Markets seem happy for now to focus on the carrot of a vaccine while ignoring the stick of the further severe restrictions to life and liberty being implemented while we await its delivery. Whether or not it offers a release from bondage, the state’s rediscovered taste for authoritarianism will, however, take some good time to dispel, while its corollary – the move toward taking an ever greater role amid the wreckage of the private economy – is being pursued with relish. Whatever the sloganizing, this is very unlikely to Build anything Back Better – only dearer and scarcer.
Tag Archives: budget
The Johnson government’s approach to COVID19 has been a toxic mix of contradiction, vacillation, and jackbooted authoritarianism. There seems no exit strategy and no end to the spiralling cost. We take a critical look at the impact on the budget impact and discuss what it means for inflation.
With the latest CBO estimates for the US Federal budget for August just in, we are again in a position to take stock of the scale of the burden which the COVID-19 lockdowns and more general restrictions have imposed upon the nation’s finances. It does not make for happy reading.
MMT has recently enjoyed a sudden resurgence in popularity. but, like so many other systems which claim to reveal previously undiscovered truths, it turns out to be nothing more than a retread of a number of age-old fallacies, only appealing because it seems to promise the Provider State unlimited power to interfere in our lives. We discuss its failings here.