Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Brown's Record is Worse Than Lamont's
Open Europe point out that the Pound has now fallen further under Gordon Brown than it did on Black White Wednesday in 1992. So much for Brown's much heralded 'stability'. What they don't point out is that Gordon Brown's catastrophic sale of our gold reserves at the lowest point in the market has ended up costing the country more than Black Wednesday ever did. And another thing about Black Wednesday, does Brown seriously suggest that it would have been any different under Labour? They were even keener to enter the ERM than Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe, and that's saying something.
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49 comments:
It was not just the sale of the gold reserves which was a catastrophe but it was doubly compounded because the proceeds were invested mainly in US dollars!
The Conservatives should make more of the cost of this disaster. Can we have some figures please?
How does this compare to 1966?
The merits / demerits of a weaker currency are highly debatable. The UK benefited enormously from the weaker pound after Black Wednesday and I suspect that export performance may be further supported under Brown's sterling debasement (imports pricey however - which then feeds into inflation).
Much more important for me though is the state of the stock market. Labour like to pretend that share prices are only of interest to millionaires. Of course anyone with a pension, who wants a pension, who buys insurance, who buys an ISA, etc is directly affected.
The 'good' performance of the UK economy under Brown has in reality been a massive draining of value out of the productive sectors of the economy and wastefully spent in the non-productive sectors. Even the most die hard socialists should recognise that the number of golden eggs available depends on the health of the goose.
Since Labour came to power the Dow Jones has soared. The FTSE has gone nowhere at all. That tells you all you need to know about the true health of the UK's productive economy.
Gordon Brown has wasted more of our money than any chancellor in history.
if you expect anyone to believe that the economy was in better shape in 1992 than it is now, you're not telling the truth.
The spectacularly idiotic thing about the sale of gold was not so much the sale itself. It was the stark, staring mind-nubingly bonkers policy of Brown announcing to the world's bullion market that he had commanded the sale. Every gold dealer on the planet rubbed his hands with glee, and enjoyed a buyers' market as the Bank was forced to change its metaphorical knickers in public.
Of course, there is a secondary question. What proportion of the money raised from the bullion sale was invested in US$ instruments, and what in Yen and Euro? I seem to have got the impression, but I must surely be wrong, that the US$ has not been enjoying all that robust a relative performance in the currency markets over the past 9 years.
I do wish Cameron would nail Brown with rock-hard stuff like this at PMQ - which really strikes at his appalling record of serial misjudgement - rather than the customary flatulent, showboating, yah-boo-sucks whiffle.
There is an old saying about if you put a frog into boiling water it will jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and slowly rise the temperature if will stay there until it boils to death.
Aren't most voters and the media the same? Unless an event happens in a very short time span (ie one day) people don't notice?
This really does need saying.
Thankyou Iain.
Quite.
The fashion of the day was to think that national survival depended on being in the ERM.
Going with the herd was wrong again.
Some one should add up how much Brown's decision have cost this country:
1) Selling Gold cheap
2) Selling out the UK budget rebate from the EU
3) Policies that have been proven to fail such as sure start and the new deal.
Could make a good campaign poster - how much has it cost you to make this man Prime Minister ?
Oh, so Black Wednesday was Labour's fault then, was it? Come on Ian, you can do better than that.
The point you fail to mention is that Labour was critical (at the time) of the DM2.95 rate at which we entered the ERM. There's the rub.
Of course Black Wednesday would have been different had Brown been in charge.
It would have been ten times as bad...
I seem to recall from Tom Bower's book that Brown spent Black Wednesday hiding from journalists, or something equally and characteristically gutless. Whatever he was in 1992, he was no champion of the floating Pound. My recollection (which may be wrong) was that the lion's share of the gold reserves were reinvested in the Euro.
Ern Malley @ 12.16
I'm open to correction here, but the Euro did not exist as a currency until 2002, and thus could not be invested in. Prior to that, it was merely an accounting convenience.
There will have been fluctuations in the proportions invested in each currency, but it remains likely that in 1999 the bulk of the gold sales was put in US$. Remember that, at that time, the US economy was doing well, and Clinton had [or was about to] balanced the budget. This was an extraordinary and supposedly impossible achievement, after the excesses of the Reagan years and before the excesses of the Bush2 preznitcy.
Unemployment's down again.
Lamont = High interest rates, high unemployment high inflation, "je ne regrette rien" (ie "so what?"), boom and bust rate-setting
Brown = Low inflation, low unemployment , low interest rates, bank independence.
What would Osborne have done with the gold? Sold it now? No? Then why do you seek to describe a loss when there is none?
You don't half write rubbish sometimes.
Lest we forget, here is a quick checklist of Labour's failures in government:
Bernie Eccleston
foot and mouth (twice—the second time leaking out of government laboratories)
farm payments
pensions theft
sale of gold reserves
Iraq war
breaking of military covenant
PFI
vast pay increases for less work in the NHS
school standards
EU referendum promise reneged
Northern Rock
HMRC records of 25m. people going astray
the Dome
Railtrack
the Olympics
NHS computer system
the New Deal
Pathfinder programme
the dodgy dossier
death of Dr David Kelly
cash for peerages
botched devolution leading to the potential break-up of the Union
botched House of Lords reform
home information packs
superbugs in hospitals
dodgy/undeclared donations to Labour party
a rash of civil service departments no longer “fit for purpose”
illegal immigrants employed at the Home Office
wholesale collapse of the immigration system
Gordon Brown’s semi-absence at the Lisbon EU treaty signing
giving away the UK’s EU budget rebate
broken promise on EU referendum
jgtupq :
Fancy name!
I forgot to mention 50000repossessions per year, rising to 70000 by 1997.
The worst predicted (ie not actual yet) is 43000 as a result of the credit crunch, the average levels so far being around 20000 pa
On the subject of the Gold Reserves. Unfortunately, it is always the case that any hedging or risk reducing strategy will either look brilliant or stupid once you have the benefit of hindsight.
If you go a year without crashing your car, do you consider it to be a bad decision to have bought the insurance?
Of course Gold has gone up in value (and particularly so recently) that much is not up for debate. But was it certain to do so? Obviously not, or else markets would have priced in that certainty. I'd argue that the liklihood of the gold price going up or down following the transactions was about equal.
If the price of gold had collapsed, would you still have thought it a foolish strategy to diversify holdings (it's not like we don't have any gold).
And how about the "brown envelope" approach to parliamentary lobbying?
How could we leave out Maastricht?
Major finally applied himself to Northern Ireland but was hamstrung by his dependence on Paisley to shore up his majority, so I'm afraid the credit goes to Blair for that one.
Half a million lives saved by persuading NATO to intervene in Kosovo? We can all spin and be blind to balance, can't we?
And how about the "brown envelope" approach to parliamentary lobbying?
How could we leave out Maastricht?
Major finally applied himself to Northern Ireland but was hamstrung by his dependence on Paisley to shore up his majority, so I'm afraid the credit goes to Blair for that one.
Half a million lives saved by persuading NATO to intervene in Kosovo? We can all spin and be blind to balance, can't we?
Interest rates at 15%, repossession after repossession and you jokingly(?) call it White Wednesday... How compassionate.
It was Labour's fault, was it? So you'll happily go out and proclaim that the Iraq war was equally the Tories fault....
and how many times have you compared stuff to Black Wednesday on your blog now?! -At every and any opportunity, when any proper economist will tell you Northern Rock or anything else has had no where near the same effect on ordinary people.
Pathetic...
With NR downsizing and repaying its debts by not renewing short term mortgages, then surely forced house sales are with us.
Mr 'prudent' Brown's only solution is to get people to indebt themselves even further by buying things in the shops that they don't really need. What a ******
Dozzy.
You can add £20+billions from the sale of mobile telecoms licences to the list as well.(Which contributed to a loss of around 30,000 UK telecoms jobs as the companies struggled to pay for the things.)
Where has all our money gone?
I never thought Brown was any good when he sold the gold and destroyed private pensions. He is by far the worst chancelor we have had since the war.
I still think some people think he is OK but boy they must be as thick as 2 short planks.
jgtupq,
Unemployment down, but the number of incap claimants is up. Inflation measured by a rather iffy set of parameters that bears little relation to a normal family's outgoings and the Bank of England independent only until things look (Northern) rocky.
I'll give you one mark for the low interest rates answer, but 25% does not equal a pass mark in the Remittance University Sylabus.
Iain, for many companies, it is not the strength or weakness of sterling which is the most important factor (key as this is), but the wide and rapid fluctuations of sterling's value against € and US$ - i.e. the inability to defend against sudden and massive variances in currency value.
My company prices almost entriely in € and US$. Sterling has lost 18% against the € since November, meaning we are much more expensive now than we were then.
But we cannot put pur prices up 18%, as this would price us out of the market.
As important as inflation, tax and interest rates is, rapid fluctutaions in sterling's value play havoc with our pricing structure.
Secondly, one of the biggest issue is access to debt financing. 70% of all SMEs are dependent upon banks for their debt financing, and 90% of those depend upon the big four clearing banks. If the big four decide to tighten up their lending criteria too much as a result of the credit crunch, many SMEs will go to the wall because of cash flow problems.
The building industry is already suffering, with some companies unable to finish contruction projects because cash has dried up, and te projects are left in limbo. The FT today has a story about Assetz launching a rescue fund of £60million to bail out smaller developers who cannot debt finance.
The crunch is hitting home all over the place - but it will be businesses who suffer first, which is a aparadox as they are the most disciplined sector of the economy. The consumer - drunk on cheap debt - will be hit next as above base interest rates will not fall drastically, as the MPC is only concerned about inflation, not growth.
But to answer the question: No, Labour would have had us even deeper in the mire over the ERM. Can you imagine dithering Brown trying to decide what to do on Black Wednesday? He would have retired to bed and cried for mummy!
Oh, another point. Brown has wasted money in so many ways - which shows he has been about as prudent as Heather Mills on a Paul McCartney credit card!
He sold gold reserves at an all time low price, then bought US$ reserves - which then also lost value - watsing even more money (he's have been better putting the money under the bed - literally), he has wasted massive rises in government revenue on non-value adding public spending, he has tied the public service into bad-news PFI deals and cash-guzzling social policies which failed, he has raided pension funds, he has prevented the FTSE growing whilst the NYSE has grown massively, he has cost us our competative advantage in Europe with more red tape than an electrician's tool box, cost us millions by dithering over Northern Rock,......God, the list is endless - Just how much has this one man wallet draining disaster zone cost us since 1997?
Anyone got a supercomputer to do the math?
But surely the main problem with black wedensday was losing all that cash not pound devaluation which is not the same in floating currency era. The pound goes up and down. It is high to the dollar. Does this not show we should have joined the euro?
Lovely little article here that you might like Iain: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7305084.stm
Cameron missed a great opportunity at PMQs today. After congratulating Brown for his decision to meet the Dalai Lama, Brown weakly replied "All our decisions are good".
Cameron should have been right in there with the stiletto--"like selling our gold reseves cheaply?"
Or any number of other examples.
man in a shed 11.46am
WE had no choice in the matter. He was ordained by this corrupt government.
anonymous 2.03pm tell that to the 2000 (at least) Northern Rock employee's that will lose their jobs.
The Labour apologists are quite without logic.
Iain you have gone into Daily Express mode
MAKING NONSENSE UP !!!!!
I really don't think attacking Brown is the way to go on the economy. Far more fun is my traditional tactic of blaming the Americans for everything (very Enoch Powell I think). Everything is going tits up due to sub-prime lending in the US, they forced us to pay everything back during following WWII, they persuaded that idiot Blair the Iraq War was a terrific idea, etc etc. You get my point.
I remember hearing the announcement on the radio. It got such a load cheer from both sides, it distorted the speakers.
Ever since the ERM disaster, when a policy pleases both sides of the Houses of Commons, I shrug very hard and start praying.
This, because you can bet yet another conspiracy has been successfully played out and the British public are going to end up paying the price, on day BIG TIME.
Atlas shrugged and hoped with all his heart that nothing a Conservative government does, for the rest of his kids life is ever again willfully supported by the Labour Party. Then sadly realized that his thinking was a act of pathetically childish hope, over any form of rational expectation.
Vanfuertes
Funny you should mention blaming America for all those things. Because The American people seriously do have just as much right, if not more, to blame our British Establishment for these things, as we do theirs.
Whether to blame the most the Rockefeller's or the Rothschild's is the only question. A question you can bet your life no one on the BBC will ever asks.
Unemployment down, but the number of incap claimants is up.
Remittance man , not by an equivalent amount. i claim an extra 25%
Inflation measured by a rather iffy set of parameters
No they're not, they're internationally accepted and used by our competitors.
I claim another 25% and an A grade
I don't follow you re independence of the BofE, so I'll allow myself to be marked down on that one.
All in all, do you really think a Tory Chancellor would have resisted the temptation to lower interest rates and say "let's worry about inflation later"? Of course not.
gareth, what happened to the oil billions received by Thatcher? It went on welfare and redundancy payments, of course.
Yalland, your red-tape problem would be ease if you spent less time moaniing about the government and a bit more time doing the sodding paper-work!
The exchange rate is screwing you - what do you suggest a Tory chancellor should do right now?
The blame? Capitalist, easy money greed.End of.
"With NR downsizing and repaying its debts by not renewing short term mortgages, then surely forced house sales are with us."
Those people who bought their home on the basis they would have discounted rates for the durtation of the mortgage either deserve what they get, or were conned by a greedy capitalist broker.
Not Brown's fault.
The fatuous idiocy of your Tory contributors never fails to amuse.
It was Browns fault. He changed all the banking rules that has allowed this to happen.
to anon - re: certainty of pricing in rises in the gold market,
I was working in the gold market at that time when gold was at an all time low - (less than $250/oz) and only a complete idiot would have been sellers at that point.
the 12m + futures contracts were all trading much much higher, there was much anticipation about future demand from china and india, and the main reason for the depression of the price was the sale (in tranches) of the Bank of England reserves, which also triggered a sell off by the Bank of Belgium amongst others.
The beauty of the gold market is the relative day to day liquidity, and the amount held by private sellers. If you want to obtain best price, I would suggest the sensible thing to do would not be to announce it at auction...
The pound seems to be doing rather well against the mighty US dollar. It's the euro that's powering ahead. Perhaps those regulated Europeans are on to something after all. It's a pity little William didn't choose "only n days to join the euro" back in 2001.
Not just the fact that he sold the gold when he was under no pressure to do so
but that he rejected all offers of help as to HOW to sell it if he really had to . With the London gold market down the road he had just about the best market advice on tap that money can't buy .
But no , the stupid obsessive aspergeroid prat just had to blab to the world what he was doing .He dumped the whole lot on the market at once and acually created a new low on the price graph - the lowest in modern times ! Its been going up ever since .
Canny Scot ?
more like a snot pranny !
edland said... How does this compare to 1966?
Football's got worse ;))
john"jgtpu" 5.03pm: What on earth would you know about my business, or how much time I spend on 'doing the paperowrk'.
I can only presume that when you went to your non-univeristy and did your non-degree before starting your (taxpayer funded) non-job, they didn't bother to send you to classes on cash flow, profit and loss or how to read a balance sheet.
Money doesn't grow on trees, as you lefty prats seem to think. Someone has to make it before your lot can 'redistribute' it. Trouble is, your lot are currently redistributing to death the goose that lays the golden egg - after taking your cut of course in salary, perks and gold plated pension! Wish I could afford a gold plated pension! But I can't as I pay my own wages - after I have first paid the wages of my employees (that what we greedy capitalists do - pay our staff first).
You clearly have never been anywhere near a business that needs to produce something of value in order pay the staff - and with that attitude, neither should you be allowed to. Stick to do something which won;t cause too many problems - like......
I suspect that you work in some quasi-socio/economic do-gooder role spending your time telling people how they should live their lives and sucking-off the tax payer whilst doing it, doubtless rewarding yourself handsomely for the 'valuable benefits' you bring to society as a whole!
FTR - I actually spend about 1.5 - 2 days a week doing stuff that adds zero value to my company's value - mostly to do with appeasing petty Government bureaocrats who seem to be paid by the mile of red tape they produce.
As for the exchange rate situation, well I would start by making the bank of England's MPC look at more issues than just its current narrow remit.
I would also make sure that inflation figures record the real cost of living (i.e. including housing costs - which we all have to pay), and not the corrupted set that Brown uses (which still shows inflation up nine consequtive months).
The trouble is that Brown has allowed people to go mad on cheap credit by not managing the economy properly (we now save less per capita than at any time in the past), and the only reason why inflation isn't shooting up to show this is because we are sucking in cheap imports.
Only thing is, they aint so cheap anymore - especially the ones priced in € or US$.
As for being a greedy capitalist - only half right I am afraid. I am a capitalist because I don't believe that allowing the state to run everything is the best way to have an ordered prosperous and well functioning society. And you would be hard pressed to find anyone else on earth who believes differently.
And unemployment is NOT down again, it is just well hidden by people on non-unemployment related benefits or in tax-payer funded non-jobs as found in the Society section of the Guardian!
It is you which writes the rubbish!
So sod off back to laa laa land where Utopia awaits you and your fellow dreamers. Leave the rest of us to make the money which your lot nick and spend on 'our behalf' because we cannot be trusted to spend it on the things you agree with!
It does remind me of the 60s all over again. Labour just cant stop spending our money.
It just cant go on and yet nothing in the budget.
I felt alone in my thoughts about brown and it is all now for all to see just how bad he is.
He thinks wealth grows on trees and it is his job to give it all away but not earn it.
Regretably Cameron sounds little better with attitude to things.
"And unemployment is NOT down again, it is just well hidden by people on non-unemployment related benefits or in tax-payer funded non-jobs as found in the Society section of the Guardian!"
Absolute rubbish. The rise in employment has been in the private sector - public sector is actually shedding jobs.
No doubt your "business" is unknown to most people on earth, presumably because it's run by a fantasist.
Complacency and arrogance are what brought down the last Tory govt - your posts show that those two are still present in bucketsful.
Vote Tory and ally myself with "deniers" like you? A giraffe mate, is being had by you.
your version of capitalism sucks -blame the government when your business fails and "leave the devious liars alone when they fancy a bit of short-selling"
I bet you pay yourself a salary that is low enough to avoid income tax and then take a dividend that is taxed @ 10%. You have no right to lecture those of us who pay full whack.
You spend a day and a half a week on unproductive admin, presumably leaving you a whole day left to address your "productive" workload. Do your staff know you waste so much time spouting off fantasies about strangers' lines of work?
GDP has shot up since 1997 - to the extent that spending on new schools, hospitals and prisons has shot up.
Presumably you'd love to see those pesky teachers, nurses, policemen and doctors fired until your pension's sorted?
Got to go now - money to be made. Enjoy your breakfast whenever you finally get up.
Facts :
From 1998 public sector employment rose every year to 5,846,000 in June 2005. This was 680,000 higher than in June 1998. Private sector employment rose by 1,241,000 (5.7 per cent) from June 1998 to June 2005.
Private sector employment increasing by double the number of public sector.
From 2005 to 4th qtr of 2007, public sector employment fell by an average of around 10000 every qtr , and then rose by 7000 because Northern Rock's employees are now counted as public sector.
Public sector employment in the United Kingdom as a proportion of total employment was 20.4 per cent in June 2005 (and it's fallen ever since). This was still below the June 1992 figure of 23.1 ...
So in June 1992, 23.1% were public sector - of course we needed that many to administer the dole queues
Enough to make the "Yallands" of that era choke on their cornflakes
"Brown's Record is Worse Than Lamont's"
You're just being abusive now.
Adrian Yalland said...
"And unemployment is NOT down again, it is just well hidden by people on non-unemployment related benefits or in tax-payer funded non-jobs as found in the Society section of the Guardian!"
And in attending Mickey Mouse 'courses' such as New Deal.
Not only was Labour keener to join the ERM but Gordon Brown toured the TV studios at the time to argue that we were entering at too low an exchange rate - which would have brought the problems of Black Wednesday sooner or made them greater.
Can anybody find a clip of Brown arguing for a higher exchange rate - and why don't the Conservatives make more of this?
John – you want to get your facts straight mate – and stop attributing to me things I never said. I don’t like big capitalism or over powerful corporates – they are undemocratic and wield power without responsibility. They can also avoid paying their fair whack – which I can’t.
Secondly, given that I employ staff, pay corporation tax, contribute towards their national insurance and benefits, I pay more than my fair whack of taxes!
Thirdly, “I bet you pay yourself a salary that is low enough to avoid income tax and then take a dividend that is taxed @ 10%. You have no right to lecture those of us who pay full whack”
I would like you to either offer proof of this statement or retract it - cos you are wrong!
I will ignore the rest of your pointless little rant!
Fourthly, your figures are as wrong as your assertions!
The idea that the growth in the public sector is underpinned by ‘front line’ civil servents – police, doctors, teachers – is codswhallop!
For the record:
Between 1997 – 2003:
According to the Office of National Statistics, between 1997 and 2003 public sector spending increased by 50%, public sector inflation rose from 1.6% in 1997 to 6.5% in 2005, and is now over 7%. Between 1997 and 2003 government consumption expenditure was up 11.8% but outputs were up only 3.9%, implying a 7.6% rate of public sector inflation.
Also, public sector productivity fell by 5% between 1997 and 2003.
Furthermore, overall UK productivity growth since 1997 has been only half the pre-1997 level - at an average of 1.58% p.a. compared with 2.85% p.a. in the last six years of the Torys.
Between 1999 and 2003 public sector employment levels rose by 400,000, where as the rise in private sector employment was a mere 86,000. Most of the new jobs were filled by people coming to the UK from abroad.
Between 1997 and 2003 700,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, red tape was costing business an extra £60 billion a year and the increase in public sector employment was costing an extra £20 billion a year!
And that is only to 2003! Since then approximately another 360,000 public sector employees have also been employed – meaning the state now employs 850,000 more people than it did in 1997. Furthermore, almost 80% of new private sector jobs have been filled from people coming in from the new EU states.
But in 2004 Gordon Brown announced he wanted to cut the size of the civil service – by a whopping 90,000 – by approximately 25% of the increase the public sector had enjoyed between 97 and 93. But (and this is where your argument collapses), for every one “head office” civil service job cut which Brown manages to push through, another four new public sector employees will be recruited, of which just one will be a doctor, nurse, teacher or police officer.
Public spending is up 44% in real terms since Labour came to power. A report by the Treasury and Downing Street Strategy Unit into public sector productivity, leaked to The Sunday Times in April 2004, found that public sector productivity fell by 10 per cent between 1997 and 2003.
The Current:
The rate of increase of total public spending will slow in the period covered by the current Comprehensive Spending Review (2005-06 to 2007-08) compared to the two previous Spending Reviews. In this period, public spending will rise by 5.9 per cent per year on average. In the final year of the Government’s plans, it will fall further to 4.5 per cent per year.
But the Chancellor has only reduced the rate of spending to that of the growth of the economy. Public spending will continue to consume 42 per cent of GDP, nearly 3% higher than in 1997-98 (39.2 per cent) and nearly 5% higher than in 1999-2000 (37.4 per cent).
As a comparison with other OECD countries, we now pay more as a percentage of GDP in Government spending that Eire, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Spain and Germany. Only Italy and France and Sweden pay a higher % GDP to the Government.
On the issue of employment – it dropped by about 10,000 a month on average last year. However employment growth accounted for only half of the fall in unemployment, the other half resulted from people dropping out of the labour market. In other words, half the Government’s claims about reductions in unemployment are people simply dropping off the radar, and 40% are foreign workers coming her to do ‘British jobs for British people’!
And you call me a fantasist!
Adrian
All my figures were directly from the ONS, which you yourself cite. They are correct.
From 1998 public sector employment rose every year to 5,846,000 in June 2005. This was 680,000 higher than in June 1998. Private sector employment rose by 1,241,000 (5.7 per cent) from June 1998 to June 2005.
Private sector employment increasing by double the number of public sector.
From 2005 to 4th qtr of 2007, public sector employment fell by an average of around 10000 every qtr , and then rose by 7000 because Northern Rock's employees are now counted as public sector.
Public sector employment in the United Kingdom as a proportion of total employment was 20.4 per cent in June 2005 (and it's fallen ever since). This was still below the June 1992 figure of 23.1 ...
I'm not retracting a word. I BET you don't pay as much proportionately as your staff do.
You deny clear Office of National Statistics facts that are staring you in the face. You are a fantasist.
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