That Corbyn fella...

Maybe because he sold the countries gold at £250 per ounce, against all market advice, announced the day he would do it which ensured the market a win and gold entered a bull market the day after which topped out at £1100 per ounce. Why? because they needed the money to fund re-election promises having got into a barely legal war.

I mostly agree with your account of Brown's role in the financial crisis/recession, but on the cyclicality of the markets - to a large extent they are cyclical because there is always a lag in the market's response to price signals. If the price of something goes up, it takes time to build the new production capacity made viable by the higher price - but often, because of this lag, the new capacity additions will overshoot a bit and there will be a temporary surplus which drives prices down. Those low prices stimulate demand at the same time as they dissuade further investment - and so the market tightens and prices rise again.

It's basically like a thermostat - you're always above or below the desired temperature, never actually at it.

Just playing devils advocate. Given that everyone seems to believe that during times of financial instability the government should increase spending as a stimulus, doesn't it equally follow that the Blair/Brown government should have been easing off spending pre the crash?

On that basis regardless of Blair/Brown involvement in the causes of the crash is it not fair to attribute a large part of the deficit and it's associated costs to them?

Theyre trying really hard to get him to stand down.

h20 - the biggest thing about market cycles is this. Prices and values are all about expectations of the market, and these are constantly shifting. The underlying factors change very very slowly (apart from sudden events!) but perhaps the effect of them is recognised by the markets all at once, but they over-estimate the effect at first. What I am saying is that investors / people's understanding of the truth can be more important and more volatile than the truth itself.

There's some sentiment-driven volatility, but in the commodities markets (and the massive investments associated with natural resources) generally it's the fundamentals that set the broader direction, and the sentiment just is the brownian motion.

Equities are all about sentiment and expectations, sure, which is why I wouldn't want to trade them personally....

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/08/labour-must-allow-all-members-leadership-vote-court-rules

This may be a bit staged (though not calculated except to release it to coincide with his publicity drive on public ownership of the railways), but one thing Corbyn does very well is stick to his guns when it comes to not appearing privileged:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/16/jeremy-corbyn-floor-three-hour-train-journey-london-newcastle

I say staged and not calculated because while I believe it was undoubtedly a genuine choice on his part to sit on the floor, together with the filmmaker present he would then have realised that it would be a good illustration of a point about public ownership (notwithstanding the fact that just because the railways are currently in a dire state, it doesn't automatically follow that public ownership would improve them, although I believe they would, too).

Much respect for his principled stance but the last time the railways were nationalised it was disastrous. This graph says it all:

Don't forget that Beeching - i.e. decimation of the network - happened under nationalisation.

Since the railways were re-privatised in 1995 passenger numbers have soared and service quality has improved dramatically. There is no evidence that nationalisation would improve them and they are not in a dire state - the National Passenger Survey shows that most passengers are happy overall, but unhappy about value for money. They are too expensive and there aren't enough seats on a lot of services because the trains aren't long enough, but as the passenger numbers show that's largely because they've become a victim of their own success.

The too expensive part is because successive governments have chosen to shift the burden of funding the network from the tax payer to passengers. I don't agree with that and I'd like to see it shifted the other way, especially as the real world cost of motoring has fallen. In the UK each passenger journey is subsidised by just under 3 euros, when it's 8 in Germany, 10.5 in Italy and 12 in France.

The point is you don't need to re-nationalise the railways and risk a massive dip in service quality through a re-organisation when you could just shift more of the cost of the network onto tax payers, sort out the rolling stock operating companies (who as an effective oligopoly don't help with the rolling stock situation) and invest in longer platforms and more carriages.

The only recent example of nationalised rail suggests otherwise.
Guardian:
In its five years as East Coast, the state-run firm returned a little more than £1bn in premiums, as well as several million in profits, to the Treasury. Detailed financial analysis from the Office of Rail Regulation shows it was one of two firms to make a net contribution to government coffers over the last two years, paying in more than it received in subsidy or indirect grants, along with Southwest Trains (run by Stagecoach).

This graph says it all:

About the rise of the private motorcar maybe?

If I could be arsed I'd search for a graph to overlay that shows cars per capita over the same period. But you'd probably also need distance travelled per capita and all sorts of other international socio-economic comparisons for that graph to prove anything.

You'll note, for example, that nationalisation stabilised a massive slump in the 20s and that use was already increasing at the point of privatisation.

#liesanddamnedgraphs

.

That's true. But I'm fairly sure car usage increased post-94 while passenger numbers shot up. And I think we could agree that the massive uplift from '94 onwards was as a result of re-privatisation?

I'm not pro-privatisation by the way, just a pragmatist. The last thing the railways need is yet another reorganisation. Corbyn's call to re-nationalise is based on ideology not evidence.

Running one franchise (which was failing) is very much not the same as running a whole network. Different franchises have different levels of profitability too, so that's not a fair comparison.

The several million in profits part is key though - the premiums would have had to be paid to the treasury anyway. Several million pounds worth of profits on a large franchise like East Coast is actually not very much - 3% of the cost of your train ticket goes on train company profits. It's hardly a lucrative industry.

There is one massive current example of nationalised rail - Network Rail. Sure, Brown fiddled things to keep it off the books, but it is part of government. For every £1 you spend on a train ticket, 26p is invested back into the railway (Network Rail) and 22p is spent on track maintenance (Network Rail). So Network Rail gets 48% of the cost of your ticket and it's really not very efficient - it costs tax payers and passengers a fortune.

What Corbyn should do is have a policy of adjusting the tax payer/fare payer balance in the opposite direction to the current government, who are trying to reduce the percentage the tax payer pays from 30% to 25%. So he could propose a shift from 30% tax payer funded to 35%, or whatever, rewarding people who make environmentally responsible transport choices.

So it's just an inconvenience that a nationalised franchise did better than the privatised ones that can be explained away, rather than in any way troubling your bald assertion that nationalisation is an inherently bad thing. And that the very passenger satisfaction you cited as evidence that things are ok, it dropped after the East coast line was re-privatised. But that's just an inconvenience too. As is the great public support for the policy which again proves how out of touch Corbyn is.

I didn't say nationalisation is inherently bad - my point is it's a distraction. If you actually want to sort out the problems with the rail network, sort out the problems. On the whole it actually works pretty well by any objective measure, so nationalisation is a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

If there is great public support for the policy (is there?) it's probably because most people think most of their ticket price is going to fat cat train operators and shareholders, which is far from reality.

Yeah - only a third goes to the fat cats and shareholders! Honestly, the British public, they want the moon on a stick.

On the whole it actually works pretty well by any objective measure

Citation needed.

Honestly dude, you need to start supporting your assertions with some sort of evidence. You come across like Al Murray, but without the jokes.

Whilst it's true that 'most' of the ticket price doesn't go to shareholders, when the government gives £4bn to bail out an operator who then pays £200m to shareholders rather than paying back the subsidy it's understandable that passengers feel short changed.

I think the point is that companies which have a legal obligation to return a profit and pay shareholders, should not be running industries where there is a natural monopoly. All the money spent by the government subsidising and all the money spent by passengers should be going into running the service, not enriching a minority.

I think the point is that companies which have a legal obligation to return a profit and pay shareholders

No company has that. It's something made up and perpetuated by greedy folk as an excuse for being greedy.

Here's the law:

172: Duty to promote the success of the company

(1)A director of a company must act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole, and in doing so have regard (amongst other matters) to—

(a)the likely consequences of any decision in the long term,

(b)the interests of the company’s employees,

(c)the need to foster the company’s business relationships with suppliers, customers and others,

(d)the impact of the company’s operations on the community and the environment,

(e)the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct, and

(f)the need to act fairly as between members of the company.

(2)Where or to the extent that the purposes of the company consist of or include purposes other than the benefit of its members, subsection (1) has effect as if the reference to promoting the success of the company for the benefit of its members were to achieving those purposes.

(3)The duty imposed by this section has effect subject to any enactment or rule of law requiring directors, in certain circumstances, to consider or act in the interests of creditors of the company.

Your point still stands tho.

How do you interpret "for the benefit of its members as a whole" (given "members" in this context means shareholders)?

3% is not a third - you might want to check your maths.

Honestly dude, you need to start supporting your assertions with some sort of evidence

I'm happy to and already did to a degree. Overall satisfaction as measured by the National Passenger Survey is at 80%, as of spring 2016. That's a survey of around 30,000 passengers.

90% of leisure passengers are happy, 82% of business passengers but only 72% of commuters, which I think probably says a lot about lack of seats and expensive tickets.

Over the last four years satisfaction on the whole has fallen by about 4%, so it's not great - and not good enough. But those figures don't suggest a dire service and I find it quite annoying when people complain about 'third world conditions' and such like: there's an awful lot of hyperbole.

If we were starting again from scratch I'd definitely want nationalisation, but services in Europe generally seem better to me - at least a lot cheaper - and they are still often run by private companies these days. The key difference is that they receive way more subsidy from the tax payer.

Whilst it's true that 'most' of the ticket price doesn't go to shareholders, when the government gives £4bn to bail out an operator who then pays £200m to shareholders rather than paying back the subsidy it's understandable that passengers feel short changed.

Absolutely agree, by the way. The franchise system is shit, for want of a better word. Another really big problem as the short franchises do not encourage investment. The few train operators who have negotiated longer franchises (such as Chiltern) have had much better results.

Interested in the source for 48% of ticket costs going to the infrastructure operator. When I last looked, leasing and operating trains was by far the largest component of rail transport costs.

Also that Network Rail is "really not very efficient"; compared to what? As you have noted, lower subsidy than any comparable European railway, the safest and arguably the most punctual. Doesn't sound all bad.

Edit: Torygraph says so must be true:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/10528441/British-trains-among-best-in-Europe.html