Macroeconomics: UK economy, IB Economics

Richard Partington writes on last week's Budget comparing the Chancellor to a snake-oil salesman pitching something he knows to be fundamentally disappointing, to an expectant nation.

He calls for an end to the pie-in-the-sky policymaking and a return to honest debate about crumbling infrastructure, low productivity and unfunded pledges to cut taxes, increase public spending or both. 

Gordon Brown's of the view that something's got to give, and that there needs to be a radical rethink to break out of the cycle of low growth. He suggests that the Treasury needs to assume a war footing, co-ordinating growth via a National Economic Council.

He sees persistently low productivity as the root of many of the growth problems, exacerbated by austerity rather than fiscal stimulus as in the US.