Surprisingly honest

From George Osborne's speech, available at HM Treasury:

... these events did not come out of the blue. They all have the same root cause.

Debt.

In particular, a massive overhang of debt from a decade-long boom when economic growth was based on unsustainable household borrowing, unrealistic house prices, dangerously high banking leverage, and a failure of governments to put their public finances in order.

Unfortunately, the UK was perhaps the most eager participant in this boom, with the most indebted households, the biggest housing bubble, the most over-leveraged banks and the largest budget deficit of them all.

History teaches us that recovery from this sort of debt-driven, financial balance-sheet recession was always going to be choppy and difficult.

That's all refreshingly honest, coming from a politician, especially one who's actually in power and could do something about it. Problem is, he and his ilk have absolutely no intention of reducing household borrowing, allowing house prices to fall, making banks sort themselves out or reducing his own government deficit, but hey.

Via Dill at HPC.