Right wing fiscal mismanagement.

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  • Peerie Maa
    Old Grey Inquisitive One
    • Oct 2008
    • 62422

    Right wing fiscal mismanagement.

    Let’s start with the IMF itself. Last week it published a report that barely got a mention from the BBC or in Westminster, yet helps reframe the entire debate over austerity. The fund totted up both the public debt and the publicly owned assets of 31 countries, from the US to Australia, Finland to France, and found that the UK had among the weakest public finances of the lot. With less than £3 trillion of assets against £5tn in pensions and other liabilities, the UK is more than £2tn in the red. Of all the other countries examined by researchers, including the Gambia and Kenya, only Portugal’s finances look worse over the long run. So much for fixing the roof.‘British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City.’
    Almost as startling are the IMF’s reasons for why Britain is in such a state: one way or another they all come back to neoliberalism. Thatcher loosed finance from its shackles and used our North Sea oil money to pay for swingeing tax cuts. The result is an overfinancialised economy and a government that is £1tn worse off since the banking crash. Norway has similar North Sea wealth and a far smaller population, but also a sovereign wealth fund. Its net worth has soared over the past decade.

    The other big reason for the UK’s financial precarity is its privatisation programme, described by the IMF as no less than a “fiscal illusion”. British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, “increase revenues and lower deficits but also reduce the government’s asset holdings”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...46du0dbUcEX0so
    It really is quite difficult to build an ugly wooden boat.

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  • Paul Pless
    pinko commie tree hugger
    • Oct 2003
    • 124805

    #2
    Re: Right wing fiscal mismanagement.

    in america republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work; then they get elected and prove it. . .
    Simpler is better, except when complicated looks really cool.

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