The Chaser Report - Britain's Truss Fund | Craig Reucassel

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Craig and Charles unpack Liz Truss's next plan to cut taxes for (you guessed it) the top 5%. What flawless solution can they come up with to make sure that Australia doesn't have the same problem? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report for Wednesday the 28th of September. I'm Charles Firth and with me today is Craig Roocastle again. Hey, good to be here, Charles, good to be here. And before you get started, I did promise yesterday that I was keen to ask a question about your face. You mean how wonderful and roguishly good looking I look nowadays? You've always been roguishly good-looking.

It's about the beard. Because you have, your beard is currently quite pointed. Yes. Yes. And I, you know what it struck me yesterday about it? What? And I looked at, and I googled this at the time, it's, you've got a bit of a Vladimir Lenin beard going on.

And I'm balding on top as well. It's perfect. Are you coming out as a Leninist at the moment? Yes, yes. I like killing coal miners. So, and Lenin. kill the toll paddle matters. Yeah, yeah.

Lennon was really at the forefront of climate change solutions. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Look back. No, no, I, because it's interesting you ask this question because I was thinking, because my 11-year-old son is very against this particular beard. But my barber says, no, no, this is trendy, right? What you do is it's called tapering, right?

So you shave it close at the top, but then at the bottom you just let it grow out. And the idea is that when you get a bit middle-aged and chubby, not that I am, but, you know, like in case, just in case. Authetically speaking. It sort of lengthens, it makes your face look longer. Oh. But I was thinking the other day that every single man I've ever met who has a sort of manicured beard,

I hate with a passion because they're a fucking wanker. That was the second thing I was going to bring up. Yeah, which is, don't you, do I? look like a wanker. Oh, yeah, look, that's a hard one, because, again, it's a baseline thing. You've always looked like a bit of wanker, but, uh, yeah, look, I don't know, I hadn't thought about the fact that it's made you look incredibly thin, uh, long face. Do you sort of look at me and go, ooh, maybe I need to help me out with him out.

Has Charles been at the gym? Oh, no, he's just got a long beard. What I like is particularly about this is so confusing. It also shows who you care about in your life as well as part of this, because you're like, my 11-year-old son hates this beard, but my barber tells me to keep it. What a great dad. Well, no, but surely you taught me how to parent, which is to, the whole point of parenting is to irritate your children.

Exactly. That is a big part of it. But that really does, once to become teenagers, really flow back the other way very heavily. It's an act of vanity rather than an act of political. allegiance to Leninism? No, mind you, I think, look, I think authoritarianism is coming back. I think probably likely it's more likely to be fascist. But, you know, when you have an era of fascism, often communism sort of rises up as well.

Oh, so this is the start of your communist upris. Our intern, Alexa Vulevich, he's a complete communist. So, you know, I'd have an ally in the office. There are a few more people, people call them, so of communists again nowadays. It's amazing how, you know, 60 million people dead under Stalin fades from memory after a while. And you just see, you just remember communism for the happy, joyous, idealistic thing that it was.

For the great posters. Yeah, that's right. And great bids. Great bids, great posters, yeah. That's all I can remember. Yep. All right, well, welcome to all the communists listening today. This podcast was founded on the idea of bringing

people informative informational news. Yes, yes, yes. And then they gave up on that idea. And then we gave up on that idea and we just chat, right? But occasionally we do try and interact with reality. Yeah, that's good. And one of the more egregious things, and I was talking to somebody in Australian Treasury earlier today,

and she... I desperately hoped that they were not coined you for advice, Charles. If so, everyone, get all of your money out of the banks. Yeah, I just said, put interest rates down, mate. I had a home. They are calling you. No, no. So, but I was talking to her and I was thinking, you know, and she said, and I said,

what are you doing? Like, what are you worried about, you know, any inside of information that's tradable? She said, no, I can't do any information tradable. But she said, I can tell you that everyone is just walking around days, and mystified about the latest budget to come out of the UK. Okay, I've been out of touch with this. So for people who, you know, I should probably update you on something, you probably don't know about UK policies, which is the Queen died.

Okay, really, really. They should have covered that in the Australian news somewhere. I know, I know. But then, but a few days before the Queen died, something even more disastrous happened, which was that this woman called Liz Truss. His Trust took over, yes. became Prime Minister.

And she has just released her mini-budget. So she let the Queen die. They did all the celebrations. It's amazing that you could go from Boris Johnson to something that could be worse. I mean, that's an achievement. Yeah, I know. It's nobody, no economist, no trained economist.

And this Treasury woman was actually saying, no actual published economist who's actually paid to be an economist rather than, say, a political spin master, thinks that this budget makes any sense at all, right? What have they done? So the problems that the UK are facing is that they've got huge inflation, their pound is dropping and they've got enormous government debt. Yes, so the pound's almost, it was almost coming down to be parity with the US parity.

Yeah, US dollar. So one US dollar buys one British pound, which is, which has never happened for it. So what they did is they cut taxes, massive, massive, massive tax. cuts for millionaires. And so the top 5% of the British population will receive 50% of the overall benefit of the government's tax cuts. And the poorest half of households will be on average 230 pounds better off next year. But the average millionaire will be 55,000 pounds better off next year. That's great. The average millionaire. And that'll solve inflation. Because wealthy people can't spend money.

The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. Right. So this Treasury woman was saying that the only thing that anyone, any economist can understand this as being is this is the type of budget that you would do if you want to create hyperinflation in an economy. Because essentially what British have done is their deficit is now, I think, 8% of GDP. So basically it cannot be paid off. the only solution to that is to print more pounds,

which will further devalue the pound, which means that, and they buy everything. They don't create anything in Britain, right? No. You cannot, you know, they may be, they don't even grow strawberries there anymore. They grow them in Spain. You can, what do they make in finance wankers and panel shows? Panel shows.

They make panel shows, right. So, so the idea is the British, like, we'll need to buy oranges and strawberries and potatoes to survive, maybe from the Irish, for example. And so keep printing money to do that. Yes. Meanwhile, because there's so many pounds, that will then drop further and further in value.

And suddenly it will cost like a million pounds to buy one potato from Ireland, right? Yes. And that is called hyperinflation. Yes. That is the only thing that this budget is going to do. Can I ask a question, Charles? Because you had this conversation,

and again, apologies for those who think this is ill-informed, I didn't realize it was coming on in an economics podcast. But if that is the case, Australia is also facing at the moment a high inflation. Yes. And our Australian dollar just went down as well. Yes. And we also have coming up next year the tax cuts, which will also predominantly go to very wealthy people and will not go to poorer people. Did the person in the Australian Treasury in any way mentioned that we were going to do something similarly as stupid?

Fuck, you're right. I should have asked that. That would have been a really probing, interesting question to ask. You're right. No, because it does seem to be the same economic model. Like, I know there are thousands of other reasons not to go through with the next stage of tax cuts, predominantly that they're the most unfair, ridiculous policy ever. But if they also are going to add to the exact problem that we're facing economically at the moment, doesn't seem to be a great idea to go ahead. Well, the thing that the Treasury person said to me was that the only reasoning behind it is that they think that the only way that they'll be elected next time is that if they just deliver to their millionaire friends what they want. But again, that's always a fascinating thing, isn't it? Because you go, if you're 5% of the population is getting most of the money, they're not delivering to them to get voted, because that's not the votes, but they must

be delivering to them to get money. Money. The ads to pay. Yeah. To get elected. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it's almost like somebody should make a documentary about the pervasive effects of money in politics. By the way, there is a parliamentary inquiry into donation laws in Australia at the moment, which anybody in the public can actually put in an inquiry, put a thing in. So you go to the website and you can actually find that and put it in a thing saying, hey, maybe we should have some rules. Yeah.

So let's face it. So, do you have a solution for this? Oh, shit. I was supposed to come up with a solution. Yeah, hold on. Well, I think, well, the point is. So have these gone through? Do they have to go through the British Parliament?

Yeah, but they've got a thumping majority. They'll easily go through it. So they're just going to put through massive tax cuts in the middle of hyperinflation. Yes, and so... The kind of thing shits me to tears. So, and what has happened in the last few days? Like, yesterday, the British pound made its fourth largest drop

since the early 1990s. Now, I don't know whether you remember in the early 1990s. The British pound was pegged to the euro. Sexy. Yep. And, William, Prince William loved it. And that became wider and wider and wider. And George Soros famously made four billion pounds at the time,

betting against the pound. Well, that same thing is happening now. So. Yeah. It's amazing when you see this kind of, and not to refer back to the beginning of the podcast, because obviously people have turned off by now. But, you know, if with all of this massive amounts of money

being given to the richest 5%, if only there was somebody that, look like some kind of Marxist hero that could take them on, Charles. Okay, so, so this is my solution, right, which is, and this applies to Australia as well, which is, and I think I was actually mentioning to you the other night, Craig, which is this. You can give tax cuts to the ridge, right? Okay. But all that does is mean that you end up having to jack up interest rates, and then everyone

has to pay the banks to do it. So when you have lots of inflation, you have to take heat out of the economy. Yes. And the way that conventionally everyone in the world does it at the moment is they just jack up interest rates and you pay more money to banks and they take your money. And that puts deflationary pressure. And it takes money out of the economy and suddenly you don't have enough to spend. And so it deflates the economy. The other way you can do that.

And this is the way that Philip Lowe, the RBA governor. The RBA governor has actually criticized the Albanese government for not. paying more attention to, is that instead of giving all that money that you're taking out of the economy to banks, which are private companies that just pay themselves lots of bonuses, you could also take that money and give it to the government to do... Through higher taxes. Through high taxes. Not just a through donation system.

Yeah, no, you just literally tax people. So if your mortgage has gone up by 500 bucks a month, instead of paying... it to the bank, if the government said, we're going to take that extra 500 bucks, they could, A, pay down their debt, but B, they could also invest it in hospitals, schools and roads. Said Charles, this is the problem. This is why you haven't really thought this through as part of your flawed solution, is that you see, if the government gets it, they will be irresponsible by putting into things like education, dangerous for society.

Healthcare, again, you know, it leads to inflation in the healthcare and the education system, not very good. You need to give it to bankers who can sit on that money and just put it into Mossman property. It's much worse, safer for the future of the economy. So your solution sounds ridiculous, Charles.

What if we call the taxes, the extra taxes, something like... Government profits. Yeah, government... Or yeah, bonuses. Like, something like executive bonuses. Yep.

So you're giving the money and you get the feeling like it's all being spent on CEOs, like it would normally do, but actually goes to the government or something. Is it necessarily the case that banks make more money when interest rates go up? Well, it's about the spread. So when they have...

It depends with the spread, yeah, yeah. So, and the general philosophy is when interest rates are all 3%, there's not very much room. to move for the banks in terms of their spread. But when interest rates are doubled, like 6, 7%, there's actually just more room to go, well, what's the difference between 6.5 and 7%. And things get unkemptit.

Well, Charles, it makes sense what you're saying. I think it does make sense. I'd rather pay more in tax than in just more on a mortgage or something. It's interesting that Liz Truss has gone the opposite way and hasn't taken your piece of advice. No, it's ridiculous. Why are people not listening to you? The voice of reason. But also, but then the other solution, and look, failing that, I think what we need

is we need more panel shows because, as you mentioned, like, the UK is now predominantly a panel show their economy. Right. And yet here, you're just going, like, win the week, it's just wrapped. It wrapped after, like, I went away for three weeks and I didn't see a single episode, mind I didn't try and see one, but the point is it only was on it was only on for about three weeks. Like, what's going on? You need like a 20 episode season, 40 episode season.

It's true. It's a lazy. This is the thing is that we import most of our panel shows in the UK. But they'll be much cheaper when they're denominated in pounds. Exactly. So again, again, it's going to swamp the panel show markets. We're going to be, oh, so we should get out of the panel show market. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. And get into selling potatoes to the, uh, of the British. Oh, I'm going to move back to Robbo. I'm just looking forward to the point at which Ireland becomes so rich in comparison with the UK that they can actually just starve the UK. They'll export all the potatoes from the UK, buy them in Euros and you have a little great English potato famine.

Look at this man with a linen beard, things should starve the population. It's happening again. Our gear is from rober microphones and we're part of the ACASTCREATER network. Catch you tomorrow. Thank you.