This Crisis Is an Opportunity to Put Our Wasteful House in Order Business Comment

Summary

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AS we come into the review-of-the-year season, no-one can doubt that 2008 is destined to throb with special resonance in the history books. In economic terms, it has been the equivalent of a 1989 or a 2001 - the great recent geopolitical turning points.

First, there was the banking disaster, in which Scotland has suffered disproportionately. The human costs of this trauma, which on Friday resulted in HM government buying a GBP15 billion stake in RBS, are set to hit home in 2009. But it has already transformed assumptions about risk and reward in ways that will change behaviour for years to come.

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Extract

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This Crisis Is an Opportunity to Put Our Wasteful House in Order Business Comment

Then there is last week's prebudget report (PBR), which has summoned up debt figures on a gargantuan scale that invoke comparisons with wartime.

All the fancy footwork of the chancellor and the prime minister has not averted widespread interpretation of this document as a lo...

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