The British are living in "La-la" land

[Mega]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/e...r-Britain.html

Mike

[BigBagel]

Re: The British are living in "La-la" land

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/opinion/16brooks.html

Mr. Brooks of the NY Times reports ".....Britain has hit its reality moment".

[Slimprofits]

Re: The British are living in "La-la" land

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-warns-EU.html

Britian's economy was consigned to a list of those at 'high risk' yesterday because of the spiralling national debt.

The European Commission issued a humiliating warning that the worsening budget deficit poses 'serious concerns' that the country will be unable to meet future spending commitments, such as pensions.

The growing number of elderly people threatens to make debt unsustainable and has led to the UK economy being ranked alongside nations such as Latvia, Greece and Romania.

The warning plunged the Government into a furious row with Brussels, as Treasury officials said it called into question the EC's ability to carry out 'credible economic analysis'.

[Slimprofits]

Re: The British are living in "La-la" land

The European Commission issued a humiliating warning that the worsening budget deficit poses 'serious concerns' that the country will be unable to meet future spending commitments, such as pensions.

The growing number of elderly people threatens to make debt unsustainable and has led to the UK economy being ranked alongside nations such as Latvia, Greece and Romania

Here it is:

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/...le15994_en.htm

From the report titled: Long-term sustainability of public finances for a recovering economy

18. The sustainability gaps of Czech Republic, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and the United Kingdom are all above 6 percent of GDP; over double that level in Ireland, Greece, Spain, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. In nearly all of these countries, the sustainability gaps are the result of a very large projected increase in age-related expenditure, compounded in most cases by large initial imbalances, and hence they are exposed to a higher long term risk. This indicates that closing their gaps will require both ambitious consolidation programmes that reduce debts and deficits in the coming years, and profound reforms of social protection. This is particularly the case for Greece, which faces the second highest increase in age-related expenditure of the entire EU, while its very high debt ratio adds to the concerns on sustainability. The possible continuing effects of the crisis on the budgetary position and on medium-term growth are a serious concern for most of the high risk countries – in particular, Ireland, Greece, Latvia, Spain and United Kingdom – for whom avoiding a very fast increase in debt ratios is a policy challenge already in a medium-term perspective.

19. In many countries, there has been a deterioration in sustainability in comparison with previous assessments. Compared with the 2006 situation, the sustainability gaps are larger in most countries and ten of them (Ireland, Spain, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom) are now in a higher risk category. In the case of the countries most hit by the crisis, the deterioration in sustainability gaps is particularly severe. However, thanks to consolidation and pension reform, Hungary and Portugal have shifted from the higher to the medium-risk group of countries.

[thunderdownunder]

Re: The British are living in "La-la" land

"The warning plunged the Government into a furious row with Brussels, as Treasury officials said it called into question the EC's ability to carry out 'credible economic analysis".

It does give the perception that the English have past DENIAL and gone into Anger.

The five stages of Bereavement at Empire Lost
1. Denial - Tick
2. Anger - Tick
3. Bargaining - won't be pretty
4. Depression - Will be Ugly Dim and Dark
5. Acceptance - Will be a Vile Austerity as noted below by Karl Marx

" The lowest sediment of the relative surplus-population finally dwells in the sphere of pauperism. Exclusive of vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes, in a word, the “dangerous” classes, this layer of society consists of three categories. First, those able to work. One need only glance superficially at the statistics of English pauperism to find that the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis, and diminishes with every revival of trade. Second, orphans and pauper children. These are candidates for the industrial reserve army, and are, in times of great prosperity, as 1860, e.g., speedily and in large numbers enrolled in the active army of labourers. Third, the demoralised and ragged, and those unable to work, chiefly people who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, due to the division of labour; people who have passed the normal age of the labourer; the victims of industry, whose number increases with the increase of dangerous machinery, of mines, chemical works, &c., the mutilated, the sickly, the widows, &c. Pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army. Its production is included in that of the relative surplus-population, its necessity in theirs; along with the surplus-population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth. It enters into the faux frais of capitalist production; but capital knows how to throw these, for the most part, from its own shoulders on to those of the working-class and the lower middle class." -Das Kapital - Vol one