, the NHS, defence and all the rest of the cost of the bloated state sector.
This is why we have still have such a huge PSBR, a shortage of housing, taxes rates endlessly increasing and yet still Osborne runs a huge PSBR.
May 3, 2016
More to the point a basic understanding not of how the state works but of how private industry and the economy works. That is the engine that drives things and that is where 80% of people work.
Instead with have a large proportion of MPs who believe in the magic money tree, greencrap energy, the national living wage controls, endless over regulation, daft employments laws, fake equality laws, an every bigger state, ever more taxation and endless other damaging lunacies.
Clearly PPE graduates and most Lawyers need to be banned they are far too over represented already and are generally incompetent green loons. Get some sensible engineers, mathematicians and physicists to sort the mess out please.
May 3, 2016
“… 90% of the respondents thought money was created exclusively by the Royal Mint?”
Coins are definitely created by the Royal Mint. The Treasury owns the Royal Mint and the Bank of England. The Treasury could instruct the Royal Mint, to mint a coin equal to the value of the entire “national debt” and then the Treasury could …. (I will let you apply a large dose of thinking; get your head around how sovereign FIAT CURRENCY systems actually work.)
May 3, 2016
Indeed the EU is an economic disaster area and has been for a long time. The ERM being perhaps the largest of the many disasters for the UK. Most of the remainers were nearly all in favour of this entirely predictable and widely predicted disaster and in favour of the EURO.
Major, who forced the country in to the ERM (as a preparation for the EURO as Chancellor) and kept us in as PM, has not even yet apologised to voters for the huge and pointless damage he inflicted on peoples lives, businesses, homes, families, the public purse and the economy. Yet the BBC still wheel him out as some sort of wise elder statesman and do not even question his many past incompetent decisions.
I suppose having left school with three O levels in History and two in English he does at least have the excuse that he just cannot help making daft decisions. What is Cameron’s excuse? He has witnesses all these past mistakes but learned nothing from them.
Above all the EU system of laws & regulations (on top and often conflicting with) all those of the UK creates a cumbersome and hugely expensive system of government. Endless jobs for parasitic lawyers, bureaucrats, EU “experts”, lobbyists and the likes that render business and government hugely uncompetitive and slow.
We must surely escape this straight jacket and return to nimble government, free trade and far fewer regulations. Why oh why did the Tories elected a leader like Cameron. Essentially a pro EU, fake green, tax borrow and waste, Libdem in all but name. Worse still one with an uncanny ability to select entirely the wrong people for promotion. Osborne with his wages controls, tax increases at every turn, his absurd sugar tax, his IHT ratting and his pension and landlord mugging being the most damaging of his choices.
May 3, 2016
Cooperation, free trade with all the world, cheap energy, cheaper imports, Cameron and Osborne gone, a far stronger more nimble economy, smaller simpler government, higher wages, lower taxes, no membership fee, freedom and democracy restored, selective high quality immigration only, no more EURO bailouts, far less pressure on housing, the NHS, schools and public services………………. what is there not to like about leave?
It is anyway our moral duty to leave and show the others the way. Democracy & freedom or serfdom and endless decline within the EU.
May 5, 2016
As what was hung on the wall in barbers’ in France in the ’60s: “Tomorrow’s shave for free” (Demain, on rase gratis).
LL, do you really believe in what you write? Fortunately, not all Brexit Conservatives are as OTT as you are.
May 3, 2016
3. Forced premature closure of our coal fired power stations, and consequent loss of coal mines.
That’s a bit rich from JR. He should know better as he was around in Government at the time, things did not exactly happen in that order.
See “Energy, the State, and the Market: British Energy Policy since 1979”, Dieter Helm, particularly
– ch.4 Thatcher and Scargill-Getting off the Labour Standard, p.67
– ch.9 Preparing for the End of British Coal-Privatization and Decline, p.176
There are limits to how one can rewrite History!
Dieter Helm, Official Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford. Member of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Energy Advisory Panel 1993-2002. Chairman of the Academic for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
One can wonder whether everything JR has been writing over these last two months is also as economical with the truth as his “cool coal comment” today.
reply There was run down of coal mining under both Labour and Conservative govts in the last century. This century we have lost What remained thanks to EU energy policies.
May 3, 2016
And that £200 billion, had it been left with the businesses and individuals, might well now be producing the country £20 billion every year in investment returns, about £600 per household. Rather than enriching people like George Soros and boosting his income.
The way to prosperity is more people working efficiently at sensible & productive jobs with fewer parasitic jobs, fewer bureaucrats, fewer regulations, fewer lawyers, fewer employment laws, fewer tax experts and far less parasitic government.
May 3, 2016
I wonder how much of it would stayed in the UK? No doubt before it headed for the BRICs it would have went done a circuitous journey via a couple of offshore sites first.
May 3, 2016
Well the chances are much of it would have stayed in the UK and much of it (even if invested abroad) would be paying investment returns to UK residents or UK businesses. At least, if kept away from the governments hands, it would have has far less chance of being wasted on green crap subsidies, HS2 or other such insanities.
May 3, 2016
And businesses and individuals left with more of their earnings to reinvest.
May 3, 2016
Lifelogic
Not under this lot. The Daily mail highlights the gap getting biggerwhen you see the failed politicians and civil servants that have all lucrative private jobs all it would seem have been given the nod by government departments. Can anyone remember the promise from CMD back in 2010 for action to stop this sort of thing?
No wonder we are in the state we are with all this going on, then add Europe to the mix and this is what we end up with. Acoba like so many quango’s are totally unfit for purpose.
When are we going to get some people in power with the bottle to actually do something about these gravy trains?
May 3, 2016
Turkeys rarely vote for Christmas.
May 3, 2016
What also is the cost (on going) of all the tax payer subsidised, pointless and intermittent wind turbines (both on and offshore) and the roof and other photo voltaic arrays? Almost none of this would have happened without the large tax payer subsidies. It is a huge mis-allocation of capital on complete economic nonsense. As is the Drax and other biofuel insanity and the electric car subsidies. It also destroys UK industry and exports whole industries.
What were Cameron’s moronic appointments in this area? Huhne, Davey and Rudd not a sensible, rational engineer or scientist to be seen. Greencrap priests the lot of them.
When (if ever) these things do work economically they will need no subsidy or tax advantages. R&D perhaps but subsidised roll out of duff technology is economic lunacy but then so is almost everything Osborne does.
May 4, 2016
Agree Lifelogic. I see 6 ministers having connections with energy companies while in office have gone on to get jobs (lucratively paid for hardly any work) in the energy sector. Something which is supposed to be illegal. Never mind, one rule for them and another for us. (Named e.g. Left out ed) It seems the worse you are at your job/government responsibilities the more the reward.
May 3, 2016
Good morning.
If you really want to know who runs the Single Market and for whose benefit, you can Google; “European roundtable of industrialists”
There is also a very good YouTube vid.
May 3, 2016
It is certainly very clear that many laws & regulations that are passed both in the EU and UK are only really passed for the benefit of certain well connected and “consultant” employing companies. Clearly against the interest of the public. The system is certainly very corrupt. All the green subsidies are a good example, the HIP packs, energy performance certificates and the endless growth in pointless traffic lights and junction “improvements”.
May 3, 2016
Well, in an article on that website:
http://www.politico.eu/article/why-europe-lags-global-innovation-modern-science-enlightenment/
Marijn Dekkers, president of the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI) and CEO of Bayer claims:
“The reflex is to first look at a new product’s risks as opposed to its benefits. This makes technological progress almost impossible.”
No doubt this is a great exaggeration and no doubt the author has a vested interest, but nonetheless it prompts me to ask this rhetorical question:
“To what extent can the removal of remaining barriers to trade compensate for the introduction of new barriers to technological progress?”
And here I turn again to TTIP, which has been billed as a huge trade deal of monumental importance, with our own Prime Minister proclaiming that it could “turbo-charge the transatlantic economy”, it would be a “landmark deal”, a “once in a generation prize”:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10124883/G8-three-Ts-trade-tax-and-transparency.html
So economically valuable that we should all vote to stay in the EU just so we can enjoy its massive benefits, which are officially projected to be … just 0.6% of our GDP, spread over a number of years, during which on the trend growth rate our GDP should be increasing by 2.5% a year anyway, in large measure thanks to technological progress, hindered by the EU.
May 3, 2016
“And here I turn again to TTIP, which has been billed as a huge trade deal of monumental importance, with our own Prime Minister proclaiming that it could “turbo-charge the transatlantic economy”, it would be a “landmark deal”, a “once in a generation prize”:
The TTIP leak of about a third of its policies has most likely killed it according to Greenpeace a day or two ago.
May 4, 2016
Monsieur Hollande seems to be suggesting the same.I’m sure it won’t lie down and die though.A bit of repackaging,a bit of arm twisting,a few threats and bungs…….
May 3, 2016
Another advantage of Brexit is that we would only have the UK government corruption costs to deal with and not both the UK and EU corruption too.
May 3, 2016
Yes, this is worth reading those links particularly the critique in Wikipedia. I wonder why JR has not made use of it as well as other prominent Brexiteers!
May 3, 2016
The EU is a contribution too far it is robbing UK citizens to pay for less productive citizens in far away countries. Indeed we practice the same as the English subsidises the rest of the countries and regions in the union that makes up the UK. However our redistribution evolved over centuries and is accepted because we have commonality that offers mutual benefits.
The same cannot be said for other states in the EU. We do not have the same commonality with them and we do not receive benefit in kind. In fact the opposite is true it is considerably to our disadvantage. Coupled with which the wealth we distribute at home we alone can decide how much, on what and where it is spent. The same cannot be said of the money we contribute to the EU we have no influence on where it is directed or very little. So little that it is as good as meaningless.
The EU is becoming ever more hungry for money and so demands more from those states who have the ability to satisfy that hunger. It is a hunger that can never be satisfied and will only became greater and it’s demands to be fed will increase. The more it increases the less there will be for ourselves we will in effect be come slaves to that hunger.
May 3, 2016
Of course the continuing trade spat with Russia costs everybody in the EU. Not to mention the costs of invasion and hold ups at Dover/Calais. Add in multiple lunches and chauffeur driven cars for MEPs. This when high debt exists!
All that for cheap holiday air fares and lower roaming charges?
May 3, 2016
Most if not all that read your blog agrees with you JR
This message has to go out to all that are sitting on the fence, yet the remain campaign is nearly all I hear from. You need more air time and take the argument to the remain with facts you can 100% back up.
We need more energy from the leave campaign.
May 3, 2016
Remaindian Dire News:-
At a Trump rally in South Bend, Indiana a few hours ago, Mr Trump spent some time condemning the procedure and essence of TTIP quoting several times “6000 pages” of negotiations. He declared when he is President he will not be making any deals, no trade deals at all with combined multiple countries citing even three countries acting together as a no-no.
He says America will ONLY make trade deals with SINGLE countries. Previously in rallies leading up to the New York Primaries days ago, which Mr Trump won decisively, he indicated he is in favour of “Nation States” and not Blocs.
Republican Primary voters will be going into the ballot in Indiana today. A victory will give him a further 30 delegates. If he wins the California Primary on June 7th as predicted,and TTIP talks break-down also predicted, the EU will not be at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal but not be in consideration at all. The UK on Brexit however would be laughing though not Mr Cameron and his Labour, Green and SNP allies. They would be, in effect, in No-Mans Land.
Even those slow of thought in the Remain Camp must realise that Brexit and Trump in power in America would be the rebirth of our country. There is still time for the Remaindians to do the right thing by our Country and change their position. Perhaps they may look at the lay of the land on June 8th to make a startling but necessary change of heart.
May 4, 2016
Just when decent people didn’t think it was possible to love Donald Trump anymore .
Can anyone remember which popularity seeking clown said the following to Parliament ?
“I think his remarks are divisive, stupid and wrong. If he came to visit our country I think he would unite us all against him.”
May 3, 2016
Once again the criticisms John highlights today ought to be put through every door ; as each day passes there is still no sign of a concentrated co-ordinated “Brexit” approach to the public ; they must have these facts in front of their noses .
From a timing point of view I believe the “remains” have shot their bolt and have no more scaremongering to reveal ; Obama turned out to be a damp squib with the opinion polls suggesting he did in fact have a negative effect . The appearance of Cameron with Union officials has made the rump of the Conservative Party feel sick and has done nothing to enhance his leadership . The public are fast making this a campaign a protest against him and other members of his cabinet .
There is no doubt that the media does have an important role in convincing and persuading voters ; we all know that the BBC is not neutral in the way it orchestrates its views and it ought to be disciplined for its actions . From now on it is the dynamics of the Brexiters that will count . We want more of the Redwoods working closely together .
May 3, 2016
Another contributor to John Redwood’s blog high lighted the BartelsmannStiftung’s analysis of the single market
https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/BSt/Publikationen/GrauePublikationen/Policy-Brief-Binnenmarkt-en_NW_02_2014.pdf
Which shows that though we have integrated our market into the single market to the same level of Germany, it is has only been worth 1% to our GDP over the 20 odd years of its implementation, some 10 Euros per head per year (Germany e450). That is it! That is the sum total of the benefit we get for giving up our independence. Barely more than half the price we pay per month for the BBC licencee fee. I wouldn’t vote to give up my country for any price, but 10 Euros? Apart from Cameron and Clegg does anybody think that is a fair price for our democracy?
May 3, 2016
Splendid article JR. You make an excellent point which I haven’t seen elsewhere.
I only wish you were in charge of the messages emanating from Vote Leave.
May 4, 2016
I only wish JR was leading his party! 🙂
No need for a referendum, just Brexit, with an orderly negotiation!
May 3, 2016
Hi John, I post you nearly every day on two of my political pages I am editor for on Facebook and also one of my own pages.. Today I have posted this piece and would you believe I have been reported on my own page and it has now been removed. The article is still flying high on the political pages and I have asked members and supporters to repost this piece to see what happens. It has certainly hit a cord with the Remain party or someone I thing if as a friend. Why have Facebook taken this down? For me you are the voice of reason in this campaign.
May 3, 2016
Sandra, well done you, for getting the message out. The beauty of the Internet is that it’s hard for the establishment to ban things completely.
JR’s article is currently second item on our Brexit news page here:
http://facts4eu.org/news.htm
May 3, 2016
When people argued “This time it will be different because of the internet” they were forgetting that the internet would not be entirely under their control.
May 3, 2016
Much as I supported her, I really do think Margaret Thatcher needs to take responsibility for the ERM, she was PM at the time we joined. If you are PM and you think a policy is wrong you either veto it or resign.
May 3, 2016
We all know, I think, who really didn’t get it.
He’s still invited onto more programme s than our host though.
May 3, 2016
Could you say how we manage round the financial passporting scheme in the event of Brexit if the others exclude us?
Reply I have done so several times on this site. There is no problem.
May 3, 2016
I do not think Leave has provided an adequate answer to this question, I hear it raised the whole time.
May 3, 2016
And silly Alistair Darling says we shall lose £250 billion of trade if we leave.
Where does he get these ridiculous figures.
May 3, 2016
He does not have to get them from anywhere as nobody can prove they are not true. People will believe him because he was a Chancellor and for a lefty he actually was not that bad a one. Like the treasury document believed because the Treasury compiled it once again cannot be proved wrong. The fact they cannot be proved right either does not matter. Brexit is going into the unknown so just keeping adding unknowns to win the case to remain in. Bound to work eventually or at least heavily influence the result.
May 3, 2016
Could this be the Alistair Darling who gave up to about £15 Billion (of tax payers money) for the Greek EURO bail out? This after the voters had already evicted him and Gordon (pension thief) Brown for total incompetence.
He just makes the figure up of course. Yet another person who has been shown to be on the wrong side of nearly every economic decision. Why do we allow the these proven wrong failures to retain their positions power. Even after they leave they later end up in the Lords and/or endlessly wheeled out by the BBC like John ERM Major, Neil Kinnock, Ken Clark, M Heseltine and the rest of them – to deliver (unquestioned) words of “wisdom” to the nation.
May 3, 2016
He wasn’t so worried about blowing potfuls of cash on RBS which remains a basket case.
Off topic but relevant- why is the government insisting employers offer pension schemes then hounding a man who sells his company, pensions included, and moves on? Either employees should look after their own money/schemes, which is far better, or the government should take care of it. To let or insist employers do this then castigate them when they lose money in a NIRP environment which the government itself created is wrong!
May 3, 2016
And forcing us to use diesel engined cars to satisfy global warming alarmists. etc. Ed
May 3, 2016
I’d like to see some itemised estimates to support the £200 billion figure. I’m not casting doubt on it, I’m just saying that I’d like to be able to refer to some sums.
However while it is well to appreciate the damage that EU membership has done to us in the past those losses are irrecoverable now, and most voters will be more interested in what will happen in the future.
Here we have the problem that successive governments have got us thoroughly entangled in the EU’s Single Market, which from the start was designed to serve political more than economic purposes by linking trade and immigration, and which was projected to have what were in reality rather minor net economic benefits and has actually achieved even less, with maybe a grand total of 1% added to our GDP thanks to its creation, despite the greatly exaggerated claims made by cryptofederalist supporters of the EU.
If we make an abrupt departure from the EU Single Market it will almost certainly cost us just to make that transition, it would be like an unfavourable contract with penalty clauses for early termination; but on the other hand if we stay in the EU then the same processes which have operated over the past four decades will inevitably continue for the next four decades, or in perpetuity, and they will be barely touched by any of the “reforms” falsely claimed by the cryptofederalist Cameron; so surely the best answer must be to make a phased withdrawal, first leaving the EU but staying in the EEA with access to the EU Single Market, which will unfortunately mean swallowing the uncontrolled mass immigration which he favours for a few years more until we can move on to the next stage.
May 3, 2016
Let’see. UK exports in goods and services to China last year were about 3.6% of the UK total to a country of over 1.3 Billion people. The UK’s 6th biggest market. Heaven to Betsy, it should be the first. How pathetic.
Trade/Import in regard to India last year actually declined.
To Russia. Well we got really really cross and stopped sending them hunting rifles. As we all know the Russians are pretty well short of guns.How can they possibly manage? So they refused to buy our Cheddar. Exports to Russia must be near nil.
Well if one doesn’t blame the EU for such a suicidal export performance then who?
May 3, 2016
“Loss of heavy industry as a result of high energy prices required by EU energy regulations.”
As reported in the FT but not in the same terms, we are the star in the firmament of nations of producing expensive and unreliable energy insofar as we have the world’s largest offshore windfarm and Europe’s largest floating solar park. Altogether over the last five years £10 billion has been malinvested by taxpayers and electricity consumers in various half-baked schemes for generating expensive and unreliable energy leading to the loss of proper businesses which produce proper added value that lead to exports and import substitution rather than enriching spivs and adding to our input bill whilst talented workers with engineering skills are thrown on the scrap heap.
There is practically no limit to the ways in which electricity could be generated if the normal business practice of competitive pricing is eschewed.
For instance, it is noticable that greenies like to ride bicycles, so why not create power stations in which stationary bicyles are pedalled by greenies fed by bags of muesli? It would work and also clear the pavements of cyclists.
May 3, 2016
Dear John
A very potent message indeed. I just wish that this information was impacting upon the public by the Brexit campaigners. We have 6/7 weeks to go before the referendum and we desperately need people to be made aware of these facts before they are frightened into a future of EU servitude by Cameron and Co.
May 3, 2016
Thank goodness Clinton and Blair are coming to save us from the Remainers!
May 3, 2016
Interviewing fishermen at Brixham port on WATO today it was said that without a quarter of the funding from the EU for a new fish market there it would never have happened.
Is this EU money actually UK taxpayers’money. This funding detail is never mentioned by the BBC.
Can you answer this Mr Redwood?
Reply All EU money paid to us came from UK taxpayers funding our Brussels contributions first,
May 3, 2016
Question to Mr Osbourne:
By how much does he calculate we will all be better off by 2030 if we remain and how does he arrive at the figure?
May 3, 2016
I’ve just read that over the past 3 years about 7000 illegal immigrants have been caught after being smuggled in on Channel ferries, and the number has been rising sharply:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/02/7000-illegal-immigrants-smuggled-into-britain-on-ferries/
The article doesn’t say what has happened to them, and I guess that many of them are still in the country. And of course these are only the ones who were detected.
I wonder what is going to happen when:
a) Merkel insists that many of her illegal guests must be relocated to France and the other countries across the Channel, with a €250,000 fine per head if a country fails to meet the quotas she sets; and
b) Merkel insists that tens of millions of Turks and others masquerading as Turks must be allowed the travel freely across the Schengen area to the Channel coast.
Has the UK government got any plans to deal with the vastly increased scale of attempted illegal immigration across the Channel which will be a likely consequence of Merkel’s insane/malicious actions, notwithstanding any UK opt-out in the EU treaties?
Apart, that is, from deploying whatever is left of the Royal Navy to provide a free ferry service for the illegal immigrants?
May 3, 2016
It seems that Merkel has got herself another good deal courtesy of Cameron.
Last September 12th the Telegraph ran an article headlined:
“Merkel ‘expects Cameron to back EU army’ in exchange for renegotiation”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11861247/Merkel-expects-Cameron-to-back-EU-army-in-exchange-for-renegotiation.html
Now the FT is running an article headlined:
“Germany to push for progress towards European army”
https://next.ft.com/content/e90a080e-107b-11e6-91da-096d89bd2173
So Cameron got his “renegotiation”, which achieved nothing of any significance, and now Merkel is getting her European army.
Oh, but this is supposed to be kept under wraps until after our referendum:
“Initially scheduled to emerge shortly before the June 23 referendum vote but now probably delayed to July, the draft paper seen by the Financial Times … “
May 3, 2016
Sorry JR but, words like, bottom, scraping and barrel come to mind. Forget economic numbers, the average Brit voter won’t have a clue and will care even less. Stick with immigration and food costs.
May 3, 2016
It’s not just EU austerity that has set the economy back, so has UK austerity. We have the real resources available for much higher GDP growth than we currently enjoy, but too small government deficits have been holding us back.
When we Leave the EU (hopefully), we shouldn’t stick to things as usual and copy the Eurozone’s austerity programme. Instead, we should cut taxes massively, abolish VAT (or at least reduce it significantly), and keep the economy humming along at full employment, close to double-digit real GDP growth, and price stability by keeping the government deficit (private sector surplus) large enough.
China has had anywhere from 7% to 15% annual real GDP growth simply by keeping their state bank lending + gov’t deficit high enough, and their economy isn’t even as free as ours! Imagine unleashing the private sector in this country, maybe we could exceed what China has managed?! Anyhow, the best short book to read on how the economy really works is the Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy by Warren Mosler (it’s free online). He has worked in banking all his life and visits the Federal Reserve regularly, he knows how it all works.
P.S. Anyone thinking that this deficit spending will cause interest rates to rise needs to realise that the currency is a public monopoly, and the government + central bank has complete control over the interest it pays on its debt. Also interest rates should always be kept low, since high rates actually *cause* inflation, not stop it, but I won’t go into that right now.
May 3, 2016
I have it on good authority that an entirely innocent attempt to renew car tax online can lead to a transfer to Remania. Is there a app which can be downloaded to prevent this bot from executing on my computer?
May 4, 2016
OUR banking crash resulted from the bursting of OUR property bubble and WE are risking a repeat because of OUR Bank of England’s lax monetary policy.
Anybody who thinks that there is zero inflatio in the UK just hasn’t looked at the rise in house prices since 2012. Any sensible monetary policy using inflation targetting MUST include a measure of house prices within the inflation index.