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The positives of the global economic crisis

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    The positives of the global economic crisis

    In the last year or so, my mortgage repayments have fallen by roughly €370 per month.

    It's obviously disappointing that several million people had to be thrown onto the dole queues around the world in order for this to happen, but I know that they'll be happy for me.

    Is there anything good at all which is going to come out of this disaster? Lower cost of living due to lower inflation? Eventual slow reforms of the wilder excesses of capitalist governments? SUVs being repossessed all over the shop? More people making their own sandwiches instead of paying €5.50 for some synthetic dreck at lunchtime? That kind of thing.

    #2
    The positives of the global economic crisis

    Australia's ex-PM - and son of Eire - Paul Keating, tried to put a positive spin on the early 90s recession (into which people went with 18% interest rates) by claiming to have "de-spivved" the economy.

    Maybe for about ten minutes, Paul.

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      #3
      The positives of the global economic crisis

      There was an ad on Marktplaats (the Dutch e-bay) for the following:

      "TV Stand. (Including free Sony Widescreen television)"

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        #4
        The positives of the global economic crisis

        More affordable housing is high on my list, too, VG. The drop in home values means I'm almost able to buy the house I want. Almost. Give it another six months, I reckon.

        I'm pretty sure there is a positive wealth distribution effect. Whilst the effects on employment will likely be felt at the lower end of the scale, happily the main effects so far have been to reduce wealth, which is even more unequally distributed than income. The wealthy have lost a *lot* of money - proportionately far more than the poor (who hadn't much to lose anyway).

        In fact, to the extent that economic stimulus packages are slightly progressive, the 80-90% of working stiffs who don't lose their job in this recession might not feel much of a difference.

        I think the larger and much nastier effects will be noticed on the way out of the recession in a couple of years time - right about the time that large numbers of baby boomers will retire. That will have some very ugly effects on public finances, which will already be strained from having gone so far into the red this year. When that happens, if you're in the public sector, you'll be thinking back to this recession and thinking how great times were.

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          #5
          The positives of the global economic crisis

          Hopefully we'll see regulation on the banking industry that ensures something this bad can't happen again.

          And hopefully people will stop living so far beyond their means and stop trying to keep up with whoever they perceive the Joneses to be.

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            #6
            The positives of the global economic crisis

            The wealthy have lost a *lot* of money - proportionately far more than the poor (who hadn't much to lose anyway).

            And also the elderly who have private pensions or are self-financing their retirement. It's biting hard on many of them.

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              #7
              The positives of the global economic crisis

              Antonio Gramsci wrote:
              More affordable housing is high on my list, too, VG. The drop in home values means I'm almost able to buy the house I want. Almost. Give it another six months, I reckon.
              Same here. Last year there would have been no way that we could afford to buy a place where we rent now. But now places have dropped by about $150-200K. They're still overpriced, however. And if Mrs. Inca and I lived where we used to, we could buy a really nice house, instead of a condo or a tiny house, which is what we're hoping to get.

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                #8
                The positives of the global economic crisis

                Absolute confirmation that the Thatcherism was not only morally wrong, but ruinous.

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                  #9
                  The positives of the global economic crisis

                  Falling production means falling carbon emissions, which will slow the global warming process to a certain extent. Unfortunately it also means lower oil prices and, as the Grauniad finally realised the other day, falling carbon permit prices. Consequently there's less financial incentive to develop clean technology and it will take us longer to transition away from a carbon based economy.

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                    #10
                    The positives of the global economic crisis

                    houdi elbow - agreed, but it seems this thought isn't being raised that much in the mainstream, although a bloke in the Newsnight audience a week or two back did deliver a wonderful harangue on that.

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                      #11
                      The positives of the global economic crisis

                      On GY's point: It seems blindingly obvious to me that this is a heaven sent opportunity to develop clean technology - since governments have decided that the solution to this problem is to throw money at it, surely they should just throw money at vast programmes of research development and manufacture of green technology.

                      Obviously being blindingly obvious to me doesn't mean that it's necessarily the way forward nor that it's obvious to the decision makers, but am I way off here?

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                        #12
                        The positives of the global economic crisis

                        With the banks being nationalised governments will have more control over lending, surely? Can't they force banks to loan to renewable companies now?

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                          #13
                          The positives of the global economic crisis

                          Well that's sort of what Obama did with his stimulus package. I think the green tech subsidies got scaled back a bit in Congress, but there's still a huge expansion over previous subsidy levels. On the other hand, the Graun is reporting that specific climate change legislation is being pushed back to 2010 while the administration fights other fires. And the stimulus is full of small-bore, specific tech measures, rather than structural solutions like a carbon tax or a well designed cap and trade system, that would be more effective in the long run.

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                            #14
                            The positives of the global economic crisis

                            Also, governments designing stimulus packages are doing all they can to minimise "leakages" (i.e. the possibility thattheir stimulus money will leave the country and stimulate someone else's economy). Scientific research, because it tends to be highly collaborative, and require lots of really technical equipment that one generaqlly has to order in from Japan or Germany, is pretty leaky - more so than, say, road construction or other types of infrastructure projects. So the latter will tend to get preferred over the former. That seems to be the deal in the NPS, anyway.

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                              #15
                              The positives of the global economic crisis

                              Your whole car?!

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                                #16
                                The positives of the global economic crisis

                                You drive a tank??

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