What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?
He points out that according to an IMF report (that came out before Obama’s budget) Britain’s fiscal adjustment is the biggest. Too right. Labour left Britain with a colossal deficit. My point was
about the speed of dealing with it.
He asks for evidence bond rates rose and I’m happy to provide it here. And you only have to look to Portugal to see how it can
all go wrong.
I couldn’t help but notice Labour did not rebut the key parts of my argument: that America is now focussed on dealing with her debt. Labour are almost the only ones left denying the need to do so.
UPDATE 2: A reader takes issue with Matthew Hancock’s claim that US bond rates rose after the Standard and Poor’s announcement on 18 April 2011, on the basis that this was the case
for only one of the nine maturities issued by the US government. We offer his comments as a clarification:
“The US government issues debt of 9 different maturities (3-month, 6-month, 12-month, 2-year, 3-year, 5-year, 7-year, 10-year, 30-year).
On the 18th April, yields on all of these maturities fell.
On the 19th April, yields on 5 of these maturities fell. 3-month, 6-month, and 3-year treasuries were unchanged, and the yield on 1 maturity, 5-year treasuries, rose by 0.3 basis points,
from 2.0629% to 2.0662% (i.e by three thousandths of a percentage point).
Mr Hancock published his blog post at 9.29am on the 20th, thus approximately 4.5 hours before the US stock market opened on the 20th, so his remarks can only be taken to refer to the 18th
and 19th April. Yields did rise on the 20th, but this was after Mr Hancock’s posting.”
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