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  Richard - ignore Alexander as he has his rather strange theories.
  
  The economy works in cycles, it always does. It goes through a growth cycle and then it contracts before it moves back into growth. The contraction is a correction because the growth phase always overreaches itself. The growth periods usually last longer than the contractions so we see an overall improvement across cycles. A bit like going forward three steps, realising you have gone too far and taking a step back before taking a few more steps forward and so on.
  
  Boom and bust refers to extreme cycles and often ill-considered government actions can cause the growth phase to overreach itself which then induces a correction, that is where we get a bust, or recession.
  
  The present depth of the recession stems from a number of related factors during the growth phase, some are international while others are domestic.
  
  The Euro straightjacket is certainly a major international factor that is making things worse for all of us. Many governments in the Euro failed to manage their economies in a sensible manner and they spent and borrowed excessively thinking that in some way membership of the Euro would shield them. We can now see the consequences of this. These less competitive countries cannot become more competitive through devaluing so a massive and important weapon in their armoury is missing exacerbating the problems of their fundamentally weak economies.
  
  In the UK we are affected by the malaise in one of our major markets and that makes things more difficult for many of our major businesses and impacts on growth.
  
  But that should not be an excuse. If we had managed our affairs better during the growth phase then we would be in a much stronger position.
  
  Sadly, like many Eurozone countries and some others, the growth part of the cycle was boosted by high levels of debt. The economy was kept afloat by an unsustainable level of borrowing. We went far beyond the 'natural swing' of the cycle so when the contraction came along we crashed into the worse recession for 80 plus years. The reasons for this go directly to government policy during the growth phase and we can pick out all the many and very specific mistakes Brown made that led to this. This long period of growth Brown boasted about was just an illusion built on unsustainable debt, the bubble burst and now we are paying for the consequences.
  
  To sum up - Brown claimed he had 'banned boom and bust', the normal delusion of a boastful politician many thought, the problem was Brown actually believed it and ran the economy that way. The fact that he was not alone and other some other countries did the same is no excuse.

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