Slowdown? What rubbish-Never had it so good

Bill Emmott's piece in the Guardian this morning is attracting a fair bit of attention and he will be appearing on the Radio 4'S PM programme later today.

According to Bill,

Unemployment is down, the economy is growing. If we call this financial meltdown, we've been leading pretty gilded lives

and adds that

If this is the worst crisis since the Great Depression then we must have all been living pretty cushy, gilded lives since the 1930s.

and continues

The only statistics that point strongly in a downward direction are those for bank shares, house prices and mortgage lending. So far this has really been a crisis just for the Daily Mail and the Financial Times. Oh, and the IMF. Most ordinary people have been affected more by inflation, in the form of rising petrol and food prices, than by anything connected to the supposed crisis of capitalism. Anyone who can remember the unemployment of the early 1980s or the early 90s, or the inflation of the 70s and 80s, ought to be shaking their heads in disbelief at all the kerfuffle over what is just a mild slowdown.

But the past year has seen some fundamental changes in the economy not least the concept that we can no longer rely on cheap commodity prices and that a sustained spending boom is not the way to operate an economy.