TIMES ONLINE: Gordon Brown appeared to acknowledge for the first time today that the world economy was headed for a 1930s-style “depression”.
Mr Brown stumbled slightly over his words at Commons question time, just a week after admitting that Britain was facing a “deep” recession.
As the financial gloom deepens, he told the Tory leader David Cameron today: “We should agree, as a world, on a monetary and fiscal stimulus that will take the world out of depression.”
The comment went unnoticed during rowdy question time exchanges between Mr Cameron and Mr Brown, which centred on protectionism and the Prime Minister’s use of the phrase “British jobs for British workers”. Ironically, the exchange ended with Mr Brown accusing the Tory leader of deliberately "talking Britain down".
The term "depression" refers to sustained depressions characterised by high unemployment and a severe lack of business confidence rather than regular cyclical downturns. It has not been used by British policymakers during the current downturn except by way of warning and comparison with the Great Depression of the early 1930s.
Only two days ago, Stephen Timms, the Treasury Financial Secretary, suggested in the Commons that the UK could be facing economic conditions as harsh as in the Great Depression. Mr Timms warned the country was “facing some of the harshest economic conditions for decades, perhaps for a century”. >>> Phillippe Naughton | Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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