UK: “This is the worst recession for over 100 years”
Independent [UK]
02/10/09
In an extraordinary admission about the severity of the economic downturn, Ed Balls even predicted that its effects would still be felt 15 years from now. The Schools Secretary’s comments carry added weight because he is a former chief economic adviser to the Treasury and regarded as one of the Prime Ministers’s closest allies. Mr Balls said yesterday: ‘The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I’m sure, over 100 years, as it will turn out.’ He warned that events worldwide were moving at a ’speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before’ and banks were losing cash on a ’scale that nobody believed possible.’ The minister stunned his audience at a Labour conference in Yorkshire by forecasting that times could be tougher than in the depression of the 1930...
http://itshrunk.com/ffc31e
Losing our religion
Reason
by Ken Kurson
02/09/09
The speed with which venerable American institutions — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia — have disappeared or been gobbled up is jarring. But in most cases, that’s just creative destruction at work. What Joseph Schumpeter defined as ‘the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.’ What’s far more disconcerting is how quickly Americans seem willing to throw off our last few vestiges of freedom and adapt a nationalized, Washington, D.C.-based set of standards — replete with pay caps, government-preferred industries (and companies within those industries), and massive new government employment — all in the panicky name of ’stability.’ Even more startling is that this new economic catastrophe is only about four months old...
http://www.reason.com/news/show/131588.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=recession
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Great+Depression
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Treasury
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=economic+catastrophe
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bear+Stearns
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Lehman+Brothers
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Merrill+Lynch
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wachovia
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Schumpeter
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Nigel+Morris
02/10/09
In an extraordinary admission about the severity of the economic downturn, Ed Balls even predicted that its effects would still be felt 15 years from now. The Schools Secretary’s comments carry added weight because he is a former chief economic adviser to the Treasury and regarded as one of the Prime Ministers’s closest allies. Mr Balls said yesterday: ‘The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I’m sure, over 100 years, as it will turn out.’ He warned that events worldwide were moving at a ’speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before’ and banks were losing cash on a ’scale that nobody believed possible.’ The minister stunned his audience at a Labour conference in Yorkshire by forecasting that times could be tougher than in the depression of the 1930...
http://itshrunk.com/ffc31e
Losing our religion
Reason
by Ken Kurson
02/09/09
The speed with which venerable American institutions — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia — have disappeared or been gobbled up is jarring. But in most cases, that’s just creative destruction at work. What Joseph Schumpeter defined as ‘the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.’ What’s far more disconcerting is how quickly Americans seem willing to throw off our last few vestiges of freedom and adapt a nationalized, Washington, D.C.-based set of standards — replete with pay caps, government-preferred industries (and companies within those industries), and massive new government employment — all in the panicky name of ’stability.’ Even more startling is that this new economic catastrophe is only about four months old...
http://www.reason.com/news/show/131588.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=recession
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Great+Depression
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Treasury
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=economic+catastrophe
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bear+Stearns
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Lehman+Brothers
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Merrill+Lynch
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wachovia
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Schumpeter
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Nigel+Morris
rudkla - 10. Feb, 11:15
