Seems to be the best way to play the system - that seems to be set up to burden small business with more debt. Is there anything to stop me setting up a company - getting all the loans I can from the govt. ‘spaffing’ the lot up a wall and then going bust?
The brutal decline in economic activities that epidemiologists say is required make crashing stock markets inevitable, given that central banks’ policy of excessively cheap money and pooled liabilities caused an unsustainable bubble. Because they used up their ammunition at inopportune moments, central banks bear responsibility for the bubble that has now burst.What is really needed are fiscal measures to save companies and banks from bankruptcy, so that they can recover quickly once the pandemic is over. Policymakers should be considering various forms of tax relief and public guarantees to help firms borrow if necessary. But the most promising option is a short-time work allowance. This approach, which has been tried and tested in Germany, compensates for the underemployment of the workforce through the same channels that are already used for unemployment insurance. Better yet, it costs hardly anything, because it prevents the losses that would follow from increased real unemployment. All countries should be replicating this part of Germany’s policy to prevent job losses.
You can already defer your vat payment. We are doing so. You need to ring HMRC but it’s about a two hour queue. We have a very large one too in April.
Extraordinary measures though. It just shows how serious this all is and how long it’s likely to go on for.I can’t imagine the mental backflips that Sunak, a lifelong free market neoliberal (ex-Goldman’s and hedge fund manager) has gone through in the last 72 hours. There’ll be more coming I’m sure.
It would be a good opportunity for the gov to 'requisition' those without work, as a volunteer force for delivering food to vulnerable and other vital tasks. Kind of a national volunteer force paid by government. Bit like how the territorial army are still employed by employer but paid for by the government
We've now closed for the foreseeable. First hospital to have arrivals exceed capacity in London yesterday. I think we're less than a week away from full lockdown now.
Ha, yeah I'm typing without too much thought for exact wording but yeah 'requisition' and 'volunteer' are at odds. Hopefully you get the picture of what might be possible given a government-funded workforce of millions organised into their company groups and set to work doing useful tasks.Why not in 'peacetime'? Well I suppose we already do to some degree but on more a charitable footing than government-funded. I don't have an ideological view on it. Just pointing out that this moment is an obvious opportunity to do something pragmatic.
I can’t imagine the mental backflips that Sunak, a lifelong free market neoliberal (ex-Goldman’s and hedge fund manager) has gone through in the last 72 hours. There’ll be more coming I’m sure.
@nigel lots of chat about this on the radio this morning. 5 million self employed affected. Suspect he’ll have to sort this out soon. The easiest way would have been 2 weeks ago to say some sort of universal payment to everyone would happen. Instead we’ve had this tiered approach.
Sunak, like chancellor Alistair Darling in 2008, keeps saying “the economy will bounce back” because it’s fundamentally sound. And that’s how most people think of the shocks we’ve experienced in our lifetime. To the ordinary person it appears as if there is a “real economy” of supermarkets, coffee bars, hospitals and universities – and above that a barely tangible financial economy dedicated to handling risks and generating large rewards for the rich, which occasionally goes wrong.During the 2008 crisis it appeared as if this financial “roof” collapsed onto the building that was supporting it, but the building – though it suffered damage – remained stable and the roof was rebuilt. The problem is, by the same analogy, this time it’s not the roof collapsing, it’s the foundations.Capitalism, like all previous economic systems, is built on people’s work. We are compelled to get out of bed, cram ourselves into public transport, obey the instructions of managers and the discipline of the clock. And when it’s over, even as we huddle together in the pub, or play five-a-side or go out to dinner, we’re still generating returns to capital invested by someone else.And though the epidemic will be temporary, the resulting disruptions will not. Because the finance system is not actually a “roof”: it has, in the space of 40 years, become the supporting structure of capitalism itself.Every aspect of human life, in a developed society like our, is “securitised”. That is: my gym membership fees, the takings at my local pub, the profits of Starbucks, the bus and tube fares I pay – all are wrapped up into financial instruments into which a complex network of banks, hedge funds, insurance firms and pension funds invest in order to generate profits.If the gym membership is cancelled, if Starbucks makes a loss, if the pub closes and, above all, if the worker does not go to work, the entire financial system will come under strain – and in ways we cannot predict because more than half of it exists in the so-called “shadow banking system”, a barely regulated and opaque network that has amassed $52trn in assets since the 2008 crisis. These “assets” are in fact just the expected profits made by all the restaurant chains, insurance companies, airlines etc – which are about to go bust.