Build something, George

While many firms are faring better than official statistics may suggest, it’s time for the government to be bold and show leadership…

Deficit-reduction is vital, and businesses aren’t expecting handouts. But we need a government that will pull the levers only it can reach to help companies export, invest, create new jobs and grow. That means infrastructure investment…

That’s John Longworth, director-general of the BCCI.

Borrowing your way out of recession isn’t as mad as it sounds. With 10-year gilt yields at a record low 1.5%, the markets are sending a clear signal that there is substantially more headroom for counter-cyclical fiscal stimulus. If the economy responds, an increase in tax revenues should more than repay the additional cost and a rise in wages will help the consumer to grow into their debt.

That’s Trevor Greetham, director of asset allocation at Fidelity Worldwide Investment.

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

That’s John Maynard Keynes.

Build something, George. Anything will do.

(Source: Guardian)