Last August, the blog noted that politicians were beginning to wake up to the scale of the current crisis. There are still many politicians (and businessmen) who still hope we are facing just a ‘normal recession’. But last week, IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a Malaysian audience that “advanced economies are already in a depression”.
Now a senior UK politician, Ed Balls, formerly an economic adviser to the Prime Minister, has warned that “the reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I’m sure, over 100 years as it will turn out.” He added that “we now are seeing the realities of globalisation, though at a speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before”.