Red Rag - Always keen to seek independent views the following is the editorial from the New York Times. That's right, Cameron, Osborne and Clegg have made that much of a fuck up since the coalition was formed other countries are using their abject performance as a perfect example of how not to run an economy.
"Britain's
Failed Experiment, Repeated
Published:
December 04, 2011
A year and a
half ago, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain came to office promising to
slash deficits and energize economic growth through radical fiscal austerity.
It failed dismally. But no lessons were learned, and instead of reversing
course, Mr. Cameron's Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition plans to make the
pain worse by pushing even tougher austerity measures on the weakening economy.
Unfortunately,
neither Europe nor the Republicans in Congress are learning from Britain's bad
outcome either. Grim new data released last week show that British growth is
still flat-lining, unemployment is still rising and the ratio of government
debt to gross domestic product is still climbing faster than predicted.
With slower
growth and consumer demand depressed by fiscal austerity, the Cameron
government has had to push its deficit reduction targets years into the future.
It now pledges to make deeper annual spending cuts, extending the austerity
plan until 2017. By then, Britain will have endured more than seven years of
starved public services and lost potential growth.
Official
forecasts now project output shrinking by 0.1 percent in the current quarter
and rising only 0.1 percent in the first quarter of 2012. That is technically
not recession. But tell that to Britain's 2.6 million unemployed people, the
highest number in 17 years. More than one million of those are 16- to
24-year-olds, a dismal portent for Britain's economic future.
Some of
Britain's economic woes can be attributed to the world financial crisis. The
catastrophic mismanagement of the euro zone - of which Britain is not a member
but which buys 40 percent of its exports - has been a drag on recovery. But the
biggest factor has been the Cameron government's determination to pursue an
untimely strategy of public spending cuts in this adverse economic environment.
With export markets threatened by the euro zone crisis, it makes even less
economic sense to reduce domestic demand. The government needs to look for ways
to increase demand when the private sector isn't vigorous enough to do this on
its own.
Wiser
policies, mixing short-term stimulus with longer-term deficit reduction, should
have been embraced last year. Britain's debt burden, measured against its gross
domestic product, is not nearly as high as Greece's or Italy's. And Britain
still has its own currency. By effectively devaluing the pound, it can
significantly improve its export competitiveness.
Instead, the
Cameron government persists on a failed, irresponsible course that is unlikely
to lead to recovery anytime soon."
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