To put this another way, my suggestion is that Rachel Reeves read the mood music of the moment very badly. The economy was in a poor state when she came into office. What she did not appreciate – because she is so fixated on the government’s supposed financial position rather than the state of the economy around it – was that what was needed from her in October was a significant economic stimulus if a recession was to be avoided. She misread the cues so much that she delivered austerity instead. Her sin is of compounding the downturn that was already happening.
Core inflation – the policy relevant rate – twice target and this is the time for stimulus, eh?
Her problems may be something to do with not being an economist and not being a chess champion. Or am I just sneering for the fun of it?
Comment posted by me to the Naked Capitalist site after they aired Spud’s thoughts on flat taxes. No idea if they’ll be accepted in comments or not – awaiting moderation…
Richard Murphy is a grade A moron whose ‘work’ is regularly destroyed by Tim Worstall at timworstall.com. He is a retired accountant whose utter misunderstandings of the bond markets, banking, money, indeed any small fragment of economics is visible to anyone who wastes their time looking at his various ill informed pronouncements. He is so off beam that after a short dalliance the Jeremy Corbyn era Labour opposition (no strangers to economic illiteracy) rejected him as a potential advisor.
You do your site and your readers no favour by providing him with airtime.
“austerity”.
“More money was spent, but not as much on me as I wanted.”
Lord save us from politicians who view the economy as a ‘thing’ that they can guide where they want by tweaking this and that.
The one thing I’ve learned from reading Tim’s site is that incentives matter and sadly the incentives that motivates the actions of politicians are inimical to the good running of the economy.
The best thing that the political class can do for the rest of us is to stay out the way and do as little as possible.
It’s the kid that went through the back of the wardrobe with murphy. It’s all government is schit at running the economy, government run NHS is rubbish, HS2 and Elizabeth Line bad value, government regulators get this wrong, government isn’t talking about whatever crisis, government isn’t opposing genocide.
But he can’t walk back in to the wardrobe and out the other side into the light and see that maybe government is the problem, and should concentrate on justice and security and a handful of other core things.
He wants to stay in his fairy story world where witches are in control and if only the right fairies could get elected everything would work, and that’s a bit sad that a man of 56 hasn’t matured.
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It’s not that she misread it. It is that her reading skills in such a complex subject are sub par. Even amateur economists know the basics. She, and she’s not alone, think that politicians are the best and the brightest and they know everything.