Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #PostTruthEconomics
Most recents (12)
#PostTruthEconomics has been exposed as an empty vessel, an old rotten barge dressed up as a buccaneering pirate ship taking on the financial markets, then collapsing into a few choice fragments: the reduction in stamp duties & the reversal of the NI rise.
Or in the #USA a crypto scam, powered by greed and lax laws in a crisis, leading to huge numbers of punters losing their shirts. #cryptocurrency fraud.
The @budget2022 was not fit for purpose, i.e. to generate economic growth. Its demise leaves the central aim of UK policy as stabilizing the markets, without a mandate. The best thing that has come out of the crisis is the utter discrediting of the @ILEA2021
Words fail. How, why, & when did our government come to this? Ask Boris Johnson if he has got what he wished for. He has played Eton games with our governance. Lack of political & economic acumen amongst Tory party leaders is astonishing. All their MPs are being held to account.
I blame #Brexit. They, Tory MPs, blame everything else that they can think of: Putin, the war, and even “remainers”! I can’t stop remembering BJ, now apparently sunning himself in the Caribbean, performing as a real politician over his period in office.
In the UK we are living day-by-day though an unprecedented historical unravelling of a Western government. Caused by a combination of external events, a Tory party actively promoting division during political & economic crises, & 12 years of Tory austerity.
New multidimensional tools are available. @e3me is a #SpaceTimeEconomics modelling framework capable of analyzing policy packages at global, national, regional, & local levels.
However, there is a problem in that financial markets move almost instantaneously, whilst real markets need time to make, move, and sell goods & services. They have benefited more from computing science, & attracted more talent by their lucrative promises.
This imbalance is very destructive of progress towards #NetZero, which needs real investment in climate change mitigation & adaptation, not the #PostTruthEconomics of populist governments, or the pseudoscience of neoclassical economics. @INETeconomics
The unwinding of @budget2020 continues. The situation demands the whole package to go, not just bits here & there. The creeping U-turn just encourages MPs & others to demand more. And it is unlikely that the markets will respond well to the uncertainty created by slow change.
Will the reversal of the Corporation Tax reduction effect growth? This question is difficult to answer because it involves comparing anticipation in 3 periods, before @budget2022, up until now, & after the reversion.
However, what stands out is the volatility of policymaking, which damages govt credibility & is likely to lower expectations for investment and lower economic growth.
The crisis is upon us. The PM & Chancellor have provoked the interlinked financial markets & the bear has woken, angry & hungry. What should the PM, with power, do? Remove the dart that wounds the beast. Calm & if necessary subdue it. Convene wise & experienced councils.
Combat climate change. But now, today: 1. Replace Kwarteng by Sunak, & cancel #budget2022. It has been an unmitigated disaster, politically & economically. 2. Reappoint a previous respected mandarin to head @hmtreasury to reassure the public & the markets.
3. Convene an open public meeting of the PM, the Chancellor, the Governor @bankofengland , the head of the @OBR_UK & the head of the @TheFCA to further reassure the markets. The turmoil must be stopped urgently before bankruptcies overtake policy. The markets take no prisoners.
I’m with @Frances_Coppola on the main question here. 1. It’s complicated and systematic. 2. Banks create money by lending, but under constraints. 3. However, the “lending” is not uniform & it is conditional. 4. Animal spirits also affect the banks, and market panic.
5. In the UK, not necessarily in other countries, most bank lending is for home mortgages. The market is churning as expected interest rates rise. 6. It seems likely in the UK, that this lending will collapse, so the increase in “money” will slow down, perhaps 🛑.
7. Meantime, the @bankofengland is intervening in the markets and issuing warnings. 8. The system is being shocked with unknown consequences. 9. We are in a global financial crisis, partly generated by #PostTruthEconomics
I’ve glanced at the paper so far. It looks to be a way forward for a severely compromised global banking system. Shadow banking is a cancer on the body politic, & must be cut out or reigned in. The turmoil following @budget2022 involved unprecedented central bank intervention.
#PostTruthEconomics as practised by Trump & Truss, clearly provokes the financial sector, with @CentralBanking_ picking up the pieces. But the risks of destabilising the system are high and rising as interest rates climb. Reform is urgent.
Reform of the global banking system is an urgent task for the @BIS_org before there is another Lehman or #GreatFinancialCrisis. The crypto collapse is ongoing, oil&gas prices are gyrating, currency/bond markets are only just being managed.
Conference ends. Truss at a twisted podium paints #TheGrowthPlan in more, unconvincing detail. @Conservatives turned into a pale, English version of MAGA neocon extremism. First they were infiltrated by the Brexit Party, now they’ve been taken over by UK followers of a US elite.
It’s as if the UK economy were a plaything for a right-wing experiment, enacting tax cuts and deregulation, attacking the woke, politics as entertainment. They don’t need any data or economic expertise. They know it all. Disrupt and hope for the best. #PostTruthEconomics
The UK establishment has been systematically undermined and damaged by these neocons grabbing the levers of power. Whitehall mandarins sacked, mocked, or broken. Lickspittles promoted as negotiators. The unwritten constitution tested and twisted to malign ends. Brexit. Clowning.
Unbelievable cod economics being spouted by Truss and Minister Paul Scully. This is boned-up #PostTruthEconomics. Scrap economic orthodoxy, he is saying, and disrupt (what? the economy? society? the woke, whoever they are?) Ah, it’s the EU regulations to be scrapped. 😡
Minister Scully is giving the justification for #TheGrowthPlan on @BBCRadio4 World at One. Mainly spin, clearly a qualification for the job. He’s good, smooth, well-spoken as mum would say. “A different strand of Conservatism” he says. 😂Neoconservatism, I say. Smooth as treacle.
So what are the economics of the half-baked plan enacted in #budget2022 & explained by sloganeering Truss & smooth Scully? Radical policies are necessary to respond to 1) events, eg energy price inflation & 2) the fact that the economic orthodoxy has failed. So far I agree 100%.
After the Greenpeace disruption. Truss’s Party Conference speech. Very good so far. She’s a person of the people. Determined to get us out of the high-tax (it’s not), low-growth (it is) cycle. Grow the pie. Growth-Growth-Growth. Change means disruption. Truss is a penny Trump.
Truss is a hopeless orator. Her voice rises in pitch at the wrong time. Pauses are misjudged. Mrs Thatcher had speech training and it greatly increased her power and charisma. I think it is too late for Liz Truss, much too late.
The Iron Lady believes in “sound money”. Terrifying, ignorant, and out of date. Three word slogans. So much is coded in the speech, but I fear for the future of the plans if this catalogue of neocon ambitions becomes law. #PostTruthEconomics
#PostTruthEconomics aka Trussonomics or Trumponomics is the economics being followed by #PostTruth governments that ignore economic expertise and formal forecasting & scenario analyses in favour of evidence-free policies based on ideology or populism - a thread
In the UK, the #budget2022 is a prime example: no @OBR_UK costings with scenarios based on alternative assumptions; policy changes based on wishes & hopes, rather than evidence; facile & ad hoc justifications (trickle-down economics); bluster & mis-speaking arrogance; and lies.
One feature of #PostTruthEconomics is the co-option of non-mainstream, outlier, ideological, or dead economists to provide confident justification, at least of aspects of the policies, e.g. for #budget2022 Prof Patrick Minford @JamesVa72538332
