Paging Lord Tebbit...

I like Norman Tebbit; he is his own man. And he has the courtesy to respond to commenters on his blog, however deranged they may be. Perhaps he will respond to the following, which I have submitted to this post of his:

Are Conservatives really conservative, in the sense of wishing to preserve the country? A message I have been trying to get out for some time, is that the financial bust that has scarcely begun, has its roots in excessive growth of the money supply not only under Labour but also under Conservative administrations.

Regrettably, The Bank of England’s website gives figures for M4 only as far back as 1963, but comparing annual changes in M4 with GDP, it’s clear that that banks have run riot for most of the last 47 years. Far more has been lent into the economy than could be justified by growth in economic activity, and the result has been a debt-fuelled ballooning of asset valuations.

From 1979 to 1990, GDP grew annually by an average of 8% or so, but M4 by 19% p.a., a difference of 11% p.a. compound. The New Labour years have seen something like 10% M4 growth and 5% GDP growth p.a., in other words a discrepancy of only half that experienced during the boom years of the 1980s.

Perhaps one could argue ignorance as a plea in mitigation by both political parties; after all, only some 12 professional economists out of an estimated 20,000 worldwide predicted the credit crunch (because debt does not feature highly in classical economic theory) – though I was relaying warnings from mid-2007 onwards, via my blog. But surely ignorance can be no excuse now.

What, then, do the Conservatives propose to do to deal with a banking system that has brought us to the verge of final national destruction?