Is it all about to go tits up? Are we finally going to find out that Mr Brown, far from being prudent has in fact fucked it up so royally that they will be baying for his blood in Parliament Square.

To be honest, I think we will.......

I think that there may well be very tough times and even recession ahead; but I think it would be unfair to blame Brown (even though I think that he deserves criticism for other reasons). If the problems now result from too much credit (and they seem to) then any crisis is of the banks' own making, though the Conservatives' easing of credit regulation is also to blame.
I don't think that Brown could have done anything about it as Chancellor for political reasons, because any action would in itself have risked precipitating recession.

It is a little like learning to play the violin while the senate stocks up on dry tinder, matches and children with ADHD...

I doubt if it will spark a collapse; a recession possibly. If this is the rock that sinks the titanic debt we're saddled with, the torlabral hybrid in downing street and the neo-yuppy attitude to property, so be it...

Brown's entire tenure lived off the credit boom.

He knew full well that irresponsible lending was going on and did nothing about it. It is hard to blame the Tories for something which Brown didn't change in his ten years as Chancellor.

UK personal debt is at unprecedented levels - with a credit crunch interest rates will rise whatever the BoE does (In fact it's already happened).

The economy is, to put it mildly, totally fucked.

Nice one Gord.

And the result of all this - David Fucking Cameron will be the next PM......


If only Blair had got in with a small majority - we'd have PR now and never have to face the Tories again...

I don't think that argument stacks up. I think that Brown as Chancellor didn't intervene in the economy enough, (and presumably that's your view as well if you blame him for doing nothing about credit), but both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are even more wedded to free market principles. With PR, we would be faced with the prospect of coalition governments for the foreseeable future, and no coalition is going to be radical enough to make the break with Thatcherite economics that we need. Besides, throughout the country the Lib Dems are in coalitions with the Tories, so the reality is that Cameron would probably already be PM if we had PR.
This crisis is a creation of the market; Brown's failure has been to abdicate control of the markets, but on his own terms (i.e. that the markets cannot be controlled, only influenced) he has done as well as anyone could.
I think that Labour will eventually have to start facing up to the failure of neo-liberal economic policies and reforge itself as (at least) an interventionist party and hopefully as a genuinely socalist one. Brown's tenure is a necessary stage in the process that will lead to that outcome.

I hope you are right, but I doubt it very much.

But I disagree that the problem is with 'the market'. The market will do what the market does - the problem is with the government failure to regulate the market. New Labour have taken on the neo-liberal agenda and it is going to fuck us all royally.

I think we agree about everything except the potential of Labour to change. I'd just say this: Blair was compared quite frequently to Harold Wilson. Brown is already looking like the new Jim Callaghan. After Callaghan we had Michael Foot - an intelligent socialist of enormous integrity with no political acumen. I don't believe that history necesarily repeats itself, but think it might inasmuch as our next leader could similar to Foot ideologically, and, just possibly, more effective as a politician.

And just as unelectable?



The credit crunch is going to cause massive problems - interest rates will go up whatever the Bank of England does.

The disturbing thiiing is that the last time there was this much debt followed by a credit crunch was 1929.....

Brown's measure of inflation might have stayed low for the last 10 years, but it has all been smoke and mirrors - monetary inflation has been running about 10%. The banks have happily been creating credit, much of which will never be able to be paid back.

I hope I am wrong but I can seriously see a period of stagflation coming as the monetary supply contracts. And it is worse in the US - if everyone bundles out of the dollar we could be looking at a prolonged depression.

Remember that money = debt and debt = money. The good times are about to end.

You may well be right; though so much has changed so much in recent times, I think it's very difficult to predict. it would be fascinating if it wasn't so worrying.