The Humiliation of Britain
Britons are willing to lend to their government on an enormous scale – and on terms that are more generous than the IMF's. But that hasn't stopped the Cameron government from forcing through fiscal cuts that will cost a half-million public-sector jobs – and cause the loss of another half-million private-sector jobs – at a time when no sources of expanding demand exist to pick up the slack.
BERKELEY – At the end of 2008, as the financial crisis hit with full force, the countries of the world divided into two groups: those whose leaders decided to muddle through, and China. Only the Chinese took seriously Milton Friedman’s and John Maynard Keynes’s argument that, when faced with the possibility of a depression, the first thing to do is use the government to intervene strategically in product and financial markets to maintain the flow of aggregate demand.
BERKELEY – At the end of 2008, as the financial crisis hit with full force, the countries of the world divided into two groups: those whose leaders decided to muddle through, and China. Only the Chinese took seriously Milton Friedman’s and John Maynard Keynes’s argument that, when faced with the possibility of a depression, the first thing to do is use the government to intervene strategically in product and financial markets to maintain the flow of aggregate demand.