Steven Baker: .... I want to turn to the Government’s own document, “UK applies to join huge Pacific free trade area CPTPP”. It was issued when the Government formally applied. It explains: “Joining the £9 trillion partnership will cut tariffs for UK industries including food and drink, and cars, while also creating new opportunities for modern industries like tech and services, ultimately...
Steven Baker: ..., politically, the project is being rejected. On the economy, I would just say that, according to the House of Commons Library, the European Central Bank has, in total to date, purchased €2.5 trillion of assets, which includes €2 trillion of Government debt. By the end of 2018, the figure is scheduled to be €2.6 trillion. That is equivalent to about 23% of annual eurozone GDP. This...
Steven Baker: ...is about 65 million, whereas the EFTA states together comprise about 14 million people. In 2015, the EFTA bloc’s collective GDP amounted to £710 billion, which compares with the UK’s £1.9 trillion. So the UK’s participation in EFTA would fundamentally change the nature of that group and would not be an appropriate model for our future relationship with the EU or with those countries.
Steven Baker: According to official statistics released by the Office for National Statistics on 29 September 2017, total direct investment in the UK from abroad stood at £1.493 trillion in the second quarter of 2017. This is the highest level on record.
Steven Baker: ...an era of chronic monetary inflation, unprecedented in the industrial age. Between 1991 and 2009, the money supply increased fourfold. It tripled between 1997 and 2010, from £700 billion to £2.2 trillion, and that accelerated into the crisis. It is simply not possible to increase the money supply at such a rate without profound consequences, and they are the consequences that are with us...
Steven Baker: ...heart of the survival of a free civilisation. That is something that Hayek wrote about, and I think it is absolutely true. If I were allowed props in the Chamber, Mr Speaker, I might wave this 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar note. You can hold bad politics in your hand: that is the truth of the matter. People try to explain that hyperinflation has never happened just through technocratic...
Steven Baker: ...and how people have benefited from them, and I remind the Committee that over the 13 years of new Labour the broad measure of the money supply tripled. M4 went from £700 billion in 1997 to £2.2 trillion in 2010. The reason why house prices have shot away so substantially is because too much money was loaned into existence and into property. That happened in particular because flawed...
Steven Baker: ...by the Government took over. If we look at the money supply back to 1997, we find that under the previous Government it tripled. In 1997, M4 was £693 billion; by 2010, it had risen to £2.2 trillion before stagnating. That chart, if well understood, is remarkable. It tells us that there was an accelerating rush to destruction in debt. Shortly, we will realise that while we were originally...
Steven Baker: ...a very fast rise in interest rates, which it might then have to combat by further printing money. Government Members know me well for always carrying on my person 1 ounce of fine silver and a $100 trillion dollar note from Zimbabwe. In the end, our society is based on money. One side of every transaction is money. If there is something wrong with money, there is something wrong with the...
Steven Baker: ...and, of course, its policies are symptomatic of those followed all around the world. Over the past 13 years under new Labour, the money supply expanded from about £700 billion in 1997 to £2.2 trillion in 2010. That was through a massive expansion of bank balance sheets—a huge amount of monetary activism led by central banks, with the Bank of England keeping interest rates too low for...
Steven Baker: ...? I have just checked the M4 money supply figures—I am sorry to return to aggregates, but needs must. When Labour came to power the money supply was about £700 billion and it is now about £2.1 trillion, so it has tripled over the past 14 years. Unfortunately, most economists talk about money flowing into the economy as if it were water poured into a tank that found its own level...
Steven Baker: ...further figures. Writing on the IEA's website, the author, a Mr Nick Silver, who is an accomplished actuary, points out that the state now owes, including pension liabilities, a staggering £6.5 trillion. To save Members from reaching for their calculators, I should say that full compensation for Equitable Life victims would amount to one tenth of 1% of our current national debt, including...
Steven Baker: ...public liability would be £4,771 billion. The Office for National Statistics has suggested that the banks' full liabilities should be included in the public liability. That would make it £6.3 trillion. Those numbers are preposterous. I should like to break down the last number, because it is so preposterous: first, the official debt, £772 billion; the cost of financial interventions,...
