Britain's parlous economic situation - and the need for a stable government to address it - is scrutinised from across the Atlantic by Landon Thomas in the International Herald Tribune. He sees the UK "teetering on the brink" of a fiscal tragedy to rival that of Greece.
"Suddenly, investors are asking if Britain may soon face its own sovereign debt crisis if the Government fails to slash its growing budget deficits quickly enough to escape the contagious fears of financial markets," writes Thomas, adding that investors are "fretting that Parliament will be too fragmented after the election to whip Britain’s messy finances back into shape.
"Without a strong political majority to tackle Britain’s lumbering fiscal problems, investors could start to make it greatly more expensive for the Government to raise funds, setting the stage for a potential double-dip recession - if not worse," he adds.
The overall level of debt in Britain is said to be the second largest in the world, after Japan’s, at 380 per cent of GDP. British household debt is now 170 per cent of overall annual income, compared with 130 per cent in the US.
“It’s not just ‘basket cases’ like Greece that can be considered candidates for sovereign crises,” said Simon White of Variant Perception, a research house in London that caters to hedge funds and wealthy individuals.
Source: International Herald Tribune - read in full here
Time for our MPs and would-be MPs to drop their hate-filled Tribalism and start thinking about how they will work effectively together for the country.
Independents such as Dr Steve Ford in Hexham are the way to demonstrate cross-party, issues-based politics - a politics of integrity, accountability and real democracy.
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