Tuesday 11 August 2009

Don't vote for Vince


The Times has an interesting poll out, vote for who would be the best Chancellor. It is nto goign very well for poor Darling, who with such a bad hand to play with has done as one would expect.

He should have folded a long time ago.

Anyway, Vince Cable is in the lead. Vince Cable.

Now, I have met Vince only very briefly and seen him a bit on the telly, as it happens I have read qutie a lot of his stuff in the papers. You know what, he is nearly always wrong. he has a ncie voice though and sounds quite reassuring, he maintains this in person too. As such he is a good communicator and politician.

But as an economist he is just wrong, as most of them are. Economists never get elected to CEO or board level in companies and there is a reason for this. Ivory Tower posturing is not what gets the job done in the end.

Let's take one example, Northern Wreck. Vince is lauded because he said nationalise it straight away. Woohoo, the Government did that later so he has the power of prescience. But Northern Wreck has cost taxpayers millions and left us with an broken loss machine on the state books. Closing it asap was the right answer, all the other banks are not like Northern Wreck, Northern Wreck were truly 'special.' So on this Vince is well wrong, as he is on most taxes.

The one piece of credibility he has is that he admits that serious decisions on pensions, defence and uni funding are going to have to get taken. Which is nice, but as he is not the man who is going to have to take them, it may as well be me saying it.

Sorry Vince, your not the answer, so I won't vote for you and neither should anyone else.

11 comments:

Letters From A Tory said...

Agreed, he does get away with spouting nonsense on occasion.

Nationalising Northern Rock but being left with all their bad assets rather than the salvagable parts of the businesses is proving disastrous.

Ivan said...

Being pedantic it should be you're (short for you are) not your (belonging to you), in the last sentence.
Otherwise I agree with you, Vince has a nice line of patter which means very little when you put it under the spotlight.

James said...

I do agree Vince does not have perfect answers.

What I am confused about though is you taking this in a vacuum. I mean it's not enough to just rubbish one of the candidates, you have to show the other candidates are better.
My current view is we have: 1) Got us into this mess, 2) No telling us jack about what they'd do because they think they can win anyway and 3) Vince et all.

James Higham said...

You know what, he is nearly always wrong. he has a ncie voice though and sounds quite reassuring, he maintains this in person too.

Sounds like Krugman.

Anonymous said...

Compared to the alternatives its no surprise that he's winning the poll, my only hope is that we don't hear much from george O because his plans are sensible and therefore not vote winners.

Anonymous said...

whoops

Nick Drew said...

VC = prime example of "people vote for the one they feel most comfortable with"

doesn't bode well for Brown ...

AntiCitizenOne said...

Vince is a windsock, what comes out depends on which way the wind is blowing at that particular moment.

He has no core understanding or consistency in approach.

He must be "progressive" 'cos to me that means believing two contradictory things at the same time.

Anonymous said...

Professor Niall Ferguson doesn't think saving the banks was the best option. He views financial institutions as similar to species competing a jungle but based on Lamarckian principles rather than random variations.
See "The Ascent of Money"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cIeQp2zzhY and The War of the World at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtw6UWx_UuA

Anonymous said...

Niall Ferguson is a b* historian. What does he know about banks.
Bank nationalisation will not lose the taxpayer money unless the Tories get in and give them away at any price (like umpteen previous occasions).

Andy said...

Slightly puzzled why you think he's an ivory tower economist with no board level experience in industry when his last job prior to entering the House was as chief economist for Shell?

Or possibly you're falling for the usual economists' weakness of developing arguments based on assumptions that collapse when faced with facts?