Friday 13 February 2009

We love our imports

Returning to an old theme; why has the UK external accounts deteriorated so much in recent years.

The extent of import penetration has increased remorsely since the mid-1980s. This measure is the ratio of import volumes to final expenditure volumes. In the above chart, this ratio is turned into an index, with the value during 1992 set equal to 100.

This data series suggests that our desire for imports over domestically produced goods has been rising remorselessly for over 20 years. So, we can't pin all the blame on New Labour and their bubble.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is how the UK helped China grow rich.

Anonymous said...

Did we have a choice ?

Anonymous said...

Do we make anything that we could actually sell to the chinese?

Thought not...

Anonymous said...

A nostradamus prediction on the UK economy and simmony the banker ?

simple simon met a pieman going to the fair.
said simple simon to the pieman 'let me taste your wares"
the pieman said to simple simon 'show me first your money'
said simple simon to the Pieman "indeed I havn"t any.