Current update on the tax but don't spend UK........
George Osborne does not have a plan B, but there is a plan A+ | Julian Glover | Comment is free | The Guardian
Wasting their "fiat currency" moment for close to zero growth....
Quote: Throw a dismally small number into the air, add a zero and a decimal point and your guess will land near the result. Ministers will be relieved by any outcome without a minus attached. The word doing the rounds inside government to describe the economy – "choppy" – barely suffices. Britain is not just facing whitecaps in the Solent. Howling Southern Ocean gale is more like it.
A year ago, in the same quarter, the British economy grew by 1.2%. This time it might only manage 0.2%, or nothing, on top of feeble quarters before. The thing new intake Tory MPs joked about as they packed up their offices for the summer was not some further disaster over hacking, but the possibility of being recalled to parliament in August to deal with the implosion of the eurozone and the British economy with it. Thursday's quick fix in Brussels may bring only short-term relief.
Everything else, more or less, is survivable: but the coalition could not outlast a collapse of confidence in its economic plans. And with Monday's figures confidence will be shaken again. Climbing food and fuel prices, a domestic recovery made of jelly, a eurozone bond market prone to bouts of nervous collapse, a cooling-off of Asian growth and a US political system maniacally intent on blowing up the dollar are the worst companions to the government's bitter programme of tax rises and spending cuts.
The paradox is that the nastier things get, the more those in charge will be persuaded to stick to their course. There really isn't a plan B, only an infinity of variations on plan A, which is to spend less and tax more in the expectation that at some point the economy will grow and in the meantime the bond markets will decide to kill some other unfortunate country rather than Britain.