A Place to Stand

We are told that there is a world recession on, indeed it has been claimed that Britain is uniquely placed to get through it & it will be worse for everybody else.

There is no world recession though you pretty much have to go to China to see this reported in the MSM (the link will want you to install a language module but can be persuaded not to).

Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- The world financial crisis has dimmed short-term prospects for the whole world and recession in developed countries and sharp slowdown in developing countries inevitable, according to a report released by the World Bank on Tuesday.

....It projects that world GDP growth will be 2.5 percent in 2008 and 0.9 percent for 2009. Developing countries will likely grow by4.5 percent next year, down from 7.9 percent in 2007, while growth in high-income countries will turn negative.

..."People in the developing world have had to deal with two major external shocks -- the upward spiral in food and fuel prices followed by the financial crisis, which has eased tensions in commodity markets but is testing banking systems and threatening job losses around the world," said Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist and senior vice president.
The collapse in global growth has reversed the surge in commodity prices that characterized the first half of the year, with prices of virtually all commodities falling sharply since July, said the report.

While real food and fuel prices in developing countries have dropped considerably, they remain high relative to the 1990s and the social turmoil and human crises they triggered are still reverberating.

2.5% growth, while down from the 5.2% previously, is a very long way from recession. Indeed it is what we have been having over the last decade, which all the big parties, not just Labour, regularly described as a "boom".

Looking at the World Bank statement it seems that the developing world, being more dependent on commodities, should be doing worse than the developed. There is also a history of growth being faster in the richer countries than the poorer, which is why before the industrial revolution people in the wealthiest country (Britain) had something, but not that much left after buying food while those in the poorer ones had nothing. Now the disparity is up to 438 times.

The "world recession" is merely a European & North American recession though they are exporting a slowdown to the rest.

So why is what might be called the western countries doing so badly. Well here is a clue from the Independent of all places:

"Philippe Varin, the chief executive of Corus [the remains of what used to be British Steel], is threatening to shift the steelmaker's European operations to China unless regulations governing carbon emissions are overhauled.

Corus employs around 25,000 workers in the UK and is in negotiations with unions over pay in an effort to curb large redundancies.

"If we are forced to buy CO2 credits on the market without a system to improve our production process, then we will not produce steel in Europe," said Mr Varin, who is also chairman of the World Steel Association's Climate Change Policy Group. "To cut carbon emissions of steel production, we need breakthrough technology, but this is extremely expensive, costing €200m to €300m to upgrade a one million ton production plant."

Varin, who spoke exclusively to the 'IoS' at the UN Climate Change conference in Poznan, said: "There is no way for us to fund this and pay penalties for our CO2 emissions. This would wipe out all of our profits and put us at a competitive disadvantage with manufacturers in nations which are not subject to carbon caps."

Our government is deliberately destroying Britain's steel production which used to be, along with coal, how you defined economic strength. We come to the post industrial economy. There is no intrinsic reason why we cannot compete with China in steel production or indeed most of the industry we have exported. Mr Varin is to good at the brown-nosing required of big businesses in a crony capitalist society to say that "global warming" & government eco-fascism generally are what are destroying our economies - instead he asks for government subsidy to ameliorate the government added costs, which may help his industry but only by moving the costs to everybody else.

The fact is that most of the world could be growing at China's 10%. The only reason it isn't is because, in an attempt to increase government power, our leaders have embraced eco-fascism. We know electricity could cost 1/4 of what it does now; we know houses could cost 1/4; we know half the economy is government spending, most of it unproductive & much of it of negative value; we know we are driving out new industries such as GM to the likes of Singapore; we know that major building projects cost 13 times what they could purely because of bureaucracy; we know H&S regulation costs the equivalent of 4 million manyears annually; we know further EU regulations cost the continent £405 billion annually. We also know know there are no real limits to what we could achieve were it not for those in government preventing us.

The US has different but similar restraints in their EPA, overlawyering & Luddite reaction to nuclear power & other hi-tech options.

It is undeniable that the government are lying to us about the "world recession" & how we have previously had a decade of "success" (ie the 2.5% growth which in the rest of the world is now called recession). It is equally undeniable that the opposition have refused to mention this same truth & this is probably the, well deserved, reason why Cameron is not seen as much of an alternative. The censors of the BBC & the rest of the MSM are lying about it too. Of course if our media were to mention that there is no world recession it would stimulate the obvious question of why we have one & whether it would be a good idea not to.

To the MSM "the world" appears to mean the US & old EU countries with occasional walk ons from the rest to play villains or victims. Meanwhile the rest of the world is fast becoming the industrial world & we are becoming the hidebound superstitious peasants. We could get back on the track of progress tomorrow & any politician who says we can't is lying.