Monday, March 01, 2010

Britain becomes poorer.

I know its a bit boring for those who visit this blog, but I want to return to the seriously misleading and downright dangerous interpretation by the media of last week's Office of National Statistics (ONS) growth figures. They were not just wrong. They were ridiculously, totally, upside-down wrong. Economics is a difficult enough science for the layman to understand as it is, without a media that misleads. We already know that 100 economists come up with 100 different answers to any question, without help from anyone ! I attached an update to my last post, but this issue warrants a separate post, based on this link, which puts it rather well.

So lets look at what the markets made of it. OK, so the UK's AAA rating has not been downgraded, but the markets are deciding to downgrade our currency anyway. The pound continues its downward path (though this may, in part, be due to opinion polls suggesting a hamstrung 'hung Parliament') and the rate at which the UK Government can borrow money has risen to over 4%. The markets judgement of the ONS figures is a massive thumbs down - and this was sold to us as 'good news'. This is me doing my bit to spread the truth.

I promise that this non-economist will now consider his sense of outrage satisfied.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like the phrase 'hamstrung parliament' - might use that elsewhere.... thanks!