Is Britain on the brink of financial armageddon?

by Hopscotch 65 Replies latest social current

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat
    If you are holding dollars besty, you are about 25% better off then 2 years ago

    Only if he actually moves back to the UK. In which case it is questionable in what sense he would be better off.

  • besty
    besty

    I'm 25% better off every year otherwise I shoot myself

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat

    Sounds precarious.

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt

    Regarding Europe, not Britain, in particular.

    European Economy Risks Decoupling From Global Growth Recovery

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aD6mJGvUqkRE

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt

    Britain Unveils Emergency Budget

    Setting the scene for years of potential strife with the powerful public-sector unions and their allies in the Labour Party, Britain ’s new coalition government on Tuesday unveiled the most severe package of spending cuts and tax increases since the early days of Margaret Thatcher ’s era.

    After only six weeks in office, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron took what his coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats acknowledged was a historic gamble: that austerity measures will help balance the government’s books without pitching the country into a double-dip recession .

    The cuts and tax increases, including average budget reductions of 25 percent for almost all government departments over the next five years, will make Britain a leader among European countries, including Ireland, Greece and Spain, competing to show they can slash spending and appease investors worried about surging debt. But the sharp reductions defy conventional economic wisdom, which holds that governments should increase spending to stimulate growth when the private sector is weak.

    The steps outlined to the House of Commons by George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, would cut the annual government deficit by nearly $180 billion over the next five years, shrinking Britain’s public sector and instituting tough reductions in public housing benefits, disability allowances and other previously sacrosanct aspects of the country’s $285 billion welfare budget.

    Only health and international aid spending would be protected from the 25 percent cuts for government departments by 2015, the steepest fiscal spending reductions since the 1930s. Mr. Osborne also announced a two-year wage freeze for all but the lowest paid among Britain’s six million public servants and a three-year freeze on benefits paid to parents for rearing children, in addition to new medical screening for people claiming disability benefits, part of a bid to cut $16 billion from the annual welfare budget.

    Mr. Osborne also announced a raft of tax increases, though he was at pains to say that the government’s plan to sharply reduce the country’s $1.4 trillion national debt would rest on making roughly four pounds in spending cuts for every pound in tax increases, a point of considerable political weight in a country that is already among the highest-taxed in Europe.

    . . .

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/europe/23britain.html

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt

    bttt

    Double-Dip Recession

    Britain's economy slid into its second recession since the financial crisis after official data unexpectedly showed a fall in output in the first three months of 2012, piling pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron's embattled coalition government.

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/47169446

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit