Abraham Lincoln famously said that “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”. His successor, George W. Bush, is reported to have added: “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.” Some British politicians wish to follow that advice in the debate on the public finances. Alistair Darling’s refusal to do that was, it appears, the reason Gordon Brown, the prime minister, wanted to drop him. But Mr Darling is to be praised, not dropped, for his probity. Continue reading "Honesty is the best fiscal policy"

This financial year, the UK government is forecast to spend £4 for every £3 it raises. Never before, in peacetime, has the UK run such a deficit. This, one might imagine, would be a dominant concern in the British political debate. One would be quite wrong. The public is venting its rage over the expenses of members of parliament, instead. Continue reading "End Britain’s phoney fiscal war"

Is the US (and a number of other high-income countries) on the road to fiscal Armageddon? Are recent jumps in government bond rates proof that investors are worried about fiscal prospects? My answers to these questions are: No and No. This does not mean there is no reason for worry. It is rather that there are powerful arguments against fiscal retrenchment right now and strong reasons for welcoming recent moves in the bond markets. Continue reading "Rising government bond rates prove policy works"

The UK has a strategic nightmare: it has a strong comparative advantage in the world’s most irresponsible industry. So now, in the wake of the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, the UK must ask itself a painful question: how should the country manage the cuckoo sitting in its nest? Continue reading "Why Britain has to curb finance"

By James W Dean and Richard G Lipsey

The enormous stimulus packages hastily put together by governments in most large economies encounter two sorts of criticisms from many conservative economists. Both criticisms are wrong.

The first is that spending will either be hurried and wasteful, or that it won’t come on stream until employment has recovered, and will therefore be inflationary. Continue reading "Will stimulus spending stifle recovery?"

By Benn Steil

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the US budget deficit will reach $1.85 trillion this year and $1.38 trillion in 2010, 13.1 per cent and 9.6 per cent of gross domestic product respectively. Much more worryingly, it projects deficits averaging more than $1 trillion a year for the next 10 years, which will raise the US public debt-to-GDP ratio to more than 80 per cent by 2019. Continue reading "Why Keynes was wrong, and why it matters"

In 2010, according to the European Commission’s latest forecasts, the UK government will be spending 52.4 per cent of gross domestic product and receiving just 38.7 per cent of GDP in revenue. It will, as a result, have a gigantic general government deficit of 13.8 per cent of GDP. Worse, the UK’s cyclically-adjusted deficit will be 12.2 per cent of GDP. These are numbers one would expect in a time of war. Continue reading "Tackling Britain’s fiscal debacle"

Is the UK once again the economic sick man? Or is it, as Alistair Darling, chancellor of the exchequer, argued in his Budget speech on Wednesday, just one of a number of hard-hit high-income countries? The answers to these questions are: yes and yes. The explanation for this ambiguity is that the fiscal deterioration is extraordinary, but the economic collapse is not. Continue reading "Is the UK once again the economic sick man?"