The economic argument is as important to the long term as fiscal action now is.

Some times Conservative commentators pull their punches. They've learnt to do this as their opponents have used their former strengths against them.

See: "Wanting to cut", "enjoying cutting" - etc coming out of the Labour party / broadcast by the BBC just now.

So an attempt is made to triangulate and some times obscure. And worse they fail to deflect and counter the lies, smears and misdirections of the left.

Currently the left is setting up the "double dip" as the test of failure ( ref almost any BBC broadcast recently ). But the odds are the momentum for this sort of thing has already been set and international events will play big in this also - so it really isn't that much of a determining test.

The left continue to argue for debt, more debt - using the argument that economic growth will reduce it latter and here' the really spurious part that the time to pay it back is when the private sector is doing well !

What shows this argument to be false is how they behaved when the private sector last seemed to be doing well - they ran a structural deficit and argued that anyone who wanted to slow the rate of growth of spending was heartless and wanted to sack nurses / doctors / destroy "front line services" and drown kittens.

Its quite clear that Labour would be politically incapable of reigning back spending during the good times, as its been their main strategy to hold and secure power for themselves.

There really is no alternative - and Conservative commentators need to nail this message home.

The likes of the disgusting Ed Balls will try to rewrite history with his spin and reliance on the ignorance of others as he did last night on Question Time trying to group the 1930's and 1980's together. He needs to be taken on directly and forcefully. His bullying debating style needs to be rebuffed - and his gaming tactics of always interrupting other people need to be outed as the thuggish bullying they represent.

The temptation for team Cameron is going to be to try to deflect the arguments about fairness and cuts rather than addressing the central arguments and winning the case. If we are unable to convince the public that the current disaster was made in the good times by Labour then we are doomed to repeat the whole thing in about 15 years time.

We must win the long term argument and well as the short term battles.

"The sad truth is that pensions savings are going to be what pays the price for these efforts to bail out the economy in the short term."

One of the effects of the shock waves of the Bank of England decision to start increasing the money supply, by supply the money, looks like being drastically damaging private pension schemes - as the price of annuities becomes very unfavourable. This may in turn kill of the remaining final salary pensions schemes.

Add to that the worries over the re badged Norwich Union Aviva solvency - well it worries me as much of my pension is with them - and only the public sector gold plated pensions are standing.

Perhaps the government is going to need those troops on the streets after all.

What we are seeing is the systematic confiscation of private wealth by the government, though future taxation to repay debt, tax on pensions, devaluation of annuities and the low interest rates. No wonder Gordon smiling so much.

I'm not sure any of us will be able to afford to grow old.

* The quote in the post title is from Tom McPhail of Hargreaves Lansdowne from an article in the Telegraph.

Who provided and then removed the £625bn of credit ?

Robert Peston is starting to make sense to me about the current crisis over on his BBC blog here. ( There has been a lot of drivel produced by the BBC - worse of all the Panorama recently which was all about feelings and putting people on camera who had never realised interest rates change ).

His point is this:

In 2001 UK bank loans and deposit roughly matched, there was no 'funding gap'.
Since then UK banks have been raising money from money markets and wholesale funds, which has created the £635bn gap, which increasingly the bank of England is having to fund.

Mr Preston present a succinct argument that I recommend reading here.

But my question remains, as I have asked it before, who or what characterises the ultimate creditors who provided the £625bn and have now withheld it ?

Surely there can be only a few candidates in the world, specifically China and the Gulf Arabs/Saudi.

During the last oil crisis the surplus cash, which burned a hole in the OPEC countries pockets was lent to the third world, especially South America. It cause decades of misery and financial turbulence that still hasn't died down.

Is thats what happening to us now ?

Is this crisis an accident, or has it been planned ?

How responsible are the lenders of the £625bn, who have now taken much of the money back, leaving the citizens and tax payers of the west to be wiped out ?

How can the US be regarded as the worlds prime power when China, in effect, owns them ?

Are these such unreasonable questions ?

What is really worrying is that nothing like them is being asked by our politicians or the MSM. It makes you wonder if they don't already know the answer.