Something like this maybe?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Holy-Grail-Macroeconomics-Lessons-Recession/dp/0470824948

Problem with a balance sheet recession is that none of the usual levers will quickly produce recovery – firms and individuals will continue to spend income on paying down debts even if interest rates are so low that they are paying next to nothing to service them.

And in the case of Japan this process took 15 long years to complete and given that our levels of corporate indebtedness are not radically lower than Japan’s back in 1990 (and consumer debt is vastly higher) we could easily be looking at a similar long haul before companies have purged themselves of debt and are in a fit state to expand again.

In Koo’s view this doesn’t mean that govt fiscal and monetary policy is irrelevant – very far from it – but that all it can do is control the speed and depth of the descent.

In Japan we saw alternating periods of extravagant Keynesian stimulus spending and of deficit-cutting and structural reform – and while the stimulus spending didn’t lift Japan from recession its abrupt cessation and the shift to deficit-cutting had quite disastrous effects and were abandoned quickly.

The implications for Britain are clear: Keynesian stimulus won’t necessarily end the recession but a switch to deficit reduction – whether under Labour or the Conservatives – will make it much worse.

However what party will declare that actually the best we can reasonably hope for is to competently manage a decade-long economic decline brought on by our own folly….

Your link is a mistake and nothing more. What isn’t a mistake is the fact the unelected, unpopular, dithering Gordon Brown said we were best placed to lead the way out of recession. We are the last country in the G20 still in it – the man is useless.

Why New Labour even mentions anything financial is beyond me with the record debt in this country.

Shamik Das – Are you TRYING to lose New Labour the next election?

Could we have a chart showing which G20 countries are still officially classed as in recession and which ones are officially classed as not in recession? Maybe a venn diagram would work?