Peter Gallagher

In the bud­get papers (Box 4 of Bud­get Paper No.2) , the Trea­sury says that there is robust sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence from the IMF that the economies apply­ing the stim­u­lus expe­ri­enced an upside growth sur­prise of 3.3 per­cent for every addi­tional 1 per­cent of GDP devoted to fis­cal stimulus.

But they made this up, as Sin­clair David­son shows, by selec­tively chos­ing data from the IMF report that is its source.

Slop­pi­ness? Dis­hon­esty? Hard to say. Dis­grace­ful, in either case.