UK Autumn Statement is appalling and ties the hands of Labour – the voters face a Hobson’s choice

Last Wednesday (November 22, 2023), the Tory government in Britain released their fiscal update known as the – Autumn Statement 2023 – which basically sets the course of fiscal policy in the UK for the period ahead. The Tories continue their appalling record. But they have also locked Labor into an austerity mindset. Meanwhile, neither party resonates with the sentiments expressed by the people if the latest Ipsos survey is representative of that sentiment. The British people face a Hobson’s choice!

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British Shadow Chancellor promising the impossible

The British Labour Party officials and politicians have all been cock-a-hoop over the last week in Liverpool as they participate in their Annual Conference with the latest modelling suggesting they may win a “landslide 190-seat majority” at the next national election leaving the miserable and incompetent Tories with only 149 seats (currently 352) (Source). The contrast between the two national conferences this year could not have been greater. The Tories looked and sounded divided and like losers. The Labour Party looked like winners and united (although that latter condition has only come from the Stalin-like purge that the leadership has conducted on the Left of the Party). The Labour Party is now schmoozing the corporate bosses and each day that it passes it sounds more like what the Tories used to be like, before the rabid Right took over. That assessment is based on the promises that the Labour Party made at its recent Annual Conference. While the details are still relatively general, my assessment of the fiscal promises the Shadow Chancellor made last Monday and elsewhere is that the conditions that would be required to satisfy them will prove impossible to achieve.

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Be careful using first release data – Britain now surges ahead of Europe!

In May 2023, when the British Office of National Statistics (ONS) released the March-quarter national accounts data (first estimate), which showed that real GDP grew by only 0.1 per cent in the first quarter and a rate equal to the December-quarter 2022, the critics were out in force. Brexit this. Brexit that. Graphs were created showing that Britain was recording the worst growth across the G7 nations. Brexit this. Brexit that. The Labour Party was cock-a-hoop as they continued the purge of the progressive elements in the Party. Then the second estimate came out on June 30, 2023 using additional data which the ONS said provides ‘a more precise indication of economic growth than the first estimate’, we learned that GDP “increased by an unrevised 0.1% in Quarter 1”. Brexit this. Brexit that. William Keegan who is like a cracked record stuck in a rut, wrote more UK Guardian articles bemoaning the democratic choice to leave the European Union. The problem is that all this data-centric inference was based on an illusion, which is why one must always be circumspect when dealing with this sort of data. The latest national accounts data released by the ONS on Friday (September 29, 2023) revised the first quarter result – scaling it up by a factor of three – to 0.3 per cent, which is still slow but hardly the disaster the pundits claimed.

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With central banks chasing shadows, many nations are now plunging towards or into recession

Yesterday, the – Flash Germany PMI – was released, which shows that “German business activity” has fallen “at fastest rate since May 2020”. Also released was the – Flash Eurozone PMI – which revealed that “Eurozone business activity contracted at an accelerating pace in August as the region’s downturn spread further from manufacturing to services”, Europe is heading to recession or should I rather say – stagflation – because the unemployment will rise sharply while inflation is still at elevated levels. All because the policy settings are wilfully and unnecessarily driving nations into recession. Over the Channel, Britain is going through a similar experience – inflation is falling rapidly and the economy is plunging towards recession. The common link is the policy folly. The European Central Bank and the Bank of England have been increasing interest rates as a ‘chasing shadows’ exercise – meaning that the drivers of the inflation they claim to be fighting are not sensitive to the interest rate changes. But the interest rate hikes are causing damage to the real economy by increasing borrowing costs. Meanwhile, fiscal policy is in retreat because the government thinks it has to set policy to complement the central bank hikes – meaning two sources of austerity. And for those commentators who pine for re-entry to the EU – they should look East and see what a mess the European economy is in!

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Monetary policy in the hands of the central banker sociopaths is advancing the class interests of the elites

Recently, I wrote about the conditions that dictate what impacts interest rate changes will have on aggregate spending and demand-driven inflation in direction, magnitude and temporality – see RBA governor’s ‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche’ moments of disdain (June 8, 2023). It is highly likely in many cases, the decisions by central banks to increase interest rates, ostensibly to ‘fight inflation’ actually make inflation worse. More people are starting to understand that point even though central bankers appear to be still talking big about further interest rate rises. But the evidence is mounting against their position and ultimately that evidence is exposing the deep flaws in mainstream macroeconomics. I argue today that the problem is not only that the interest rate hikes can be inflationary but they are also facilitating a major reinforcement of the class divisions in our societies whereby the low income cohorts are transferring massive income benefits to the higher deciles. I also discuss cricket which recently has provided a demonstration of how the class divisions work. Then some music, given it is a Wednesday.

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Australia – inflation declines sharply

Today (June 28, 2023), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Monthly Consumer Price Indicator – which covers the period to May 2023. On an annual basis, the monthly All Items CPI rate of increase was 5.6 per cent down from 6.8 per cent. There is some stickiness in some of the components in the CPI but overall inflation peaked last year and is now declining fairly quickly as the factors that caused the pressures in the first place are abating. I doubt that any of this decline is due to the obsessive interest rate hikes by the Reserve Bank of Australia. Anyway, a quick analysis of the data then some discussion of the British teachers’ pay dispute, the latest Australian Covid numbers (worrying) and some music to cheer us all up after the economics. The overwhelming point of today’s data is that this period of inflation is proving to be transitory and did not justify the rate increases. It was a supply-side event and trying to increase unemployment to kill off spending (demand) will just leave an ugly legacy once those supply-side factors abate (which they are and were always going to).

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The New Global Financing Pact equals the old failed global financial arrangements

It’s Wednesday and I cover a few topics usually in less depth than usual and provide a musical entree. From tomorrow (June 22 to 23), the so-called world leaders are meeting in Paris for the – Summit for a New Global Financing Pact – which is being hosted by the French president. The aim, apparently, is to build a new global architecture to replace the Bretton Woods system (they left it a while!) to ‘address climate change, biodiversity crisis and development challenges’. The solution that is being proposed is to allow the financial markets to create debt and speculative derivative products to fund the new architecture because, apparently, governments do not have the financial capacity. The whole initiative is about replacing defunct financial architecture but it still proposes to rely on the same (defunct) approach to public infrastructure development and the like that has failed dramatically to reduce inequality and poverty. It has certainly massively enriched the top-end-of-town and the same result will come out of this Pact. I also comment on the latest Brexit claims and provide a brief entree into some Covid research that I found interesting. Then some music.

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Post Brexit UK is seeing higher skilled labour entering from non-EU countries to support a range of services (public and other) – success

It’s Wednesday and so before we get to the music segment we have time to discuss a few issues. The first relates to the progress Britain is making in its post-Brexit reality. There is now growing evidence that, despite predictions of economists supporting the Remain case, the newly gained freedom that Britain now enjoys as a result of leaving the EU has allowed it to restrict the entry of lower-skilled and lower-paid migrants (from the EU) and attract a large boost in skilled migration from non-EU nations with net benefits to the domestic economy. Second, it seems the mainstream is now discovering the work of Marxist economists from 5 or more decades ago and concluding that it provides a much better explanation of the inflation process than that offered by Monetarists (excessive money supply growth) or the mainstream New Keynesian theories which emphasise “departures from a natural rate of output or employment” (NAIRU narratives). That’s progress even if it took a while. Once you have absorbed all that there is some great improvisational music to soothe your senses.

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Inside the Bank of England governor’s dreams – the wage-price spiral we cannot see

Many central bank officials have been trying all sorts of conditioning narratives to convince us that their interest rate hikes have been justified. Now they are actually defying the information presented in the official data to simply make things up. Last Wednesday (May 17, 2023), the Bank of England governor gave a speech to the British Chamber of Commerce – Getting inflation back to the 2% target − speech by Andrew Bailey. It came after the Bank raised the bank rate by a further 25 points to 4.5 per cent the week before. In that speech, he admitted inflation was declining and the main supply-side drivers were abating. But he said the rate rises were justified and unemployment had to rise because there was now persistent inflationary pressures coming from a “wage-price spiral”. The problem with this claim is that there is no data to support it.

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Investigation into BBC bias misses the point really

This week, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released the results of an independent review into its coverage of economic matters – Review of the impartiality of BBC coverage of taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt – which was completed in November 2022. The problem is that the Investigation conducted by this Review, while interesting and providing some good analysis, misses the overall source of the bias that our public broadcasters have fallen into. The problem is not that they might be favouring political positions of one party or another. Rather, the implicit framing and language they use to discuss economic matters is largely flawed itself. And the journalists who uncritically use these concepts and terms just perpetuate the fiction and mislead their audiences.

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