The Rusty Wire Service

It’s funny how sometimes the truth has a habit of popping up and then in the midst of all the detail, it gets lost; like one of those photoshopped pictures that occasionally appear on everyone’s social media timelines. You know the ones; where you don’t notice the spectre hiding in plain sight in the background until you take a closer look. Well, I had one of those last week. It was, on the face of it, a relatively innocuous piece of economic-speak; part of a speech by deputy governor of the Bank of England Charlie Bean.  In listing the headwinds faced by the UK economy in the months ahead, Bean posited that “for some households, the past accumulation of debt may weigh on spending”. Maybe I was having a bad day but when I saw that particular phrase, my first visceral reaction was: So, Mr Bean, what you’re saying is that one of the main reasons we can’t get out this mess fast enough is because ordinary people in debt don’t want to spend money they don’t have on ov...