Tom Streithorst
Spend, spend, spend: in this climate, you can't have too much of a good thing
Britain, along with much of the western world, has (barely) managed to crawl its way out of recession. That it has done so is mostly thanks to unprecedented and, I dare say heroic, government easing. For two years, monetary policy has been spectacularly loose, with interest rates close to zero, and fiscal policy has been hugely expansive, with deficits more than doubling. Finance ministers haven’t had much choice. With the private sector deleveraging, households and businesses saving instead of spending, the government has had to step in order to maintain demand. Imagine what a mess we would be in today with interest rates at normal levels and without massive deficit spending. Unemployment would be through the roof. But all this government expenditure, combined with lower tax revenues, has pushed deficits to almost wartime levels. The question is: will bond markets continue to shrug off what some see as unsustainable budget deficits?
Economists are fighting a civil war over what is more frightening: government deficits or their eradication. We should all pay attention, because the consequences of either side winning could be brutal.
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David Goodhart
1989: "Ich war dabei"
I was there in Berlin on November 9th 1989. There is nothing special about this: it seems that half the world was there with me, although I don’t recall seeing them at the time. Daniel Johnson, the editor of a rival publication, even claims to have asked the vital question at an East Berlin press conference that led to the announcement that the wall was effectively defunct. But I think I am the only British journalist who witnessed that great evening in the company of pony-tailed American pop music impresarios.
The East German regime had been looking vulnerable for several weeks—even since the big East German outflow through Hungary—and we (at the Financial Times where I was working) were taking every opportunity to get into the country to gauge popular feeling. So when the opportunity came to attend a conference on rock music promotion in East Germany at a swanky East Berlin hotel from November 9th to 10th I grabbed it.
The East German government was keenly aware of the importance of rock music in keeping its young people happy and it used to attract a stream of the best bands in the world. It also had quite a thriving rock music industry of its own and was keen to export bands—at least those who could be relied upon to return. As I sat rather bored listening to East German cultural bureaucrats debating with the pony-tailed Americans I remember someone coming into the hall, in the early evening, and saying that the wall had opened.
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Helen Radice
British musicians: on tour
In Saturday’s Financial Times, Andrew Clark describes British orchestras’ manic touring schedules, and claims that British musicians are the hardest working rootin’ tootin’ band the world over, beating the idle Germans into a cocked hat. I should know.
I am currently a dynamic harpist-about-Europe. I’m all too familiar with the extras that touring can involve; excellent initiatives, like playing to sick children. But the main reason we musicians do it is pure, crispy wonga. British orchestras receive much less public funding than their German rivals. Musical Brits, therefore — saving the orchestra money on sick pay, holiday and pensions — often freelance. No play, no pay: they cannot afford, as Clark writes, “to down tools.”
Being freelance has made British musicians the Polish plumbers of music. We are on time, hard working, good at what we do, and with an endless supply of similarly-named friends whom we organise to cover if we cannot work. Of course we are easy to work with. If we don’t work, we don’t eat. But that isn’t the only reason.
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