[caption id="attachment_1183" align="alignleft" width="142" caption="It feels as though our government is spending now so that we can pay later"]
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By chance, I met a candidate for the position of Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, this week while travelling on business with a colleague in the USA. We were on our way back to the railway station, being given a lift by the car rental company who were also giving Mirna White a lift.
Mirna introduced herself to us when she heard what we were doing in the USA and mentioned that she was running for mayor with the election on 11th May. We duly asked about her campaign theme which centred on the issues of crime and unemployment in Newark. she recounted some of the facts about the city including their unemployment rate had risen from 8.3% in 2005 to 14.8% today. They have a steady murder rate of about 80 a year. A million people come to the city every day to work but their official population is only 280,000. in 2005, they had 1,250 robberies and 1,387 in 2008.
Newark is a stark contrast from its next door neighbour, New York. Newark is only a 15 minute train ride from central Manhattan and the journey takes you over the marshy ground between the two cities and through some of the industrial heartlands of America, which are not pretty. There are acres of containers and warehouses and a noticeable amount of derelict buildings.
Speaking with some of the people with whom we were doing business, they told us of house building companies selling houses for $1.99 as long as a highly discounted price for the house and a cheap mortgage were taken up so they could sell huge inventories of houses which had been vacated by customers who could not afford the payments. Some of our colleagues from Michigan told us about the large drop in the value of houses because large numbers of the local workers had been laid off by the failing motor industry.
All in all, it felt like there was a whole lot of pain out in America which we, in the UK, can only really guess at compared to what we have been experiencing as a result of the credit crunch.
However, in contrast, when we went back into New York, although things have slowed down compared to before the credit crisis, you would not know there was a recession happening if judged by the number of people eating in the restaurants we visited at lunchtime and in the evenings. Some of them were packed. The hotels seemed to be busy too. But I expect that is more to do with the fact that New York is bound to be recovering faster than the parts of New Jersey we visited because of the nature of the city and its strength in financial services and other leading industries.
This picture of different stages of a recession is bound to reflected in our own economy. But I can't help thinking that the UK population has been shielded from the darkest realities of the credit crunch by our governments' willingness to subsidise our economy. So, in effect, it feels like the government is spending now so that we can pay later.
[/caption]By chance, I met a candidate for the position of Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, this week while travelling on business with a colleague in the USA. We were on our way back to the railway station, being given a lift by the car rental company who were also giving Mirna White a lift.
Mirna introduced herself to us when she heard what we were doing in the USA and mentioned that she was running for mayor with the election on 11th May. We duly asked about her campaign theme which centred on the issues of crime and unemployment in Newark. she recounted some of the facts about the city including their unemployment rate had risen from 8.3% in 2005 to 14.8% today. They have a steady murder rate of about 80 a year. A million people come to the city every day to work but their official population is only 280,000. in 2005, they had 1,250 robberies and 1,387 in 2008.
Newark is a stark contrast from its next door neighbour, New York. Newark is only a 15 minute train ride from central Manhattan and the journey takes you over the marshy ground between the two cities and through some of the industrial heartlands of America, which are not pretty. There are acres of containers and warehouses and a noticeable amount of derelict buildings.
Speaking with some of the people with whom we were doing business, they told us of house building companies selling houses for $1.99 as long as a highly discounted price for the house and a cheap mortgage were taken up so they could sell huge inventories of houses which had been vacated by customers who could not afford the payments. Some of our colleagues from Michigan told us about the large drop in the value of houses because large numbers of the local workers had been laid off by the failing motor industry.
All in all, it felt like there was a whole lot of pain out in America which we, in the UK, can only really guess at compared to what we have been experiencing as a result of the credit crunch.
However, in contrast, when we went back into New York, although things have slowed down compared to before the credit crisis, you would not know there was a recession happening if judged by the number of people eating in the restaurants we visited at lunchtime and in the evenings. Some of them were packed. The hotels seemed to be busy too. But I expect that is more to do with the fact that New York is bound to be recovering faster than the parts of New Jersey we visited because of the nature of the city and its strength in financial services and other leading industries.
This picture of different stages of a recession is bound to reflected in our own economy. But I can't help thinking that the UK population has been shielded from the darkest realities of the credit crunch by our governments' willingness to subsidise our economy. So, in effect, it feels like the government is spending now so that we can pay later.
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