Sunday 18 January 2009

Gloomy Sunday Thoughts

Ho Hum. I was rather hoping that this widely unread blog was merely the eccentric musings of a economic ignoramus with the political antennae of the average lamppost. My obsessions might not coincide with anyone else's. But, hey, less than great minds seemingly think alike:

1. Will Hutton says Britain is potentially Iceland writ large.
2. William Keegan starts using the word Depression in a "well, actually, this really is a possibility" kind of way.
3. Tom P quotes Mandelson - always a good guide to the zeitgeist - as saying Britain needs to move away from an over-dependence on financial services and find new 'competitive advantages in Europe'. ( Lord Voldemort remains intensely relaxed about high salaries for 'high performance' of course: he's just woken up to the fact few of us think bankers deserve them....)
4. Ken draws attention to the Sunday Times bigging up Chinese political control of their banks and the ease with which they can therefore insist on counter-cyclical lending to industry to minimise the recession. (Not that the Sunday Times approves of this, you understand, but still...)

What is really striking to me at least, is how difficult it is to find informed discussion of all this in Leftie blogs with large audiences*. The blogs that I know about which fall into this category remain, with a few honourable exceptions ( hullo John Ross), fixated on foreign policy issues. Or at least the British ones do - it is American networks of Leftie blogs (e.g.) who seem better connected to the economic crisis.

Or perhaps I've just not found the Brit equivalents.

*Well, except for the ever insightful S&M of course - but half the time even he's busy using economic type logic to disprove political points, not attempting direct macro analysis of the political economy.
Addendum: and how could I forget Tom P, who once described himself as a 'weedy social democrat', but has heroically plugged away at the detail and now seems to realise that this is one of those moments of likely historic change.....

No comments:

Post a Comment