Via John Aziz of Azizonomics blog [7],
This is just a disaster — and more prolonged than the depression of the 1930s:
[8]
And even more of a disaster when we consider the impact this has had on youth unemployment, which has climbed far above the EU and OECD averages (although nothing like as badly as Spain or Portugal [9]):
[10]
This is not just a failure of government austerity, although that in itself has totally failed to ignite any kind of growth or recovery. The fiscal trajectory is important (not least for business expectations) — and trying to cut public spending and raise taxes during a severe depression in private activity has been shown repeatedly to just exacerbate the private slump [11] — but it’s just one aspect of a greater problem — the failure to create a favourable business environment that can attract capital and growth to the UK.
Lending to UK business remains severely depressed:
[12]
Given that the British government owns the bailed-out commercial banks, it’s a shock that they haven’t leveraged this power to reignite lending to business, and particularly to business startups. So long as businesses are allowed to either succeed or fail on their own merits, it would not be a malinvestment of time, energy or capital to use publicly-owned bailed-out banks to break through the lending freeze.
It is something of a chicken-or-egg problem to say exactly how much of the problem is austerity, and how much of it is a weak business environment. But either way, we are on the wrong track. Business confidence levels are still deeply depressed — lower than they were when Cameron and Osborne came to power:
[13]
We’re now half of the way to a Japanese-style lost decade. If we carry on on the same track, we may end up with exactly that.
If British businesses don’t have confidence in Cameron and Osborne’s policies, if their policies don’t lower unemployment, don’t create growth, don’t boost imports and exports [14], don’t result in recovery, and don’t even result in less borrowing [15] (their stated aim), why do they continue to pursue them?
