'This is the worst recession for over 100 years'

Britain is facing its worst financial crisis for more than a century, surpassing even the Great Depression of the 1930s, one of Gordon Brown's most senior ministers and confidants has admitted.

In an extraordinary admission about the severity of the economic downturn, Ed Balls even predicted that its effects would still be felt 15 years from now. The Schools Secretary's comments carry added weight because he is a former chief economic adviser to the Treasury and regarded as one of the Prime Ministers's closest allies.

Mr Balls said yesterday: "The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I'm sure, over 100 years, as it will turn out."

He warned that events worldwide were moving at a "speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before" and banks were losing cash on a "scale that nobody believed possible".

The minister stunned his audience at a Labour conference in Yorkshire by forecasting that times could be tougher than in the depression of the 1930s, when male unemployment in some cities reached 70 per cent. He also appeared to hint that the recession could play into the hands of the far right.

"The economy is going to define our politics in this region and in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 and even the next 15 years," Mr Balls said. "These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape. I think this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s, and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/this-is-the-worst-recession-for-over-100-years-1605367.html

I am SO not gonna go there...

amazedly,
Bright

AND allow the nickname "Dick"?

I mean, there are alternatives -- Rick, Ricky.

That's cruel.

judgmentally,
Bright

I would tell people my representative was Dick Swett and they would respond, "Mine too, so what's HIS name?"

I think he should have gone by Richard. Great guy with a wonderful family. Certainly beat "Here's how much I'm like George H.W. Bush" whats-his-name who came before him and Charles Bass is an asshat.

:hide:

:) :)

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No matter what Labour does, they are toast. I hope Cameron isn't a regurgitated Thatcher. Old, as usual, politics will not work in this day and age.

If the U.K. is finally admitting the magnitude of the disaster, it can only be a matter of weeks before our own G.S. and President Happy Sunshine up your ass, admit we are in a depression of enormous magnitude. Of course that will be after the investment banks have made off with the last of our savings.

What, are they forgetting where they put it or something? Try looking in the swiss bank accounts.