Post by Teddy Bear on Dec 6, 2013 18:14:18 GMT
Here's a story that shows just why the BBC is not only a completely useless organisation for reporting the realities of this world, but they would actually carelessly and contemptuously do damage to this country to support their agenda, regardless of who it would hurt.
So relentless in demonizing everything the present government did, any moves to improve the economy was immediately heavily criticized by the panel of 'experts', always on hand as the voice of doom. Think how happy the BBC would have been to have been proved right, never mind what that 'right' would have meant to the general public.
Fortunately these harbingers of doom were proved wrong. Remember their names for future reference on their predictions.
So relentless in demonizing everything the present government did, any moves to improve the economy was immediately heavily criticized by the panel of 'experts', always on hand as the voice of doom. Think how happy the BBC would have been to have been proved right, never mind what that 'right' would have meant to the general public.
Fortunately these harbingers of doom were proved wrong. Remember their names for future reference on their predictions.
Here's what I want to see in the media
The 'experts' who should hang their heads in shame...the journalists, broadcasters, academics and economists who predicted a triple-dip recession and misery for millions
By Ross Clark
They are the Jeremiahs who, for the past three years, have been talking down the economy — predicting that the austerity ‘cuts’ would precipitate a triple-dip recession and misery for millions of people.
Here, ROSS CLARK examines these ‘experts’ who have been proved so disastrously wrong . . .
Every news bulletin seems to carry doom-laden reports about the state of our economy. This is not surprising since the Corporation has an entrenched and mindless opposition to all public sector cuts.
A constant stream of Left-wing pundits are invited onto its programmes to shroud-wave, with some warning that up to ten million households will be hit by brutal austerity measures.
Typically, BBC news headlines in April were full of dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund about the folly of the Coalition’s policies.
The BBC website said: ‘So far, the IMF has supported Mr Osborne’s policy of cuts to spending in order to reduce the budget deficit.
‘But in recent months there have been growing questions over whether austerity measures are doing more harm than good, not least due to weak economic numbers.
‘Since cuts were introduced in 2010, the UK’s economic growth has consistently been below official forecasts, and borrowing has not been significantly reduced.’
Such negativity and pessimism chimed with coverage in the Left-wing Guardian newspaper which, even as recently as two months ago, ran the headline: ‘IMF urges George Osborne to spend on infrastructure. Fund triggers fresh dispute between Chancellor and Ed Balls about impact of austerity programme on recovery.’
The truth: Britain’s economic recovery began to accelerate at almost the same moment the BBC’s report was broadcast in April. Just a few weeks ago, a humiliated IMF had to admit that it expected the UK economy to grow by 1.4 per cent this year — more than double the rate it previously projected.
The economist revered by the Left-wing establishment has been a constant Eeyore about the chances of the UK economy picking up.
In May, the former Bank of England adviser declared: ‘I nearly fell over laughing when I heard Mervyn King (the then Bank of England governor) say there’s a recovery in sight.’
A few months earlier, British-born Blanchflower, who is now a professor of economics in America, confidently predicted that official figures would show unemployment on the rise.
He has delivered more pearls of wisdom in his New Statesman magazine column. For example, in 2009 he said: ‘If spending cuts are made too early and the monetary and fiscal stimuli are withdrawn, unemployment could easily reach four million. If large numbers of public sector workers, perhaps as many as a million, are made redundant and there are substantial cuts in public spending in 2010, as proposed by some in the Conservative Party, five million unemployed or more is not inconceivable.’
After Osborne’s first Budget, in June 2010, he was still forecasting doom: ‘I am now convinced that, as a result of this reckless Budget, the UK will suffer a double-dip recession or worse.’
The truth: A year after Blanch- flower’s dire warning about unemployment figures, official statistics showed that unemployment had peaked and the number out of work has now fallen to 2.47 million.
As for his pessimism about ‘no recovery in sight’, he was proved utterly wrong — with Britain enjoying its fastest growth spurt for 15 years.
Until recently the BBC’s economics editor (and a former student flame of both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband), she was well-known in Westminster for her bulletins of economic doom.
In March, she blogged: ‘. . . there is a distinct possibility that national output will shrink again, in the first three months of this year. In other words, it is quite possible we will see that much talked-about “triple dip”.’
The truth: By June, she had to admit that not only had the ‘triple-dip’ recession not materialised but that revisions by the Office of National Statistics suggested the second dip didn’t happen either.
PS: Stephanie soon after insulated herself against austerity by swanning off from the BBC and taking up a lucrative role with investment bank JP Morgan on an estimated salary of more than £400,000.
Another one to talk Britain down has been the director of the think-tank National Institute of Economic and Social Research — with many of his writings sounding like a Labour Party script.
In January, he blogged: ‘The continued dismal performance of the UK economy is entirely consistent with the predictions of those of us who have argued consistently for the last two years that premature fiscal consolidation [ie cuts] would be severely contractionary in the short term, and risked doing significant long-term economic and social damage.’
The truth: Less than a year later, the UK economy is growing faster than that of any other large developed country.
A nobel prize-winner for economics in 2008, he published a book last year titled End This Depression Now! which called for governments to end austerity programmes and splurge public money on the economy.
In 2012, he said: ‘Even if you have a long-run deficit problem . . . slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the depression. So why is Britain doing exactly what it shouldn’t?’
In March, he was still predicting misery — being invited onto BBC2’s Newsnight to say that our economy was ‘disastrous’ and ‘a mess’. It was time, he added, for Mr Osborne ‘to say that he backed the wrong horse. He was wrong’.
The truth: Shortly after his book on the ‘Depression’ was published, the economy started to pick up. Instead of deepening depression, the UK now has strong economic growth.
Having written his PhD on the Great Depression, and having spent several decades observing the economy as Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, it would be easy to imagine that the 74-year-old Skidelsky would be overflowing with insight and wisdom.
Writing in The Guardian in 2011, he said: ‘The brief recovery is over. The shrinkage in demand is becoming a collapse. Unemployment will still be rising in 2013, real wages will continue to decline and as households stop spending, company profits will suffer.’
The truth: Unemployment peaked just before he wrote these words and has since fallen sharply.
By Ross Clark
They are the Jeremiahs who, for the past three years, have been talking down the economy — predicting that the austerity ‘cuts’ would precipitate a triple-dip recession and misery for millions of people.
Here, ROSS CLARK examines these ‘experts’ who have been proved so disastrously wrong . . .
THE BBC
Every news bulletin seems to carry doom-laden reports about the state of our economy. This is not surprising since the Corporation has an entrenched and mindless opposition to all public sector cuts.
A constant stream of Left-wing pundits are invited onto its programmes to shroud-wave, with some warning that up to ten million households will be hit by brutal austerity measures.
Typically, BBC news headlines in April were full of dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund about the folly of the Coalition’s policies.
The BBC website said: ‘So far, the IMF has supported Mr Osborne’s policy of cuts to spending in order to reduce the budget deficit.
‘But in recent months there have been growing questions over whether austerity measures are doing more harm than good, not least due to weak economic numbers.
‘Since cuts were introduced in 2010, the UK’s economic growth has consistently been below official forecasts, and borrowing has not been significantly reduced.’
Such negativity and pessimism chimed with coverage in the Left-wing Guardian newspaper which, even as recently as two months ago, ran the headline: ‘IMF urges George Osborne to spend on infrastructure. Fund triggers fresh dispute between Chancellor and Ed Balls about impact of austerity programme on recovery.’
The truth: Britain’s economic recovery began to accelerate at almost the same moment the BBC’s report was broadcast in April. Just a few weeks ago, a humiliated IMF had to admit that it expected the UK economy to grow by 1.4 per cent this year — more than double the rate it previously projected.
DAVID BLANCHFLOWER
The economist revered by the Left-wing establishment has been a constant Eeyore about the chances of the UK economy picking up.
In May, the former Bank of England adviser declared: ‘I nearly fell over laughing when I heard Mervyn King (the then Bank of England governor) say there’s a recovery in sight.’
A few months earlier, British-born Blanchflower, who is now a professor of economics in America, confidently predicted that official figures would show unemployment on the rise.
He has delivered more pearls of wisdom in his New Statesman magazine column. For example, in 2009 he said: ‘If spending cuts are made too early and the monetary and fiscal stimuli are withdrawn, unemployment could easily reach four million. If large numbers of public sector workers, perhaps as many as a million, are made redundant and there are substantial cuts in public spending in 2010, as proposed by some in the Conservative Party, five million unemployed or more is not inconceivable.’
After Osborne’s first Budget, in June 2010, he was still forecasting doom: ‘I am now convinced that, as a result of this reckless Budget, the UK will suffer a double-dip recession or worse.’
The truth: A year after Blanch- flower’s dire warning about unemployment figures, official statistics showed that unemployment had peaked and the number out of work has now fallen to 2.47 million.
As for his pessimism about ‘no recovery in sight’, he was proved utterly wrong — with Britain enjoying its fastest growth spurt for 15 years.
STEPHANIE FLANDERS
Until recently the BBC’s economics editor (and a former student flame of both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband), she was well-known in Westminster for her bulletins of economic doom.
In March, she blogged: ‘. . . there is a distinct possibility that national output will shrink again, in the first three months of this year. In other words, it is quite possible we will see that much talked-about “triple dip”.’
The truth: By June, she had to admit that not only had the ‘triple-dip’ recession not materialised but that revisions by the Office of National Statistics suggested the second dip didn’t happen either.
PS: Stephanie soon after insulated herself against austerity by swanning off from the BBC and taking up a lucrative role with investment bank JP Morgan on an estimated salary of more than £400,000.
JONATHAN PORTES
Another one to talk Britain down has been the director of the think-tank National Institute of Economic and Social Research — with many of his writings sounding like a Labour Party script.
In January, he blogged: ‘The continued dismal performance of the UK economy is entirely consistent with the predictions of those of us who have argued consistently for the last two years that premature fiscal consolidation [ie cuts] would be severely contractionary in the short term, and risked doing significant long-term economic and social damage.’
The truth: Less than a year later, the UK economy is growing faster than that of any other large developed country.
PAUL KRUGMAN
A nobel prize-winner for economics in 2008, he published a book last year titled End This Depression Now! which called for governments to end austerity programmes and splurge public money on the economy.
In 2012, he said: ‘Even if you have a long-run deficit problem . . . slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the depression. So why is Britain doing exactly what it shouldn’t?’
In March, he was still predicting misery — being invited onto BBC2’s Newsnight to say that our economy was ‘disastrous’ and ‘a mess’. It was time, he added, for Mr Osborne ‘to say that he backed the wrong horse. He was wrong’.
The truth: Shortly after his book on the ‘Depression’ was published, the economy started to pick up. Instead of deepening depression, the UK now has strong economic growth.
PROFESSOR ROBERT SKIDELSKY
Having written his PhD on the Great Depression, and having spent several decades observing the economy as Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, it would be easy to imagine that the 74-year-old Skidelsky would be overflowing with insight and wisdom.
Writing in The Guardian in 2011, he said: ‘The brief recovery is over. The shrinkage in demand is becoming a collapse. Unemployment will still be rising in 2013, real wages will continue to decline and as households stop spending, company profits will suffer.’
The truth: Unemployment peaked just before he wrote these words and has since fallen sharply.