You are here: Home » News »

The Osborne Effect – recession edition

April 25, 2012 10:47 am

Tags:

Share this Article

So we’re back in recession. It’s now roughly six quarters since the much heralded “spending review”. Let’s take a look at UK growth in the last six quarters:

That’s what some might euphemistically call “negative growth”. That’s the Osborne Effect.

6 quarters. 18 months. A failing economy.

In total Osborne has been in charge of economy for 7 quarters. The economy has shrunk in 4 of them.

trotters57

Company profits are holding up generally, company directors are still getting bonuses, the bankers are getting bonuses, company dividends were up 18% in the last year.
For everyone else real wages are falling in both the public and private sector, unemployment and underemployment are measured in millions.

And yet very few people are talking about a systemic crisis.
- Steven Macari
  
  Yes the bosses are getting bonuses and big pay rises and the average man/women pay has flatlined or shrunk. This gives the proof that trickle down economics doesn’t work. These people at the top are hoarding and not spending. They are not benefitting the country as a whole, they are just benefitting their own coterie.
  - Dan McCurry
    
    Totally agree. We don’t have to be in recession. If companies started spending we would prosper, but they don’t have confidence. The lack of confidence is due to government policy, not just here, but in Eurozone also.
MonkeyBot5000

Why have you started with these daft pictures again? For a while you looked like you where going to stick to presenting genuine informative data, but now you’ve gone back to this sub-GCSE rubbish.

We need to see the six quarters before and after the spending review (12 columns in all) and that shows us how growth has increased/reduced. You also need to label your axes – is growth down by ~0.3% or ~£0.3?

Why do you persist in producing this inumerate nonsense when your point would be far better ilustrated if you just made a proper graph? The underlying data supports your view, but when your presentation of that data hides the important points rather than illuminate them, you make your argument easier to defeat.
- trotters1957
  
  ”
  you make your argument easier to defeat.”
  So why didn’t you defeat the argument instead of shooting the messenger?
  - MonkeyBot5000
    
    Because I’d rather see the argument strengthened than defeated.
    
    As for shooting the messenger, if they can’t deliver the message properly, what use are they?
- http://twitter.com/HarryThompson11 Harry Thompson
  
  It’s tongue in cheek, obviously not a serious economic article. I like it.
  
  Oh, and the economy was growing at a fairly robust rate (considering we’d just come out of a global recession) pre-Osborne effect.
- aracataca
  
  What are you talking about? Recessions are called when there are 2 quarters of negative growth and have been since the 1930s. This is the first double dip since the 1970s and I know everyone would want to join me in congratulating Osborne and his team for this marvellous achievement. Very well done indeed.
  - MonkeyBot5000
    
    The reason you need to see the data from before and after the spending review is that you can’t say tell whether growth started to increase/decrease since the spending review or whether it was continuing a trend that began before the review.
    
    It’s not about the definition of a recession.
http://www.facebook.com/business.science Steve Prior

We are in a perfect storm where all political parties are both right and wrong because their decisions are based on a flawed framework.

No one seems to questions our baseline understanding of what is really going on, what is causing our current reality.

There is no vision and no leadership and sadly there is little true democracy.

We have created a capitalist monster that can only work with growth. Out system of debt based money is part of the systemic problem which means we can only get growth with more debt.

The media talk about GDP as if it measures productive output but it doesn’t. Growth and consumption are built into a system which strips us of our humanity. The system drives a form of slavery which means the rich get ever richer and the poor hold all the debt.

So far, I have seen zero ideas from Ed, Nick, David or George for that matter apart from a myopic ideology.

Politics and the people in power all read the same economics books and went to the same schools. Party politics is tribal and new ideas and innovations are driven out because individual thoughts and ideas are not welcome.
- trotters1957
  
  The 30 year neo-liberal consensus has shown to be a failure and a con trick but no-one has come up with any alternative.
  I remember living through the 70′s when it was equally clear that the post-war social democratic consensus was failing but no-one came up with any new ideas.
  Unfortunately Thatcher and Reagan with the backing of a newly confident business elite won.
  
  We desperately need some new ideas but until the elite start to be hurt or scared nothing will happen. Their grip on both national and international institutions is total.
  - Peter Barnard
    
    @ Paul H (Trotters1957),
    
    You may like this, Paul (courtesy of Will Rogers) : ”
    
    “The money
    was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the
    needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the
    people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night,
    anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”
    - trotters1957
      
      We need some Roosevelt’s now to blow away this failed consensus, Peter. I can’t see any on the horizon, even Obama has been a disappointment.
      But I suspect it’s because of the grip that the rich have on just about every institution and policy in both the UK and US.At least in the 30′s they were fearful of revolution and knew they might need us to defend their interests against Germany and to keep the Empire together.
      
      They don’t need anyone now, if they have a problem they can pick up and move to the Far East or wherever. Even the tax systems need to be competitive or off they pop.
      - Peter Barnard
        
        @ Paul H,
        
        Combination of the “grip of the rich,” Paul, the Culture of Contentment (J K Galbraith), sustained brain-washing of the last thirty years or so, and the successful (but untrue) propagation of the equation, a “mixed economy” = “socialism.”
Jon Newton

Label your axes, Ferg.

Latest

Comment
The Week in Bits: “Welcome to Britain, 2014. The end can’t come soon enough”

By Conor Pope

Impending Armageddon comes as blessed relief for prospective homeowners The prediction that the average price for a small flat in central London will rise to £36million by 2050 was not met with any particular surprise, given the unstoppable force that is the UK’s absurd housing market. Predictability does not, however, negate any feelings of glum impotence towards the hope of one day owning a place to live, and the depressing forecast was only lightened by the increasing likelihood of the […]
Read more →
Comment
Whose recovery is it?

By Ian Lavery

We live in strange times. It is a world where nothing is quite as it seems. For tuning in to the news, picking up the daily papers or checking out the internet it would appear everything is rosy. There’s a recovery, the dark days are over, the Chancellor’s economic plan has worked. But where is this so called recovery? It isn’t manifesting itself in financial rewards for the households in my constituency or indeed most households up and down the […]
Read more →
Comment
We must build more homes – but how?

When Ed Miliband announced Labour’s aim of building 200,000 homes a year by 2020 in England last September, the Financial Times reported that housebuilders had called it a ‘wild’ plan and that the party ‘fails to understand how real markets work’. So the task for everyone who wants to see the supply of new homes radically increased is to prove it can be done and set out practical steps to achieve that target within the lifetime of the next government. […]
Read more →
Featured
Our Armed Forces – standing up for today’s and remembering yesterday’s

By Vernon Coaker

This weekend, Ed Miliband and I are in Afghanistan visiting the Armed Forces in Camp Bastion. The British combat mission may be coming to an end, but it’s clear from what I’ve seen here and what our service men and women have told me: there is much work yet to be done. The loss of 448 members of our brave Armed Forces is an every day reminder of the service and sacrifice that men and women from communities across the […]
Read more →
Comment Local Government
Winning in Tower Hamlets: home to Labour Pride

By John Biggs

I’m proud to be leading the fight for Labour in Tower Hamlets. We have activists who have kept the faith, joined by new active party members, and a talented and energetic group of candidates. We are now a united party and we are taking a strong, progressive and positive offer to residents across the borough. There’s no doubt that Tower Hamlets has had a rocky electoral period over the last few years. We have been divided just when we have […]
Read more →