economics

The TUC Blog will be launching a new report on the relationship between inequality and economic growth on Monday, in an online seminar.

So, about that GDP. It's not looking so good, again. And the Financial Times's blog points us to Dr. Tim Morgan, global head of research for City stockbrokers Tullett Prebon. Dr. Morgan has noticed that the government's financial plans depend on economic growth, and that it is unlikely that net trade alone can provide enough demand for that growth to occur. Therefore, for the cuts to actually reduce the budget deficit, the consumer sector has to load up on debt.

OK, so the scores are in. Unsurprisingly, Labour did well except for Scotland, the Tories held their core vote, and the Lib Dems got massacred. No won the referendum.

Our original mission was to report on how the coalition parties would settle their differences. As it turned out, the Tories adopted a plan of going as far and as fast as possible on their policy goals in the hope that the differences wouldn't be tested - as a result, this blog has been more of an attack dog than we originally thought.

Obviously, budget blogging is pretty late to the party. But I think there's a way in which not bothering with the budget is a valid point. It's been commonplace for years to say that budget day isn't what it used to be, but this year might have been designed to dramatise the point. There was a controversial emergency budget, and then there was a far more controversial Comprehensive Spending Review. And then there was an utterly inconsequential budget. Of course, the media faff was as noisy as ever. When the dust settled, though, it became clear that the budget was essentially a no-decision.

This post is part 2 in a two-part series. The first can be found here