The new UK government, which will present its first Budget next Tuesday, has pledged to learn its lessons from the retrenchment in Canada between 1994 and 2000. Good for them: Paul Martin did much right. He realised that, if you are going to rein in a colossal structural deficit, you need a wide consensus. The Canadian regime has also recognised that consolidation requires you to cut where the fat is. It did not salami-slice every budget, but went for where there were savings to be found.
But the Ottawan lesson only goes so far. As Paul Krugman says, it doesn’t help the UK with the macroeconomics of cutting. Its retrenchment took place as the US was booming. The political pain of cutting would have been much higher, the process much more difficult and the results less successful if its giant cousin to the south hadn’t had its nose in the punchbowl.
Britain is going to cut its deficit in what will probably be a weak neighbourhood. German manufacturing has been roaring, but the eurozone is weak and vulnerable. The whole continent’s states are tightening their belts. So while the weak pound might help the UK build market share, the market might be sickly. George Osborne’s confidence that Britain can grow while consolidating looks like hubris.
So what is to be done? Well, the chancellor of the exchequer should press ahead with his ambition to rein in the structural deficit. I don’t really want the government spending more on pay and pensions to prop up output. Stimulus needs to be temporary programmes that come to a defined end. Raising structural spending, only to slash it when the economy recovers, is bonkers. So Mr Osborne should work out temporary packages to offset the deflationary effects of his structural cutting.
The FT has come to the view that Mr Osborne needs to prepare stimulus measures, and so has Martin Wolf. In his open letter to George Osborne, he asked the chancellor:
Are you going to stand by if the economy goes into a steep decline? … In such circumstances, the most effective instrument might be central bank financing of additional public spending. But your commitment to pre-programmed spending cuts would seem to rule this out. The alternative might be a temporary reduction in taxes, of the kind you condemned under the previous government. In any case, the UK should have a plan for growth of nominal demand at a rate of 6 per cent and preferably more, for some years. Who is to take responsibility for this and how?
There are major attractions to setting out plans for stimulus measures now. Moving towards a clearer rule-based system for discretionary fiscal policy would make it possible to take stimulatory action without spooking holders of gilts. You can make sure they’re ready to go where they’re needed. The Treasury should compile a list of names and addresses to which it could post cheques. In case the UK’s troubles are longer-term, the finance ministry should prepare a list of infrastructure projects it would like to build.
Setting out such contingency plans would require a bit of political bravery. Mr Osborne would be the first chancellor to admit that he is not, in fact, in charge of the economy and not its master. He would be required to admit there is uncertainty in the world and limits to his powers and foresight.
Now that would be new politics.
The Office for Budget Responsibility is going to irritate lots of people this week. When it comes out with its assessment of the Budget, its multipliers and assumptions will come under attack. After years now (years!) of phoney arguments about the deficit, this will be A Good Thing. Indeed, all the Labour leadership candidates should embrace the new institution.
First, it should improve the credibility of the fiscal framework. No Briton can credibly claim that any fiscal rules could have any real disciplining effect: only an institution that can nip at the government can do that now. This framework offers the golden combination of clear red lines for governments and the flexibility to respond to as-yet-unforeseen economic circumstances.
Second, farming out forecasting should improve the quality of projections that inform fiscal decisions. As an excellent Social Market Foundation pamphlet puts it, an independent forecaster would help overcome some problems with internal forecasting:
At the moment, being seen to have credible forecasts is particularly worthwhile: investors have, in recent months, fixated on suspect growth forecasts. But all of those benefits rely on the OBR actually becoming independent – something it currently is not.
The body – now established on an interim basis – is a Whitehall beast. Sir Alan Budd, OBR chief pro tem, leads a team of Treasury lifers, based in the Treasury, running Treasury models. This is all forgiveable: the apparatus was set up rapidly and has yet to find its feet. It is important, however, that it does not become a permanent feature of the OBR.
The most important aspect of the institution’s independence is staffing. OBR staff cannot be borrowed from the chancellor, going back to the Treasury at the end of a stint at the slide-rule. Otherwise they will still be creatures of their political masters. The OBR needs its own recruitment stream. (I’m sure George Osborne will be alive to this issue: he has long had an interest in the independence of Bank of England monetary policy committee members.)
As David Miliband has written, the OBR should, moreover, answer to parliament – not to the Treasury. Furthermore, MPs and peers should be allowed to submit written questions to the institution and it should be ultra-transparent.
Posted in Comment, Economics, Financial Crisis, Politics, UK | Permalink