Never was so much owed

Never was so much owed by so few to so many.

We’ll come back to the bankers but as regards the PBR, never was so much opined by so many about so little. We know now that the chancellor and prime minister had towering rows over how draconian the PBR was going to be. Or more precisely, how much of the draconian detail was to be revealed.

Whichever party wins the next election will have an emergency budget and the best line in the PBR farrago was Osborne’s description of Alistair Darling’s reluctance to provide details of public sector spending cuts, as “ringfencing a black hole .”

Darling's third PBR was a work of fiction. Taking place within months of the next general election he provided few details of where the £5bn axe will fall in the public sector. As expected, he increased NI and VAT is back to 17.5%. We explore these and the other fiscal changes as fully as his obfuscation allows.

The PBR highlighted the current fragility of the UK economy and the one-off tax on bankers’ bonuses above £25,000. Banks are already conspiring to remunerate staff differently to avoid paying the tax and some, no doubt, will make noises about relocation out of the UK.

There are few places in the Western world where they’ll get a warm welcome but the splendid Gillian Tett, writing in the FT, makes the very valid point that it’s not just tax that’s driving the bankers out of London.

Money and sentiment are moving east, away from the mature markets.

In the last Monthly View of 2009, we reiterate the belief that this was the year that the financial and economic tectonic plates shifted eastwards to the Orient, to a very different place.