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Osborne Warns Labor Would Wreck Economy

Osborne Warns Labor Would Wreck Economy
Osborne Warns Labor Would Wreck Economy

British Finance Minister George Osborne said that if the opposition Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn ever won power it would wreck the British economy with money printing, higher borrowing and punitive income taxes.

Corbyn, who won control of the Labor Party on Saturday with a mandate to oppose spending cuts, named a hard left ally as his would-be finance minister, signaling his intention to pursue a hard left economic agenda, Reuters reported.

At the heart of Corbyn’s economic policy is ‘people’s quantitative easing’, a proposal to print money to pay for investment in infrastructure such as housing and railways. He also wants to renationalize rail and energy sectors.

Osborne, who is currently frontrunner to succeed Prime Minister David Cameron as Conservative leader ahead of the 2020 election, warned that Corbyn’s ideas would undermine the Bank of England’s independence and undo a generation of work by both his own Conservative party and previous Labor governments.

“By printing cash to pay for public spending, it would stoke inflation, ramp up prices and undermine the real-terms pay rises that many have worked so hard for,” he wrote in The Times newspaper on Tuesday. He called Corbyn’s renationalization plans an “industrial policy straight out of the 1970s”.

Corbyn and his finance spokesman John McDonnell have argued that printing money to pay for investment during times of recession will sustain growth–something they say should not be achieved by paring back public spending.

Financialtribune.com