I went on the radio this week to talk economic gloom. My starting point was this very good piece by Geoff Bertram in The Conversation exploring the question: Does the government know what it is doing? Answer: very possibly not. Their austerity measures, which they’ve touted as getting the car out of the ditch, are in fact very likely making things worse. The more austere it gets, the deeper we go into recession.
Various indicators are now worse than the GFC and worse than '87, with no prospect of an end to the downward spiral while they remain on this course.
Johnny, the bFM breakfast host, is a glass-half-full sort of guy, so he tried a question that might produce something sunnier to hang our hats on. Where might we be in a year from now? Did I think they might have corrected course by then? I said no, they seemed too dogged and blinkered for that, too resolute in making a virtue of inaction and neglect.
