Wednesday 4 September 2019

Tightening The Belt Again

The great thing about Capitalism is if you missed the last recession then you don't have to wait very long for the next one and as we are still desperately trying to clamber out of the gigantic hole left behind by the last one, the next one is waiting in the wings according to a the Bank of England, Office for National Statistics and IHS Markit who measure these things.  
Growth in the services, manufacturing and construction sectors shrunk in the last quarter and if there is another downward turn in the next quarter, the UK would officially be in a recession and as a 0.2 drop is being forecast, time to worry.
A decade of austerity measures has failed to lift the UK back to where it was in 2010 which not only begs the question what have the Tories been doing with all those savings from closing libraries, National Insurance increases and cutting all those public sector employees?
Unfortunately, it is not just the UK who is looking towards a bleak downturn but the global economy is heading into recession with the finger being pointed at the US/China trade war, a sluggish German economy, Brexit, enormous debts in Argentina, Iran, South Africa, Turkey and Venezuela.
The Bank of England point to the main marker being the international money markets getting jittery and the bond market selling their short-term loans to get ready for an imminent recession so it seems that the belt that has been tight ever since the crash of 2008 won't be getting any looser soon and the system that facilitates it will still be protected by the same people who profit most from it.

5 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

The good thing about capitalism is that the economy has ups. Because you can't have the recessions without the ups...

Falling on a bruise said...

That would be ups from career ending and home and life threatening lows.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

humanity across the globe has emerged from living like animals to living like humans in the past 225 years - the era of democracy and capitalism.

you would throw out capitalism because some people don't save for the down times? because people by homes, cars, and travel beyond their means?

sure, punish everybody because some people are short sighted and lack discipline. that's equal treatment...

make everyone poor

Falling on a bruise said...

People lose their jobs through no fault of their own, big businesses are going bust almost weekly. I know people who worked like dogs to build a business themselves and lose it all when the economy flattened. Austerity cost many people their jobs so capitalism does fine in making everyone poor and then when you have lost everything, kicking you some more but the real kicker is you can build it all up again and the same thing will happen again a decade later.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

i have high admiration for people that start their own business, but it takes much more than "working like dogs" to succeed. you have to offer something that people/businesses want to consume, there have to be enough people/businesses that can afford it, you must have an efficient business, you must take managed risks, you must be adaptable, you must have high motivation, you must offer better total value than your competitors (some will fail), and you need a bit of luck.

like small businesses, big businesses must adjust or they fail - that includes changing personnel. businesses have been changing personnel my whole career - mostly due to technology evolution. that is why I earned a:
- computer science degree,
- then an MBA,
- then a project management certification,
- then a lean six sigma process engineering certification,
- then a competitive intelligence certification,
- then an innovation certification,
- then a design certification,
- then a machine learning certification,
- then an MS Data Analytics,
- I'm now working on a graduate certificate in National Intelligence

Resting on your laurels is a fools errand. All the education and certification cost me much time, energy, and money but I offer much value to businesses. I have little empathy for people that rest on their laurels... a poor choice.

Companies across all industries need more people that know data analysis and have software development skills - get with it, or get cut...

getting rid of a system (capitalism) where the good outweighs the flaws is stupid because you dislike the flaws...

Socialism (government ownership of businesses) only works for a few small nations that have certain cultural attributes, have the support of NATO for defense, and have the support of the EU economic platform.

Communism only works for the leaders.