Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Nobody Could Have Predicted

Clive Crook writing for Bloomberg.

Since 2010 Britain has been a laboratory for an important experiment in economic policy. The question: When economies slump and public borrowing soars, can fiscal restraint speed the recovery? Preliminary findings: No, and whatever made you think it could?

The Tory line, echoed by many of the Very Serious People here, has been that appeasing bond markets and keeping government borrowing costs down by pretending to reduce borrowing - in other words, fixing the economy by obtaining a tool by promising not to use it - would lead to paradise.