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A new debate is emerging on the scope of the state

Few people would tolerate a country in which the poor starved or went homeless and yet in Wycombe food is provided by the One Can Trust and emergency winter shelter by Wycombe Homeless Connection. Last time I divided the social security budget (£207bn) by the number of people in poverty (13m), the figure of almost £16,000 was higher than the income of over half the population. Despite spending so much money, the welfare state fails to keep people to a decent [...]

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Our ballooning national debt – is City AM the only paper worth reading?

This morning in City A.M., Editor Allister Heath writes once again about the lamentable failure of the political and media class properly to inform the public debate on our country’s finances. Referring to a poll asking whether the Coalition is cutting the national debt, keeping it the same or increasing it: These same questions were first asked at the beginning of the year by ComRes, last time on behalf of the Centre for Policy Studies. Depressingly, the public’s economic literacy [...]

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Three videos to start the Autumn

On levels of debt: On the madness of QE and the current economic consensus: On the battle of economic ideas:

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More unexpected borrowing?

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Yesterday, we learned “public sector net borrowing was £0.6 billion in July 2012; this is £3.4 billion higher net borrowing than in July 2011, when net borrowing was -£2.8 billion (a repayment)”. Compared to say May, when we borrowed £17.9 billion, £600 million seems relatively modest. It’s still the gross annual earnings at the national average wage of over 23,000 people. Apparently, it was a surprise to economists (again). They expected the usual July surplus. As far as I recall, [...]

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The triumph of politics » The Cobden Centre

At The Cobden Centre, Detlev Schlichter explains that, The biggest threat to your property and to your individual liberty does not come from markets and not even from the bankers. It comes from politics. I feel sure he is right. We’ve had decades of excessive political promises paid for by high taxes on people of ordinary incomes, deficit spending, national debt and currency debasement. That has inevitably caused a financial, economic and social crisis. And yet still it seems politicians and [...]

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The UK faces a €149.2 billion liability to the EU

The Bruges Group’s latest report has exposed that the UK is facing a maximum potential loss of €149.2 billion on its financial commitments to the EU and the Euro. The report reveals the full extent of our obligations in respect of the present and future debts of EU institutions including: How the Government’s defined position is questionable in law and therefore has led it to underestimate its full potential exposure to EU debt; and That the true extent of the [...]

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Please pay your debts, Argentina!

When we hear the word ‘default’ we naturally think of the euro. But to many people across the world, ‘default’ is associated with Argentina. In 2001, Argentina committed the greatest default in history and declined to repay $81,000,000,000 that had been lent to it in good faith. Even now, it has not come to terms with all its creditors from that time. It still owes $360m to the USA, £3.79 billion to the Paris Club of creditor states and a [...]

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A massive failure of journalism is being corrected

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Via It’s austerity all right – but not of the kind we actually need, City A.M.’s Allister Heath makes his case: It has long been a theme of this column that the government and its critics alike have exaggerated the extent of the government’s belt-tightening. The coalition is doing this to try and reassure the bond markets while seeking to minimise the hit to the public sector; the opposition because it wants to blame the recession on “the cuts.” But [...]

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What If the National Debt Were Your Debt? – YouTube

Via Learn Liberty, a video which tries to make the US fiscal position understandable: What If the National Debt Were Your Debt? Government debt is not the same as household debt of course. Households can’t debase everyone’s money in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy.

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Presentation on the financial crisis

This evening, I made the following presentation on the Government’s financial position and intentions and on the genesis of this crisis. The PDF is here: How to create a crisis.

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Steve Baker is MP for Wycombe. He was previously an RAF officer then a business software consultant. Find out more...

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