ED BALLS REALLY DOES TALK BALLS !

Listening to Ed Balls, shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the 'Andrew Marr Show' this morning, was like listening to a broken record.

 

Whingeing on about George Osborne's 'failed' plan for fiscal recovery, Balls did little but spout the usual socialist claptrap: a 'bankers' bonus tax', 'creating jobs', 'millionaires tax cuts' and so on. The one thing that Balls never mentions is his own gross culpability for much of the mess in which we now found ourselves.

 

The last Labour government, of which Balls was, eventually, a major part, laid the foundation for a large chunk of the current crisis through its policies of high taxation and uncontrolled state spending. Let us not forget that it was Gordon Brown who changed the taxation status of pension funds, depriving many people of vast amounts of money in their old age. It was Gordon Brown who introduced the system of tax credits which now makes it completely pointless for many people to work the basic hours required in order to claim them; It was the Labour government which introduced the minimum wage resulting in small companies often being forced to pay uneconomic wages to lazy and inefficient staff. They did all this and much more while raising every tax within sight, always excepting income tax which they cynically used to signal a supposedly tax-friendly approach towards the poor oppressed population.

 

For Balls to be complaining that the coalition government has 'failed' to restore balance to the economy after not much more than 2 years in office is an insult to the intelligence; for him to demand a restoration of the catastrophic 'tax and spend' policy of his disastrous government shows an almost unbelievable arrogance and ability to ignore reality. Why anyone would listen to him seriously or, worse still, ever vote for his bunch of failed hypocrites again, I have no idea.

IS MARK CARNEY REALLY SUPERMAN ?

Speaking of the appointment of Mark Carney as the next Governor of the Bank of England, George Osborne described the man as being the "outstanding central banker of his generation". Even allowing for the usual hyperbole that issues from the mouths of politicians at such times, this was extreme and will undoubtedly open Osborne up to potential career meltdown in a few years time if his words prove inaccurate.

Carney has previously been the top man in the Canadian central bank and has gained a serious reputation; he's credited with guiding Canada through the last few years of economic turmoil in a relatively successful way although there also seem to be some who claim that his policies have laid the ground for much more turmoil ahead. Having made it very clear that he had no ambitions to take on the job at the Bank of England, his arrival there next year might suggest that he knows full well that there are choppy waters ahead in his home country and he's getting out now before things begin to turn bad. Who knows ?

Canada's economy is about ¾ the size of the UK's and its population is a little more than ½; it is heavily dependent on its trading links with the USA. It's a huge nation covering a vast area much of which is sea and ice, and is a very different country overall from the UK; its wide open spaces yield some of the world's greatest volumes of oil, natural gas, timber and agricultural products, while mining of important metals and minerals is another major part of the economy. None of this is replicated in the UK.

Carney's credentials as a brilliant central banker may or may not be justified but what is clear is that his record has been earned in a very different world from that he will find in the UK. In Canada he has maintained very low interest rates while pumping large amounts of credit into the financial system, similar to the approach adopted in the UK but with, apparently, far better results. Whether this was a consequence of banking skill or of the different financial and banking regulatory framework in Canada is open to question.Nonetheless, Carney has been fêted around the world and comes to the UK with huge kudos attaching.

 

If he succeeds, he will leave the UK in 5 years time with his reputation enhanced and George osborne will emerge as the man of genius who appointed him. If he fails, he will still leave with a lot of money and will undoubtedly find another well paid job, while Osborne will have watched his career and ambitions to be Prime Minister run away down the drain. The rest of us just have to sit and hope.