Tag Archives: UK Economy

On Sunday, May 12, 2019, I will be presenting a workshop in London on – Local Government Funding: Challenging the Status Quo. Basically, I will be speaking about the way in which flawed understandings of the capacities of currency-issuing governments, combined with a vicious, ideological attack on working people from a government fully invested in neoliberal transfers to the elites, have ravaged the capacity of local government in the UK to deliver essential public services. See the Events...

It is Wednesday and I am reverting to my plan to keep my blog posts short on this day to give me more time for other things. Today, I will briefly outline what happened last Thursday when I met with Shadow British Chancellor John McDonnell in London. As I noted yesterday, I was not going to comment publicly on this meeting. I have a lot of meetings and interactions with people in ‘high’ office which remain private due to the topics discussed etc. But given that John McDonnell told an...

I am back in Australia now and I don’t have to stand on my head to write (a reference to the hassles of trying to maintain some order while travelling to different destinations on an almost daily basis). Last week, the IMF released its so-called – Fiscal Monitor October 2018 – and the mainstream financial press had a ‘picnic’ claiming all sorts of disaster scenarios would follow from the sort of financial situations revealed in the publication. At the time of the publication I was in London...

In my analysis of the UK fiscal statement that George Osborne released on March 23, 2011 – I don’t wanna know one thing about evil (April 29, 2011) – I noted that the imposition of fiscal austerity in Britain meant that any hope of growth was really dependent on a combination of export growth and household consumption growth. With the former source unlikely and household income growth sluggish (and falling in real terms), households would have to run deficits, which necessitated running...

How it worked, why it failed and how MMT Job Guarantee proposals avoid those problems Modern Money MattersThe UK’s Unofficial Job GuaranteeNeil Wilson

The UK is facing a binary choice between a deep trading relationship with the EU or the US, according to a report from MPs on the International Trade Committee (ITC). Efforts to drop regulations in a bid to land a quick Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US could result in the erection of fresh trade barriers between the UK and the EU, the report claimed.… Detailed report. Longish.The TelegraphUK faces 'binary choice' of EU or US trade, MPs warn Anna Issac | Economics Correspondent

Chris Dillow mentions MMT.Stumbling and MumblingThe persistence of fiscal stupidityChris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

There are times when so-called progressives outdo themselves with their (usually self-styled) ‘genius solutions’ to the ravages of neoliberalism. They come up with elaborate ‘solutions’ that people on the Left get feverishly excited about yet fail to see how obviously ridiculous these strategies are when all the options are allowed. They, in fact, step further into the mirky neoliberal world by trying to be progressive because they fail to see what the basic issue is. One recent example of...

Bank of England — Bank UndergroundA prince not a pauper: the truth behind the UK’s current account deficit Rachana Shanbhogue, Macroprudential Strategy and Support Division, and Stephen Burgess, Macrofinancial Risks Division

Productivity is a problem and conventional British economists don't have a theory that explains it. So what to do? Oh, right, more blood letting (austerity).Stumbling and MumblingNotes on productivityChris Dillow | Investors Chronicle