Calling Fraser Nelson – Duncan Donuts on debt need exposing!

Cap’n Fraser Nelson of the good ship Spectator delights in exposing what he calls “Brownies” – silly instances of where he thinks the PM has got his facts wrong. Well, we have a real humdinger for him to expose.

It comes from Alan Duncan, and indicates why Dave thought it wise to move him from an economics job. Today on Radio 5 Simon Mayo had this exchange with the demoted Tory:

SM:And this massive fiscal stimulus which [Obama] is about to launch, you’ll support that?

AD: Well … you know it’s an American solution to an American problem. The difference is that in Britain we’ve got nothing in the kitty because Gordon Brown spent ten years spending so much but the difference too is that because America is such a much larger economy it can well be that what they do can affect us without us having to do exactly the same thing.

BUT DEBT IN THE US IS BIGGER THAN IN THE UK

US: 50.7% OF GDP
UK: 38.5% OF GDP (Source: IMF, Table A8, page.273)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2008/02/pdf/text.pdf

AND BORROWING IN THE US IS BIGGER THAN IN THE UK

US: 8.3% OF GDP (Source: Congressional Budget Office for 2009, page 3)
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9958/01-08-Outlook_Testimony.pdf

UK: 8.0% OF GDP (Source: PBR for 2009/10)
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr08_annexb_262.pdf (Table B11 on page 198)

So, how about it Fraser? Let’s see a big expose on this. We could even give such instances a name: Duncan Donuts, maybe?