As Christy says, there was consumer rationing — spending was forced to fall.
Those who have good, secure jobs here are thankful, but even they worry about the future and are rationing spending.
Now that stock prices have plummeted, consumers may will ration their spending and perhaps even save some of their money, keeping economic growth in the doldrums.
In this age of rationed public spending, the deterioration of vital public works is increasing, and with it the potential for disaster.
It should lead us to question the dogma of rationing public spending, to re-launch the debate on the taxation of movements of capital, to stimulate the will to put an end to fiscal dumping and tax havens.
There is both exaggeration and truth in all this, but effective action also involves a change for the worse: regulation, rationing, austerity, state spending.
A report recently produced by the King's Fund, an independent medical research organisation, predicts that, without an increase in spending, rationing of health care will inevitably become more extensive and explicit.
But he did not provide details of specific cuts and referred instead to the tough decisions taken by the Attlee government in 1945, such as continuing rationing, cutting defence spending and introducing prescription charges.
The problem is, the advisory board can't propose reducing benefits (a k a rationing) or raising fees (another form of rationing), without which the spending target looms impossibly large.
And they made tough and unpopular decisions: to continue with rationing, to cut defence spending and to introduce prescription charges.
