Is George Osborne cutting for a rainy day of bailouts?

(From Guardian Unlimited)

In politics, when somebody tells you that "there is no alternative", it usually means that they are just desperate to stop anybody else noticing that there are several. Where the depth, speed and scale of public spending cuts is concerned, the story told by the coalition government -- and dutifully, and largely uncritically, repeated by the BBC -- is that we have no choice. Yet in some fundamental ways the chancellor, George Osborne, is very successfully spinning us a yarn and certainly not telling us the whole story.

First, the cuts are likely to be so damaging to the economy that they will do precisely the opposite of his stated intention of restoring the trust and faith of the markets. This is odd, in any case, as it was the …