Conservative economic policy trivia corner

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Conservative economic policy trivia corner

By Mark Pack | Sun 2nd November 2008 - 10:15 am

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One of the two men George Osborne says are his key advisers on the economic framework he wants to put in place is Alan Budd. He was chief economic adviser at the Treasury when Britain was in deep recession in the early 1990s, including before and during Black Wednesday, when sterling crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), destroying the Government’s then economic policy and costing over £3 billion.

Let’s hope he’s learnt a thing or two 🙂

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4 Comments

Frank H Little 2nd Nov '08 - 10:45am

Budd was an arch-monetarist, which is ominous. Who is the other adviser?
Bernard Salmon 2nd Nov '08 - 5:59pm

Will that be the ERM that all the major parties supported at the time?
Frank H Little 2nd Nov '08 - 10:49pm

Budd was against it, was he not?
Tim Leunig 4th Nov '08 - 12:22am

Alan is a serious economist, the sort of person our party would be delighted to parade around! The post-ERM period was also the time in which Britain became serious about inflation targetting, and for we know Budd may well have proposed making the Bank of E independent in this era – we know that the Tories didn’t like the idea, but HMT certainly seemed to have some plans on how to do it as soon as Labour got in.