If the UK’s finances were a person, you would have diagnosed a potentially fatal illness a year ago. The patient was mortally wounded, bleeding heavily, and it was only after extraordinary and emergency resuscitation at the last minute that the danger of death was averted.
The causes of the organ failure were it seems due to the patient bingeing in an unprecendented way, consuming large amounts of unsuitable sustenance, a poison in fact.
Any medical practitioner having regard to such an illness and the excesses of the patient, would administer to the recovered - and hopefully contrite patient - a stern lecture on the evils of over-imbibing. A doctor would explain in words of one syllable the consequence of similar excesses and would spell out in very certain terms the very likely danger of death if such behaviour happened again.
A sensible patient, having had a near-death experience, would then mend their ways, choosing instead of their usual excesses a more frugal existence and avoid, like the proverbial plague, the very behaviour which had brought them so low.
I don’t see any of that in the alleged resurgence of financial health. We seem to have side-stepped the issues and the patient, if anything, is being encouraged to carry on as before. Consumption, growth – these are the terms we hear commentators crowing about, as if they are anything to be proud of.
It looks to me as if the patient still has not received the message. I fear that it will limp along, becoming increasingly over-weight, talking the talk but not desisting temptation nor doing the walks and the runs it should. And as Greenspan says, yes, it will all happen again, the patient will never really learn.
