In the case of the current encumbents of:
A. The Bank of England
B. The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer
They each have 100% records of being wrong in their public pronouncements.
Of course, these are two of the main participants in the great debate who continue to claim divine insight up to 15 years ahead.

Your social science has yet to earn it's spurs and anyone in another profession who was consistently wrong all of the time could hardly expect to keep their job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science

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Dave

It's not that economists are always wrong. Now, the ones in the media really tend to be...

1) Politicians: They are more concerned with looking nice to the people in the present rather than being right. For a politician it's far more important to be liked by the people than being right so they say what they perceive as the public's wishes when they speak. When the realization that they were wrong comes, many water already passed under the bridge and they can spin it in multiple ways.

2) Academics: Those who have always lived and worked in the pure academic environment and have no experience in the real world, those who have never worked in positions where their income depends on their accuracy, also tend to be wrong. Reality is far more complex than the sterile academic conditions are able to replicate.

Then you have several others, regretfully very rarely seen in the media anywhere, who work in positions where their expert opinions are important and people's money along with their own depends on what they say, write and do. These are worth listening. Also the ones who have an impressive resumé of earnings due to their efforts, mostly in the financial markets, are worth listening. Consistently earning money in the financial markets throughout a period of several years is the ultimate test about one's understanding of the economy for the way markets move is the sum of all forces acting upon it. Only those who truly understand them can earn money consistently and, therefore, understand the economy and have the ability to look forward to the future.

It's not that economy is like astrology. Far from that. One just must look for the answers in the right places instead of feeding on what those either with an agenda or inexperienced in real world conditions (or both!) say, not in order to enlighten the public but to promote their interests. Don't expect accurate previsions to the third decimal point. Economy is not engineering. From those who indeed know what they are doing, you can expect, however, a very high degree of accuracy and also the presentation of different possibilities according to this or that scenarios occurring in the future. Also these tend to be much less dogmatic than the former.

Quite so.

Such words as economics and engineering are easily conflated by those who wish to claim, or just imply, that they have some special insight or even powers to foresee the future in what are complex human relationships.
Only the Good Lord Harry knows why we put them into positions of influence and power.

In other instances, "businesses" are referred to as "industries" as if to imply that there is some form of value added to the real economy rather than dealing in the system of shadow banking and financialisation; the latter being part of the globalisation taking place at present, in my view - all being discussed over in "the other thread" so I will desist for now.

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Dave

Such as Peter Hargreaves, for example.
http://citywire.co.uk/money/peter-ha...mpaign/a907486

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Dave

Everybody should read this to be better informed. By Geoffory White

Some of my friends and relations have told me they will vote for Brexit in our referendum. At the risk of falling out with them I intend to vote for us to remain in the EU. Here's a bit of pre-EU history to help explain my position.

I grew up in a time of post-war austerity. My country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was broke and virtually in ruins. Germans were still "the enemy" in children's games. Bomb sites and abandoned air-raid shelters were our playgrounds. Nine years after the war ended butter, meat and sugar were still rationed. One couldn't buy sweets without coupons issued by the government.
Portugal and Spain were fascist dictatorships. In Spain unauthorised gatherings of more than 3 people were illegal. A military junta later seized power in Greece. Half of Europe was sealed off behind the Iron Curtain. I remember lying in bed at night, in my parents home, and hearing the roar of American warplanes flying overhead on their Cold War missions. We were told that, if the Russians unleashed their missiles, we would get 4 minutes' warning of Armageddon.
In Britain our currency was weak. We had exchange controls. Travellers were allowed to take only £25 sterling out of the country plus a limited amount in foreign currency. On return, any left over had to be sold back to an authorised trader. The details were entered in one's passport. (See photo.)

The UK still had the death penalty despite some obvious and irreversible miscarriages of justice. In France they still executed condemned prisoners by cutting their heads off. In Spain they used strangulation.

The press and the BBC, (there was only the BBC), were not free from government interference and books, films and plays were censored. Women were paid less than men for equivalent work and landlords could turn away black and Irish people with impunity. For private acts of "gross indecency" gay men were sent to prison.

During the 1950s, six similarly devastated European countries were determined that the catastrophe of war between them should never be repeated. They decided to work towards creating a single European economy. The result was never "just a trading agreement" as some detractors now suggest. The Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957, provided for free movement of goods, services, people and capital, with the stated aim of "closer relations between the States".
The UK was invited to participate from the outset, but Prime Minister Attlee rather scornfully declined, thus missing the opportunity to influence the future development of Europe. However, by 1961 it had become obvious that the economies of "the Six", (France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg), were growing faster than ours, so we applied to join. It took 9 years of negotiations, (and 2 vetoes), before terms were agreed. The United Kingdom officially joined the European Communities on 1st January 1973.

In the 1980s many of our skilled workers took advantage of the free movement of people and migrated to West Germany, whose economy had already overtaken ours. These British " migrants" were the inspiration for a popular television series, "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet".
Since 1945 there have been wars in Europe, but none between countries that were members of the European Union. Despite global economic storms, the EU's citizens in 28 independent countries enjoy greater prosperity and greater freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination, freedom from conflict, freedom to trade across borders and freedom of expression than at any time in history.
So far no member state has ever applied to leave the EU. There have always been candidates to join but to succeed they must have democracy, the rule of law, a market economy and guarantees for the protection of minorities and human rights. They also need the support of ALL existing members, including us, without which they cannot join. In my opinion it would be a shame if Britain were to turn its back on Europe, give up its voice and influence, and opt for an uncertain future. So...I shall vote IN on 23rd June.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I too grew up in similar conditions from a slightly younger age: I recall most of what is described in the last posting and I expect that my elder brother remembers the rest.
But my conclusion is different, as outlined in earlier discourse herein; in essence, where the EU has come from is a poor indicator of where it is going.
Quite obviously, the EU did not invent Europe which has been around a lot longer than the EU/EEC/Common Market which was lied about by Edward Heath before signing up to the project.

Incidentally, there is no "EU citizen" as mentioned* in that text, at least not yet.

*Implied, is a better term in this context - it depends how the sentence is taken by the reader.

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Dave

This article mixes a lot of things and tries to make us believe that all evolution in Britain came as a result of the EEC. It's preposterous if not insulting for change came on these topics long, very long, before the EEC started meddling on the way countries governed their internal affairs. Let's go over a few points.


That can be blamed, mostly, on the almost communist experience that happened in the UK under Clement Attlee.


I really hate the so loose usage of the term "fascist" but let's move forward for it isn't the worst in this sentence. Both dictatorships ended long before both countries accessed the EEC. In Portugal it ended in April 25th 1974 with a revolution and in Spain, after the death of General Franco on November 20th 1975, a slow transition started. Both countries only accessed the EEC in 1986. Also, Portugal was already a member of the EFTA since the early 1960s.


Not true, at least the way the writer presents it.


Oh dear, if it was weak then (and it was compared to 50 years earlier) what is it now? Throughout the 1950s the British Pound was worth 2.85USD. Nowadays it overs around 1GBP to 1.50USD and it has been lower in the past months.


The last country to abolish the death penalty in the EEC was France, in 1977, when it was already a member for a very long time. They still used the guillotine. The UK ended the death penalty for civilians in 1965, long before accession to the EEC and in Spain it ended in 1978, also long before accession to the EEC. It's also not true that the method of execution in Spain was strangulation. It was something called "garrote vil" which kills by severing the spine and only if very poorly done by strangulation, just like hanging. I don't know how to translate "garrote vil" into english.


It still happens not only in EU countries but all over the world.


Yes, they were, until 1967, long before accession to the EEC. In Germany thew were sent to prison until later than that. Until 1969 there was fierce persecution of homosexuals in Germany. From then onwards things slowed a bit but only in 1994 any reference to homosexuality was removed from German books. Decaffeinated versions of the nazi version (stricter than the previous Prussian version) of paragraph 175 were implemented in 1969 and 1973. Germany was a member of the EEC since its inception.


Norway applied to join but, in the end, after a referendum in 1972 in which the people refused the accession, they stayed out. Another referendum in 1994 yielded similar results.


That is true now. It wasn't true when the UK joined the, then, EEC.

Plooking,
A second vote of thanks are due for dispelling the myths, innuendo and assorted dis-information.
And so rapidly!

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Dave

Just to add.
"Weak currencies" is relative of course and, for fiat currencies, fixed at a particular point in time by the free market, with an element of interference from central banks at the behest of their governments.

As such, "weak, weaker" are not fully indicative of what is best for a nation at any particular stage of it's economic cycle - of course, for 28 countries there are 28 stages, all somewhat different.

The most useful thing that Germany could do for the Eurozone and the EU, and for Europe is to leave the Euro and re-adopt the D Mark.
Will they do that for the common good?

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Dave

Excellent post. And to think there are people even here calling for the abandonment of Human Rights and EU integration, the total disregard of 20th century history and how we ended up were we are now is baffling.

Yep those rotten "communists" who created the NHS and welfare state, how dare they improve the nations health and provide free healthcare for all!

Thank you, Walkabout.

I like public debate on several subjects. I find it very interesting and we can all learn from these debates. What I utterly dislike are the lies, the propagation of myths and several other ways to misled others. That is not conducive to learning and to informed decisions. It is insulting for it diminishes others' knowledge and capacity to form a decision given all the true facts.

As for rapidly, well, these were easy things. That thing is insulting to the point of lying on basic items. It does not even go into hard, complex and subjective points. It lies on basic things of commons knowledge and that I find abusive to readers.

Well, even Stalin, a murderer crook as a whole, had his positive points. The negative, however, dwarfs the positive. In any event, the NHS, like all other systems existing in Europe, are based on the national health service created by Mr. Bismarck. The same is true for the welfare state. Now, I can't imagine anyone, with any stretch of imagination, calling Otto von Bismarck a communist.

Ah yes, how very intellectual.

The relation is established against the USD. The Bretton Woods agreement defined the United States Dollar as reference currency for all others and, to this day, all exchanges between currency pairs are done thru the USD. For instance, if you exchange pounds for yens, the back-office mechanism is exchanging pounds for US dollars and then US dollars for yens. If you look closely, the GBP/JPY exchange rate is equal to GBP/USD * USD/JPY.

Also, until 1971 the GBP did not free float. Its rates were fixed against the USD. The free float came after that.

Now, nowadays and for the last 5-7 years, yes, the forex market has been heavily manipulated by central banks. That was not the case before. However, this I must stress, central bank intervention does not change much the true market value of a currency. Historically intervention has been useless in the medium and long terms.


That is one of the falacies of the Euro, the assumption that a common currency could benefit all equally.


Not so fast. Anyway, the same problem would remain for Portugal and France are very different economies. On another note, for certain countries, like Portugal, a weak currency while appearing as a good thing, given that the Portuguese can't govern themselves, would be terrible and lead to further impoverishment.

One thing is to use a one-time currency devaluation as a way to boost exports and economic development. A whole different thing is to enter the cycle of devaluation-inflation which is what Portuguese governments did since 1974 until the introduction of the Euro. This leads to an increasingly diminished value of a country's currency thus making those who use it poorer.