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Is the UK Labor Party so inept that it can’t mount a credible attack on these outdated and destructive Tory policies? Two weeks into her tenure and Liz Truss seems intent on proving herself a high-functioning monetary moron. Unlearned history is repeating itself in Truss’ Thatcher-era mistakes.

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Currency markets as well as much of actual commodity markets are really nothing but manipulation and escape from change mechanisms utilized by Finance within the current monetary paradigm. In the new paradigm much of speculation would be severely regulated or even banned.

Do you want to: End inflation forever? Virtually eliminate payroll taxation, cut income taxes by at least 50% ? (but tax the shit out of anyone who cheats or games the new paradigm) Double everyone's purchasing power? Isolate Finance from the rest of the legitimate economic business models while exposing private money creation as the dominating and costly parasite it has always been? Integrate the self interests of traditionally opposed economic constituencies and agendas which would enable the kind of coalition needed to finally wake up, die right and herd the entirety of the political apparatus toward sanity?

Communicate the benefits of a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale to the masses as well as the rest of the new paradigm program.

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“borrowing requirements would fall a lot if say, UK government [were to] announce a massive cut in NHS spending, education, no net zero, privatisation of strategic assets (NHS again) to contain pressures on sterling/gilts.” - sorry if I am not following/fully up to speed - but there are no borrowing requirements, right? (except political policies and pressures)

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"It might sound far fetched ..."

Not that far-fetched if you read this:

https://www.cato.org/white-paper/ideal-us-uk-free-trade-agreement-free-traders-perspective

and, in particular, the Epilogue in which you will find this:

"As for other services areas, health services are an area where both sides would benefit from openness to foreign competition, although we recognize any changes to existing regulations will be extremely controversial. Perhaps, then, for other areas the initial focus should be on other fields such as education or legal services, where negotiators can test the waters and see what is possible. That said, we would envisage a swift, time‐​tabled implementation of recognition across all areas within 5 years"

Now, if you had executed a Brexit which enabled you to make changes to existing regulations under some draconian powers, (like, for example, those granted by the The European Union [Withdrawal Agreement] Act 2020 ), and you wanted to sell off and terminate the NHS, (like the Tories have done for time immemorial), and you took your advice from, among others, the CATO Institute and 5 years seemed like a rather attractive timeframe to achieve that in, then wouldn't it be rather a good idea to "announce a massive cut in NHS spending, education, no net zero, privatisation of strategic assets (NHS again) to contain pressures on sterling/gilts.”.

Because this may be a really stupid and destructive mini-budget or it may just be an unconstrained cabinet putting the finishing touches to nailing the crown jewels of Brexit - full privatisation of the NHS and sell-off to multinational healthcare corporates.

After all Brexit was never about the things in the sales pitch and was always about selling off England and its public sector by the (conveniently cheapened) pound and handing its user base (the UK population) over to the corporates as an economically enslaved user base.

Maybe not a stupid budget - a horrible, cruel one, but also a dead cat masterstroke.

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Sep 26, 2022·edited Sep 26, 2022

The alternative interpretation is that if the UK government's deficit is allowed to increase because of the big tax cuts for the rich and presumably defence spending increases, which is indeed very much like the Reagan era approach, but importantly other government expenditure is basically left as is - then that is still a better fiscal outcome as it would bring the UK closer to the full employment condition.

Although the tax cuts are not the ideal path they are a legitimate alternative path to a better outcome of more employment IF OTHER GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE IS NOT CUT. The trajectory of the UK government's deficit will reveal what they are all really up to.

The latter part of the Ronald Reagan Presidency was seen as an economic recovery period after the spending austerity, high interest rates, bankruptcies and high unemployment of the late Jimmy Carter/Paul Volcker period and Reagan's initial fairly brief austerity period. All Reagan did however was to increase the federal deficit and apply Keynesian pump priming after inflation was again fairly low due to Volcker's/Carter's US and global recession.

MMT economists generally recommend that national government deficits be increased so that unemployment falls and ideally by utilising a JG to provide the 'automatic' fine level fiscal control. The new UK government leadership may yet be on a better path but not the ideal path. We will see.

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Sep 26, 2022·edited Sep 26, 2022

Robert Reich's observation that most US inflation (and probably also most global and UK inflation) is currently profit-price driven then a little Keynesian pump priming by the new UK Liz Truss government, even if it is in the form of tax cuts, is unlikely to add much to inflation and is still better than nothing from the perspective of the unemployed and underemployed IF, and that is a big IF, other expenditure items are not cut as a result of the larger deficit.

It is almost certain that the UK defence budget will increase substantially which also may indicate how the UK government is actually thinking - Keynes is back?

Part 1. The truth I'm telling Congress today about inflation – Robert Reich – 22 September 2022

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-truth-im-telling-congress-today#details

Part2. The Truth I'm telling Congress today (Part II) – Robert Reich - 22 September 2022

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-truth-im-telling-congress-today-cc7

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