Only state investment can revive Britain's zombie economy | Phillip Inman

Small firms are borrowing big sums to survive. They must be given the option of a debt-for-equity swap with the Treasury

Britain is sleepwalking into a debt crisis that will undermine its prospects of a sustainable recovery.

It's not the debts of the government that are at issue; it is the monumental amount of borrowing by the private sector, much of it from the Treasury, that will hang like a dead weight on the shoulders of thousands of businesses, possibly for a decade.

Of course the government would be in the game of 'picking winners' - something the Treasury has always rejected