A few months ago, colleagues of George Osborne were worried the Chancellor risked ‘banking the recovery’ too early. If they’re still worried about that, then Osborne certainly isn’t. Today he’s delivering a speech attacking economic pessimists who he says can be proven wrong: ‘Our nation’s best days lie ahead’. He will say:
‘The evidence increasingly shows that monetary policy, broadly defined and effectively deployed, can work but with two caveats. Banks need to be well capitalised so that the monetary transmission system is working. And there needs to be credible fiscal policy.’
His speech will also characterise what ‘proponents of secular stagnation’ argue for: ‘further fiscal stimulus and higher government debt’.
Who is the Chancellor talking about here? Well, Ed Miliband has been out and about ‘ridiculing‘ the Government’s claims that the economy is mending. He still thinks that there are sufficient numbers of voters who still feel as though life is very tricky (and for whom a ‘savings revolution’ in the recent Budget seems rather pointless when they’re trying to spin their pay check out to the end of the month, let alone put away £15,000).
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