The most dangerous cocktail is the chancellor’s own recipe
Dangerous cocktails were in evidence in many a bar during the Christmas and New Year holidays. I do not know how many the chancellor might have sampled, but his demeanour appears to have been transformed from one of blatant complacency in his autumn statement to pre-budget nerves. He now warns of "a dangerous cocktail of new threats" and, yes, "creeping complacency" in the British economic and political debate.
This is not, of course, anything to do with him and the complacency he was fostering as recently as before Christmas. No, this is mainly because of threats to the global economic recovery emanating from a manifest slowdown in China and the impact the collapse of oil prices is having on the economies and finances of oil-producing nations - with the obvious exception of the oil-producing country known as the United States, whose "fracking" boom has made no small contribution to oversupply and falling prices in energy markets.
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