Recent quotes:

Must-Read: Robert Skidelsky: The Conservative Election Manifesto - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

The Conservatives have continued to spin their familiar yarn of having rescued Britain from ‘Labour’s Great Recession’… … the mother of all lies. The Great Recession was caused by the banks. Governments, the Labour government included, by bailing out the banks and continuing to spend, stopped the Great Recession from turning into a Great Depression. Yet practically everyone seems to believe that the Great Recession was manufactured by Gordon Brown. The Conservatives claim that ‘by halving the deficit we have restored confidence to the economy’. This cheerfully ignores the near academic consensus that their deficit-reduction policies over the last 5 years have made the British economy between 5 and 10% smaller than it would have been with more sensible policies…. The Conservative narrative has become the Overton Window of our day, outside of which policies are unthinkable. But sooner or later reality will break in, and what is now unthinkable will become sensible again. But not in this election.
#Robert-Skidelsky - equitablegrowth.org

Today's Must-Must-Read: Robert Skidelsky: Messed-Up Macro - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

“Until a few years ago, economists of all persuasions confidently proclaimed that the Great Depression would never recur. In a way, they were right… …After the financial crisis of 2008 erupted, we got the Great Recession instead. Governments managed to limit the damage by pumping huge amounts of money into the global economy and slashing interest rates to near zero. But, having cut off the downward slide of 2008-2009, they ran out of intellectual and political ammunition. Economic advisers assured their bosses that recovery would be rapid…. But then it stalled in 2010…. It is now pretty much agreed that fiscal tightening has cost developed economies 5-10 percentage points of GDP growth since 2010. All of that output and income has been permanently lost… [and] made the task of reducing budget deficits and national debt as a share of GDP much more difficult…. That should have ended the argument. But it did not…
#Robert-Skidelsky - equitablegrowth.org