Osborne's Kills The Economy To Facilitate Lansley's Asset Stripping.

If anyone had any doubts about the catestrophic idiocy of George Osborne's economic policy then the fourth-guarter figures for GDP lay it out so starkly that even the most ill-informed moron must get it by now. Essentially Osborne's policy has been based on two fallacies of epic proportion and ignorence. The first is that the banks must be saved from their own folly. The second is that Britain's credit rating must be protected at all costs through savage spending cuts that will demonstrate its "credibility" to, of all people, the banks. Unfortunately protecting the banks has given rise to an unexpected outcome - unexpected by George Osborne at least - the continuation of an unsustainale property bubble that is warping the economy and preventing any real chance of a recovery. Economic recovery after an economic crash always receives its first impetus from a fall in asset prices. Investors grab these assets at knock-down prices and the cash in when the asset values begin to rise again as the economy recovers. The problem is that in protecting the banks from their own unwise property investments, Osborne has also protected the value of those selfsame investments and, therefore, property values. There are no assets to buy at knock-down prices and, therfore, no initial impetus for recovery. Investors are simply holding on to their cash and refusing to invest, content instead to reduce their own debt by cutting overheads - in other words, jobs. Britain may well have succeeded in protecting its credit rating but at the cost of a savage austerity programme that precludes the only other route back out of recession - government spending. Osborne has only succeeded to the extent that the money we now have to borrow to fund our ever-growing burden of unemployment benefits is relatively cheap. There is, however, a get of jail free card, at least for the Tories, though for the rest of us it will prove to be one of the most expensive economic fixes in the history of the British economy. The Tories can sell the greatest asset the country has and one that they have been very busy devaluing - the NHS. Even a cursory examination of Andrew Lansley's plans for "reform" in healthcare demonstrates quite clearly that is what they intend to do. Such a move has only one parallel in recent modern history - Hitler's conquest of Europe in order to fund the previous expansion of his armed forces that he needed to conquer Europe in the first place. Get ready for the day that George Osborne, having deliberately killed the economy, then turns around and tell us we have to sell the NHS because "there is no alternative." Between them Cameron, Osborne and Lansley are perpetrating one of the greatest swindles of all time and its your NHS and your future that they are stealing.