CITY AND SUBURBAN
Printers win, losers weep the next Chancellor will paper the markets with debt
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
The sure-fire winners out of this elec- tion will be Essex men. They work at leafy Debden, where on the Bank of England's presses they print the certificates for British Government stock. They will work early and late, their overtime will be prodigious, they will need to negotiate special allowances, so that they still get paid when the presses are switched off to cool down. John Smith would take more from their pay packets, but first he would fill them. The good news for Debden, and bad news for the rest of us, is that the next British Gov- ernment, whichever it is, will wallpaper the markets with stock. Norman Lamont demurely proposes to borrow £28 billion in the year ahead, after collecting another £8 billion from privatisation sales. In the year after, he would expect to borrow more. John Smith would start from the same posi- tion, but with two handicaps — his party hates privatisation, and it has committed him to a dead weight of unproductive extra spending. The years of deficit stretch into the distance. The Government broker has dusted down his silk hat, the dealers and salesmen look forward to earning their bonuses. All the old bogeys from the bad old days of government borrowing will come back to haunt us — bond buyers' strikes and Duke of York manoeuvres, marching interest rates up so as to sell stock on the way down. As if we did not need, obviously and urgently, to march them down! Neither in the Budget or in its shadow is there a nod to that need.
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