Stiglitz backs Brown

I am just reading the Independent's front page splash with Joseph Stiglitz.former senior advisor to Bill Clinton who wants Gordon Brown to defy economics and continue to reflate.

He says the paper

is appalled that the banks have expressed "not a note of gratitude" about the funding and subsidies they have received from taxpayers "without which they would not exist", and that they have had the cheek to turn around and say that they don't have enough money to lend to small businesses or would-be homeowners, but that they have to spend vast sums of money raised from often hard-up taxpayers on obscene bonuses

But it is advice to Gordon that for me stands out.He thinks that he should ignore any clamour to reduce the budget deficit and recoils at Cameroneconomics

"Because cutting back means the economy goes into a downturn and the markets lose even more confidence, as it will trigger another recession or depression." If we do do that, he says, we will get the dreaded "double dip" recession. He urges ministers instead to tell the opposition and those short-sleeved, short-sighted, short-memoried traders in the City to consider the investment and returns that will come from all the public spending we are doing.

for those who worry about our AAA credit rating

he finds it "unconscionable" that the British Government is now being held to ransom by the very credit ratings agencies – currently murmuring about withdrawing the UK's AAA rating – which fouled up so badly over sub-prime mortgages and all those unfathomable securities that landed us in the mess we're in now. And if the markets won't buy our gilts – the bonds the Treasury issues to cover its vast borrowings (about £175bn this year) – he wants the Bank of England to be "cooperative" and buy them instead.