Saturday 8th December

Unlike Haircut 100 is it not ‘down to the lake I fear’ but maybe down and down in a spiral of which one can see no end in sight.  And it is the same almost everywhere one looks; Europe is locked into the same spiral as we are – deficit increases, therefore cuts and austerity, therefore lower growth, therefore rising deficits, therefore more cuts ; the US which saved itself by pumping money into the economy is now facing a ‘fiscal cliff’ which the Republicans are doing their best to fall off.  And what is the answer?  Even Labour knows that if elected in 2015 they will face an even steeper cliff than they would have had they managed to hang on in 2010.  It is easy for them to say that they would not have cut so hard or so fast, but by the time they might get back in Government those cuts will be history, and it will be doubly difficult to reverse them.  And this is the clever trap that George Osborne is setting; he is far more a political Chancellor than a financial one, his main concern is to see the Tories retain power no matter what his policies may have reduced the country to.  And he will go to the electorate basically saying “Yes, we have cocked up badly, our policies are not really working, but at least we still have fairly cheap borrowing costs.  And bad as we have been – the other lot would be far far worse.”

So what is to be done?  Where do we go from here?  I am tempted to believe that armed insurrection may be the only solution – change the system, declare a new regime and cancel all old debt and start again.  But failing that, which does not look too imminent I would welcome some ideas.  Please send in your suggestions in a brown envelope marked “DAFT IDEA I KNOW BUT…..”