{"id":19695,"date":"2013-03-18T08:31:52","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T08:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=19695"},"modified":"2013-03-18T08:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T08:32:46","slug":"we-want-balance-the-books-even-by-2018-the-treasury-forecasting-model-is-wrong-and-osborne-is-too-dumb-to-have-noticed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/03\/18\/we-want-balance-the-books-even-by-2018-the-treasury-forecasting-model-is-wrong-and-osborne-is-too-dumb-to-have-noticed\/","title":{"rendered":"We won’t balance the books, even by 2018. The Treasury forecasting model is wrong and Osborne is too dumb to have noticed"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the FT notes this morning<\/a> (because almost everything about this budget is being leaked in advance)<\/p>\n

George Osborne will admit in Wednesday\u2019s Budget that it will take even longer than previously forecast for public sector debt to begin to fall.<\/p>\n

His bleak message will further damage the government\u2019s reputation for economic competence.<\/p>\n

Having originally committed to bring the burden of public debt down by 2015-16 at the latest,<\/span>\u00a0the chancellor extended that target by a year in December<\/a>\u00a0and is now preparing to concede another delay to 2017-18.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This has, in fact, been the pattern since 2011. Every time Osborne speaks about clearing the deficit the time scale from the\u00a0time\u00a0of speaking to the time of clearing remains fixed - but is\u00a0therefore\u00a0moved at a constant pace into the future.<\/p>\n

There is in fact good reason for this. The\u00a0budget\u00a0is forecast in detail for two years and then from year three on moves onto a generic forecasting model that uses long term underlying growth\u00a0assumptions. So the first two years are always problematic\u00a0but\u00a0because of the\u00a0realistic\u00a0assumptions used. Thereafter though the long term\u00a0underlying\u00a0growth trend in the UK is\u00a0used\u00a0and not the pattern of\u00a0behaviour\u00a0we now know to\u00a0exist. That always means that from year three on the budget always says things will get better and so, five years out, we're always in balance, according\u00a0to Osborne.<\/p>\n

But we won't be. The model is wrong. But George is too dumb to have\u00a0noticed\u00a0as yet. And we're all paying the price for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the FT notes this morning (because almost everything about this budget is being leaked in advance) George Osborne will admit in Wednesday\u2019s Budget that
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,35,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-economics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}