To stop cuts, seize control of the banks!
The Tory shadow Chancellor George Osborne must think he pulled off a coup on Monday 15 March. He got Jeffrey Sachs - a real economist, an architect of Russia's "shock treatment" after 1991, but who has since distanced himself from extreme free-marketism - to co-author an article with him for the Financial Times. The article said that the Tories are right to go for rapid, big cuts in public spending to reduce Britain's Budget deficit, rather than a slower approach which includes waiting and seeing whether future growth will erode the debt more painlessly. The European Commission gave Osborne...