Thatcher's Last Wish: Another Clunker from the Iron Lady
found this in TP-- an article actually from FORBES !
Hope it isn't already posted here...didn't see it....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/04/14/thatchers-last-wish-another-clunker-from-the-iron-lady/?partner=yahootix
Here's just a bit..
"Let’s be clear first on the larger politics. The voters who elected Thatcher in 1979 were motivated powerfully by humiliation at the UK economy’s constant loss of position in global competition since the early 1950s. So how did Thatcher do in reversing the trend and what in particular did she do to improve the UK’s trade position? The eulogizers are quiet on the subject. Advisedly so. The fact is that under Thatcherism the UK’s trade position went from the merely weak to the totally disastrous. The UK ran a current account surplus of 0.6 percent of GDP in 1978, the last full year before Thatcher came to office. As of 1989, the last full year before she was ousted by her own party, the current account DEFICIT had reached an appalling 3.9 percent of GDP. In the meantime Thatcher presided over a savage program to destroy the UK’s core exporting industries. She was smitten by the erroneous notion that advanced nations should leave “rust bucket” industries behind and move to a postindustrial model. Not a view shared by Germany, which has now long eclipsed the UK as Europe’s premier economy. It is a fallacy I have consistently attacked since the 1980s and indeed devoted a whole book to in 1999 (In Praise of Hard Industries)"
it goes on to rake GE over the coals, and, and, and...
