Finance (No. 2) Bill

My hon. Friend is right on both points, but he also raises an important issue about what Keynes called ““animal spirits””. It is fair to say that all the signals are that the animal spirits are somewhat more depressed now than they were a few months ago and that the things that have depressed them are the decisions that were announced in the June Budget. Ominous noises are coming out of the recent International Monetary Fund meeting about currency wars and competitive devaluations, and they offer worrying echoes of conditions that led to the great depression in the 1930s. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was not joking or exaggerating when he warned the IMF meeting about the dangers that the huge increases in unemployment will pose for our democratic institutions. Yet none of this is referenced in the measures before us today.