Sunday, March 21, 2010

Ex-Governor George: Bank of England deliberately fuelled consumer boom

Apparently, 'Fast Eddie' (a.k.a. Baron Edward George, the former Governor of the Bank of England) pulled a fast one, by deliberately blowing up bubbles in the British economy to get his political pay masters out of a fix of declining UK industrial productivity and increasing UK government spending. Fortunately for him, Lord George died in 2009 before the full horrific consequences of his actions came to haunt the rest of us. Maybe he'll return one day as the chain-smoking Ghost of Bubbles Past?

Now the sensible thing to do instead, back in his tenure at the Bank of England, would have been to cut government spending and then feed these tax cuts and concomitant regulation cuts back into British industry to allow it to grow again.

But this would have upset all of the tax-eating Guardian-reading slugs who were using the teat of the state to succour themselves, so Fast Eddie blew some financial bubbles instead, with the Bank of England's counterfeiting machine.

This bubble blowing led directly to the current mess in England, which is going to take decades to unwind, if it ever is unwound and we don't suffer a 'Hyper-Japan' ad infinitum. (Or even better, a 'Hyper-Zimbabwe'.)

And the British government's solution to this problem brought on by too much borrowing, taxation, inflation, regulation, and growth of government at the expense of everyone else? Yes, folks, that's right. It's going to be more borrowing, taxation, inflation, regulation, and a growth of government at the expense of everyone else.

Not satisfied with a current UK government spend of 48.9% of every private penny earned (and here I'm being extremely generous), the UK Chancellor is about to announce more tax hikes, more government borrowing, and more government spending (to ease our way out of recession, don't you know!)

We really are living in a looking glass world of lunatics, charlatans, and bubble-headed zombietrons. It won't last, of course, and reality will not be put off forever, but no doubt these fools will give us a good run for our money, before they're all carted off to the guillotine.

So thank you, Eddie George. I hope you enjoyed living in Cornwall before you bankrupted it.

2 comments:

Jock Coats said...

Finally, someone else has noticed. I've been citing this evidence in posts off and on fortwo and a half years.

But I reckon you should go a bit easier on Eddie Goerge himself. I went and found the Hansard for the committee meeting (it was part of the first review of how the MPC had worked), and it was pretty clear, between the lines, that whilst the MPC was supposed to be independent of government, and that its target was supposed to be inflation, the view that we had to be kept out of recession if at all possible (it was, after all right before Labour's first re-election attempt) had been formed at ministerial level.

Nonetheless, perhaps someone will now understand my constant ranting over the past couple of years that this recession was created by political meddling done for electoral gain at the highest levels of government.

Jack Maturin said...

I think when 'Independent Monkeys' know who is filling their banana bowls every day, then their 'independent' decisions will be somewhat skewed. Why anyone thinks any part of government is independent is beyond me. They're all fed by the taxman, therefore when the taxman says 'scratch my back' they all know exactly what to do.

They can't do it too obviously, of course, otherwise the plebs who are being made to pay for all of these parasites will spot the shell game for what it is, but I think it's becoming more obvious with each passing day that none of these leeches ever thinks beyond their own feeding bowl.

Keep the good work going, Jock. Oxfordshire needs you! ;-)