Strange that your list of “most respected economic commentators” did not include blogger, ex-MPC member (appointed by none other that Gordon Brown), FT columnist and LSE professor Willem Buiter, who said in his blog:

“Certainly if, against all odds, Labour were to form the government after the next election, its fiscal credibility, and specifically its capacity to commit to future fiscal pain, would be nil. Although Alistair Darling has been a good chancellor, the years of Brownian fiscal irresponsibility have, I fear, undermined the credibility of any fiscal tightening program announced by Labour that was not significantly more front-loaded that it could have been and should have been had the government possessed a reputation for fiscal rectitude.

The Tories are untried and untested. They did the right thing pointing out the inevitability of major fiscal pain; their apparent desire to start the fiscal tightening immediately and thus not to take full advantage of the announcement effects of future fiscal tightening may have been motivated by a recognition that they start out without a track record, without a reputation and therefore without any credibility capital to spend. A hung government might have some fiscal credibility if Vince Cable were the chancellor, but I am not holding my breath.”

I also note your laughable accusation that politicians for picking that statistics to match their arguments not necessarily academic views. If I remember correctly Will, you spent some time working in the Treasury. During that time, I’m surprised that you never come across Gordon Brown asking for carefully crafted statistics to bolster his speeches?

Other than the Rock, which other banks had runs on them? I genuinely don’t know.

There was systemic lack of confidence. To suggest that this was solely due to the policies of the UK government, given that the crisis was international, is a bit silly.

The question – indeed, the only question – is whether you would have nationalised the Rock and prevented further bank runs or not.

xD.

The repayments will be on our absolute debt, so it’s the eventual total which is the key figure, not the rate of rise at a given moment in time. As Dave Cole points out, we don’t even have the highest deficit, let alone debt.

It’s also a bit of a stretch to call Martin Wolf left wing.

MJW,

No – the real problem is the collapse in tax revenue due to recession, not the levels of public spending, which were and are below average for comparable G7 and EU countries so it’s hard to see how our public sector could be that much less efficient than them.