Let France be a warning, Rachel Reeves: stand up to the bond market vigilantes, or they’ll come for Britain next

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• tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Britain, so the story goes, also needs to wake up, or else the markets will be coming for us next.

  The reason France and Britain have no choice but to do this is because states are weak and markets are all powerful. The bond markets exert their power through their role in buying and selling government bonds. If they sell en masse, the interest rates governments pay to borrow goes up and they can be forced to change policy even when they are reluctant to do so. It has been the received wisdom for the past 50 years that governments should do what bond traders and speculators demand, or risk being crushed by the global financial juggernaut.

  All right, I am just boggled by this.

  The markets already came for you. Are we so soon forgetting that three years ago, a British prime minister had the shortest tenure in the history of the United Kingdom, lasted less time than a head of lettuce, because she decided that she was going to blow the deficit way up?

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Truss_lettuce

  Liz Truss became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 6 September 2022, following the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, replacing Boris Johnson. The September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget was published on 23 September by Kwasi Kwarteng, then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, which included tax cuts without matching spending cuts. The mini-budget triggered a heavily negative market reaction, with the exchange rate of the pound sterling collapsing and pension funds coming close to bankruptcy.[3]

  After just over a month in office, Kwarteng was removed as Chancellor of the Exchequer on 14 October, and Truss reversed most of the economic policies within the mini-budget. British media outlets lambasted Truss’s performance and the ensuing political chaos, with many observers believing that her resignation would be imminent.[4] An 11 October column in The Economist titled “Liz Truss has made Britain a riskier bet for bond investors” stated that, after deducting the ten-day mourning period following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Truss had caused economic and political turmoil after just seven days in power, comparing that duration to the “shelf-life of a lettuce”.

  Before the lettuce had wilted, on 20 October Truss announced her resignation as prime minister becoming, after only 45 days, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.[1][11] At that moment, there were 12,000 viewers on the livestream, which soon shot up to 21,000. The British national anthem “God Save the King” began to play, the portrait of Truss on the table was flipped face down, and a plastic golden crown was placed on top of the lettuce, with the Daily Star declaring the lettuce’s “victory” over Truss.[1][12]

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• resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Not how fiat currencies work.

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