The steep decline in the British economy
And like they say about images == 1000 words and all...As the global economic crisis takes hold, hardly any other country has seen its fortunes wane as brutally as the United Kingdom. Once a model economy, the country has been overcome by a deep sense of uncertainty.
Ummmm, lez return a li'l bit of the love the $hitish hacve showered on us poor SDREs in the past 2 centuries....take it apart piece by piece onlee....oh,m schadenfreude!!!
Why Ash, someone will pay. The taxpayer, that is. And if you aren;t a TSP/BD welfare moocher, you will too. Happy?Ash Akhtiar, who works for an employment agency in a Birmingham suburb, says that he wants to see someone pay for all of this.
Good luck with that, David. Ukstani laws criminalize armed self defence by aam aadmi. Perhaps you should consider welding brass plates round your neck, you know, to protect against beheadings and what not?David L., a banker who, fearing for his job does not wish to see his name in print, is considering buying a gun to protect his family.
Philip Augar, a financial expert, tries to explain how his country could have become so dependent on banks and loans, while bestselling author Tony Parsons says that the upheaval the United Kingdom is experiencing is as serious as the fall of the Berlin Wall. {You mean, the fall of the soviet empire? Sure, UKstani honeymoon with imperial loot coming to a close was overdue}
The current mood in Great Britain is gloomy. Long Europe's most successful economy, Britain's fortunes have since plunged more than those of almost any other European country. {What? More than even Ukraine which saw GDP contract 20%?! Or dya mean 'em east euro-peons aren't euro-pean nuff for ya?}
Unemployment is rising twice as fast as the European average. Two million people have already lost their jobs, a number that could rise to three million by the end of the year. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the British economy will shrink by 2.8 percent in 2009, the greatest projected decline among the seven largest industrialized nations. {Really? More than even Japan's annualized 12.9% projected contaction? This reporter ought to check its facts onlee}
More and more people are losing their jobs, and more and more are coming to see Akhtiar. "You can see the desperation in their eyes," he says. "They realize that things are different now, and that they won't get new jobs after only a few weeks." {Hey, what happened to the stiff upper lip and all?}
...
The British welfare state, its reach narrowed by a succession of reforms, only offers about £60 ($85) a week in unemployment benefits left to those who have been laid off. The unemployed are often forced to give up their apartments or houses, because many are deeply in debt and can no longer afford to make their monthly mortgage payments. Someone in Great Britain loses their home once every seven minutes. {Too bad. Perhaps, they can join the BNP and oust a few large paki BD 'asylummed' families occupying govt housing in London, then?}
Ten years in the financial industry have made him a wealthy man, with a house in the exclusive Kensington neighborhood, four children in private schools and a wife who wears handmade Manolo Blahnik shoes.
Nowadays, says David L., he sometimes feels nauseous with panic. He imagines a future in which many people are poor and angry, people who could even break down his door in Kensington and enter the house. He has even been thinking about ways to protect his family.
It looked as though Great Britain had created an economy of the future, but in reality it had become dependent on an increasingly bloated financial sector. Even though it generated only 8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the best of times, the financial sector provided the government with a quarter of all corporate taxes. The number of Britons working in the financial sector grew from 4.4 to 6.5 million in the good years.
When Tony Blair came into power in 1997, his Labour government did not reverse any of Thatcher's neoliberal reforms. On the contrary, Labour even loosened the reins on the financial caste a little further.
"The effect the financial industry had on the economy was like a big stone thrown into the water," says Augar. The waves of artificial affluence spread to include lawyers, consultants, shop owners and restaurants. Most of all, however, they drove up the real estate market, where prices almost tripled in only 10 years, making people feel rich. {Wow, 'em tommies reeeally were living upto the Yamerikhan dream, eh?}
"Rising house prices," says Augar, "gave the consumers confidence to spend money, to borrow money. Actually, the whole boom was based on debt." This conclusion helps to explain why the British economy is now in so much trouble. When it comes to debt British private households, having accumulated £1.5 trillion ($2.1 trillion) in debt, are at the leaders in Europe.
The words of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who only last year insisted that the United Kingdom was better prepared for the global crisis than most other countries, sound like a mockery today. Few Britons still believe that Brown is the right person to lead the country through the crisis.
In Great Britain, new borrowing will comprise 9 percent of GDP in the coming year. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, it will take the United Kingdom until 2030 to bring its national debt back to pre-crisis levels. Some are already referring to London as "Reykjavík on the Thames."
Moi suggests 'em $shitish read up a tad on the effects of accumulated bad karma onlee...The negative numbers have also weighed heavily on the British pound, which has lost 17 percent of its value as a result of the recession, the currency's sharpest decline since 1992. Major US investor Jim Rogers warns: "I don't like to say it, but I wouldn't invest any more money in Great Britain."
Instead of being the "sick man of Europe" it was in the 1970s, Great Britain, as the Times predicted, is fast becoming the "sick man of the world." The country is firmly in the grip of deep uncertainty.
"We have become a 'fear nation,'" says author Tony Parsons. "Everyone is afraid: the people, the banks, everyone."
But so what, blimey me....we're still doing better than 'em slumdawgs squatting amid squalor in India's sweltering wasteheaps, no? Lets count our blessings and tease some turd-world slumdawgs for a change... Onwards to the movies!But it's too late now. Parsons says that he has never known of so many people in his social circle who have lost their jobs. "Thatcher had riots in the streets with three million unemployed. Gordon Brown, or David Cameron, will experience the same thing." And those who do have money, like Parsons himself, will soon be pleased about the security guards they have in front of their houses. "We have a Gurkha in our neighborhood, a former elite soldier. Perhaps it'll be like South Africa here soon."
P.S.
Std disclaimers hold. No offense intended. In fact, moi takes this opportunity to reiterate my undying admiration for great $hitain and the games it once played with the lives and livelihood of peoples in moi country.
Peace!