Brown’s not the only one
Brian Cullen 5:49pm
There’s an article in the latest New Republic which (perhaps unintentionally) highlights a key similarity between George Bush’s and Gordon Brown’s difficulties. Jonathon Chait points out that Republican claims that America underwent an economic ‘boom’ under Bush are totally hollow. He writes:
“The whole trick here was to start at the bottom point of the economic cycle and assume that any subsequent improvement was the result of his policies. Of course, this is a ludicrously forgiving measure. Over time, the economy tends to grow, and it also goes through cycles. To point out that we're better off at the peak of a cycle than at the trough is something that could be said of any economic cycle. Bush was claiming his miracle fertilizer succeeded because his plants were taller at the end of the summer than at the beginning of spring.”In spite of the fact that Bush sits on the opposite side of the economic divide from Brown, this is almost exactly the same situation Brown finds himself in. His Treasury cheered itself on through years of growth – leaving it listless now that an economic downturn has hit. Similarly the wider public doesn’t feel all that grateful for the economic programmes which ‘oversaw’ that growth now that recession is looming.
Perhaps the public and media responses on both sides of the Atlantic mean that there’ll be less complacency during the next period of global growth – anyone can boast about success when the economy is expanding at the peak of an economic cycle. I wouldn’t count on it, though.
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Labour Matters
August 20th, 2008 6:23pm Report this commentWe have 11 year long economic cycles now do we? Funny there have never been 11 years of growth under the Tories then.
Burton
August 20th, 2008 6:51pm Report this commentBush and Brown both employed "pro cyclical" policies, meaning they put a turbo on the economic cycle. They ramped up government spending, increased debt and encouraged massive personal debt.
Sensible goverments remain neutral or employ anti-cyclical measurements, for example they pay down debt during the good times and try to control booms.
But Bush and Brown are not sensible.
Dumb Engineer
August 20th, 2008 8:04pm Report this commentI have been making pronouncements against the economic illusion of the past decade throughout. Just ask my wife.
I am not an economist nor did I need to be to recognise the nonsense unfolding.
The only surprise is that the economy didn’t hit the buffers earlier.
Were the Tories taken in by it? They didn’t make much protest.
Not a good recommendation for a group who expect to be running the country in the near future.
Ian C
August 21st, 2008 10:31am Report this commentPoliticians need to accept and understand that they can control little in the real economy but they can influence not so much the direction as the speed of travel. Thatcher/Howe shrank the economy into a recession and raised VAT. This forced the economy to sort itself out and had many consequences that were unintended but actually turned out to be good for the long run economy, if less so for some people in it at the time and still many people rue those days in some places.
In contrast, Brown has had expansive policies in a world upturn and has overspent & borrowed and in particular has over estimated what government can do without crwoding out enterprise, which is where we are now (again).
Politicians of both sides need to learn that they can only influence at the margins for the good and can be extremely destructive if they introduce policies of unsound money in order to seek to differentiate themslves from their opponents.
This needs writing into one of the FACTS Of LIFE that politicians need to sign up to on becoming one of that class. It must then be read out to them at the beginning of every Parliament and all appraisal of policy should be estimated against this rule.
Unsound money and a vast dependency culture is what we have always faced after a Labour Government's excess expenditure. The country's constitution needs to become the mechanism by which it becomes impossible for it to be repeated ever again.
Venture Creature
August 21st, 2008 2:30pm Report this commentDear Labour Matters - that would be 15-16 years of economic growth starting under the Conservatives.
He took over with a growing stable economy, maintained that economic policy for 2 years, started taxing and spending excessively, screwed it all up.
Time for the Conservatives to sort it out again.
His two decent economic policies were an arms-length BoE and keeping us out of the Euro despite Tony Blair's best efforts.
The rest is malevolent pants.
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