Fundsmith chief executive Terry Smith on why austerity v growth is a sterile debate…
I have appeared recently on Newsnight (23 minutes in), ITN News and BBC News talking about the debate over austerity v growth. I also appeared on Robert Peston’s BBC2 programme about the Eurozone crisis – The Great Euro Crash.
These appearances were prompted by the Eurozone crisis coming back into focus, and in particular by a period of a week in which the Dutch government fell; elections in Greece failed to produce a government, and in particular failed to produce a consensus which supported the austerity measures which Greece had agreed to as part of its last bailout deal; and the socialist candidate Francois Hollande defeated the incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy to become President of France. Clearly the electorates are rejecting austerity. It has now led David Cameron to start making supportive noises about Monsieur Hollande’s call for policies to support growth. It seems strange to scramble to align oneself with a soundbite. But then I’m not a politician.
The appearances were also a result of the publication of the latest piece of research by my colleague Dr Tim Morgan – Blowing the Whistle on UK Austerity.
Tim’s research explodes the myth that the UK economy is struggling under the impact of government spending cuts. Government spending was cut by just 1.5% in 2011-12 and is only planned to fall by 5-6% by 2016-17 (so far away, who cares?). It is still over GBP20bn higher than government expenditure in 2008-09 under Labour. More worryingly, it is 50% higher in real terms than it was 10 years ago. As Tim succinctly puts it: what is it that the government wasn’t supplying ten years ago that we now cannot live without? The answer of course is nothing. Expenditure can be radically reduced and needs to be if there is to be any chance of closing the deficit which is currently running at over GBP120bn per annum and adding to the national debt which is already too high.
Such a miniscule cut did not send the UK economy back into recession – it never existed in reality (see below about the size of the stimulus which has been applied just to get it to stand still).
My stance is clear and it has been so since the onset of the financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis: The debate between those who propose policies designed to promote growth and those who see the need for austerity is a sterile one for a number of reasons. The simplest reason is that we are going to get austerity whatever people want. There is simply no source of additional money to spend to stimulate growth. The bond markets have had enough of governments who continually run unsustainable deficits. You cannot borrow your way out of a debt crisis.
Additional deficit spending funded by increased borrowing would not produce the desired result even if it were possible. So far the UK economy has been the recipient of GBP500bn of deficit spending, GBP325bn of Quantitative Easing and interest rates have been at a 300 year low for over three years. These so-called Keynesian measures (I say “so-called” because most of their proponents seem to me to have about as much grasp of Keynesian economics as they do the topography of the far side of the Moon) have not managed to get the economy growing so far, and they will not. The velocity of circulation of money has slowed-people want to pay down debt where they can. The government is also an incredibly inefficient spender (unsurprisingly as it’s not their money) – in the years prior to the recession it borrowed GBP2.18 for every GBP1 of growth. As Einstein said, to keep repeating the same actions whilst expecting a different outcome is a definition of insanity.
The only way to generate growth is to cut the size of public spending sufficiently to allow for tax cuts. Individuals and companies are much more efficient at spending the money they earn than the government is on their behalf, so better to leave more of it in their hands. Yes, I do have a plan for exactly where to make the cuts. With regard to the Eurozone I first predicted that Greece would leave in April 2010. I have not changed my mind.
There have been no fundamental solutions applied to correct the problems of the Eurozone. You cannot solve a problem of solvency and lack of competitiveness with liquidity and rhetoric. If you could, it would have been solved long ago. When Greece leaves, the crisis will roll on into Portugal (I know it’s a small country but everyone seems to have forgotten them) followed by Spain, Italy, Ireland and ultimately France. Yes, the horrible truth is that financially France is a peripheral country, one of the PIIGS.
