It is, in my opinion, breathtaking in it's ineptitude.
First of all the whole premise is that Brown is returning to debt as a means to get us out of the financial mess "like an addict returning to the drug". The only person who could make that statement is someone who has consistently failed to pay attention for the lat 10 years. It simply is not the case that Mr Brown has repeatedly used government debt as a way of solving problems. The fact of the matter is, as we all know, Mr Brown has tried to build his reputation both as Chancellor and Prime minister based on PRUDENCE.
Whether he has achieved that is another matter, but the best criticism that one can make of him is the one the Tories are currently pushing out, eg that he has forgotten prudence and torn up the old rules. To say "oh no here we go again" with reference to public debt ignores the facts.
Secondly Rowan completely misses the difference between personal debt, which is currently a bad thing, business debt and government debt. These are all different. For example in government and business sometimes debt is necessary for cash flow. Fiscal stimulus has been repeatedly called for by the IMF. Individuals need to deleverage, so too do businesses, not because they have maxed out their credit cards but because credit is not available due to the exceptional circumstances in the banking sector.
Finally his comments about Britain needing to actually 'make something' are unbelievably wide of the mark. Currently the biggest proportion of manufacturing jobs are to be found in China. This is because China currently has the lowest wages. We simply cannot complete with that. Is the Archbishop suggesting we have special economic zones in this country in which workers get paid less that a dollar a day? Or does he imagine that just because our banking sector is in trouble we can just pull out of the global economy and reopen the textile mills of Manchester.
Of course it would be lovely to have more manufacturing in Britain, but until China and India shut up shop that is nothing but a pious wish.
Archbishop of Canterbury he may be. Robert Peston he is not.
1 comment:
Whilst I agree that the UK cannot compete in maufacturing markets, there is no reason why less stuff could be imported from abroad that can be grown here - or just not imported at all (do you need most of the random tat that many shops sell these days?)
I think the "recession" will cause people to reduce their superfluous purchases, but trying to spend our way out of a depression is like telling someone to swim to the bottom of the sea in order to break the surface.
Post a Comment