Helicopter Scenario Getting Closer?

Previously discussed here

Also commenting here in November just after the VAT cut I said “The way that Broon and Darling are responding to it is crazy. A fact which will become abundantly clear over the coming year.”

Broon and Co really have to act now if the UK isn’t going to end up like a big Iceland. As I said since I started commenting on the crisis, the only way out of this is to get people spending again.

Get the money to the people who will spend i.e. the less well off. If there had been a hand out to them last year instead of tinkering with VAT it would have had an immediate and sizeable impact.

Quite seriously, dropping the billions from helicopters (whether literal or metaphorical) WOULD have had a far more positive and immediate impact on the economy than the second bank bailout.

According to those in the know, the UK is second only to Switzerland in the betting for the next country to follow Iceland to bankruptcy.

What’s that whirring noise overhead?

Excuse me I have to go!

Mystic Rab

I wrote the following on June 8th this year when all those in the know were saying there was no chance of a recession.

‘I may not be an expert, but from the sharp end of retailing both in food and consumer items, I’d be very surprised if inflation doesn’t reach double figures by the end of the year, and I really do wonder how we are going to avoid a full blown recession.’

The full article is here

and edited to include this

I Just Don’t Know Anymore!

The financial stuff is now leaving this humble blogger bemused. I honestly don’t know if yesterday’s measures, to take control of a large section of the banking sector will work or not. Do these guys know what they are doing? or are they like some compulsive gambler having lost his wages and the housekeeping, putting the house and holiday money on a good tip on the last race at Plumpton?

It was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics but a few short weeks ago who would have guessed at the events that have unfolded. Yesterday Gordon Brown compared himself to Churchill and Roosevelt and there was hardly a snigger. Never in the field of global crisies can one man’s career have had such a boost.

The reason that nobody laughed at Broon’s comment is that we’re all shit scared. Shit scared for our jobs, houses and pensions. A siege mentality/ wartime spirit is now evident. And yet…..and yet……although shares in general recovered yesterday, the three banks (HBOS, RBOS and Lloyds TSB) continued to plummet. HBOS ended up 27.5% down.

Gordon Brown says a condition of bailing the banks out is that mortgage lending must return to 2007 levels. Hang on! isn’t that at least partly what landed us in this mess in the first place?

As I say, I’m a humble blogger. I just don’t know anymore.

Tonight We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 1929!

The House of Representatives has refused to back the ‘cross-party’ £700 billion rescue package for the USA economy.

Crikey.

What now?