Former Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Adam Posen has a post up at Jonathan Portes’ Not the Treasury View… where he lays out what, precisely, is screwed up about the UK economy. The whole piece is at Portes’ blog, but here’s the bullet point version, in Posen’s words:
- The British economy is lacking productive investment, but not for want of investment opportunities. Banks and large corporations are sitting on cash, households are holding back on large purchases (including of housing), and the public sector is slashing its investment flow.
- The current British coalition government’s economic policy program, however, is intended to address a lack of savings, not of investment.
- This false assumption feeds back into further arguments for fiscal and household consolidation. The UK public and private sectors are paying down debt less quickly than expected to, and that means by assumption that their future ability to pay down debt is declining, so they must cut back spending and borrowing even more today to remain solvent.
- The facts of recent experience, including of the recession, do not fit with [the misinterpretation that debt is the problem], but do fit with the view that investment failings are at work in the British economy.
- So should the British government just go on a spending binge instead? No, clearly not. Even though there is legitimately little fear about UK government finances at present, with the large deficits largely driven by slow growth pushing down tax revenues and up benefits spending, there is nothing to be gained by making those fears more realistic.
Posen’s full piece has a long list of examples backing up his reading of the economic situation versus the Chancellor’s, which is worth reading if you have the time.
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