novatownhall blog

A British member of the EU Parliment gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a verbal drubbing that left the PM wonderfully … speechless.  Grinning like some circus troop monkey, Gordon just sat there and took his drubbing in silence.  Mr Hannen in short called him out and the PM was shown to be wearing no clothes.  Hannen starts with the PM’s penchant for talking out of both sides of his mouth (like someone else we know) …

    Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that. Who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’ and that you have subsidised, where you have not nationalised outright, swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks? Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words? Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country?

The British PM came into office in June 2007.  It appears he is a good leading indicator of the treatment we are in for.  Britain began its experiment of spending its way out of recession almost two years ago.   The ‘spend-money-like-mad-dogs‘ policy does not appear to have worked out to well for the British economy.  Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time.  We excoriated Rumsfeld for repeating the errors of  McNamara 30 years after McNamara micromanaged the Vietnam war.  Now, Obama is repeating the mistakes of Brown two years after Brown took Britain down this garden path, can’t he wait longer to repeat a mistake?

Hannen then illustrates the fact that Britain is broke.  The real frightening part is we are even more broke.  The Brits carry a debt of ~$40K/child we owe about $50K.  The other similarity is that the British media ignored this poignant speech, just like ours.  This is where the fourth estate has really let us down.  Actively ignoring the voices that criticize one side of the political spectrum is a disservice to the  society as a whole.  The corollary for this is the fourth investigates only one side of the political spectrum; this is also a disservice to the  society as a whole.  Newspapers are failing not because people don’t read anymore, but because the ‘blarney-o-meters’ have been red lining for many years now.

    The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child. Now, once again today you try to spread the blame around; you spoke about an international recession, international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt. We are now running a deficit that touches 10% of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary; countries where the IMF have already been called in. Now, it’s not that you’re not apologising; like everyone else I have long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things. It’s that you’re carrying on, wilfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. Last year – in the last twelve months a hundred thousand private sector jobs have been lost and yet you created thirty thousand public sector jobs.

The similarity is shocking.  We are in as bad a shape as the British.  Our debt load is as high.  Obama’s recipe for curing our ill’s is to increase government from 20% to 40% of GDP.  This is a recipe for paupering the country.  Can someone in our legislative body please stand in the road and shout, ‘STOP!!’?  Like Barak, Gordon flunked economics.  The British PM is of the opinion that increasing overhead increases efficiency.

    Prime Minister, you cannot carry on for ever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re ‘well-placed to weather the storm’, I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense! Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so; the European Commission has said so; the markets have said so which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.

Saul Alinsky would be proud of the Obama administration.  Obama and his crew came in at a time of recession. The world wide housing market bubble was bursting.  The previous administration was as clueless as the rest of the world going about lessening its impact.  But Obama came in and made it worse with his rhetoric.  Markets hate uncertainty.  Obama and Co.  did everything imaginable to increase uncertainty.  The end result?  We are on the verge of a depression — markets are down 40% SINCE Obama was elected; China is preparing to call in our debt; our currency is to be discarded in favor of some new universal script.  The Obama apparatchik/drone Tim Geithner, whose sole job is to protect the dollar, showed us he is ready to toss it over the side.   Can Obama administration take us to an even more devalued state?  ‘Si se puede!!’

I am only left wondering … where is OUR Daniel Hannen?