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+--- Thread: How fucked are we? (/showthread.php?tid=15099)
How fucked are we? - Protheroe - 01-19-2021
In 2008, the UK spent 1.5% of GDP to alleviate the global financial crisis; this time we have spent 26% of GDP.
The answer to the question would appear to be, very.
Yet the S&P is at a record, Tesla & Bitcoin are at valuations disengaged from reality, the UK housing market is powering ahead and new IPOs & SPACs are announced every day - all on the foundation of cheap money and the printing press.
Sound money is dead. There are no monetary levers left for central banks to pull. The only way to get out of this hole is to inflate away our debt - and if you think "austerity" was bad, then wait for the return of inflation.
What will herald the inevitable correction this time? And which markets would you buy into to protect yourself from the carnage?
RE: How fucked are we? - Borin' Baggie - 01-19-2021
There's no point trying to guage the impact until the economy is fully open.
RE: How fucked are we? - Ossian - 01-19-2021
If we cosy up to the US they might adopt us and we could become like a cold, damp, distant Puerto Rico.
More seriously, any plan to recover from this pandemic probably needs, realistically, a twenty year lifespan, which in turn means it then needs to factor in a response to a couple more pandemics because - human mobility being what it is - these are likely to keep coming in the future and they won't be 100 years apart.
RE: How fucked are we? - Protheroe - 01-19-2021
(01-19-2021, 04:51 PM)Ossian Wrote: If we cosy up to the US they might adopt us and we could become like a cold, damp, distant Puerto Rico.
They've got enough to worry about themselves.
RE: How fucked are we? - baggy1 - 01-19-2021
Who'd have thought that voting for a failed journalist and London Mayor on a one promise campaign that everybody could see was set to fail could ever go wrong.
RE: How fucked are we? - Protheroe - 01-19-2021
(01-19-2021, 05:27 PM)baggy1 Wrote: Who'd have thought that voting for a failed journalist and London Mayor on a one promise campaign that everybody could see was set to fail could ever go wrong.
How's that relevant? Any government would be / is in a similar position.
RE: How fucked are we? - Ossian - 01-19-2021
Somewhere between slightly and quite badly - in answer to the thread title. When the dust eventually settles there will be plenty of other countries in a much worse position than us, including some of the EU27; but that's when measurements (debt, deficit, GDP by sector) are expressed as national indicators. At the level of the individual there will be a vast disparity between - for want of a better expression - the winners and the losers. Anecdotally many of the most wealthy have, over the course of the last year or so, amassed even more.
That's going to need to change: and not by means of a Leninist insurrection either (at least hopefully not). However unpalatable it will be for some on the right, some of the solution lies in the manageable rebalancing of how wealth is accumulated; it will need to be redistributive without being punitive and that's a tough ask. It's just preferable to being completely... what was the word?
RE: How fucked are we? - ChamonixBaggie - 01-19-2021
(01-19-2021, 06:48 PM)Ossian Wrote: Somewhere between slightly and quite badly - in answer to the thread title. When the dust eventually settles there will be plenty of other countries in a much worse position than us, including some of the EU27; but that's when measurements (debt, deficit, GDP by sector) are expressed as national indicators. At the level of the individual there will be a vast disparity between - for want of a better expression - the winners and the losers. Anecdotally many of the most wealthy have, over the course of the last year or so, amassed even more.
That's going to need to change: and not by means of a Leninist insurrection either (at least hopefully not). However unpalatable it will be for some on the right, some of the solution lies in the manageable rebalancing of how wealth is accumulated; it will need to be redistributive without being punitive and that's a tough ask. It's just preferable to being completely... what was the word?
Awwwwww
RE: How fucked are we? - Protheroe - 01-19-2021
(01-19-2021, 06:48 PM)Ossian Wrote: it will need to be redistributive without being punitive and that's a tough ask.
That's the nail on the head. Problem is - when the tax take is as high as it was in the mid-70s where do you go hunting for revenue? And if you increase marginal rates will you raise any additional revenue anyway?
RE: How fucked are we? - Ossian - 01-19-2021
(01-19-2021, 06:55 PM)ChamonixBaggie Wrote:(01-19-2021, 06:48 PM)Ossian Wrote: Somewhere between slightly and quite badly - in answer to the thread title. When the dust eventually settles there will be plenty of other countries in a much worse position than us, including some of the EU27; but that's when measurements (debt, deficit, GDP by sector) are expressed as national indicators. At the level of the individual there will be a vast disparity between - for want of a better expression - the winners and the losers. Anecdotally many of the most wealthy have, over the course of the last year or so, amassed even more.
That's going to need to change: and not by means of a Leninist insurrection either (at least hopefully not). However unpalatable it will be for some on the right, some of the solution lies in the manageable rebalancing of how wealth is accumulated; it will need to be redistributive without being punitive and that's a tough ask. It's just preferable to being completely... what was the word?
Awwwwww
It wouldn't work in the UK anyway; halfway to the winter palace we'd get distracted by either Greggs or Caffe Nero.