This caught my eye because it’s really quite crazy. Last year, the International Monetary Fund pushed the UK quite aggressively for an austerity budget — and now they’re warning that the UK austerity budget has resulted in just 0.2 per cent growth in the second quarter of the year, following two quarters of poor growth. Gee, you don’t suppose unemployment, wage cuts and the additional costs incurred by public program cuts resulted in people having less money to spend, do you?

So what strategy do they recommend if growth doesn’t improve? Come on, you already know: tax cuts and more quantitative easing. You know, the same things that didn’t work here! It’s not really science with these people; it’s fundamentalist religious dogma, like the conviction that Adam and Eve co-existed with dinosaurs:

In a comprehensive analysis of the state of the British economy, the economic watchdog said that, between them, families would have £35 billion less disposable income due to the Government’s attempts to tackle the deficit. In addition, a fall in the value of houses would wipe off more than a tenth of their “tangible” wealth in real terms by 2016, the IMF said in its report.

The forecast for household finances came amid a growing political row about recent slow growth. George Osborne has come under pressure from David Cameron to come up with new ways to stimulate the economy.

The IMF reiterated its support for the Government’s programme of cuts, which it said had “significantly reduced the risk” of a sovereign debt crisis. However, it warned that tax reductions might be necessary if the rate of economic growth did not improve. And although it said the Government had made the right decisions to tackle the deficit, the impact on households would be significant.
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