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Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, says when you consider that London gets 7 times the infrastructure spending per person than West Midlands, "its not bloody surprising" that his region is not growing fast. West Midlands covers a large part of central England, including Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Coventry. Even life expectancy is lower by 8 years in Blackpool, and disposable income can be quarter in Camden compared to North London. Labor's Corbyn and Conservative's Thatcher in the British general election are both campaigning for reviving the regions outside London, that have seen investment in people and technology lag substantially behind London. Regional revival is the big issue in this election. Consider that London which accounted for about 15% of economic output in the 1980's now accounts for nearly 25% of economic output of Britain. Berlin is about 4% of Germany's economy, and Paris 10% of France's economy. A word of caution on Brexit is sounded by experts at the University of Birmingham, who say the whole process of Brexit is so complicated that it may detract from the task of reviving this region. Even though the political upheaval had origins in this discontent, was it more about shifting government attention to the gap between London and the rest of the country, and less about a complex process of withdrawal from the European Union. ...

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Empty storage tanks and empty supertankers and idle storage terminals are to be seen in the area of Cameron Parish, in coastal Louisiana. This is where Cheniere Energy opened a $1.4 billion liquefied natural gas terminal recently. This was part of a $7 billion construction of 8 new LNG terminals over the last 5 years around the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast. Only a year ago this seemed like an attractive investment as LNG supplies to the USA appeared to be on the rise. But that is not the way it turned out. By October its estimated that the USA will have in storage 3.1 trillion cubic feet of gas, about 1 trillion less than the full storage capacity.This is after the summer use and reduced LNG imports. This is 1 trillion feet of idle unused capacity or about 25% idle capacity. What has happened is that with a nuclear plant down in Japan because of an earthquake and drought conditions in Spain limiting hydroelectric dam electricity prices these countries pay has jumped and LNG tankers have been diverted to these places instead of the USA. Because natural gas prices unlike oil prices are set on a regional basis, prices in other regions and countries are several dollars higher than the US price of $11.80 per thousand cubic feet, which is itself up from $7.50 per thousand cubic feet at the beginning of 2008. The reason for all this unused capacity is that imports are 40% of what they were for last year and capacity has been doubled. Producers have also put more supplies on the spot market and less on long term contracts to make higher profits thus raising prices even higher. Some analysts believe that it was a bad thing for the US not to import more as 3.1 trillion cubic feet of gas in storage will not meet expected demand in the winter heating season of 2008-2009. And with global demand up and global supplies not coming up fast enough gas prices may increase still further. Demand is growing at about 7% in the developing world, and about 2.6% worldwide so demand in the USA is not increasing at this time. The new refineries and petrochemical plants going up in the Middle East and Asia will increase demand further for natural gas. The whole issue has not been prominent because the US meets only 3% of its natural gas needs through LNG. ...

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Unemployment in the UK reached 8.4% for the three months ending in January 2012, with total unemployed at 2.67 million. Youth unemployment for ages 16-24 reached 22%, with 1.01 million youth unemployed.

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The conservatives are hoping to do what Angela Merkel has done in Germany developing policies that support social protections to undercut the centre-Left parties, and working for ideas that support personal responsibility and fiscal responsibility in public finances. As Britain faces increasing national debt, polls show austerity measures are supported by 60% of the public.

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Bank of Scotland stands to lose close to 90% of the value for a 1500 acre luxury golf-course property and homes it financed in Hawaii called Hokuli'a. From its peak price of $600-800 million it is now going for $50-100 million after the developer based in Phoenix defaulted on the $1 billion loan from Bank of Scotland, which is now part of Lloyd's Banking Group.

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Sir Fred Goodwin left RBS with a 693,000 British pounds annual that was arranged in the contract. At the end of 2007 Sir Fred was owed 597,000 British pounds, but when he was forced out in October 2008, Sir Fred 50 years old, was given credit for 10 years more work, increasing the payout to 693,000 British pounds a year. With the highest annual loss in British history of 24 billion pounds reported by RBS for 2008, the government is asking Sir Fred to take areduced pension. This has resulted in a nasty exchange with Sir Fred who has refused, and the British public and the people of Edinburgh especially are furious. "There is asense of fury that the government seems impotent, unable to act when the man chiefly responsible for the bank's collapse is able to walk away with apension that others can only dream of- and at the ripe olfd age of 50!" said David Pickering, aspokesman for the Edinburgh Association of Community Councils. "And what is worse that we, the British taxpayers are actually paying for it."...

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As the UK's biggest banks are hit hard in the markets, RBS shares down 39%, HBOS down 42%, and Lloyd's down 13%, Barclays down 9%, on Tuesday October 7, 2008, Brown takes a bold step to recapitalize British banks. In recent years as the boom years progressed British banks handled global capital equal or greater than Britain's entire economic output for a year, and making London the global financial hub rivalling New York. Brown offered to buy stakes in British banks for as much as 50 billion pounds or $88 billion.

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At the G7 meeting in Washington of finance ministers efforts to pitch Gordon Brown's plan to other G7 members. The British idea to expand its proposal to other countries has a lot of support on Wall Street and is being studied by officials at Treasury and US government officials. Under the British plan the government would guarantee upto 250 million pounds ($432 billion) in bank debt maturing in 36 months. It is also injecting capital into British banks in exchange for equity stakes. The government is also considering removing a ceiling on deposit insurance giving essentially unlimited protection to bank deposits to protect investors and banks seeing withdrawals from scared investors.

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In a decline in living standards for 9 months since March 2016, the longest stretch since 1975, UK household disposable income declined again in 2017. UK household's disposable income fell 1.4% on the quarter in the first 3 months of 2017, according to the Office of National Statistics. This decline for the third quarter in succession comes from weak wage growth, rising prices, and higher taxes. This also shows that Brexit has certainly not helped the British economy, and provides further evidence that it is hurting the British economy. With increasing uncertainty after the parliamentary elections, a weak government, serious questions about Brexit, further weakening of the annualized growth of 0.9% at this point is not ruled out by experts. One evidence about Brexit's impact- the steep decline in the value of the British pound since the June 23, 2016 Brexit referendum has accelerated inflation in May to 2.9%, significantly surpassing any slight growth in wages. This leaves Britain worse off than before, with the future uncertain under Brexit talks.  ...