Linking tax credits and the fiscal charter

I have made fun in the past about Labour politicians and supporters who in public trip up once the word borrowing is mentioned. An interview...

A way forward for the centre left on deficits

When it comes to fiscal policy the politics of the right at the moment [1] could be reasonably described as deficit fetishism. The policy of...

Is deficit fetishism innate or contextual?

In a couple of interesting posts , Jonathan Hopkin and Ben Rosamond, political scientists from the LSE and Copenhagen respectively, talk abo...

Fantasy macroeconomics

The prize for the biggest piece of pure fantasy yesterday must go to the Chancellor when he said this: “Today, our goal is for Britain to be...

Can we have our instrument back?

This is a rather long post about how one of the instruments of macroeconomic policy has been taken away, and replaced by a fetish about gove...