Back in November, Rishi Sunak commented on Radio 4’s Today programme that the current projections for UK borrowing are “obviously not sustainable”. The question that nobody seems prepared to put to him is why there is no attempt made to balance the books? It’s as if the consensus on the need to spend and the […]
Covid-19
The Balancing Act fallacy
Speaking to Andrew Marr on 4th October, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “And, you know, we’ve got to continue to bear down on this virus, whilst protecting the economy. That’s the balance we’ve got to strike.” Few will take him to task for saying this, as it is a sentiment that is widely held. […]
Eat out to help out
So here we have it, UK’s much-praised Chancellor is urging us to “eat out to help out”. Recognition of the absurdity of this formula requires a certain naivety, we being so brainwashed into thinking economic orthodoxy to be a law of nature. We need to see the world more like the boy in Andersen’s “Emperor’s […]
The struggle to be heard
Labour’s response on dealing with the economics of Covid-19 has been rather insipid to date. Beyond criticising the Chancellor for a one-size-fits-all approach there’s no big new ideas coming from Anneliese Dodds. One would hope she would be consulting widely at this time, but her office responded with the predictable “thank you but Anneliese can […]
The grip of concepts
So, furlough payments have been extended in the UK but it’s clear the language is changing. We are now being encouraged back to work not because it is now any more safe (forget “R”, more people infected in aggregate means greater risk of catching the disease), but because they cannot afford to maintain the current […]
Covid-19
The current health crisis is occupying so much of the current bandwidth of government worldwide that insufficient attention is being paid to the economic tsunami that is following in its wake. Radical measures are required, and it has been heartening to see that some of the necessary policy has been enacted by finance ministers across […]