Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Angry
"The former Bank of England governor Mervyn King has denied that the previous Labour government was responsible for the financial crash, saying there was a shared intellectual responsibility across the political parties and financial institutions for failing to foresee the problems
Saying his view on the cause of the crisis had evolved, he said he doubted any single one country could have found their way through the crisis."
The Cardigan.
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Nice straw man you have there.
Nobody has ever said Labour caused the crash. They have, however, repeatedly pointed out that normal economic management requires the paying down of debt and the increasing of reserves during a boom, in order to better survive the bust during that (inevitable) part of the cycle.
Gordon Brown, on the other hand, famously claimed to have abolished the cycle of boom and bust, and used that "fact" to justify not only the spending of tax receipts during the boom, but also the running up, rather than the paying down, of debt. He then spent this on a massive expansion in state largesse, including but not limited to the ensnaring of large swathes of the working population in the benefits system via so-called tax credits.
When the crash occurred, the UK's ability to pay its way through it was severely hampered. The UK's ability to maintain state spending at a level commensurate with the size of its economy is now also severely hampered by the need to also pay enormous obligations arising from that debt.