Interest rates and Inflation

Blaming the wrong side, I'm afraid. 

Gordon Brown may have failed to douse the housing fire, but he did not start it.  The wholesale deregulation of the financial sector, which took the brakes off mortgage lending, took place in the 1980s under Thatcher/Lawson.  More recently George Osborne was responsible for "Help to Buy" (and before that "FirstBuy") the effect of which has been to drive up prices still further, while doing little or nothing to help those who the schemes purported to help.

Edit:  Crossed with tallsuk.  Great minds think alike!

To be honest, I dont really think it is about sides. Regan and Thatcher laid the groundwork but it was Cinton who repealed the Glass–Steagall Act that really deregulated the financial sector and Blair, Brown, Cameron and Osboure were all happy to take advantage. 

The problem is politicians of all sides are happy to sacrifice long term economic benefits for short term gains because voters are unwilling to educate themselves in basic political and economic ideas.

Democracy means we get the governments we deserve.

There are too many houses and too many people in the UK.

"too many" is a relative term. Relative to what ? Clearly there aren't 'too many houses' relative to the number of people wanting one, otherwise the whole debate regarding house prices wouldn't exist/

"too many people": relative to what ? Clearly not relative to the number of people who have a legal right to call themselves a citizen or resident of the UK, since the number who are here on a permanent or semi permanent basis who don't fall into that category is a rounding error in comparison. Also, there are many millions of ex-pats who currently live abroad who by definition have the right to live here. 



On a maximum sustainable population density level ? I suspect the people of Singapore or Hong Kong (amongst others) might disagree with that. While the people of New Zealand might agree.

On a measure of sufficient people of employment age to support an aging population ? Probably on all quantifiable measures, the answer to that is 'not enough': a country needs young people to be the engine room of its economy and to support its aging population. Just see the vacancies in the care home industry. Perhaps we need to have a formal policy of state sponsored geronticide to both balance that out and to target that 'too many' problem. 

Out of those eligible to be here, I see very few stepping forward to volunteer themselves to be part of the good cause to reduce 'too many' to 'just enough' against whatever measure is being used. 


The problem with the 'too many people' argument is multi-fold, but a good starting point is who are you going to forcibly remove or forcibly stop procreating to get to ones (normally left undefined) target number. Typically this starts with identifying a group that isn't the same as me (as I of course feel I have a greater intrinsic right to be here). And of course who else who has a right to be here but currently chooses not to be are you going prevent from returning ?

The financial sector in the UK was deregulated a good decade and a half before the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.  The repeal had little or no effect that I can recall on mortgage lending in the UK, and it had nothing to do with our own local disasters (Northern Rock, HBOS).

Glass-Steagall never stopped US banks from mortgage lending in the UK.  If anything it encouraged them to do so, because it made it hard for them to expand at home.  Several US banks entered the UK mortgage market when it was deregulated in 1982.  My first mortgage, in September that year, was from Bank of America.  But the US banks never found the UK market very profitable (it was too competitive, because of our deregulation) and I think they had mostly left the market by 1999.  I know for sure that Bank of America sold out to Bank of Ireland some time in the 80s.  Today US banks' market share of UK mortgages is negligible.

Having said all that, the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act was in line with the zeitgeist of the times, which also saw "light touch" regulation in the UK (on Gordon Brown's watch, but applauded by the Tories at the time).   Whether the boom and bust of the 2000s would have happened if Glass-Steagall had not been repealed can be debated.  I think it probably would, but the boom and bust would have been smaller.

See  www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/050515/did-repeal-glasssteagall-act-contribute-2008-financial-crisis.asp with which I broadly agree.  For a much longer version, see www.cato.org/policy-analysis/repeal-glass-steagall-act-myth-reality . It's a surprise to find myself agreeing with something from the libertarian Cato Institute, but in this case I do.

I agree with the rest of your post!

Indeed.  It's worth adding that (as I'm sure you know) the population of the UK has aged less steeply than that of most of the rest of Europe, mainly because of immigration. 

One of the worst effects of Brexit for the UK is that, with the immigration tap turned off and many young Eastern Europeans going home, our population will get older quicker.  The dependency ratio will rise and the working population will fall.  Inevitably this will lead to higher taxes and/or lower pensions in the long run.

If your belief has any grounding in fact or reality, then it should be trivially easy to provide some evidence for it...