Prince John posted:Taking issue with the point above, you can see a clear correlation with bond yields and the high debt:gdp countries in the Eurozone (graphs e.g. here. Their cost of borrowing is high because they have no credible plan to manage their debt. Mr. Osbourne would tell you that the reason British borrowing rates are falling is that we have a credible plan to deal with long term debt that the markets are happy with. I suspect it's got rather more to do with the fact we're not an economic basket case compared to some of our European neighbours and Sterling looks safer than the Euro in the event the Eurozone fractures. i.e. there are other factors driving a low UK borrowing rate and that it's happening in spite of running an increasing deficit. It's just as plausible, as more than one person ITT has said, that the reason those countries have high borrowing costs is not just that they have high debt:GDP, but that they have high debt:GBP denominated in a currency they don't control.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:43
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Prince John posted:Taking issue with the point above, you can see a clear correlation with bond yields and the high debt:gdp countries in the Eurozone (graphs e.g. here. Their cost of borrowing is high because they have no credible plan to manage their debt. Mr. Osbourne would tell you that the reason British borrowing rates are falling is that we have a credible plan to deal with long term debt that the markets are happy with. I suspect it's got rather more to do with the fact we're not an economic basket case compared to some of our European neighbours and Sterling looks safer than the Euro in the event the Eurozone fractures. i.e. there are other factors driving a low UK borrowing rate and that it's happening in spite of running an increasing deficit. Notice that that blog misses out Italy and France, both countries have had low(ish) borrowing for most of the crisis dispute not going full austerity. There is also the fact that we are a sovereign currency which means we have greater control of money production that the eurozone counties don't. Also see Japan and USA for other low yield bonds bespite extreme debt and deficit respectively. Plus I would say that the high bond yields demanded by the market in 2012 was profiteering as if anything went super bad the bundersbank would be forced to step in and bail ever one out.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:48
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Disinterested posted:It's just as plausible, as more than one person ITT has said, that the reason those countries have high borrowing costs is not just that they have high debt:GDP, but that they have high debt:GBP denominated in a currency they don't control. Precisely. It's literally impossible for the UK to not pay its debts, whereas the eurozone ranges from highly unlikely to "uh oh". e: I should have said "be unable to pay its debts", because as we've seen from the US it's amazing the stupid things politicians will choose to do.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:53
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Wolfsbane posted:Precisely. It's literally impossible for the UK to not pay its debts, whereas the eurozone ranges from highly unlikely to "uh oh". Of course, as the amount of money you print continues to increase, so do the collateral negative effects to your economy overall. But given present deflationary pressures, that worry isn't really all that present.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:55
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Disinterested posted:It's just as plausible, as more than one person ITT has said, that the reason those countries have high borrowing costs is not just that they have high debt:GDP, but that they have high debt:GBP denominated in a currency they don't control. Its very simple: THE IDEA THAT HIGH DEBT TO GDP RATIOS ARE BAD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY DEBUNKED AFTER THE AUTORS (RAGOFF AND REINHARDT) FUDGED THEIR NUMBERS AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN THE BASES OF ANYTHING AFTER THE RESEARCH WAS RELEASED IN A NON PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATION!!!!1!!!
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Jan 20, 2015 18:56
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Also prince John, I am only getting ratty as I am on a train where a bloke keeps banging his chair on my knee and I'm taking it out on you. Your posting is engaging and reasonable, I don't want you to stop
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Jan 20, 2015 19:05
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Prince John posted:The thread consensus is that this is bollocks, and governments can basically spend as much as they like with no consequences. The international economic consensus (based on the policies of other governments and central banks) is that government debt does matter, hence austerity to combat excessive spending. LemonDrizzle fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 19:14
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Tnotaspy posted:Missed he was going on about GDP:debt ratio. To be fair they didn't deliberately do it, they just made a horrible programming error in excel.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:16
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notaspy posted:Missed he was going on about GDP:debt ratio. For those who are unaware what this is about, Ragoff and Reinhardt basically tortured their data until it gave up and then managed to get it looking as if it was peer reviewed - and that's Osbourne's favourite paper to cite. Which doesn't mean debt to GDP is meaningless, just that it's not the be all and end all. @Malcolm XML, if that were the only thing they did wrong I'd be more sympathetic to the view it was an innocent mistake. Ducking peer review by slipping it in Papers and Proceedings was another, and there were quite a few more.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:20
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Saki posted:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/20/eric-pickles-why-single-out-islam-patronising-treatment Yes, I can see why Muslims complaining about being otherised, profiled, and talked down to rather than quietly accepting it might be disappointing.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:28
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neonchameleon posted:For those who are unaware what this is about, Ragoff and Reinhardt basically tortured their data until it gave up and then managed to get it looking as if it was peer reviewed - and that's Osbourne's favourite paper to cite. Which doesn't mean debt to GDP is meaningless, just that it's not the be all and end all. Thanks, I wasn't aware of this. Also, I remember the last time I got jumped on for talking about deficits, so this thread has firmly moved me into "oh god, I don't know" territory from being firmly in the deficit=bad category. I'll form a proper opinion at some point when I've got the time to do some more reading. Lemondrizzle, I stand corrected in those two. I was thinking of Europe and also I thought the IMF and World Bank were poo poo hot on austerity as well? Notaspy: Is it possible to contrive some sort of accidental blow to the head of your fellow passenger? 
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Jan 20, 2015 19:49
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Malcolm XML posted:To be fair they didn't deliberately do it, they just made a horrible programming error in excel. With neoliberalism, never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice (or the Commie's razor)
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Jan 20, 2015 19:59
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That study got torn up by an econ student who was presumably the first person to actually loving examine the data
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Jan 20, 2015 19:59
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quote:basically its a very serious structural problem with the eu. its too much like a state to be a simple free trade zone, and yet too different to be a single country. if georgia suddenly went deeply into debt, the rest of the us would bail them out. in fact the north of the us has been bailing the south for ages but why would a bunch of germans want to bail out the greeks? its their own fault for being too irreponsible! if greece had their own currency, they could print more money and get out of the slump that way. but they cant, and so the eu ends up in a position where individual states cant solve their problems, and the union as a whole doesnt want to help either. austerity then becomes the only option. except iausterity is loving retarded and doesnt work. your economy is already in the shitter and you poo poo some more on it to solve it, thats basically austerity. your defecit doesnt go down because even with cut spending, the depressed economy is bringing less revenue. and your debt actually becomes bigger as your economy shrinks (because its measured as % of gdp) This is nice, simple, grammatically incorrect post summing up EU austerity quite nicely (from GBS), which I think anyone could understand. Can't remember who posted it, but I rather like it in terms of explaining the problem to someone without any knowledge of the subject.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:02
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Yet another thing to think about is why are we talking advice\accepting demands from an industry that is running debts of 5 times our GDP? And that is the financial industry of this country not the entire industry world wide.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:42
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Following on from yesterday's feminist victory, here's today's Page 3. hmm yes taking pictures of women without their permission is totally more ethical than taking pictures of a glamour model well done british feminism have a gold star
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Jan 20, 2015 21:27
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TinTower posted:Following on from yesterday's feminist victory, here's today's Page 3. I'm not sure you can blame British feminism too much for the Sun continuing to be creepy fucks after one of their angles for being creepy fucks is removed. Blame the Sun for being creepy fucks instead, and put getting rid of candid celebrity pics next on your agenda list, I'd say.
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Jan 20, 2015 21:33
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i can look at endless free tits via the magic of the internet, so i'm afraid page 3 was just a grossly inefficient means of doing so. It outlived its usefulness.
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Jan 20, 2015 21:35
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Apparently I can go on the website to see page 3 Lucy from London and find out her valuable opinion on the Saudi Arabian executions or whatever.
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Jan 20, 2015 21:46
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Does the Sport still have tits in addition to people sticking their dick in Greggs chicken bakes and sticking Wotsits up their rear end?
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Jan 20, 2015 21:46
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http://www.itv.com/news/story/2015-01-14/osborne-lets-celebrate-effects-of-low-inflation-not-fear-them/George Osborne posted:Let's celebrate effects of low inflation not fear them If the conservatives where so worried about the deficit and public debt surely low inflation is the worse thing that could happen. The UK national debt is~ £1400 billion so the fact that inflation was 1.5% lower than the 2% target means that in effect the debt is worth 1.5% ( equivalent to £21 billion) more than if inflation had been 2%. http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-tories-sums-correctly/19765 The Conservatives austerity program has reduced the deficit from £153 bn in 2009/10 to £91.3 bn in 2014/15- so they've reduced it by about 12.5 billion a year. This is obviously a simplification, but am I missing something or does the low inflation this year completely demolish any effect on the national debt from the spending cuts this year?
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Jan 20, 2015 21:47
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So apparently, Labour are discussing limiting their tuition fee cut to STEM subjects only. Christ, they're not even pretending that it's not regressive, are they?
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Jan 20, 2015 22:24
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TinTower posted:Following on from yesterday's feminist victory, here's today's Page 3. 99% sure that those pictures are with permission. They are just so spontaneous!
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Jan 20, 2015 22:30
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TinTower posted:Following on from yesterday's feminist victory, here's today's Page 3. Looks a bit posed. But of course the press do often coerce cooperation out of their targets so it's a toss up. Either way, you're spreading the pics here to an audience who'd never see them otherwise without their consent so a bit of a hypocrite?
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Jan 20, 2015 22:50
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TinTower posted:So apparently, Labour are discussing limiting their tuition fee cut to STEM subjects only. "useful" subjects... I wonder if that includes PPE.
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Jan 20, 2015 22:59
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Angepain posted:"useful" subjects... I wonder if that includes PPE. In legal news, has Loafer been legislating from the bench? 
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Jan 20, 2015 23:02
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Guavanaut posted:people sticking their dick in Greggs chicken bakes Jesus Christ do people get off on third degree burns on their knobs or something? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 23:07
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ANYTHING YOU SOW posted:This is obviously a simplification, but am I missing something or does the low inflation this year completely demolish any effect on the national debt from the spending cuts this year? You can't jump between real and nominal value like that, the debt and the deficit are the values that they are regardless of inflation and any changes remain proportional between them no matter what the inflation level is. Whether the level of debt is meaningful is another question, if inflation was higher it would mean the debt was fractionally less of a burden.
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Jan 20, 2015 23:09
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OwlFancier posted:Jesus Christ do people get off on third degree burns on their knobs or something? Or maybe The Sport just made it up like their stories about fellating dogs for quavers. (They do seem to like crispchat)
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Jan 20, 2015 23:20
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OwlFancier posted:Jesus Christ do people get off on third degree burns on their knobs or something? Well no, that was the story. He, and I believe this is the precise term used, "burned [his] bellend!" It was a great crime against a man who only wanted to shag a Greggs' pastry. As you do. And as The Sport reported.
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Jan 20, 2015 23:26
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Never going to get a line better than "Prefers the purity of nude socialism" and for that I love the Sport.
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Jan 20, 2015 23:43
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Mister Adequate posted:Well no, that was the story. He, and I believe this is the precise term used, "burned [his] bellend!" It was a great crime against a man who only wanted to shag a Greggs' pastry. As you do. And as The Sport reported. The Sport has "bellend" as the preferred spelling as part of their style guide (such as it is). An editorial email about swearing, via popbitch: http://popbitch.com/home/2014/07/24/the-sunday-sport-style-guide/ quote:The editor of the Sunday Sport sent a rather angry email out to his employees yesterday, making sure that they were all swearing correctly and consistently. The threat of disciplinaries was meted out to those who couldn’t follow these simple swearword rules.Want to know how they’re supposed to be swearing? The rules are as follows:
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Jan 20, 2015 23:45
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Does the Sport still have its 'scales of justice' column where it describes the court proceedings of sex crimes in lurid detail for the titillation of its readership?
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Jan 20, 2015 23:46
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OwlFancier posted:Jesus Christ do people get off on third degree burns on their knobs or something? There's no need to kinkshame mate.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:00
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TinTower posted:Following on from yesterday's feminist victory, here's today's Page 3. That picture would have just been on page 4 if they still had the topless woman page 3, it's not like they only had one scantily clad lady in the paper and the rest of it was a sober reflection on the state of the nation.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:03
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dispatch_async posted:Does HS2 solve that issue? I've not really been paying attention to HS2. I assumed the old line would still be carrying passenger services. Would the remaining services just be slower local ones then? That sounds like a service downgrade for people living near existing WCML stations. Absolutely, you actually get an improved stopping pattern for intermediate stations such as MK and Coventry because there are no non-stop Preston/Crewe services hammering through. Basically a stopping passenger (even a semi-fast, not just a London Midland type service that is all stations) allows for a much better utilisation of the network capacity because trains can follow each other. It's hard to describe without a graph, sorry, but yeah, you actually get a better service and a better capacity utilisation if you imagine the service from London -> Glasgow now runs HS2 to Brum first, which keeps it out of the way. Think of it as a WCML bypass, that's probably the most relateable comparison. neonchameleon posted:Oh, it absolutely is new track. But the goal behind HS2 rather than standard extra lines is largely the vanity solution that creates a toy for rich people and takes money from less glamorous projects. Agree, however it would be both exceptionally difficult to build those new lines within the existing formation or to perform the required enhancements on the WCML to release the sort of capacity HS2 will. Look at the money that had to be retroactively spunked on it after Railtrack buggered it up in the late 90s, only after Bechtel had pulled half of the scope did it actually function. We'd be talking a period of upgrade and intervention on the WCML that would make the previous 10 year upgrade look like a walk in the park, all while trying to still run trains. Personally, we missed a trick with the WCML, but this was mostly cos of privatisation because if you compare what we got with BR's solution... There is probably a better way to do it, but this cannot be constrained to trying conventional solutions, as these are almost entirely in place now. I think HS2 fails on a lot of fronts and they have made some design decisions that I find, frankly, quite nonsensical but I'd be picking round the edges rather than saying the whole project is a write off.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:06
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TinTower posted:So apparently, Labour are discussing limiting their tuition fee cut to STEM subjects only. Presenting the Really Useful Undergraduate Degrees of the Labour Shadow Cabinet: (source is skimming the Early Life section of their wikipedia pages, so take that for what it's worth) Ed Milliband: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford. (There's some maths in that economics I guess, or at least, there'll be the odd equation or two, maybe.) Harriet Harman: Politics, York. (what a luxury) Ed Balls: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford. Douglas Alexander: Politics and Modern History, Edinburgh Yvette Cooper: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford. Sadiq Khan: Law, North London (it does pay a lot, but there's not even any numbers in it, I'm not sure this is worthwhile) Rosie Winterton: History, Hull Andy Burnham: English, Cambridge Chuka Umunna: English and French Law, Manchester Rachel Reeves: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford. (that's four, now) Tristram Hunt: History, Cambridge (and was a member of the Footlights, instead of doing something constructive with his free time like category theory or topology) Vernon Coaker: Economics and Politics, Warwick Hilary Benn: Russian and East European Studies, Sussex Caroline Flint: American Literature and History combined with Film Studies, East Anglia (three subjects, not a single equation between them. poor show.) Angela Eagle: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford. (five) Michael Dugher: Politics, Nottingham Ivan Lewis: dunno Mary Creagh: Modern languages, Oxford Margaret Curran: History and Economic History, Glasgow (okay even I'm getting bored now but I'm almost done and i've never been one to recognise the sunk cost fallacy when I see it) Owen Smith: History and French, Sussex Maria Eagle: Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford. (six) Lucy Powell: Chemistry, Oxford (finally! Something useful!) Jon Trickett: Politics, Hull Gloria De Piero: Social Science, Westminster (I mean, it's got "Science" in the name, I guess we can count it) Chris Leslie : Politics & Parliamentary Studies, Leeds Baroness Royall: Spanish and French, University of London Baron Bassam: History, Sussex So that's two out of 27 who did worthwhile degrees. What a drain on society.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:16
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I'm not sure it's worth getting too worked up about the Spectator's musings on discussions that may or may not be going on within Labour.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:21
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LemonDrizzle posted:I'm not sure it's worth getting too worked up about the Spectator's musings on discussions that may or may not be going on within Labour. Other current articles on the Spectator: quote:Religion of peace' is not a harmless platitude - Douglas Murray
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Jan 21, 2015 00:25
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LemonDrizzle posted:I'm not sure it's worth getting too worked up about the Spectator's musings on discussions that may or may not be going on within Labour. Probably not. I don't know why I have such a chip on my shoulder over this, what with having studied Mathematics, but there you go. Maybe I just imagine a world full of Angepains and recoil in horror.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:31
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