Tekst bretum að afstýra kreppu hjá sér?

David McWillimas veltir því fyrir sér í skondinni grein.

Borrowing is only going to dig us into deeper hole

I’m writing this from the Starbucks at the world’s largest shopping centre; the place is vast. Westfield in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, opened last October. [...]

[....]How, when Britain is on the verge of being downgraded by the rating agencies, can this place be so packed? Now granted, today is a bank holiday Monday, but the shopping centre is jammed, despite the heatwave.

The reason it is full is that the Brits are doing everything in their power to stave off the recession and prevent it turning into a depression.

Forget all the stuff about “green shoots”; what is in the balance here is the difference between a recession and a depression and the British authorities know it. They are printing money when possible and borrowing to keep the show on the road.

Sterling has been allowed to collapse and there is no sense that they are worried about it falling further. In short, they are trying to borrow their way out of a recession that was caused by too much borrowing in the first place. The 0pc sofa finance deals in Habitat are the thin edge of the wedge, emblematic of a society, like our own, that has run up a financial cul de sac. We think that by borrowing and spending more people’s money now, we will get out of this hole and then escape the ramifications of a 10-year binge.

The whole of the English-speaking world is at the same game. If we get away with it, we will simply transfer the weight of our debts on to the next generation.

But the real test is in the government bond markets. Are they prepared to accept our IOUs yet again? Hardly, which is why a crash in the global bond market in the months ahead is probably going to mark the next phase in the first Great Recession of the 21st century.

Whatever happens, we are in an intellectual conundrum because the whole point of our economies can’t surely be more of the same, more debts and more stuff made in China ending up mothballing in the wardrobes of the West.

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Nú er það spurningin hvort að bretum tekst að viðhalda ballinu og halda áfram að versla, eða hvort að allt fer á verri veg - þar með eignir Landsbankans í bretlandi sem eru víst að verulegum hluta lán til kaupa á verslanakeðjum. Ég er ekki bjartsýnn fyrir hönd breta, það sem heldur þeim gangandi núna er prentvélin í Englandsbanka. David hinn írski veit nokkuð um hvað málið snýst og hefur gert um árabil.