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Pawel Swidlicki, research analyst at the Open Europe think tank, said: “David Cameron deserves credit for mustering an alliance in favour of an EU budget cut.

“However, these examples illustrate the ridiculous extent of horse-trading and special pleading on the part of many member states which results in an economically irrational and ineffective EU budget.

“In particular, using the structural funds as a form of deal-sweetener results in widespread misallocations of scarce public funds coupled with massive opportunity costs. Arguably, the net effect is to hamper growth rather than to boost it.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... eners.html



Its almost as if that's the actual plan?

Lets hope so!

Ref: http://postgrowth.org/learn/about-post-growth/

sam_uk wrote:Lets hope so!

Ref: http://postgrowth.org/learn/about-post-growth/

Agreed. Its just the horrible sneaky corrupt way they go about things.

Pretending to the world that we can actually go back to business as usual, just as soon as this economic crisis is over.

When in truth they're arranging things so that the world can never go back to BAU.

Its a kind of madness.

It's just putting off the evil day when everything crashes so that it falls on someone else's watch. When Labour get in at the next election they will try to ensure that the Tories get lumbered after the following election. It's called politics although our homegrown politics isn't quite as bad as Greece where they offer outright bribes.

This refers to the EU where everything is corrupt and always will be because too many countries have their snouts in the trough. The receivers outnumber the payers and one of the biggest, most influential nations, France, is a net receiver. Our only way of removing this corruption from our system is to get out of the horrible fascist mess.

kenneal - lagger wrote:It's just putting off the evil day when everything crashes so that it falls on someone else's watch.

That does rather seem to be the only game in town for national governments right now, doesn't it?

When you think of the things Millibean could do to galvanise support for Labour (investing in a massive public works prog including the Ken-Insulation-Fest, for example) given the present dire circumstances and the low cost of borrowing...feck there's even talk of negative interest rates at the BoE! The problem must be that, in order to get people on-side, they have to admit to the said dire circumstances. And they don't dare. F***ing cowards.

RenewableCandy wrote:

kenneal - lagger wrote:It's just putting off the evil day when everything crashes so that it falls on someone else's watch.

That does rather seem to be the only game in town for national governments right now, doesn't it?

When you think of the things Millibean could do to galvanise support for Labour (investing in a massive public works prog including the Ken-Insulation-Fest, for example) given the present dire circumstances and the low cost of borrowing...feck there's even talk of negative interest rates at the BoE! The problem must be that, in order to get people on-side, they have to admit to the said dire circumstances. And they don't dare. F***ing cowards.

According to the news, the Bank of England lent about 13 billion to the banks to so they could lend to small businesses.
In fact the banks are lending even less now than they were before the loan was given.

Do you think they might know something?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21653603

Of course they do. What we need is a national network of "Bank of Dave"s where people can save locally and invest in local businesses without having to subsidise the gambling of the major *ankers and their bonuses.

Urm, sounds a bit like a credit union. We have one in Bristol: http://www.bristolcreditunion.org/

Since people are talking so much about a no-growth economy: how can we actually get it to work and no longer depend upon the things which drive it? How, in other words, do we get a sustainable economy without growth? What actually causes the need for growth in the first place? these things need to be explained adequately. We need a blueprint, not simply vague principles.

EDIT: And, do banks have that much to do with growth as I suspect they do?

How many times have we had this conversation? We need growth to pay interest on loans and savings. No interest, no need for growth.

kenneal - lagger wrote:How many times have we had this conversation? We need growth to pay interest on loans and savings. No interest, no need for growth.

Exactly. If we want to get rid of the need for perpetual growth, we need to get rid of the current system of banking and money creation first.

the_lyniezian wrote:Since people are talking so much about a no-growth economy: how can we actually get it to work and no longer depend upon the things which drive it? How, in other words, do we get a sustainable economy without growth? What actually causes the need for growth in the first place? these things need to be explained adequately. We need a blueprint, not simply vague principles.

EDIT: And, do banks have that much to do with growth as I suspect they do?

Banks have everything to do with growth.

Banks create money by lending it into existence. This is done initially by central banks and is then amplified by commercial and domestic banks. The money multiplier effect of the commercial banks and domestic banks increases the original central bank money by a factor of at least 3. However, this amplified cheque-book money is used in the economy as if it was CB money.

Also, the interest applied to the loans means that there is another several percent on top of that which is in circulation (CB money plus cheque book money) which is going to need to be lent into existence in the future just to be able to cover those interest payments. That new money, when it is lent into existence, will also have the money multiplier effect applied to it and so the game continues.

All of the above requires that the physical economy grows into the future in order to give all of the new money a new home to go to (otherwise you would get uncontrollable monetary inflation). In order for the physical economy to grow, there needs to be an ever-increasing supply of raw primary resources. Which is, of course, why it is unsustainable. We live on a planet of finite resources and, given the amount of those resources we have already consumed combined with ever more countries coming online to consume the remainder, we are now at the point where supply cannot meet demand. Thus, physical growth is globally peaking. All of which means our current system of money creation is teetering on the brink of collapse.

We need to change the monetary system. It's that simple. What is not so simple or easy is the fact that changing the monetary system is not in the interests of the global banking system and the global banking system currently appears to have governments across the world by the balls, apparently.

That's the bit that always get me, to be honest. The f*****s don't actually have much by way of physical power and yet they wield so much influence. I think it's because they have just been exceedingly clever over a number of centuries in ensuring that the individuals who have physical power are also invited into the game and allowed to put their own snouts in the trough. Thus, we have arrived at a situation where you could look at it from both angles and it amounts to the same thing; the political/power structures are there to promote and protect the money lenders and the money lenders are there to promote and protect the political/power structures. Indeed, very often you will see the same faces operating in both spheres.

stevecook172001 wrote:

the_lyniezian wrote:Since people are talking so much about a no-growth economy: how can we actually get it to work and no longer depend upon the things which drive it? How, in other words, do we get a sustainable economy without growth? What actually causes the need for growth in the first place? these things need to be explained adequately. We need a blueprint, not simply vague principles.

EDIT: And, do banks have that much to do with growth as I suspect they do?

Banks have everything to do with growth.

Banks create money by lending it into existence. This is done initially by central banks and is then amplified by commercial and domestic banks. The money multiplier effect of the commercial banks and domestic banks increases the original central bank money by a factor of at least 3. However, this amplified cheque-book money is used in the economy as if it was CB money.

Also, the interest applied to the loans means that there is another several percent on top of that which is in circulation (CB money plus cheque book money) which is going to need to be lent into existence in the future just to be able to cover those interest payments. That new money, when it is lent into existence, will also have the money multiplier effect applied to it and so the game continues.

All of the above requires that the physical economy grows into the future in order to give all of the new money a new home to go to (otherwise you would get uncontrollable monetary inflation). In order for the physical economy to grow, there needs to be an ever-increasing supply of raw primary resources. Which is, of course, why it is unsustainable. We live on a planet of finite resources and, given the amount of those resources we have already consumed combined with ever more countries coming online to consume the remainder, we are now at the point where supply cannot meet demand. Thus, physical growth is globally peaking. All of which means our current system of money creation is teetering on the brink of collapse.

We need to change the monetary system. It's that simple. What is not so simple or easy is the fact that changing the monetary system is not in the interests of the global banking system and the global banking system currently appears to have governments across the world by the balls, apparently.

That's the bit that always get me, to be honest. The f*****s don't actually have much by way of physical power and yet they wield so much influence. I think it's because they have just been exceedingly clever over a number of centuries in ensuring that the individuals who have physical power are also invited into the game and allowed to put their own snouts in the trough. Thus, we have arrived at a situation where you could look at it from both angles and it amounts to the same thing; the political/power structures are there to promote and protect the money lenders and the money lenders are there to promote and protect the political/power structures. Indeed, very often you will see the same faces operating in both spheres.

What gets me is, they must know the system is bound to collapse in the very near future, but they have no plans for the future.

What good will all the money do them if the system that uses money is f****d?

And yet the US stock market keeps making record high points, the UK stock market too is over 1% higher, isn't it amazing what gambling with loaned money achieves, all seems bizzare in the financial world, the worse the economic data, the higher oil, energy, etc cost go, the higher the 'market' goes.......mind you if it goes down, nobody could have seen it coming.......just like last time, apart from the people who saw it coming!!
Regards, acman.

stevecook172001 wrote:...........

That's the bit that always get me, to be honest. The f*****s don't actually have much by way of physical power and yet they wield so much influence. ...........

They don't have to have much physical power they just have to pay someone to bump off the likes of Lincoln and Kennedy both of whom tried pumping government created cash into the economy. In Kennedy's case the government money was withdrawn soon after he died by the next President.

Wonderful what you learn on Facebook isn't it.