After Greece?

Portugal? Not yet but the Wall Street Journal reports "Its overall public debt is close to 80% of GDP, while's Greece's surpassed 110% of GDP last year.

The Portuguese government is slated to borrow around €20 billion to €22 billion from bond markets this year, less than half of Greece's borrowing needs". However, give it a few months and a lack of fiscal discipline.

Spain? Now that's a far bigger economy, but it has public debt at lower rates compared to GDP than the UK and France. Its problem is going to be prolonged stagnation, and unemployment at a destabilising 20%. However I wouldn't see it falling before any of the others.

Italy? As the third biggest economy in the Eurozone, this would precipitate a crisis that makes Greece look like a sideshow. Italy has serious problems, as the billionaire halfwit running the place continues to be willfully ignorant of the need to upset people by cutting spending. Italy has public debt proportionately similar to Greece, at well over 100% of GDP. Its most recent sovereign debt issue was only barely adequately covered by subscribers, meaning the next one will have to be at a higher interest rate. It has one saving grace, in that private debt levels are low as Italians have a savings culture stronger than other Eurozone countries. It is this, and the fact Japanese continue to "invest" in their government's sovereign debt, that has saved Japan from collapse (but meant the economy has been zombie like.

Ireland? It has bitten the hard pill of budget cuts, so should be safe but it still has the largest budget deficit of them all, because it decided to nationalise banks. Its recapitalisation of Anglo-Irish Bank has been classified as debt, when before the Irish government wanted to treat it as equity.

What's the verdict overall? Socialism doesn't work. It especially doesn't work if governments promise voters who expect something for nothing, and it shows the enormous damage and the costs imposed by constitutionally unrestrained governments. Governments who can overspend, and effectively issue promissory notes for debt that they issue, but have no means to repay. Governments that ever grow, that constantly offer more and more "freebies" to citizens, that grow the welfare state, that grow the bureaucracy of the unproductive, yet employed.

It is a path to absolute ruin, and it is a path that has been popular in much of Europe for some years, and a path that the UK, the US and New Zealand have also been following. Albeit all of them have had the option of devaluing their currency, effectively stealing from the holders of their currencies (in debt and savings) to enable this sovereign debt cycle to be perpetuated.

Who is accountable? No one. Politicians get 3-5 year bites at power, they get paid (and get opportunities to get paid far more afterwards), they promise to spend other people's money to get power, and the masses like children vote for it, and then wonder like imbeciles when governments eventually tell them the "good times" are over.

When government has unrestrained power to borrow on your behalf, demand you pay for its spending on its behalf, imprison you if you fail to do so, and the only restraint you have is to vote along with millions of others to change the teams, who by and large do the same with different flavours, this is what happens.

Reality evasion on a grand scale.

UK election: Evading unpleasant truths

Besides me not actually being in the UK for around a week, I've not blogged about the UK election lately because it has been an exercise in comprehensive banality largely focused by an unusual degree of hyperactive psephology.

Given that was fun just to write on its own, it is timely that the Institute of Fiscal Studies (an economics think tank that was formed in the 1960s) announced today that the three main political parties are misleading British voters of the scale of the budget deficit problem.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the IFS said ""Over the four years starting next year, Labour and the Liberal Democrats would need to deliver the deepest sustained cuts to spending on public services since the late 1970s,"

"While, starting this year, the Conservatives would need to deliver cuts to spending on public services that have not been delivered over any five-year period since the Second World War."

You see, the fundamental enormous lie they are all spreading is that the budget deficit is the highest it has ever been, by any measure, and public debt is the highest it has been, by any measure, for over a century.

This debt is, in part, because Gordon Brown decided to nationalise banks rather than let them fail, but is also because he has consistently run budget deficits over the last nine years. Borrowing, spending and hoping, so Labour could be re-elected by the people receiving the largesse stolen in advance from future taxpayers.

Most of that borrowing has not even been for the sort of infrastructure projects some economists argue produces a net positive outcome for the economy either. It has been to pay for the ever growing expansion of the welfare state in all of its forms.

Gordon Brown has tried to campaign on "business as usual". Labour, you see, "invests" its borrow stolen loot - "investing" means paying for wealthy pensioners to get free bus passes and subsidised gas and electricity. "Investing" means propping up homeowners who foolishly borrowed too much and have mortgages worth more than their properties. "Investing" means paying for new bureaucracies to run neo-Stalinist big brother checks on people who may spend time with children, vetting those without convictions or even charges. "Investing" means pouring money down the ever poorly performing ponzi style health and state pension plans. YOU can't invest of course, or rather, your children can't (since it will be them forced to pay for it). Don't be so selfish.

After all Gordon Brown saved the world, he's the genius who sold billions of pounds of Britain's gold reserves when the price of gold had been at a historic low, he abolished boom and bust. How dare mere taxpayers question him?

How can any person seriously trust this man with a piggy bank, let alone the finances of the world's sixth largest economy? Particularly when his own Treasury Secretary let it slip that the necessary cuts in state spending will be greater than that implemented under Thatcher's government in the 1980s (which frankly were modest), at the same time as Labour promises to introduce a socialised care service for the elderly.

Labour is lying and it knows it, because all it has ever offered the UK electorate, fundamentally, is to spend more of its money and to grow the role of the state. It will be cutting spending, and increasing taxes if it gets elected, because if it does not address the deficit convincingly, it will hurt the pound, the sharemarket and Britain's credit rating. However, Labour is partly expecting to lose, and is hoping to stem losses by promising to the masses to continue giving them more unearned proceeds from future taxpayers.

What about the Conservatives? Well, the only thing going for them is that they haven't wrecked the country's finances. The Conservatives say they'll be more ruthless on improving the efficiency of the state, but they too are fundamentally dishonest. They continue to promise real increases in spending on the centrally planned and "free at point of use" (so unlimited demand) state health system, and in aid to the wealthy in poor countries. They continue to promise toys like a state subsidised high speed rail line for business travellers. The Conservatives simply stopped talking about cutting spending because the lumpen-proletariat didn't like the truth, especially since Labour and the Liberal Democrats kept promising money borrowed from future taxpayers.

Taxpayers (and let's be honest, many millions who are net tax recipients), you see, appear to like being promised goodies, paid for by someone else, no doubt because past governments have treated them like children. So the Conservatives have chosen just to keep quiet.

The Liberal Democrats are having it both ways, because they claim to support deep cuts, although they also seek to increase some taxes and abolish income tax on the low paid. The net effect is not that different from Labour.

However, their cuts range, like abolishing ID cards (not much money), not replacing Britain's nuclear deterrent (not a lot year on year, but a fundamental change to foreign policy), to abolishing government subsidised Child Trust Funds. Slightly more honest? Well they would be if they were worth much, but most of what they say is the same "efficiency savings" "reduce bureaucracy" Sir Humphrey speak that is code for keeping the state as big as it is. The Liberal Democrats are largely an offshoot of the Labour Party. Given the recent celebrity style boost of the polls, the Liberal Democrats are also keeping quiet on spending cuts, as they see an opportunity to plunder Labour voters used to being promised something for nothing.

So what SHOULD be the biggest issue at this election simply isn't - it is whether the next government can avoid the UK making the same sort of failure to deal with public spending that has seen the Irish and Estonian government engage in major cuts in spending on a grand scale, and saw Greece face default.

Are the politicians just liars or is the public too stupid to understand?

UK election - Liberal Democrats, the naive protest vote

For a very brief period I thought about voting for the Liberal Democrats. Why? Because I want Labour out, and the Lib Dems came second in my constituency last time. Removing a seat from Labour is rational, but a moment of scrutiny shows the Liberal Democrats for what they are, a mediocre muddle of conflicting, contradictions, which at best is naively optimistic and at worst is peddling envy and big government.

The whole manifesto is here, but you'll fall asleep reading it. So I've compiled the highlights, it shows a party that is pulled in three different directions, socialism, environmentalism and liberalism. The result looks like a left wing more liberal version of the Labour Party.

On tax it starts looking good. The first £10,000 would be tax free for everyone. I can't oppose that, except that it isn't about cutting taxes overall. No. Capital gains tax would be increased, as would taxes on aviation (why tax aviation? Part of the environmentalist religious mantra, and helps to price the poor out of overseas holidays), and a new tax on owning a big home. The tax policy essentially benefits the middle class voters it wants to attract, while penalising the wealthier and the poorer (as the tax on aviation hurts the poorest who want to fly).

It then claims to look sensible on deficit reduction, but when you look at the detail it isn't much different from the weasel words of the other two, about more efficient procurement, reforming state sector pensions. The exception is the Liberal Democrat view on defence, which is for the UK to withdraw from the world somewhat. Scrapping Trident means phasing out Britain's nuclear deterrent over time.

However, the real danger is in the policy on banking. A new Banking Levy on all banks, would penalise the prudent as well as those bailed out, and it is a precursor to splitting up the banks. It also wants to drastically cut bank bonuses, effectively chasing the most talented in finance to Geneva, New York and Hong Kong. In other words a wholesale attack on one of Britain's leading industries, presumably to pander to middle class anger and envy about it. How can this be taken seriously? Why the hell aren't the Conservatives warning of how devastating this would be, except the fact that George Osborne hasn't a clue about the banking sector either?

Meanwhile, it might say it wants to cut the deficit, but then it seeks to made the Ponzi style state pension MORE generous. Surely not another vote bribe of the elderly paid for by more borrowing? It also extends the absurd Winter Fuel Benefit to the disabled and would give money to homeowners with homes that aren't used so they can be used for public housing. It also wants to eliminate child poverty by 2020, presumably by not leaving it to parents to look after their own kids. Increasing the welfare state at a time when it says the economy is in tatters?

It wants to expand corporate welfare by the state paying shipyards to make wind turbines? What sort of nonsense is that to put out of business existing manufacturers? It is illegal under EU competition law for the state to do that, you'd have thought since the LibDems love the EU, they might have known that.

It would set up an Infrastructure Bank to waste taxpayers' money. It sees it like a sovereign fund, except you don't establish those until you have low or no net public debt. Silliness again.

Then there is part privatisation of the Royal Mail, a sudden rush of blood to the head of common sense, rare as it may be.

Liberal? My arse. What liberal party would make it compulsory for job application forms to have NO NAMES, so people are not discriminated against for their sex or ethnic background? How the hell are you meant to interview Applicant X, or approach referees? How does that combat the suspected discrimination?

Education is largely tinkering, except for promising to abolish university tuition fees over six years. Again, the cutting the deficit idea is shown up to be bullshit.

Health is tinkering as well, although it is curious the LibDems are the only major party to not promote continued above inflation spending rises on the NHS. Although the quackery of the policy can be seen when included in health policy is opposing the 3rd runway at Heathrow Airport because it will reduce pollution and health costs. Yes, seriously.

Free speech? Well not really, not when you want to ban airbrushed images in advertising, for example. Requiring Facebook to have an online reporting function for perverts and bullies. See the trails of Nanny Statism all over the manifesto. You see it in setting maximum interest rates for credit cards, forcing rail fares to be reduced (even on overcrowded lines) and in wanting to set up a PostBank! Border exit checks add to this.

It wants to regulate supermarkets, so that they are forced to pay higher prices to farmers for food (as will everyone). Liberal? Just mercantilist protectionism.

It is in cuckoo land on energy policy to make 40% of energy renewable by 2020, which would mean a huge increase in energy bills. It would scrap nuclear power as well, and have an Australian style nationwide home insulation programme. Why? Because the LibDems are vehement about cutting CO2 emissions. It wants to spend more money on UN agencies, and to support wiping third world debt - seems bonehead Bono has got to them too. It is quiet on the EU, because it knows so many loathe the waste there, but it would strengthen European defence co-operation.

However, one policy on defence says it all about naivete. The LibDems rule out military action against Iran. It may not be a wise or a desirable move, but to completely rule it out tells Iran that Britain, at least, would not stand in its way of being a nuclear power. Why this policy even needs to be here (how many Iranians are voting?) is beyond me.

Transport isn't too important, but again it shows a childlike foolishness. It would seriously cut road spending (which isn't big anyway) to reopen closed railway lines, which would mean no road improvements and possibly more potholes and other serious deterioration of already underfunded roads. Along with banning new airport runways, and it is the typical Green "rail good, road baaad, planes baaad" religion.

Anything liberal? Well scrapping the ID card scheme is about all i can get enthused about, but the Tories say the same thing. There is an implied policy of not being so draconian on drugs, with policy based on harm, but that is barely scratching the surface. Libel laws would be reformed, innocent people's DNA removed from state databases and stop storing people's email and phone records without good cause. This is it on freedom, at the same time as regulating business and individual behaviour more, and changing taxes, but not reducing the size of the state.

Finally, it would reform the electoral system to introduce STV, and give the young and naive the vote at 16 (both would benefit the Lib Dems enormously). It would also empower local government to introduce local income tax, yes small government isn't to be found here.

It's atrocious. It is a mix of old fashioned socialist envy about banking and property ownership, lots of anti-capitalist environmentalism and hatred of certain technologies (aviation and nuclear power are notable), and a lot of tinkering, with a smidgeon of reducing state surveillance in some areas.

It could be the Labour Party without it's embracing of state surveillance, and its commitment to the defence status quo. However, it reforms very little, and in fact would cause immense damage to British business and industry, whilst gaining nothing for social services, and reducing Britain's influence in the world.

There is nothing here to excite, and quite a bit to fear. However, all the public are thinking is that Nick Clegg is a vote against both Brown and Cameron. Yet, he has enough seats and could win enough to hold a significant influence after the election.

What's next?

Well there is another debate next Thursday between the three leaders, so things may go a little different.

More importantly, Monday morning is only hours away from having the markets open and react to the high chance of a Liberal Democrat determined hung Parliament. I suspect that will tell a lot about what business thinks of the public's flirtation with the Socialist Democratic barely Liberals.

UK elections - Liberal but Democrats, so what are they this time?

I had the great fortune of missing the debate between the two men who will be Prime Minister and Nick Clegg on British TV - largely because I was on one of the last planes out of Heathrow before the volcanic ash cloud plummeted the country into environmentalist heaven.

The Liberal Democrats are deserving of attention for three reasons.

Firstly, the original "Liberal Party" once governed the UK and once proudly embraced free market capitalism and social liberalism. When it waivered from this, it moved to the centre, embraced Keynesianism and the Labour Party supplanted it as a major party, from which it has never recovered. Until the merger with the Social Democrats (a breakaway from Labour when it was avowedly Marxist).

Secondly, as the third biggest party, with 66 seats, it has the potential to be a kingmaker if neither major party wins an outright majority. This has happened last time in 1974, on that occasion the Conservatives came second, but Ted Heath tried to remain in power through support from Ulster Unionists. They had demands Heath was unwilling to agree to, so Harold Wilson from Labour formed a government with support from the Liberals, but the majority was so slim he called another election that same year. Labour won an small majority, which itself disappeared over the next few years as Labour lost by-elections and formed a pact with the Liberals. The possibility is real that this situation could be replicated.

Thirdly, with Nick Clegg allegedly the "winner" from the first leader debate, the poll ratings of the Liberal Democrats have soared. With both the Conservatives and Labour losing support to the Lib Dems, making it more of a three way race.

So should lovers of freedom embrace the presence of the Liberal Democrats, given their consistent support for civil liberties and suspicion of state interference in the rights of citizens? Or is it simply a wolf in sheep's clothing?

Conservative manifesto - less worse than Labour but where is the freedom?

Given the electoral system in the UK, the big choice for most voters is whether to support the incumbent Labour Party, and its "we'll look after you, give us your money and promise us your kids' money too" approach or the Conservatives.

Labour, naturally, wants to portray the Conservatives as the "nasty party" proclaiming that it would make "brutal" cuts like Margaret Thatcher did, and claim that the radicalism of that government is where the Tories REALLY have their hearts and minds.

A little odd given the Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted on the BBC that LABOUR would have to make cuts worse better than Thatcher.

Nevertheless, on the face of it, given how the Tories have abandoned the closeted xenophobia, anti-homosexual, social intolerance of the past, is there really hope that the Tories are now socially liberal AND the great inheritors of Thatcher's culling of the state?

After all, I would LOVE to be able to give the Conservatives my moral authority to earn my vote. Britain needs to consign the pseudo-Keynesian spendthrift promise breaker Gordon Brown and his tribe of envy peddling control freaks to history. So is there something to hope for in the Opposition? A belief in capitalism, individual freedom, commitment to addressing real crimes and to a state that weans the public from dependency on it for pensions, healthcare and their kids' education?

Not if you read the Conservative Manifesto. No. In fact, the Conservative Party continues to be suspicious of capitalism, embraces wholeheartedly the religion of unquestioned environmentalism. Moreover, you'll be spending a lot of time searching for the freedom in it, because it largely isn't there.

Its first policy is called "Big Society". Remember when Margaret Thatcher correctly said (and was subsequently quoted only in part) that there is "no such thing as society"? She meant that when people say "society" thinks this, or is to "blame" for that, that it is a nonsense as there is no collective brain. Society is simply a group of individuals who interact with their own consciousness, own opinions and diverse views, lives and attitudes.

The "Big Society" policy says "We have set out an ambitious agenda to build a Big Society based around social responsibility and community action." In capital letters? Quite simply, fuck that.

Allister Heath in City AM put it so very well:

their “big society” agenda, which looks suspiciously like a rebranded big state. “Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group.” Really? What about those so busy trying to make ends meet that they have taken on two jobs, or who are too ill or too old or who have to care for young children or elderly relatives? And what about the barmy proposal for vast numbers of state-funded community organisers? It’s nonsense – slightly sinister nonsense, even, with authoritarian undertones and entirely unaffordable in an age of drastic austerity. One can’t chide the state for its bossiness and all-controlling bureaucratic officialdom – and simultaneously try and make volunteering compulsory. There is such a thing as freedom and being allowed to do whatever one wants with one’s life, rather than being bossed about by do-gooders. It is worrying how, for all their empowering rhetoric (and in some cases proposed actions, such as on civil liberties) the Tories have forgotten about this.

He's right you know. It is the classic conservative agenda, not of letting free individuals live as they want as long as they don't hurt others, but putting obligations on your life to "participate" in ways the government approves of. Most people much of the time help and contribute to the lives of others, like parents, family, friends, colleagues. They don't need Uncle David Cameron telling them to volunteer on top of that.

The Tories have made a big deal of not increasing national insurance tax like Labour will, but they will STILL increase it for those earning over £35,000.

Frankly the most positive policy is on education, by allowing anyone to set up a school in competition with the state and have state funding follow students to that school. A form of semi-deregulation of the compulsory education sector.

Beyond that there are some positives:
- Reducing corporation tax and an agenda to reduce regulation on business;
- Resolving the West Lothian question, by requiring issues that only involve England or England and Wales need to be passed by a majority of MPs from those constituent countries;
- Allowing council tax payers to veto increases in council tax by petition;
- Retain and replace Britain's nuclear deterrent;
- Ensure that UK has final sovereignty over its laws (which wont happen as it means leaving the EU in effect);
- Reduce (but not eliminate) powers to enter homes by councils;
- Scrap compulsory ID cards;
- Allow DNA from innocent people to removed from databases;
- Remove consensual gay sex convictions from criminal records;
- Freeze council tax for two years.

Then some negatives:
- Giving other people's money to households to pay for energy efficiency measures;
- Stop the privately owned and funded third runway at Heathrow on spurious environmental grounds, and no more runways at Gatwick or Stansted either;
- Interfering in energy markets because of climate change;
- Introduce voluntary "National Service";
- Create a new bureaucracy to look to prop up food prices for farmers;
- Destroy remaining property rights of BT and other telcos by forcing them to sell broadband capacity to others;
- Force everyone to pay for universal broadband access below cost in rural areas;
- Increase state health spending and foreign aid spending in real terms whilst the country is in fiscal crisis;
- Refusing to abolish the 50p top tax rate while public sector pay is frozen;
- Put a FLOOR under landfill tax;
- Retaining the ridiculous and distortionary "free at point of use" policy of the NHS;
- Encourage councils to build more council housing;
- Limit non-EU immigration;
- Maintain most of Labour's expanded welfare state.

No, it doesn't inspire. It doesn't promise to not increase other taxes, like fuel duty and VAT. Welfare dependency remains, as do victimless crimes and the nanny statism over children that Labour introduced. It is at best devoid of ambition, with the only positive sign the education policy (even that is the ACT policy of 2008). The rest is denial of the need to confront socialised medicine, a complete disregard for private property rights and being hijacked by the inane environmentalist lobby to strangle growth in aviation.

Gordon Brown it is not, New Labour it is not, but does this deserve moral endorsement from me as a libertarian?

Sadly, no. I can't endorse the environmentalism, the confiscation of property rights, the weasel words around the deficit and tax, and the embracing of the NHS.

The question is whether the Tories are that bad that it wouldn't matter if Labour won or the Conservatives won. The problem I have is that if I vote Conservative I hardly have a right to object if they do what they say, since I would have had a hand in saying YES GOVERN ME.

I don't think I want to do that.