In discussion with a journalist this morning I suggested that the whole of the UK, government included, now feels as if it’s being run to provide money to a failing financial services sector and those who enjoy the returns it pays. For how long can we keep going like this?
Wholesale finance is perhaps 4% of UK GDP.
That initial analysis might not be quite right.
Did the journalist then ask him whether he was on medication, drunk or simply insane?
OTOH, my savings, pensions and spending are to be controlled in the interests of ‘the economy’. If I am worse off because of it, what good is it to me if some notional economy is improved? Improved, that is, in a way that the triple prof approves of?
Diogenes
That did make me chuckle!
“In discussion with a journalist this morning I suggested that the whole of the UK, government included, now feels as if it’s being run to provide money to a failing NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (SIC) sector and those who enjoy the returns it pays. For how long can we keep going like this?”
Glad I’m approaching retirement (I was born the same year as the P3); it can’t be long before the entire UK workforce will be working for the NHS.
The use of ‘feels like’ is a convenient way to avoid actual facts, bit like Meghan and her use of ‘lived experience’ as a way to justify factually incorrect statements
What is meant by ‘wholesale finance’ here? Is that the right measure?
What portion of GDP is the financial service sector taking a cut of? Would that not include (and indeed, mainly comprise of) mortgage payments and pension savings? Perhaps, indirectly, insurance too?
The assertion may be hyperbolic nonsense, but if feels pretty un-controversial to, at least, note how much government policy seems to serve the aim of rising home prices, which are a pretty significant way in which the financial sector takes a clip of huge chunks of productive output. I don’t know the number, but I think it’s a big one.
All finance is around 12% of GDP. Banks, car insurance, the low. Wholes – The City – is around 4%.
House prices, agree, but the clip there is really the savings of the middle classes. Also, asset values are not part of GDP.