New LEAP Red Papers - The Recession Budget

To coincide with the 2009 Budget - New Labour's first during a recession - LEAP has published its April 2009 Red Papers: The Recession Budget.

As we face the worst recession for a generation, and if Ed Balls is to be believed "more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s", what is left in the pot for those feeling the effects of the recession: the unemployed, the repossessed, the low waged, the indebted?

It is clear that many are asking 'Where’s our bailout?', and with good reason. For years we were told there was no money to pay for student grants, to restore the pensions link with earnings, to invest in council housing or to reduce inequality. Yet when the banks collapsed through a combination of greed, incompetence and government negligence, the UK taxpayer could be indebted for decades to rescue the lame ducks of neoliberalism.

• Graham Turner on how US policy is damaging the global economy
• Professor Gregor Gall on the faux-Keynesian consensus and what socialists should be arguing for
• Jerry Jones on defending jobs and the case for direct action
• Andrew Fisher on economic insecurity and inequality in recession
• Paul Feldman & Gerry Gold on the G20 and what it should have done
• Richard Murphy on the campaign against Tax Havens post-G20
• John McDonnell on why we need to build a vision of a new economy

Download the April 2009 LEAP Red Papers 'The Recession Budget'.

Update: Read John McDonnell's article on Guardian Comment is Free.