The Housewife's Squeezed Purse

I have great respect for Ruth Lea. She was a highly successful Director General of the Centre for Policy Studies and wrote a number of excellent treatises on the economy. She has written a blog for ConservativeHome today here which sets out a defence of the Bank of England's latest round of QE. It is the first defence of QE that I have seen and for the sake of the country I hope she is correct although my instinct is that she is wrong. Janet Daley has also written about the economy today in the Telegraph here in which she maintains that a reduction in the cost of living will encourage housewives to open their purses which will then result in more trade and greater economic growth to the benefit of us all. Janet Daley makes a number of suggestions for swelling the nation's purses including reducing the cost of heating and energy to cutting taxes. We are told to expect some big, controversial announcements from Osborne in his Autumn Statement and hopefully he will flesh out what he has said about green taxes. Delaying the whole green programme including green taxes will certainly help with the cost of living and leave more in our purses so that wee can spend more.