Fiscal fetishism
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The financial pages are dominated by discussion of fiscal consolidation and bankers’ bonuses. Many other subjects, including important ones, hardly get a look in.
Take today’s release of business investment figures from the Office for National Statistics. According to the provisional estimate it was down by 5.8% in the final quarter of 2009 and 24.1% lower than the final quarter of 2008.
Such figures give some indication of the scale of the economic crisis and bode badly for the future. If investment is not increased it will not be possible to rejuvenate the economy by generating faster growth. Yet there is hardly any discussion of the topic.
Apart from anything else it begs the question of how good a job the financial media generally does for its readers. You can probably guess my answer to the question.
