Your predictions for the coming Tory government?

[Blagsta]

People have been forced into a situation where they've had to borrow. This wasn't accidental.

 

[The39thStep]

My prediction: when the Tories get in New Labour will lurch to the tame left and criticise the Tories for carrying out the very same policies that New Labour did.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Hmm.

Presumably the tories who were - right up until the moment the shit hit the fan - calling for *less* regulation in the financial sector, are completely different from the tories being discussed here?

 

[deadringer]

Spending spree bollocks. Before the recession the public debt was at the same level as 1997.

would have been prudent to try and reduce this down, no?

(although politicians allowing and encouraging property speculation then getting outraged about property speculators is pretty stupid).

and property speculating themselves!

 

[LLETSA]

Have the Tories said anything to suggest they're going to ditch the minimum wage, attack workers rights, slash housing etc? Whichever party gets in, there's going to be cuts, because Mr Brown's furious spending spree was unsustainable, and the debt will be years in the paying off as it is.

It sounds like you're expecting the bastard spawn of Alan B'stard and Ayn Rand to take office. You're more likely to get the soggy offspring of Michael Portillo and Polly Toynbee.

The last paragraph is probably accurate, but the reason for spending cuts on the scale we'll see no matter who gets in is primarily because of the bailout of the banks necessitated by the freeing up of the financial system initiated by Thatcher.

 

[LLETSA]

Suharto apologist and child exploiter - or ex-pat tory git for short.

Or better still-phoney. Anybody who daily frequents left-leaning message boards wanking on about being a capitalist is lying.

 

[LLETSA]

Poor people who borrowed... they didn't know what they were doing did they?

Although economic growth needs an ever expanding number of people buying into consumer capitalism, it becomes steadily harder in a situation where, for the vast majority, real wages stopped rising some time ago. Everybody was therefore encouraged to borrow heavily in order to maintain their living standards. For many the choice became to take up the many and varied offers of credit or fall behind in a society that says you're nobody unless you can flaunt as much material success as you can.

Ultimately it means consumer capitalism is heading for the buffers.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It takes two parties to create a loan - the lender and the borrower.

Indeed.
They enjoy what is known as an "asymmetric relationship", though, with the majority of power and knowledge being on the side of the banks.

Its very easy to simply blame the banks and not further but that is just plain stupid. The banks trade within the regulatory framework set out by the FSA and the Treasury. Who presided over both? Yup that's right: Crash Brown.

The regulatory framework merely stipulates the degree of fractional reserve a bank requires in order to legally trade, it doesn't stipulate how the bank holds those reserves because, as the government itself has acknowledged, no-one except a few economic "witch-doctors" actually properly understood the type of derivatives that were being invested in. That's not a regulatory failure, it's a systemic failure.

We'll never know as they weren't in power.

We can, however, reasonably extrapolate from past performance.

RUBBISH!

Poor people who borrowed... they didn't know what they were doing did they? Poor alcoholic who had an accident and killed someone.

Mmm, because that's what I said, wasn't it?
You muppet!

I was talking about degrees of responsibility, and anyone who doesn't have dog-cocks for eyes could see that!

Stop making excuses. People are responsible for their own actions. Period.

So people who were mis-sold pensions, life insurance and other financial services by large financial companies in the eighties, nineties and noughties were "responsible" for that, were they?
Or perhaps companies whose staff were allowed to get away with sharp practices bore the majority of the blame, hmmm?

Even that rag tag the Guardian blames people other than bankers for the crisis. Perhaps you should read the article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy

Perhaps you should read it properly yourself too.

 

[glenquagmire]

would have been prudent to try and reduce this down, no?

Not especially. It wasn't particularly high and it's normal for the debt to fluctuate up and down over a decade.

Don't know who this Wookster is but s/he seems to be incapable of reading what's written - preferring instead to imagine a thread full of people who all love Gordon Brown and read the Guardian.

 

[The39thStep]

There was an interesting point on tne radio re individual debt here and in Europe. In Germany there is a lower proprortion of housing ownership and the rents are also comparitvely lower as well hence less borrowing.