The global economic storm continues to rage and national governments seem about as commanding in these conditions as small boats tossed around on a tumultuous sea. The week began with an emergency bailout of Citigroup, the world’s biggest bank, by the United States Treasury. A few days later the Federal Reserve released news of an $800bn credit market intervention. This was followed by a €200bn European Union-wide stimulus package from the European Commission. And expectations are rising that Barack Obama is planning an even bigger spending plan for when he takes office in Washington next year.

 

Yet the discomforting truth is that no one can say with any confidence that these various rescues and interventions will have any effect on the underlying crisis. Everything policymakers have thrown at the emergency thus far has had a disappointingly small effect. Our leaders appear to be surviving on a diet of hope. Nowhere is that truer than in Britain.

The Government presented its own contribution to the EU stimulus package in the pre-Budget report this week. But the real story of the PBR ended up not being the widely trailed £20bn stimulus, but the alarming projected borrowing figures…

(Read the rest of the article here, courtesy of The Independent)