> Looking at the data, the turning point is clear. From the start of the 1990s through to the late 2000s, everything seemed to be going well for the UK economy. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth had trended upwards [...]
> As the financial crisis of 2008 unfolded, unemployment increased, wages fell, and millions were pushed into poverty. Meanwhile, those whose greed and recklessness lay behind the crisis were insulated from [...]
Not to speak well of "neoliberalist" economic policies, but Britain was pretty well broken by the events of 1912-1946, and its own poor responses to those. Start of that period, Britain was the obvious global superpower - her Royal Navy dominating the seas, London the world's financial capital, the sun never setting on her Empire, etc., etc. Vs. end of that period, Britain was a crumbling has-been - avoiding full national bankruptcy only because the US Treasury gave her a huge bail-out loan.
(If you look at British history 1946-1992 - it's obvious that the greed, recklessness, stupidity, and lack of consequences for the guilty, which the article notes in 2008, was long-established practice. If you read some older history...yeah. Those vices predate neoliberalism by thousands of years.)
And that Britain looked fairly good - by some macroeconomic metrics - during the 1992-2008 financial boom is not a sign of "going well". It's a sign that the economy was heavily financialized. A petrostate looks great when the price of oil is spiking...but that's no sign of actual economic health.
bell-cot•50m ago
> As the financial crisis of 2008 unfolded, unemployment increased, wages fell, and millions were pushed into poverty. Meanwhile, those whose greed and recklessness lay behind the crisis were insulated from [...]
Not to speak well of "neoliberalist" economic policies, but Britain was pretty well broken by the events of 1912-1946, and its own poor responses to those. Start of that period, Britain was the obvious global superpower - her Royal Navy dominating the seas, London the world's financial capital, the sun never setting on her Empire, etc., etc. Vs. end of that period, Britain was a crumbling has-been - avoiding full national bankruptcy only because the US Treasury gave her a huge bail-out loan.
(If you look at British history 1946-1992 - it's obvious that the greed, recklessness, stupidity, and lack of consequences for the guilty, which the article notes in 2008, was long-established practice. If you read some older history...yeah. Those vices predate neoliberalism by thousands of years.)
And that Britain looked fairly good - by some macroeconomic metrics - during the 1992-2008 financial boom is not a sign of "going well". It's a sign that the economy was heavily financialized. A petrostate looks great when the price of oil is spiking...but that's no sign of actual economic health.