The Auditing Practices Board don't think there's enough of it. The House of Lords don't think there's enough of it. Yep, it's that thorny issue, scepticism, back in the news.

This time, it's about the Euro. George Osborne went to great pains on The Today Programme to say that "I told you so" isn't a sound economic policy. Yet that implicitly accepts that the sceptics were right.

People don't much like scepticism. Sceptics are the sort of people that try to take away the punchbowl when the party is in full swing, or who drone on about house price crashes when you've just committed to buy a house at eight times your salary. For regulators to ask auditors to be more sceptical is rather having their cake and eating it. We want to keep having fun but we want a stool pigeon (the auditors) to blame when it, rather inevitably, blows up in our faces.

Scepticism would be easier to maintain if we could be more tolerant. All too often, people behave zealously about their cause, be it multiculturalism
or climate change. No opposing views are acceptable, even if well argued and presented. It may not be good economic policy, but Osborne might at least have the good grace to admit that he and other politicians were wrong, and we were right.

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Filed under: Economics, Politics with tags apb, deficit, george osborne, house of lords, ireland, scepticism