"If you are drunk will having a drinking binge solve the problem? If someone has taken an overdose do you give them a few more pills? If your house is being destroyed by a flood do you pump water into it?
If the economy and currency is seriously sick because you have allowed too much easy credit and spending do you make credit even easier and encourage spending while discouraging working by increasing income tax and national insurance?"
- James, via website
"Of course it's not going to work. For a start, the recession is more likely to turn mid 2010 not mid 2009 making a nonsense of the projections. The most annoying thing is that they keeping on telling people it's not been mainly caused by poor government - 20% growth in public sector jobs, nil growth in private sector jobs over the last 10 years. Uncontrolled excessive public spending, with no visible returns or improvements.
Then you've got 100/125% mortgages to people who clearly could not afford them, scandalous bonuses in the City for short term profits and no contingency for a downturn in the economy. And now the Bank rate bearing no relation to mortgage, loan and credit card rates. Scandalous!"
- Brian Rogerson, via website
"Governments are throwing enormous sums at their respective problems (to get the over-borrowed to spend even more!), which has to be borrowed and eventually paid back. We heard recently that the cost of insuring against the UK government defaulting on its debt had increased and that McDonald's bonds were more highly rated than US Government bonds!"
- Tom V, via website
"Willl the government stimulus work? No, in my opinion it is not aimed at the real problems largely created by the present government over 11 years of socialist mis-management. I am really amazed that one word has not been regularly mentioned: QUANGOs! Public spending in general is out of control and we now have so many unnecessary quango organisations soaking up many many millions of our hard earned money. Cutting out most of these would release a pile of cash! It's been done before and can be done again."
- Coleman, via website
"Under this government our country has gone from being extremely well funded to bankrupt in the short space of 11 years. Personal debt is extremely high, jobs are very insecure, investments are in shaky territory and cash is earning very little. Now is the time to put our house in order with prudent budgeting, reduction in debt and an increase in personal savings not go for broke on another spending binge.
By all means give us decent tax breaks-enough to feel some benefit - but finance them through savings elsewhere. Printing money will not get us out of this problem we will just have a much bigger one in a few years time."
- Carole Lackmaker, via website
"It will not work! 2.5% off a £500.00 TV amounts to about £10.00, you can get more than that shopping around, and what difference will ten quid make? It would have been better to reduce the income tax on the low paid."
- Nigel Foden, via website
"Why does everyone think that borrowing more money will get us out of this mess, when it was borrowing that got us in to it? And my partner would like to know what drugs Will Hutton has been taking when he wrote that article!."
- DMG Group, via website
"This an international situation - the nearest parallel is not other recessions since the Second World War, but 1929. We must all do everything we can to avoid a slump - what is done may not be enough but there are two issues that MUST be addressed: Overall shortage of demand and our availability of credit. At least Brown and Darling are trying, which is more than can be said for the Conservatives who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves - and I am a Tory!"
- Martin Facks, via website
"Mr Brown states this problem was caused by the USA, he seems to be in denial that the banks have been encouraging people to borrow far more than they can afford to pay back for years. What happened to 2.5 x salary + 20% deposit? We need to return to sensible economics; don't spend what you can't repay. Insisting the Banks lend for people to spend will only increase the problem and put off the inevitable. Instead of repossessions, lower the interest rates, stabilise the market!"
- Colin Tuck, via website
"It's as though we've gone back to the 1970s. New Labour RIP. There can't be many places in the world with 60% rates of income tax. And the argument that the debt is a necessary cost of the fixcul stimulus doesn't hold water. The stimulus is a one-off £20bn, the debt will increase £120bn in one year and by a planned £500bn over the next few.
Bad budgeting, over-confidence on tax revenues and poor control of efficiency and spending in fact.
And record breaking levels of debt raising by the government, that could crowd out the private sector, or even over-load invetsor appetite. Just like the US, we will be looking for China, Arab states to fund us.
Most worrying, there seems no way out of the hole that Gordon has put us in. A £2bn tax hit on the higher-earning may feel good, but it doesn't do much to bridge a ?120bn and rising annual shortfall of spending over taxes."
- Robert Marr, via website.
"Not a single word about PERSONAL debt which has been stimulated by the credit card companies and banks and which has far greater immediate impact upon families (hard working or otherwise) than the tinkering at the fringes with a minor adjustment on VAT.
Instead the very same people who are up to their ears in such debt are encouraged to go out and spend some more! Who is in charge of the asylum?
HM Government now "plans" or finds itself obliged through its actions to borrow huge sums of money. With sterling having declined already by an amount greater than past formal devaluations who is going to lend and what will be the coupon terms in order to stimulate any interest in this risky venture?"
- JW, via website.
"I am totally with Tom (Clougherty) on the question of the Chancellor's package. For the life of me I cannot see the VAT reduction making the slightest difference to spending and it costs the government an absolute fortune. I also cannot see why diesel fuel is 15% higher than petrol...The tax hike will drive out the wealth creators...they got the economy going. The Bank mismanagement is crass incompetence and, whilst I hate more regulation, the rules on lending ratios need enforcing."
- "mioroger", via website
