The UK economy must, then, be going horribly wrong. Our political leaders adopted all three tactics last week, thereby betraying their deep-rooted fears.
Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, offered the denial. In an interview with the BBC, Mr Brown said: "We've seen house prices rise by about 180 per cent over the last 10 years and they have risen by about 18 per cent over the last three years, so a 2.5 per cent fall is something that is containable." He was referring to the latest decline in the Halifax house price index.
Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made the claim that things are worse elsewhere. On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, he said: "The IMF has down-rated every country's growth forecast in the light of what's been happening in the world economy [as if the world economy is something other than a collection of countries]. However, they have lowered their expectations in relation to us by less than other countries."
It was Mr Brown, though, who chose to blame others for the UK's latest economic turbulence. Apparently, the world is "in a difficult situation arising from what's happening in America".
Mr Brown's first quote is a denial of the laws of gravity. While it's possible that house prices have reached a higher sustainable level, history and damaged reputations suggest otherwise. It was, after all, Irving Fisher, the great American economist, who famously (and presumably regrettably) said just before the 1929 stock market crash that "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau". While there's no guarantee that what goes up must come down, the history of the UK housing market strongly suggests that the 2.5 per cent decline recorded by Halifax in the latest month will, sadly, mark the beginnings of a major slide.
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