UK PLC's Figures Don't Add Up

I wonder if all these figures are correct, or have been so manipulated in every direction that HMG, HM Treasury, the BoE and all their attendant soothsayers can no longer tell what is actually happening

Where on earth is the British economy going? It’s virtually impossible for anyone to say! Here are some simple facts: we have been in a double-dip recession for two quarters; captains of what’s left of UK plc – after the bankers and CEOs have helped themselves to vast and as we now know largely unearned bonuses – have spent the summer on their golden beaches in their Vilebrequin swimwear sipping their martinis, with their loudhailers directed at Nos. 10 and 11, shouting at the PM and Chancellor to do something to get the economy going again!

Here are some more facts: the private sector has created 1,000,000 jobs in the last three years, with 236,000 of these in the last quarter alone. Osborne’s idea of reducing the PSBR through cuts, and letting the private sector start creating the jobs and reducing the absurd Brown deficit, should by now be leading to his goal of a PSBR reduction. The PMI forecasts show upticks in industry, services and construction.

And yet the MPC at the BoE stands ready to launch QE3 in the event of a third quarter (ending September) continuation of recession while the self-same BoE mercilessly robs savers and pensioners by holding interest rates artificially low, even as the government massages the inflation figures down in support of this so-called monetary policy to preserve the housing market – and the banks that went bust inflating this particular bubble in the first place!

Now look at the public finances: Osborne’s plans for removing the structural deficit by 2015 have been blown clean out the window; taxation has hardly been reduced; the PSBR is still rising, despite the so-called cuts, of which only a quarter have been instigated so far; and there is no end to the rising Social Security budget, which now has the cost of the entire NHS added in for confusion’s sake, it seems.

Meanwhile the Coalition has hit the much smaller Defence budget for six, causing the UK’s largest manufacturer and employer, BAE, to seek salvation inside a hugely problematical merger with the European giant, namely EADS, but as the smaller partner.

And at some point I wonder if all these figures are correct, or have been so manipulated in every direction that HMG, HM Treasury, the BoE and all their attendant soothsayers can no longer tell what is actually happening. And the UK is as usual a mirror-image of what is or isn’t going on in the US, where the Bernanke is warming up the printing presses for QE3+, so designated because this time the Fed plans to splash out zillions in buying up household mortgages.

Hang on a mo’, isn’t that where this whole crisis started? Or have the Fed and the BoE, and now the ECB, started pushing their very own backward-feeding loops into stagflation via their printing presses? With no global growth anywhere with which to repay these almighty but unholy debts, it’s probably time to start restudying the course of the Weimar collapse.