Interesting that folks this side of the pond are starting to talk in terms of recession. The situation really is very worrying indeed. Home repossessions have doubled, paid work is becoming harder to find and I think there is much worse to come. There are number of very serious contributing factors in my view:-
- The sub-prime lending fiasco – people lent far more money than they could afford to pay back.
- Big banks no longer trusting each other and unwilling to lend money to one another. This inter-bank lending is what lubricates the wheels of free-market capitalism. If it dries up then basically we are buggered.
- A totally decimated industrial base. What do we actually make here in the UK? Bugger all.
- UK and the United States having economies that are tied together too closely. If Washington sneezes we catch the flu.
- UK (& US) wasting billions of dollars on a long, drawn-out and utterly pointless foreign war. I still don’t understand how Blair got away with this. The guy should be standing trial for war crimes, not swanning about as Middle East Envoy.
- The Iraq war has also resulted in oil-price-instability and hence a massive hike in raw energy costs.
What seems to be forgotten is that wars cost money. This money and this has to come from somewhere. It has already cost the US three trillion dollars. Our Government won’t actually tell us what it’s cost. I suspect it doesn’t know how much it has cost!
Finally, I think these national current account figures make particularly depressing reading. Note the three countries way down at the bottom – i.e. those with the biggest national debt – are the United Kingdom, Spain & United States. Remember, these are also the three major players in the Iraq fiasco:-
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html
And remember these are the CIA’s own figures!
We are really in the poo methinks…