Now CitiCorp or, CitiGroup, or whatever it’s called, gets a massive bailout in the blink of an eye. Why them and not the auto industry? As I’ve said, I think GM, Ford and Chrysler had decades of warning, but at least they manufacture something. All this money being borrowed by the feds that will eventually have to be paid back with higher taxes, and yet the credit market is still frozen.
Why, after all of this, is the whole concept of the global economy not being questioned more? Sure doesn’t seem to have been a very good idea, after all. I just watched a segment on The News Hour about the situation in England, and since September it seems to be suffering more of a short, sharp shock than what we have in America.
I can imagine that America and the UK will probably follow the same path Doug. Continental Europe will probably do something else. It will be interesting to see who gets out of this mess best.
The mess, incidentally, is being called an “anglo-saxon problem” in Europe.
That’s ok though, I’m not anglo-saxon, but Celtic, so I’m not offended.
I know somebody from Belgium (I didn’t discover K3 on my own!), so I know about the rift between the French and Dutch speaking Belgians. Very nasty indeed.
Brown’s approach to directing the banks is now what the U.S. Treasury is going to do, rather than the “toxic debt buyout” that was originally proposed by Henry Paulson.
I blame it all on Bush. Partly because it’s easy to do, and also because I think it’s true. Iraq is sucking the American economy dry, and that’s really the #1 priority for Obama. I’m disappointed he’s keeping Robert Gates. I was hoping he’d give the post to Colin Powell and give the man a chance to redeem his reputation after being suckered so badly by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Hey, when do the war crimes trials start?
NO Doug, nothing…. absolutely NOTHING would make me like this idiot. He has driven this country to the brink of bancruptcy, and he won’t give us the chance to get rid of him with an early election. I take your point about the person who caused the problem being the best one to fix it. In this case I don’t think so. His government is tired, out of good ideas and totally removed from what people are thinking. One commentator asked if any of them had visited Earth recently!
His solution is not the best one. Today France and Germany announced plans to help their economies, both stating that they did not favour Brown’s plans. Most people here are wondering how a reduction of around 2% in VAT (sales tax on most goods, except food, children’s clothes and books) will help. Retailers are presently giving reductions of between 10 and 50% on items and THAT’S not working, so Brown’s reduction is pretty pointless, but very expensive. The French pointed that out today. We need big public spending projects to creat employment, and improve our crumbled infrastructure.
Don’t misunderstand me. The opposition Conservatives are a bunch of opportunist idiots too, and we are between a rock and a hard place, but Brown and his hapless, bottom feeding, trough swilling government need to be punished, and the only way we can do that is to deprive them of the fat salaries and expense account to which they have become accustomed.
I don’t know whether we are in a worse situation than America, Jeaniebeanie. It’s not easy to judge the one from the other really, but your papers are not exaggerating. Both the IMF and the European Union have said that because of the parlous state of our economy (mismanaged by Brown for the past 11 years) the UK recession will be very very bad. (The last time Labour was in power, the UK was obliged to seek aid from the IMF. A sad situation for a western European power. They seem to have learned nothing.)
It’s not a nice place to be.
Belgian Doug, yeah, although they don’t have their troubles to seek at the moment, as the country is pretty much tearing itself apart because of the problems of the two languages and cultures. They are pretty well off though!!
Hi All! As I sit here in my codeine haze I am wondering why, as Jean calls him, Barky is having Gates in as SOD. I was hoping he’d go with someone like Wesley Clark. And Dave, WOW, I didn’t realize the UK was having it as bad. Of course I didn’t realize Iceland was in such dire straits until the banks went belly up. You mentioned you wish you were from Norway or Switzerland, and since I’ve been the mental equal of someone like Dubya the past few days with this flu, I was wondering what they’ve done differently with their economies. I need to read up on this subject since I know pretty much squat on economics.
Dave, yes, the Yank papers are REALLY making a big show of how much worse off the Brits are compared to us, but are they really? Rule of American Media: Always distract the public away from the real problem. Case in point: All this week, CNN has been running a special on UFOs and Aliens during its primetime 7-7:30 a.m. spot! Are they nuts?
Personally, I think Brown looks like the late Peter Finch. Too bad he isn’t like the character he played in “Network!”
Doug, I agree. It’s creepy how everybody is treating President-ELECT Obama as if he were already in office. You rarely see Bush anymore (not that I want to, but still!) Now Barky has decided to keep Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense! This was a total surprise. It could be a very bold move in a good way, if Gates truly does want to pull out, as he now claims, or a horrific blunder on the part of our new prez. A lot of people who voted for Obama are already bitching that the “CHANGE” thing is already not happening, as Obama has chosen so many already runs for his cabinet positions. Today we find out who his economic advisers will be.
My preference would be to be Belgian! Then I could chit-chat with K3!
In appearance and voice, Gordon Brown reminds me of Terry Jones from Monty Python. If Brown were to petition the Queen to grant Petula Clark the title of Dame, would he be on your good side then, Dave? 😉
The news feature I link to above says that Brown is himself somewhat responsible for what’s happened. In the computer industry, in which I work, it’s sometimes the case that the only person who can fix a problem is the one who created it. I hope that’s the case in the UK, because it certainly wasn’t true here in the US, but fortunately the cause of our trouble will be gone on January 20. It’s fun watching Obama essentially being the acting President.
It’s bad here too. The Finance Minister announced a package of totally useless measures to encourage more borrowing and spending this Monday past. He doubtless isn’t aware that profligate borrowing and spending got us into this mess, but then he’s not well known for being bright.
Meanwhile Brown struts around telling us all how he has saved not just the nation, but the world, and issues warnings to President Elect Obama about NOT lending to the car industry (like Barack is gonna listen to a idiot like him). Brown of course was finance minister in Britain before he was the big cheese, so whatever mess we are in is largely down to him.
What amazes me is that no one in power saw it coming. Everyone I know saw what was going to happen when house prices went up by more than twice the salary increase rates, when banks pushed people into taking creditr cards and kept pushing their credit limit up; when people had 5 or more credit cards and store cards all maxed out, massive housing payment, student loan repayments, etc., and had become accustomed to living on massive amounts of credit.
Mr Brown told us he had presided over the end of “boom and bust”. It seems that perhaps he has just presided over the end of “boom”.
The really funny thing is he refuses to take any blame for it. He has consistently blamed America (of course he wouldn’t have doen that if Bush hadn’t been finished); he has blamed Iceland and the EU; the only people he hasn’t blamed are…. yep… his government.
He is without a doubt the most useless, half witted, prime minister in the benighted history of the UK… and that includes Mrs Thatcher. Added to which he seems to be completely mad.
Get me out of here. Why wasn’t I born Norwegian or Swiss!
Hi Doug! From reading the transcript it sounds like deregulation and no-holds-barred lending has led to an economic breakdown to our friends across the Pond. It may seem a little more recent to them maybe because of whatever their major federal spending involves and how many people are affected-like all the spending on the war here hasn’t obviously gone to helping our economic problems and so many here have been affected since Dubya got in, so now we’re grasping at straws trying to do something. I don’t know, I’m just guessing. Or the codeine cough medicine is doing my thinking!
“You can take that one off now, Uncle Billy … ” 🙁