finance

Osborne Strikes Again

Posted on by chrisjeff

After the Deripaska fiasco, you would’ve thought George Osborne would just lie low for a few weeks and keep his name out of the press.
Quite the opposite…

How are we going to dig our way out of this one?
How are we going to dig our way out of this one?

Now I don’t know a great deal about politics or economics, but it didn’t take me long to realise that Osborne made a massive blunder in predicting a run on the pound. Whilst the credit crunch begins its slow and painful transformation into a full-blown recession, what we need right now is confidence coming from the top in order to begin to turn things around.
It may be the Conservatives’ role to criticise Labour’s every move, but shattering public confidence in the stability of sterling is just plain irresponsible. There are plenty of other ways to criticise Labour at the moment, and Osborne’s leader seems to be doing pretty damn well in reaction to the case of Baby P.
Osborne is, of course, obliged to be critical about the economy, but his actions have grave implications for the whole financial system. It seems he has an ‘if I’m going down, I’m taking you down with me’ mentality. And yet he refuses to apologise, and may even lose his post as a result.
There are some times where ‘telling the truth’ can do more damage than good, and you would expect a prominent politician to be aware of that. This may be the time for a novice, but it’s certainly not the time for a maverick. Just ask John McCain.
I’d be interested to know if anyone can defend his behaviour this week.

UPDATE:

So it seems Boris Johnson disagrees with me:

George Osborne is paid to warn of such risks, and he is absolutely right to do so.

In this highly predictable piece he effectively spouts the typical Tory line, but since he can no longer sit in the Commons and berate Brown face-to-face, he has to find a new medium for his partisan accusations. Mayor Johnson’s biased ramblings aside, I think it’s a bit cheap of the Telegraph to print this. Trying to snare in readers with a big name opinion piece by any chance?

Where Have All The Lefties Gone?

Posted on by chrisjeff

You can’t move in the journalistic world at the moment without being faced with worrying questions about the credit crunch, but no-one seems to have any definite answers. It’s particularly daunting for someone such as me, who has no formal economic education, so I readily bow to those who know their FTSEs from their Dow Jones’s.

Take to the streets!
Take to the streets!

The Times’ daily columnists have been doing a great job of making the credit crunch more comprehensible, and today the BBC chimed in with this helpful article.

But I am quite surprised that no-one has risked taking a Marxist view of the situation, even ironically. I consider myself to be a closet Lefty, fairly convinced by Marx’s ideas, but not educated or confident enough to walk down Farringdon Road waving a Red Flag, burning £10 notes.

No matter what your political stance, it must seem unusual that as the capitalist system falters majorly, there is a great dearth of left-wing criticism. Nonetheless, I found this article from the Guardian particularly interesting.

Unquantified though it may be, I think it’s wonderfully ironic that the Germans (who are stereotypically aligned with fascism) should look to their estranged son Karl for guidance during this time of severe economic turmoil. Perhaps I should look to the Guardian more often to indulge my quasi-Marxist tendencies…

Now Playing: Frank Turner – Love, Ire & Song

UPDATE 13/11/08: Don’t despair, some would argue you can even benefit from the credit crunch. David Christopher blogs that a reduction in house prices can only be good for those hoping to get on the property ladder for the first time.