In this case it was Moody’s, which, in downgrading UK debt, according to the FT : The agency also specifically pointed to what it called “the weakening in the UK’s institutions and governance”. “While still high, the quality of the UKʼs legislative and executive institutions has diminished in recent years,” it said. Now we know… Read more
Category:
Money
MMT and Tax : a new narrative – A guest post by Jim Osborne
I have been arguing within the Scottish Currency Group recently, through a number of OPs and comments, that the MMT narrative about taxation is incomplete and presents a serious weakness in the MMT proposition. I want to explain why this weakness needs to be addressed. MMT is a description of what actually happens in the… Read more
Sunak is the velvet glove sheltering the iron fist of total Tory control – that is the point of them
“I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.” said Tony Benn He needed to add – or certainly we do now – that the people should be heavily indebted too. When you can persuade the indebted that not only are they indebted but,… Read more
Daily government incompetence and worse…
I recommend all readers take a look at the ‘Russ in Cheshire’ tweet stream – effectively it has already seen comment on ProgresssivePulse here – although the original source is no longer available- but the author is the same. If you are on Twitter it is worth following ‘Russ in Cheshire’. You will probably be… Read more
Basic Income and the Job Guarantee – further clarifications
There was a Centre for Innovation and Public Purpose discussion a month or two ago which I’ve been meaning to watch. Here Pavlina Tcherneva – together with a few interventions from Robert Sidelsky – was discussing in some practical detail, on the basis of her recent book, “The Case for a Job Guarantee” its benefits… Read more
Sunak is going to trash our economy and our lives
Sunak’s disastrous recently announced ‘Job Retention Scheme’ spoke of his desire to keep ‘viable’ jobs, which even the Telegraph thinks will not deliver, . He has given us no indication of those jobs he considers viable and as we all now know there is no objective viability – only Sunak’s bizarre and cruel political choice… Read more
‘Sheltering’ the Economy…
“Save lives, protect the NHS” and “shelter the economy” is, according to Laura Kuenssberg (and I’m sure Progressive Pulse readers will be well aware that I read no-one else) what Johnson now wants to do. It is ‘shelter the economy’ that I find more than usually fantastical. It is as though the economy were not… Read more
All for an arbitrary lack of money
Having listened to BBC Radio4’s ‘Front Row’ it demonstrates that the arts, whose members are supposedly progressive and original thinkers are, like so many others, completely brainwashed into the idea that they must find ‘other’ commercial sponsorship because government money is so limited. The theatre producer and owner, Nica Burns, has said she will endeavour… Read more
Proposals for a Scottish National Pension & Investment Fund (NPIF) – A guest post by Jim Osborne
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to crush economies around the world we are currently witnessing a boom in the financial sector and continuing inflation of asset values. This is a clear indication that at some point in the past a tipping point was reached and the real economy and the financial sector separated into two… Read more
The French are doing it so much better…
My piece yesterday bemoaned the arbitrary end of furlough and the complete lack of any clear-sighted direction for the economy. Indeed I now understand that the government’s ill thought out ‘kickstart’ scheme is in fact available only to those able to offer a minimum of 30 placements. No wonder Tesco is in favour and this… Read more