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Will Hutton: Tomorrow, Mr Darling must introduce morality into the City

The pre-Budget report is the most important economic moment in the 11-year life of the Labour government. Chancellor Alistair Darling has to walk the finest of lines. He has to marshal well-directed and overwhelming financial force to limit recession, while simultaneously and credibly persuading everybody that he has not lost control of the longest sequence of big Budget deficits outside wartime.Get it right and Labour has a chance of winning the next election. Get it wrong and his party will be back in the wilderness.For the last six weeks, Treasury economists and officials have been assessing and reassessing the outlook for the economy and the government's rapidly deteriorating finances. Meanwhile, the wider economic news has got ever gloomier. It will be no surprise that the Treasury is forecasting a significant recession and slow recovery. The problem is that the banking crisis has wrecked the relationships and assumptions on which economic forecasts are made. Reality could be very much worse than expectations.The City of London has landed our country in a mess. Nobody has yet gone as far as the Swiss UBS and invited the incompetent, overpaid monsters at the top to repay their bonuses. They should. Sir Tom Mckillop, outgoing chair of the Royal Bank of Scotland, is so far alone in saying sorry to his investors. Yet having mistakenly once lent far too much, banks are now mistakenly lending far too little.Addressing this crisis - as much moral as economic - should be at the heart of the pre-Budget statement. Keynesian economics, I have repeatedly argued, is not so much borrowing and printing money in recessions - although vital in an emergency - it is using every tool possible to persuade and cajole banks and building societies to lend.Darling must concentrate his limited funds on creating instruments and policies to stop the destabilising herd effects. The more effective and imaginative he is, the more he will be able to argue that the downturn will be limited and the more the public finances can be stabilised.He has already signalled a willingness to overhaul the cautious and punitively expensive small business loan guarantee scheme. Young small businesses pay 2 per cent on top of their borrowing rate as an insurance policy to reassure the lending bank it will get its money back. The insurance premium needs to be slashed and every small business should qualify. Banks would start to provide much needed working capital.But Darling needs to go much further. For a relatively small amount of money - low billions - he could radically extend cheap insurance schemes across targeted areas of bank lending so that banks would know that, come what may, they will get their loans repaid and thus lend with more confidence. For example, banks used to issue securities to raise money for mortgage finance; the market is shut, but could be reopened, as Treasury adviser Sir James Crosby has urged, with a guarantee. Darling should do it.The same principle should extend to home owners. Darling should create a scheme to allow ordinary borrowers to insure the equity in their homes so they can lock in some wealth. We also need to take the first steps towards the reinvention of the bust British banking system. Darling should announce a new national infrastructure bank along the lines Barack Obama has suggested in the US. He should also announce a major inquiry into British corporate governance. We can't go on with a system in which directors essentially award themselves bonuses for non-performance. I would introduce a financial services bonus tax - 75 per cent for one year bonuses, but tapering downwards to the standard tax system for long-term bonuses.These measures won't stop the recession, but they could mitigate it. And Darling badly needs a powerful story about why this will be a nasty recession but not worse. As it is, the character of this downturn is devastating the government's tax receipts. More than a quarter of corporation tax came from the financial services sector in 2006/7. No more. Capital gains tax folds in an era of plunging property and share prices. Income from stamp duty on house sales will fall by two-thirds. This recession is going to hit the tax base much more savagely than the last one in the early 1990s.Then the peak budget deficit, driven by social security spending and falling tax receipts, rose to nearly 8 per cent of GDP, which in today's terms would be around £120bn. This time round, it is bound to be higher. The peak deficit in this economic cycle could rise to 10 per cent of GDP or a mind-boggling £150bn. Only between 1940 and 1945 will the UK have borrowed so much for so long.The Conservatives' political bet is that if there are further tax cuts and spending increases, financing these moves is going to force the government into a corner. Which is why Darling's extra borrowing has to be used effectively and boldly; although the deficit is necessarily high, we are at the limits of normal finance without resorting to the money printing press and there may be more demands on the state further to recapitalise a bust banking system before the recession is over. His firepower has to be directed overwhelmingly on boosting bank lending. He should not be seduced into permanent tax cuts but, instead, offer a one-off tax credit for the low paid who are most likely to spend it. Anything left should be focused on incentives for employers to retain workers, public works programmes and bringing forward whatever capital spending he can. Don't underestimate the capacity of very low interest rates and a devalued pound to help to put a floor under the economy.There are no easy fixes. The next 18 months are going to blight all our lives. Which is why there must be a moral dimension to tomorrow, along with the economics. Darling cannot legislate for those bonuses to be repaid or history to be rerun, but the truth should be baldly stated. It was the greed of a few that has plunged the many into hard times.Fighting this recession should lay the foundations for a different way of doing capitalism in the future, one that is fairer, longer term and less skewed towards the interests of the City. The rebuilding of the financial system and a more moral system of taxation must begin tomorrow. If Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown dare to say it, they would find not just their party but the whole country behind them.Pre-budget reportEconomic policyCredit crunchAlistair DarlingLabourTax and spendingEconomicsExecutive salariesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Will hutton: It might be politically toxic - but we must join the euro now

When the euro launched nearly 10 years ago, an unnamed euro-sceptic currency trader - now almost certainly redundant - famously called it a toilet currency. Last week it climbed to an all-time high against the pound.Moreover, in Washington this weekend, the euro was the most important currency next to the dollar. The ease with which it can be converted into other currencies, and in huge scale, are two key preconditions to being a reserve currency. The euro and dollar qualify. So does the smaller yen. Sterling does not. It may be convertible, but at present only sellers are exercising their rights. Three months ago a pound was worth more than two dollars. On Friday it bought $1.48 - an extraordinary fall. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne blames Gordon Brown's excessive government borrowing.The explanation is far more complex, and for a Conservative, far less congenial. For years Britain has indulged the City, allowing our financial system to grow four and half times the size of our GDP, a more modest version of Iceland, Ireland and Switzerland, but with the same risks.It is the City's need to borrow at least £100bn a year for the foreseeable future, on top of the government's need to borrow the same - made acutely more difficult by a sterling crisis - that is the heart of the problem. Suddenly membership of the euro - politically toxic - is beginning to look a very attractive escape route. Before growing too depressed, I should point out that we may muddle through. The fall in the pound will stimulate exports and, if it does not become a rout, it is welcome. But there is a real danger that in a country that currently resembles a gigantic hedge fund, the fall could get out of hand. The foreign savers on whom the government and banks rely to finance their debts went on strike 12 months ago. Now they are actively withdrawing their cash. Last week one of the US's top banks, the Bank of New York Mellon, revealed that in September and October, three quarters of the capital that foreigners had brought into Britain in the preceding four years had left - more than £100bn.What worries them is that with plunging property values, the viability of British banks remains questionable, but the UK government has not got a deep enough pocket to bail them out again. British savings are inadequate. If a company gets into this situation it declares bankruptcy because it has not the cash to continue trading. If foreign cash continues to leave, the UK faces the same fate. However, bankruptcy works differently for a country; it spells economic stagnation. The ardent hope is that this does not happen. If investors start to consider the pound cheap and endorse the government's handling of the economy, they may start buying sterling assets again. But suppose the worst happens, what then? There is the Latin American option. Instead of trying to sell bonds, the government would simply instruct the Bank of England effectively to print money. It may want to do this anyway if deflation looms, but now its hand would be forced. But once on this path there is no easy way back; savers and investors are crowded out by the printing press and the country gets locked in a cycle of inflation in a broken-backed economy with an angry, rapidly impoverished middle class. The next option is to organise a jumbo - up to $200bn - loan from the IMF, EU and US to tide the economy over. The Europeans and Americans would both insist that Britain negotiate a deal with the IMF as the precondition for the loan. It would be a re-run of Labour Chancellor Denis Healey turning to the IMF in April 1976 - only now it would be Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown. One insider, contemplating the prospect, acknowledged it would be political suicide. The last, best and most palatable option is to join the euro, and fight a referendum campaign on it being our get-out-of-jail-free card - a means of avoiding de facto national bankruptcy and emasculation of the property-owning middle class while offering a route to reindustrialisation and underwriting the City of London. Inside the euro, both the government and the City would be able to sustain the spending and lending necessary to avert recession. The competitive level at which we would join would boost industrial exports for a generation. And the middle class would not have its savings wrecked by inflation. We would avoid the clutches of the IMF. Importantly, at the moment, the five tests for entry set by Gordon Brown are all met 100 per cent. Britain and Europe's economies are in perfect synch as we enter recession simultaneously. The labour market is flexible. Entry would attract much-needed inward investment, and save the City. It would boost growth. In economic and political terms it would be a masterstroke. Britain would become a member of a reserve currency zone at a competitive level, offering us a key role in the emergent debate about the governance of globalisation and the international financial system. We would remain prosperous and we would matter. Brown, I am told, when the idea was put to him not only ruled it out, he did not want it repeated again for fear even its mention would imply it was actively being considered. Euro membership is political poison, even as its logic becomes more compelling. The same crowd who cheerleaded Britain into becoming a de facto hedge fund in the name of free markets would now rather risk endemic inflation or endless recession and stagnation to avoid the dark hand of Europe. Political leadership is about taking a position in the national interest and arguing for it, rather than being cowed into silence. The best time to begin negotiations is now, rather than in the middle of an economic rout. The very fact that there is zero chance of this happening is one more reason why foreign investors are fleeing - and makes it more likely a rout is on the way.European monetary unionEconomic policyEuropean UnionEuropeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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