It had to happen. Everyone knew that there would be a downturn eventually, everyone that is except for Gordon Brown.
He abolished "boom and bust" remember? He was responsible for all those consecutive quarters of economic growth, even the ones when the Conservatives were in offices. Now it has come to an end.
You would have thought that having taken credit for all the good years, and I mean ALL the good years, Brown would at least have the guts to say "this happened on my watch, I'm responsible". Yeah right!
Could Brown Call an Election This Week?
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6 comments:
Interesting that Brown only admitted to the existence of the recession 2 days before these shocking figures came out.
I agree praguetory. By saying it 2whole days before, Gordon thinks he'll look 'ahead of the game'. In the Mirror/Guardian world, maybe.
Does 'no more boom and bust' really mean no more recession ever again?
Economist are currently predicting a relatively short and shallow recession (although stock markets are trying their best to prevent this from happening). If this is the case then your accusations of boom and bust are false.
Since Ken Clarke became chancellor we have seen:
moderate levels of inflation,
moderate levels of government borrowing/surplus,
reduced levels of unemployment,
low levels of interest rates,
high levels of investment in public services
However, the housing market is the one area where we have clearly seen boom and bust. Whether this proves to be worse or better than the early 1990s is yet to be seen. Opinions are divided on whether house prices are still too high or whether the housing market will now stabalise.
If we see a short recession with house prices stabalising then it would still be correct to claim that we do not have the boom and bust experienced in the 70s and 80s. There is no doubt in my mind that Clarke and Brown have been the two best post-war chancellors and have worked towards a stable economy. By contrast Lawson created an unecessary boom to win an election and Lamont created an unecessary bust by his failure to understand the ERM.
The whole world has seen the 10 year increase, and now the whole world is suffereing the downturn. It's not he politicians you loons. They are just passwengers like the rest of us.
So, if they can't change anything, why do we pay them to try & fail?
A number of countries went into a minor recession in 2002 including US and Germany. We did not, thanks to the housing market, the governor of the bank of England, and the chancellor.
It is certainly true that politicians can ruin the economy, so they must be able to do positive things too - and should be given credit when they do.
16 years of living off the back of Thatcherism of course.
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