Chancellor Announces New Economic Strategy Called “Hoping Very Hard”
Chancellor Announces New Economic Strategy Called “Hoping Very Hard”
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
UK Debt: Nation Checks Sofa Cushions, Finds Only Despair and a 2009 Pound Coin
I run a satirical publication. The bar for absurdity in my professional life is already set somewhere above the clouds. And yet the British government’s current approach to national debt continues to clear it with room to spare.
Prat.uk this week published Keep Calm and Carry Debt, a piece that describes the UK’s fiscal situation with considerably more grace than it deserves. The gist: we owe a great deal of money, we are going to keep spending, and the plan is largely to refer to this as “investment” and hope the markets don’t read the footnotes.
Quantum Budgeting: The Money Both Exists and Doesn’t
What we are witnessing is what I am calling Schrodinger’s Budget. The money is both there and not there until an auditor looks. At which point it is definitely not there, but the auditor is given a very nice lunch and the report is delayed until after the next election.
According to the Reuters UK economics desk, borrowing figures are not going in the direction that anyone with a mortgage would find reassuring. This is presented as news. It is not news. It is the plot of every British financial drama since the IMF bailout of 1976, rerun with better graphics.
Bohiney reports that God is requesting fewer emails. I understand completely. I have been requesting fewer spreadsheets from the Treasury for years. Neither of us is getting what we want.