I see Morgan Stanley ( a large US investment bank) has just downgraded GLOBAL growth forecasts on concerns about... Any guesse blanchflower? No... Oh, on debt concerns in Europe . Let's see who's fault this is- is it
A) osborne's and the rotten Tories
B) the rotten Tories led by Osborne , or
C)slashers.
Any guesses folks?

The economy under present policies is like to jerk along the bottom to the end of this Parliament. I don't think the politics of it will hold. Watch this space.

"Are you familiar with the expression " Upwards " ?"

Well judging from your previous house prices argument (or lack of), you obviously aren't Matt!

If you didn't go around just using ad hominem insults against everyone perhaps more people would engage you in more serious discussion.

But then again every time you get your arse handed to you you disappear

Bit like the Prof come to think about it!

Matt- what are you trying to say? do u have a point? is it that no man should make 2.5mn in 1 year- or Osborne is responsible for the share price? or that despite blanchflower and all calling him a slasher, u think Osborne is a spender???
u don't articulate very well, and your sublety is non existent

All the snide central office commentators are writhing as DB shows them for the slaves and propagandists they are.

George W Bush added 6 Trillion dollars to the National Debt.

When George W Bush came to power, the economy was generating surpluses, he killed that within a year.

I see Hans Christian is dodging the Hester bullet.

Global stockmarkets in freefall.. and blanchflower is banging on about a bank holiday's impact on the stats!!!!!!
hehe £75 billion swings, US downgrading on DEBT concerns, Europe down 5% on DEBT concerns, British banks collapsing on DEBT concerns, and Blanchflower is (i'm having to pinch myself) crying about when the Royal wedding took place- Is this the mark of a statesman?
OR, is he trying to get your attention away from the fact that for years, He and balls and brown and Krugman all advocated HIGHER AND HIGHER public expenditure?? Check out their speeches- it's all there- they pushed for more and more debt. They have sought to enslave our children and now will be exposed.
One more point about this man's destabilising influences. currently, the dynamical system that is the global economy is not balenced, it has not been so for a long time but 5 years ago the cracks started to really appear, however the politicians started to chuck voters sweeties. It would be good to remember that not only must the adults firmly take control of the finances now because so many people's livelihoods depend on it now (this is GLOBAL), but also that the debt is to foreign powers, and they will want their money back. These powers do not have the same values as us wrt human life. In the same way kids squabble over a toy, then adults squabble over MONEY.
We live in a sanitised, risk free world in which we have allowed ourselves to become disconnected from the forces of nature (thank you elfnsafety)... It risks becoming a far harsher place if we get this wrong.
The clowns must be outed!

@Willp
To be honest you are a bit insulting and come across as niave. BTW I've read thousands of books, by authors with long and short names, and not just on economics.

I dont agree with you that Labour embraces borrowing to invest in worthwhile projects. The record shows that Labour's spending has been driven by a consuming motivation of a small elite to retain power.

As for spending money to solve our problems. The Government as an investor is disadvantaged relative to private and public equity because vested interests use political advantage against the govenrment to exploit their self interest. Compare to the simple shareholder view where capital is managed to maximise value for the shareholders (most UK plcs follow the enlightened shareholder model - google it).

The conflict of interest for Government investors manifests itself in corruption - where self interests of others overides the maximisation of wealth creation for the common good e.g. which is why the public sector xxx (employee self interest membership groups beginning with 'u') exist .

The Government investor can indirectly mitigate the conflict of interest by allocating public resources to promote business activities without having a direct interest in the control of the business which is open to exploitation by vested interests. Know to work for this includes low business taxes or providing other indirect support to promote specific activities. Governments can also create an environment which encourages industry to develop e.g. low exchange rates, high employee fexibility, high indirect/ low corporate & employment taxes etc.

Making a sustainable sucessful business is not as simple as throwing money at it. A business trades on its goodwill including its resources, customer relationships, management, etc. Simple investment buys assets but does not buy goodwill. It provides the means of production but does not promote the development of sales, efficient processes or a robust supply side which often requires management to be cruel relative to the standards of others who do not have an interest in the capital invested - governments are fundamentally disadvantaged at running businesses as they can not be as cruel as private businesses.

Often, governments can help best by not hindering or disorting the market (because when a government engages with the market, vested interests put pressure on the government to exploit their interests).

Governments can promote businesses through low interest rates, provide export support, low general taxes, specific tax incentives, low administration costs, grants, loans etc. More controvetially they can regulate the employment market through proactive immigration control.

.... its all sounding Tory and ideologically differentiated from Labour (which was a party for common labor but has degenerated into the mechanism of power for a small elite).

So to cut a long story short. Give Labour £100Bn and they will spend it trying to win votes and how they spend it will depend on where they can get the most votes.

Give the nasty Tories £100BN and they will spend to paying down the national debt to reduce annual debt interest to reduce taxes to promote business growth.

It occurs to me that the people who protest loudly about Professor Blanchflower are in the same la la land of denial as David Smith of the Times. They have chosen to go on the same white knuckle ride with Osborne as he arrogantly takes an unprecedented gamble with the future of this country's economy. They know Osborne's plans are not working and further, they know they will not work because they haven't a cat in hell's chance of working.
The facts are indisputable, whatever they say, they cannot ignore or deny that since Osborne got his hands on the UK economy and Labour's measures stripped out and replaced with Osborne's the economy has stalled.

I do not see this situation improving because Osborne is arrogant and will never admit he has called it all wrong and we do not need politicians like that, especially at this time. The situation is fluid and changing all the time we need people who can handle that and Osborne can't. Whether people like it or not Ed Balls is the only chance this country has and he has been proved right more times than he has been proved wrong.

Also like it or not Blanchflower's detractors on here (and elsewhere) have been repeatedly proved wrong and Blanchflower right and no amount of prevarication on their part or the verbosity of their comments on here is going to change the facts.

@gracie

Blanchflower right repeatedly? I must have missed it when unemployment hit £5 million or did that only happen in la la land?. Since the austerity measure have barely kicked in, the evidence is actually on Osborne's side of the fence, i.e. the fiscal stimulus has failed here, as it did in the US, as it has largely in the EU. What leads you to beleive another stimulus here would be more successful when it failed so abjectly in the largest economy in the world?

As for gambles do you not think pulling the fiscal levers to the point of default is not a gamble in itself, it hasn't worked too well for Greece and Spain has it?

Before you respond please go away and learn what a structural deficit and then find out what the UK's is, I doubt you even understand such basic concepts.

The suffering public are no fools. Osborne's cheerleaders can continue to hysterically spin the failing Austerity Policies to kingdom come , while consumer and business confidence plummet. The suffering electorate will puniish Osborne and Cameron in the general election.

@ matt
i'm laughing so hard it's hurts- have you heard of jack welch? he turned a cpmpany called general electric into... actually i can't explain this right now, toommuch laughter.
Ok, so fred goodwin replaced hester- ok , he was the guy who worked at RBS BEFORE hester turned up...lol.. thank you, thank you again, some of the comments here are so good it's not true... amazing stuff keep it up. You make a comment about a bank that sucked up £80bn hehe (and will do more there'es no equity left hahahaha), link it to Osborne who wasn't even in power, lol, at the time, gloss over the idiot who signed off on the £15million payoff!! hahaahaha, and you don't know who goodwin is-SLAM DUNK!! AHAHAHA, value, tears in my eyes. And you're from the Left! it's classic- hey, you were there when the greek guys thought the rest of the world would show solidarity with the birthplace of democracy, then we found out they didn't actually go to work haahahahah... I have some good cynical friends who will love this one. I will try hard to be unbiased in rcounting the story.
thanks again

the coalition do need to pursue a pro-growth strategy, but this does not mean a blind deficit increasing tax and spend policy.

gov't spending should be heavily re-configured away from admin style jobs to growth enhancing infrastructure spend, we could subside the uni fees of all engineering graduates (something we need more of in the economy of the future if are to compete with china, india and far east who are churning out such graduates). we could provide tax cuts for low and middle income ranges - shift the tax free allowance as high as possible and take people out of tax altogether (i would rather scrap tax credits and replace with a 15 to 20k tax free allowance), you could reduce taxes on productive assets and replace with a wealth tax - helping reduce corporation tax for the north of england, scotland and northern ireland should be a priority, we could also invest more in green technology.

The nasty neanderthals continue to stalk and stomp across the land with their rabid, rotten, right wing poisonous rhetoric.
As I've said previously, get back to your DARK DARK DARK caves where you belong!

@ mark
he's not a left wing economist- He's not left wing he knows nothing of what that means, and his economics is limited to scratching around trying to find trinkets of data to support rabid power seeking arguments. The left will have to find new 'champions' if they are serious- as the cold sets in, people are going to want answers, and the more political bullshit the 2 clowns will trot out, the angrier the mob will become, because when the debt junkies sober up and see the drug dealers in the cold light of day, and the effect it's had on them and their kids, the mob will want it's pound of flesh... Hehe, Ed will then be able to get rid of balls as well...actually this isn't so bad a plan. Didn't the kennedy's run America together? Anyone got david Millibands number?

"So how exactly would a bank holiday in April lower hours in March or May?"

Because the YBUS series is a 3-month rolling average, centred on the specified month; I confirmed this with the ONS. (The bulletin always gives YBUS data as a 3-month average, so that should have been a clue)

@ blanchflower
a 3 month rolling average is calculated as follows:
1. specify a centred month
2. add the previous month, the centred month, and the following month hours (you may use a calculator blancflower)
3. divide this number by 3
4. Blame Osborne the slasher

Gracie
Yu are part of the problem generally-and specifically for labour cos u make the party look like it's full of numpties. You can't know anything about economics, you don't even understand that people aren't slagging blanchflower cos of his policies,it's more his attacks on Osborne without base since the policies are to early to judge. Ever heard the story of the boy who cried Wolf? You can't grasp the enormity of the situation because I doubt that you have conceptualised what a billion actually is and you have probably never heard of a compound interst rate.
David smith made a point at the week end, as was pointed out here, that Blanchflower made a wrong calculation- not judgement fromMr Smith, he simply pointed out that Blanchibabe forgot that a particular statistic was clculated on a 3 month rolling average. I have commented that handling large sets of data is prone to error(generous really of me, rabid lefties would jump all over it), yet U don't accept it- u can't see that 2+2=4 in base 10 math,and embarassingly you try to ARGUE it dosen't. Do you understand how dumb u look, but more importantly how dumb u make the side u represent look like? I wonder if u even know what a 3 month rolling average is? If not, have u even tried to find out? If not , why not? Are you one of those who expects that Britannia rules the waves and that u were trained to do one job and that's all you will do for the rest of you're life because as A British subject and therefore ruler of the waves the ethnics can bloody well behave and not try and take that job? Clearly there is no way that you will retrain your mind to be able to do something else, the knowledge economy is for those that are there to subsidise your myopic view of the world. Rather than talk about facts being indisputable, why not take time to study, learn and then most importantly introspect.
I have withheld from being rude, but you're crass ignorance of the facts whilst claiming that you are backed by the facts, well it's animal farm territory. You think you're doing someone a favour by backing them even if they're wrong- well, that's the same dumb idea that says there should be no competition at school (go on Jonny, u're a total loser who can't run for shit cos u NEVER done any practice, but well done!!! have a medal for not quite finishing). U think the last 20 posts have been about whether blanchflower was wrong!! seriously, go and introspect- u need it badly- just stop talking, go and meditate...

@danny

If I'm reading Rob and Alastair correctly you have made a school boy error. Will you print a retraction as it impinges on New Statements reputation?

Luckily Labour economists would not need to count beyond 2 (that is AA).

@ matt
"Interstingly, who bailed RBS out with taxpayers money? and who paid the then boss Fred goodwin £15 million pension with taxpayers money?"
er, when i wrote fred goodwin, what i meant was.. er... fred goodwin...
is this for real?

I think Mrs Bonwick-Jones has been sipping too many sherry's whilst reading her Daily Telegraph. Shouldnt believe all you read in the DT, dear.

Keep up the good work, Danny!

@Graeme Hancocks
"Shouldnt believe all you read in the DT"

OK. Which of these then is not true and mere right wing propoganda?
(a) Before 2008, Labour borrowed £250Bn.
(b) During the term of the last government, UK industry shrank at its fastest rate since the 1970s?
(c) Labours deficit reduction plan is to borrow £250Bn more than the coalition

Its (a) of course. Before 2008, the last government borrowed a massive £350Bn.

Indu Pendent writes, "I dont agree with you that Labour embraces borrowing to invest in worthwhile projects."
I actually wrote, "Labour and the Coalition both embrace the former", the former being bad debts, "the debt we incur when the government makes the taxpayer bailout (subsidise) the banks. The banks then impose conditions on the government (privatise, cut public services), rather than vice versa. Nothing is invested: no growth occurs."
So I was saying that Labour does NOT 'embrace borrowing to invest in worthwhile projects."

"Clare
19 August 2011 at 13:02

Incredibly Danny hasn't rush out a story on the vastly improved government borrowing figures this month (£20m July 2011 vs £3.5bn July 2010), this improvement saves the tax payer an indefinite iterest repayment of £175m annually and that's before we even start repaying the capital.

Indu Pendent
19 August 2011 at 14:50

@clare

Beat me to it, I was just going to say the same. Brilliant news for the country.

Danny - please could you supply a chart of your after dinner speach fee income as we can use it as a proxy for forecasting the deficit."

-----------

Yes, great news about the deficit - shame about the real economy going down the crapper. The markets have realised what Danny has been arguing - "where is the demand going to come from?"

And what's this? Government-held RBS + LloydsTSB stakes fall by £50bn over last two weeks? Whoops, might have to mark that one onto the balance sheet.