Anatole Kaletsky in the Times, praising the recent interest rate cuts, and arguing they may have to go lower!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article5141565.ece

With inflation at 5% and interest rates at 3%, you will certainly be able to to get people to borrow to spend, but who's going to want to save. How are banks going to build up their capital reserves in no-one is going to put money into their accounts?

He does make the valid point that there are two contradictory problems facing the world economy a 'slow moving cancer' caused by excessive borrowing and a property speculation bubble, and a 'heart attack' brought on by the near meltdown of the global financial system.

But wasn't it Dr Brown as Chancellor who presided over a decade of a regimen of a diet of massive amounts of public sector lard, and recommended a 200 a day habit of high tar cigarettes to stimulate the system in the form of low interest rates, encouraging unprecedented levels of private debt, and Enron type accounting to keep much public sector debt off the books. All the time presenting data on blood pressure, temperature and other bodily functions and claiming that this was the fittest, healthiest, strongest patient ever, and under his guidance, all previous medical emergencies were a thing of the past, and good health was guaranteed as long as his advice was followed.

With the lard and cigarette diet giving the patient cancer and a near fatal heart attack, Dr Brown did at least do a good job of CPR to stop the patient expiring of the heart attack, but is now recommending increasing the patients intake of lard and consumption of cigarettes to aid recovery.

Spending your way out of recession has been a phrase much bandied about recently, by those conveniently forgetting the stagflation of the 1970's. Like drinking your way out of a hangover, or those people who like to think they can accelerate out of trouble on a motorway and end up causing a 12 vehicle pile up, it sounds as if it might work, but is just going to make the end result worse, though it may delay it.