The Autism Spiral? (obligatory loluk thread)

[Pattern]

So when does one, at least in the UK, say that austerity is officially failing?

Rise in government borrowing adds to George Osborne's woes
Chancellor could be forced to borrow an extra £20bn this year after figures showed a bigger than expected shortfall in the public finances in June
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George Osborne (left) with the Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, on a tour of a Crossrail site. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA
The chancellor, George Osborne, could be forced to borrow an extra £20bn this year after figures showed a bigger-than-expected shortfall in the public finances in June.

A rise in government spending to cope with higher social security bills, combined with a fall in tax receipts, has left the Treasury scrabbling to meet its borrowing target for the end of the year.

Osborne expects to borrow £120bn this year, but a near 12% overshoot in his calculations in the first few months of the year could lead to a £140bn borrowing requirement when the tax year finishes next April.

The chancellor has predicted that a mix of tax rises and welfare cuts will cut borrowing to just £21bn by 2016/17. But the expectation of a prolonged double dip recession and a recovery that could take years to get under way has undermined his plans.

The prime minister, David Cameron, said earlier this week that he may need to keep austerity measures in place for a decade to reach the government's borrowing target.

A spokesman for the Treasury said it was too early to tell how the public finances would look in a year. He added that the level of borrowing could be revised downwards, as it was last year, to below the target.

However, several economists said the chancellor should take little comfort from revisions to past data. The International Monetary Fund has also warned the government that it risks permanently damaging economic output unless it spends more on infrastructure projects and delays welfare cuts to boost confidence and private consumption.

Howard Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, said: "Three months into the fiscal year, and Osborne is already facing an almighty struggle to meet his fiscal targets for 2012/13 and looks ever more likely to miss them. The current weakness of the economy is clearly taking a serious toll on tax receipts while spending is currently rising at a well above target rate. It is of only minor consolation to the chancellor that the Public Sector Net Borrowing Requirement (PSNBR) in 2011/12 was revised down to £125.7bn from the previously reported £127.6bn."

The Office for National Statistics said the PSNBR, excluding the bank rescue funds, rose last month to £14.45bn from £13.92bn in June 2011.

Archer said borrowing for the first three months of the financial year amounted to £42.9bn, which is up from £38.4bn in the first three months of 2011/12.

"In other words, the underlying PSNBR is up by 11.7% year-on-year in the first three months of 2012/13 compared with a targeted drop over the whole fiscal year of around 4.5%," he said. "If this trend was to be continued over the rest of the fiscal year, the PSNBR would come in around £140bn, which would be £20bn above the targeted £120bn."

Chris Williamson, chief economist at financial data provider Markit, said the government's plans had been undermined by a lack of growth.

"First, and most significantly, weaker-than-anticipated growth has led to lower-than-expected tax revenues. Tax revenues rose just 3.6% on a year ago in June, and are up just 2.5% so far this tax year," he said. "There seems little scope for revenue growth to pick up soon, given the fall in [industry surveys] to an eight-month low in June. The government's deficit reduction target was based on a projection of economic growth of 0.8% this year, but most forecasters now expect GDP to rise by less than half of the official forecast."

Williamson added that weak growth had resulted in a further impact in higher welfare bills, underpinned by an unemployment rate of 8.1%. He added: "Government spending fell 0.8% on a year ago in June, which is encouraging, but is 2.1% higher so far this year compared with last year."

Much of the current overshoot in borrowing was due to a smaller surplus in local government finances than last year, because of deferred or reduced central government grants, the ONS added.

While rising unemployment has driven up spending on benefits, earlier this month the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank said Treasury figures showed government departments had spent £6.7bn less in the 2011/2012 fiscal year than planned under the austerity budget.

Britain's total public sector net debt, excluding financial sector interventions, rose to £1.04tn or a record 66.1% of GDP in June. Including the cost of bank support, it now represents 144.5% of GDP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...george-osborne

Also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...g-save-economy

[tulip]

Why admit the plan is failing when you can just blame Europe being "worse than expected"? That assumes of course that he doesn't simply brush off the numbers as wrong, it's a well known fact that as a politician when the IMF gives good news about your economy it's because of your policies but when they give bad news it's because the numbers are wrong, misleading or influenced by outside variables you have no control over.

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Brilliant, as usual:

[Azure]

Brilliant, as usual:

Good stuff!

Reminds me of:

[Sykes]

Tomorrow's Observer has an interesting story that puts a lot of this stuff in perspective:

A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.

The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...fshore-economy

[Zeekar]

But it would trickle down! Straight down from the alps into the Swiss banks.

[Spawinte]

Tomorrow's Observer has an interesting story that puts a lot of this stuff in perspective:

A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.

The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...fshore-economy

That is some disheartening shit. Seeing what's been happening to people in the last few years has already left me with an overwhelming sense of unfairness but this.....

[Nooby]

That is some disheartening shit. Seeing what's been happening to people in the last few years has already left me with an overwhelming sense of unfairness but this.....

I'm sure they have worked hard for their trillions~

[Sykes]

That is some disheartening shit. Seeing what's been happening to people in the last few years has already left me with an overwhelming sense of unfairness but this.....

I'm sure they have worked hard for their trillions~

Very long hours apparently ...

Which apparently absolves them from contributing to society through proportionate taxation like normal people do.

For them, society is just another revenue stream, as their stooges in government subsidise their share prices (e.g. society just bought Richard Branston a bank and just provided G4S with the resources to get them off the hook for grotesquely underbidding on providing security for the Olympics, probably on the assumption they could use workfare slaves at zero cost because they're paid for by ordinary peoples' honestly paid taxes)

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Ordinary folk get exploited by the rich and powerful!
Film at 11 ...

[Sykes]

Ordinary folk get exploited by the rich and powerful!
Film at 11 ...

This is a pretty common sort of response in places that are primarily full of apolitical tech geeks, but I'm interested to know, what do you intend by it?

Clearly the exploitation of ordinary folk by the rich and powerful is happening. You appear to agree. So what's the point of this remark? Merely to say that you agree?

[Chrien]

Its more that its been said over and over and everyone bar Lallente seems to agree.

[Sykes]

Its more that its been said over and over and everyone bar Lallente seems to agree.

Is that any reason not to say it?

All too often any description of the ways in which ordinary people are being, increasingly, fucked over by the privileged, is sneered at as 'conspiracy theory' by arse-licking apologists for privilege.

Hence all the more reason to keep posting credible evidence that such oppression is real.

[Chrien]

I'm more than happy to see the rich be picked apart.

[Sykes]

Fair enough.

When you get an influential minority here sucking the rancid cock of privilege in the most despicable way imaginable, coming out with poisonous 'kick the poor when they're down and laugh about it while snorting coke and swilling champagne' shit that might conceivably get someone banned on Guido Fawkes' site for bringing hateful reactionary Tory arse-holes into disrepute.

When anyone taking issue with such garbage has to deal with an entire tree full of shit-flinging monkeys leaping up and down going 'hurhurhur he trollolololed U' like a bunch of morons.

I think it's reasonable to be a little bit bolshie about this kind of thing. I have no intent to offend anyone who isn't an arse-licking cheerleader for indefensible ruling elites though.

[Chrien]

You've got to remember that in any such debate that humans in western societies are cultured and educated to protect their self-interest. In the case of those doing well they're never likely to agree that things need changing. It takes an incrediable amount of self-perception to look past personal circumstance and make objective judgements.

[Spawinte]

In the case of those doing well they're never likely to agree that things need changing.

Hang them. Got it.

[Kransthow]

Can we have a revolution now?

[Spawinte]

Is that a zoomed in screenshot or a photo of a creepy cat eyed doll?

[Zeekar]

Can we have a revolution now?

Standard of living is still to high in most western countries for that, give it a couple of years. Either that or war.