Workers in the UK have suffered the biggest fall in wages among the world's richest countries since the financial crisis, research has suggested.
Between 2007 and 2015 wages in the UK fell by 10.4%, a drop equalled only by Greece, the analysis by the TUC [Trades Union Congress] found.
Women's pay in particular needs to be boosted, the union body said. Women earn on average 19.2% less than men, according to the latest official data.
The Treasury said the TUC's analysis did not fully reflect living standards.
The UK is the joint biggest faller on pay in 29 countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - a forum for wealthy countries who work together to promote financial growth and social wellbeing.
The UK, Greece and Portugal were the only three OECD countries that saw real wages fall, according to the research complied by the TUC.
Source: BBC News
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday July 28 2016, @11:13PM
That wasn't exactly the story, since it suggests that the banks gave a damn what the borrowed money was going to be used for, when it probably wasn't even remotely that calculated.
The real reason the money poured into Greece (and Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) was that the yield on the bonds they were issuing was higher than the yields on the sovereign debt bonds from Germany and the UK, and with those debtor countries now part of the EU there was no longer any concerns about tax penalties that would make the difference in bond yields not worth it. Nobody was sitting there in a bank thinking out the purpose this borrowed money would go to, just about the higher return on investment they could make.
The thing is, the higher bond yields also mean higher risks, and those investment bankers were looking at the upsides but not the downsides. After all, sovereign debt is still relatively safe, so why not get Greece's 5% or 7% rather than Germany's 3.5%? But once the financial crisis hit, we got shown the reason why the interest rate was higher, the debt went bad, but the German banks were powerful enough to convince the German government to bully Greece into paying back the loan no matter what it took. And the "no matter what" took on the form of austerity and massive unemployment. Which was not negotiable, unseating at least 2 prime ministers.
In other words, yet another incarnation of the "heads we win, tails you lose" method of investment banking.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.