Why Moneyweek “The End of Britain” Is Itself a Conspiracy...

There’s a video that inadvertently, yet perfectly illustrates the propaganda & lies needed to make most right-wing economic propaganda work. www.youtube.com...

Yes, it raised some good points such as...

What Can Happen, Because it’s Happened Before…
1. Not allowed to take more than £500 out of the bank a week
2. Not allowed to take more than £500 of money abroad
3. A ban on buying foreign investments
4. 83% income tax
5. Nationalisation of all private pensions without compensation –rather the government decides what it will pay you, and at what age it will pay you.
6. A ban on owning Gold -5 years in prison if you do not hand precious metals to the government at its agreed price (as happened in the U.S during the Great Depression).
7. Inflation at 24.2% (Britain in 1975 see historical inflation here www.whatsthecost.com... )

The Hairline Trigger…
Is a loss of confidence in government bonds. Quite how-why investors are so confident about UK debt (given its scale) is beyond me. But at this moment government bond yields (effectively UK debt interest rates) are 3.63% fixed interest on a 30 year government bond, and 0.5% interest for two years…www.bloomberg.com... ... -bonds/uk/

BUT...
What You Should Also Know
Here’s some of my favourite quotes on a critique on MoneyWeek’s homework…

The article utilises one particular trick over and again, it contains graph after graph showing alarming growth spikes in the UK national debt, however these graphs are produced by counting the debt in £billions, rather than by the established practice of counting debt as a % of GDP (which is done in order to provide a sense of perspective). Of course there were more £billions in public debt in 1998 than there were in 1948 because there is such a thing as inflation, which makes a 1948 £billion an absolutely enormous sum (in terms of purchasing power) compared to a 1998 £billion.

The thing they are trying to eradicate from history is a period of sustained economic growth and massive debt repayment that occurred between 1948 and 1979 (the green area on my graph) which became known as "The Golden Age of Capitalism".

Another equally interesting question that they clearly don't want the reader to ask, is why the national debt has soared back up again after 33 continuous years of neoliberalism based economic policy?

Iceland disowned the enormous debts of their private banks and started bringing those responsible for creating them, to justice. Their economy is recovering strongly and their national debt is now actually beginning to fall.

Pretending that because the cuts have proved counterproductive and have failed to cut the deficit, actually means that there simply haven't been any cuts at all is a grotesque and economically illiterate distortion, which ignores the altogether more plausible theory is that the sheer scale of the cuts have led to economic contraction, which consequentially reduced government revenue, which then more than wiped out any savings made through the cuts.

It is obvious that they are aware that a compromise, somewhere between the two extremes of free-market capitalism and totalitarian communism is the most efficient system yet tried: That social democracy produced the longest period of economic growth and debt repayment in UK history. It is obvious that they know it because they were so meticulous in revising it out of their story altogether.

This is just a fraction of the critique that's on: anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk...


The Conspiracy…
1. Money Week is using this video to promote financial products that are both risky, as well as destined to take money out of Britain, and therefore help bring into being the very financial crisis they predict. But then again, what does one expect? They are not a charity.
2. What’s really interesting is why they are so against state spending (in the form of “Keynesian Economics”) when it is under the right-wing Austerity imposed by Britain’s governing Con-Dem political Coalition that has proved so counterproductive that state borrowing has indeed (in just 3 years) risen beyond all the borrowing under the previous 13 years of New Labour. Why oppose state borrowing to pay for tax cuts (like Labour was doing?) why oppose state spending to pay for infrastructure projects like high speed rail, which for every pound spent will provide 2.30 in benefits (so be it a fall from project 2.50)

The expected benefit-cost ratio (BRC) has fallen from £2.50 to £2.30 in benefits for every pound spent.

That fall is mainly due to a £10bn rise in the scheme's projected £42.6bn cost, which was added earlier this year. www.bbc.co.uk...

Whilst for UK construction generally:

Independent research undertaken on behalf of the UK Contractors Group and CBI, shows that for every pound spent on construction, £2.84 is returned to the economy. Read more about the Construction in the UK economy: The benefits of investment www.construction4growth.co.uk...

This makes sense in a country where the average construction cost of e.g. a home 30-40% of its sale value.

3. So by producing an extremely deceptive, pro-austerity video, that unfairly worsens the UK’s problems, whilst selling financial products that they know will worsen the UK -not least by situation starving the UK of tax…
Is MoneyWeek’s end game: To deliberately accelerate Britain's end (that they supposedly preach against)?

That Said…
If the OP's emergency measures were enacted, what is the best way to protect your own wealth?
I know if you put it in a bank abroad you don’t benefit from the government £50,000 guarantee. But then again you have a better chance of accessing it (if there is anything to access).
The only way I know is putting your money into land-property (because whilst these may fall in value substantially they (unlike gold) have never been compulsorily purchased by government at a fraction of their value –outside communism.
However: Property doesn’t seem that good a solution if it’s subjected to a 98% Harold Wilson style tax (the income tax was 83% but there was an additional 15% on “unearned income” like rent). www.nationalreview.com...