Can Turtles Fly?

From an Associated Press story via The Globe & Mail : Fighting record debt, the British government on Wednesday outlined the largest cuts to public spending since World War II — slashing benefits and thousands of public sector jobs with an austerity plan aimed at restoring the nation's finances. After the country spent billions bailing out indebted banks, and suffered a squeeze on tax revenue and an increase in welfare bills, Treasury chief George Osborne staked the coalition government's future on tough economic remedies. Mr. Osborne confirmed there would be 81 billion pounds ($128 billion) in spending cuts through 2015, which he claims are necessary along with some tax increases to wipe out a spending deficit of 109 billion pounds ($172 billion). As many as 500,000 public sector jobs will be lost, about 18 billion pounds ($28.5 billion) axed from welfare payments and the pension age raised to 66 by 2020, earlier than previously planned. I'm against the "a...

From MarketWatch : Standard & Poor's on Thursday lowered its credit outlook on the U.K. to negative from stable for the first time ever in view of the country's swelling debt, which may expand even as the economy recovers. The move by Standard & Poor's raises the prospect not only of a credit-rating downgrade in Britain but a lowering of the outlook in the U.S., which has taken a similar path of big spending and quantitative easing to escape the credit-led recession. "I think there will be a downgrade on the U.K. and I think there will be a downgrade on the U.S. outlook from one of the Big Three" credit-rating firms, said Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange. ... S&P kept the country's AAA rating intact, but the outlook signals that the country's credit rating could be lowered within the next two years. Rival agency Moody's Investors Service on Thursday said it is not reviewing the U.K.'s rating. S&...