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At Westminster, Vince Cable has earned the name Dr Doom for the way he has prophesised many of the calamities that have befallen the economy. Yesterday, he was at it again, describing the situation as a "national economic emergency" and calling for serious tax cuts for the low paid. Those in the know, know to take heed.
The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman has predicted so many of our current economic woes that he's even started censoring himself.
In November 2003 when interest rates stood at a 48-year low at 3.5% and no one was talking about the end of the longest boom in the UK's history, Cable was on his feet in the Commons warning of the hangover.
When Northern Rock went to the Bank of England for help last September, Cable said "nationalise". Labour and the Tories said nationalise too - just six months, a handful of advisers and quite a lot of money in consultancy fees later.
Cable has been talking of a "ticking debt timebomb" (sound familiar? The Tories' attack, almost verbatim) for most of the last five years. In August last year he warned that the crisis in the US sub-prime market might not be just an American crisis: "The British must not be smug."
Most recently, at this year's Lib Dem party conference, Cable called for an end to short selling to stop speculators "betting against the taxpayer". The government went on to stop it a few days later.
Then there was the tip-off he received about trouble in the Icelandic banking system. "We had a meeting and discussed whether we should blow the whistle on it," Cable said of the moment a colleague alerted him to the problem, months before it erupted, taking with it British savers' money. Why didn't they blow the whistle? "It was obvious that had we done so, it would have triggered a panic."
His seems to be the very best advice money can buy and the bonus for the cash-strapped government is that, since MPs make speeches in the Commons for free, Cable's wisdom is cheap at the price.
- Pre-budget report
- Economic policy
- Alistair Darling
- George Osborne
- Conservatives
- Tax and spending
- Recession
- Credit crunch
- Tax
- Income tax
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