I attended a talk by Anatole Kaletsky who used to be with The Times and is now moving to Thomson Reuters. He talked about how the UK and the US took two different approaches post the financial crisis – it was an experiment of sorts. The two countries started from the same point but followed two very different paths; US followed the path of QE – quantitative easing or fiscal stimulus while UK went in for austerity measures which spelt cuts even in areas such as health and education.
Now the impact of those two approaches is becoming evident. At a time when kick starting the economy was critical, fiscal stimulus, it would seem from the example of these two nations, was the thing to do, argues Anatole.