george osborne was the master of that austerity plan. he is the chancellor of the exchequer. he joined me here in new york. thank you, george osborne, for joining us. let me ask you to begin with you ve been touting britain s growth. you ve written an op-ed in the wall street journal. of course there are a lot of people who say britain s recovery has been very weak. the weakest in g-7 other than italy and there is a specific charge made, which is that it was your austerity program, especially the spending cuts, that is responsible for this weak recovery. let me read to you something larry summers said on british television. he said britain s economic policies, meaning yours, are powerful test of the efficacy of determined resolute austerity. and the results so far certainly have not been encouraging to advocates of that strategy. what is your response?
determined resolute austerity. and the results so far certainly have not been encouraging to advocates of that strategy. what is your response? if you look at the situation the u.k. found itself in, we had one of the deepest recessions of any of the major economies in the world. gdp has shrunk. we had largest banking crisis of any financial center. biggest bank bailout. and we exited with a high budget deficit. 11% budget deficit. really only the united states had a similar size deficit and of course the u.s. has a reserve currency. that was a situation we were confronting. we set out a deliberate plan to bring that deficit down and reduce structural deficit to sort out some of the structural problems in our financial system and to rebalance the british economy. i think 3.5 years on, the british economy is currently growing faster than pretty much any other western economy.