Points for discussion?

[vonuber]

Not seen these posted yet on PH and thought they would be a good point for discussion, so:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235576/Ho...

and:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/17/tre...

in the interest of balance, one is from PH's favourite newspaper of truth and honesty, and one from the typically rabid political propaganda agency.

Surprised these have not been brought up, if they have then feel free to close

[0a]

Wikipedia says:

"NEF was founded in 1986 by the leaders of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) with the aim of working for a "new model of wealth creation, based on equality, diversity and economic stability".[2]"

AND

"At the policy level, NEF has attracted Gordon Brown (when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer) to chair some of its events"

I suspect, to put it politely, this is complete and utter bullst.

Try this http://freethinkingeconomist.com/2009/12/14/not-ec... and look at what it says about their assumptions:

blog said:

They take one period – the 100 year storm we’ve gone through – work out the peak to trough loss of value, and call that “what a banker does”. Then divides through by the banker’s supposed normal value add. That is their ‘technique’. You may have thought that economics was difficult, having read all about Paul Samuelson. Oh, clearly we were wrong. It could be done by irate fifth formers.

The peak value of our production and our economic capacity – the level it was at when the bubble was blowing – is taken as the base case, and the difference to the low level it may be now, the loss made. So, apparently, without the City – without any financial intermediation - our GDP would have been at the bubble levels, and the only reason it is not is because of the bankers.

The same assumption is made of public accounts. So we would have had only 38 per cent of GDP as debt – if it were not for the bankers. Yes, forget that Germany, France, Japan, any number of countries that did not supposedly depend on a parasitical ‘City’, also have had large increases in debt. Forget that the only reason we could afford such high public spending and have debt only at 38pc was because of bubble-dependent revenues.

Forget the counterfactual. Forget how financial intermediation, shifting large scale resources from savers to borrowers, might have some value. No, just treat it as a combination of banditry and gambling, you know, like a drunken student would, if he had no intellectual honesty

They are even so crass as to divide tax contribution between retail and wholesale according to employees.

Edit: I think this is the Guardian Article you wanted to link to, utter tosh in any case: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/14/new...

Edited by 0a on Sunday 18th December 15:32